My Lord Raven (Knights of the Royal Household)

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

“You eat little, my lady,” Bran said, leaning toward Catrin, not quite touching her. Still, his warm breath brushed the side of her face. He smelled of wine and a faint scent of woodruff.

“I am no longer hungry, my lord,” Catrin replied with a stiff nod of her head.

He failed to heed her dismissal and sliced a piece of venison from the joint on the trencher they shared. She had long ago satisfied her hunger during the first course of their wedding meal. Now, some hours later, they lingered over a third course, amid the noisy, joyous castle folk and freemen who feasted with them in the great hall, eating and drinking their fill.

He offered her a wicked, indolent smile. “You will need your strength for what’s to come this night.”

She eyed her new husband who sat relaxed beside her at the cloth-covered trestle table. Her jaw muscles tightened. Heavens! She wished she were so relaxed. His attentionnay, his very presencecramped her belly and twisted her nerves. Now he expected her to eat more. She was wise enough to understand his subtleties. The mere thought of climbing into bed with him made her want to flee.

“I am not as needing of strength, my lord, as forbearance,” she said with a sniff, maintaining her stiff posture. His gaze rested on her face. Feeling it heat, Catrin glanced away. “I have proven I will do my duty.”

“Then do your duty as etiquette demands and let me tend you.” He scrupulously wiped his hands on a linen napkin and picked up the freshly cut morsel between two fingertips. “You’ll find this venison quite tasty.”

Catrin looked back at him feeling trapped like a rabbit in a snare and let him feed her the tidbit she did not want. His fingertips grazed her lips, lingering there almost intimately while she accepted the meat and began to chew it slowly. She stared up into his penetrating eyes, feeling as if she would melt from their intensity. Reading his mind was not hard. She knew he thought of stolen kisses. He thought of tonight when his kisses would not be stolen, but legally his. Tonight, when she must do her duty as his wife.

“You see, ’tis a lovely cut of venison, without that gamy taste,” he said. “Your cook should be congratulated, my lady.”

Catrin swallowed and patted her lips with her own napkin. “As you should be congratulated, my lord, on your persistence.” She reached for the cup of wine.

He laughed and seized the cup from her very hands. Then he lifted the goblet to her lips, offering it so that she could take a sip. Catrin drank, seeking to wash down more than Cook’s tasty meal—but rather her fear, her repugnance, her hate.

She was anxious to be gone from the hall and longed to be done with the approaching night, instead of waiting like a condemned murderer for the executioner. She had made her bed, so to speak. Now she wanted to lie in it, simply to ease the pounding in her head. Surely, the consummation would not be as terrible as its anticipation.

Catrin shut her eyes. She was fooling herself. Everything about her groom bespoke a certain mastery of the subject that threatened her very sanity. Bran ap Madog, the King’s Raven, was a master of blade and lance. And master of women as well.

“You are bored,” he stated. “By merest chance, may I tempt you with something sweet?”

Her eyes flew open, knowing full well he had been watching her, wondering about her, wanting her. In truth, his sultry gaze confirmed what her senses perceived.

“Nay, I fear I cannot eat another bite,” she said, tilting her head away from him.

He motioned with his hand to his sergeant-at-arms who stood near his left shoulder. Like magic, the wiry man produced plates filled with various treats—pastries topped with pine nuts and white sugar, marzipan cakes with almonds, plus a variety of costly figs, pomegranates, and dates.

Queasiness washed through her already tense body. Catrin shook her head declining the sugarcoated date he’d plucked from the plate and held to her lips.

“Nay?” Bran brought the foreign delicacy up to his mouth and lazily took a bite, his gaze never leaving her face. “You know not what you miss.” He chewed with deliberate slowness as if he were tantalizing her, promising her of more delights to come.

So keenly aware was she of his every movement—the slight lift of a dark eyebrow, the way his throat moved when he swallowed, the exciting timbre of his deep voice—Catrin caught his double meaning.

Bran finished the morsel and wiped his hands once again on his napkin. “Then, let us have entertainment. Rhys, what say you?” He turned to his sergeant who hurried off to do his bidding, returning with a motley troop of travelers who included a juggler, several nimble acrobats, and a young troubadour with a lute.

To the approval of those in the hall, the acrobats tumbled between the tables and in front of the lord and lady of the castle, springing high into the air and flipping frontward and back. Applause rose as each one of the brightly clad men finished a maneuver. The juggler balanced wooden balls on a stick and then tossed four of them in the air at one time. Moving them in a circle between his hands, he never let them fall to the rush-strewn floor.

For a moment, as her attention turned toward the entertainers, Catrin’s nervousness eased. Even Bran applauded the diversion. She found the performers provincial and simple. As a member of Queen Eleanor’s entourage, she had once seen a magician with slanting eyes who had come from a faraway place. He had made fire appear from the very air, something both frightening and wonderful.

Surely, her new husband, a former Crusader, had more sophistication than to let these local players captivate him. She slid her glance to the left, catching the untroubled look on his face. The fine lines by his eyes crinkled now with laughter and the brooding look was gone from his gaze. Why should he not be diverted? Bran had gained what he wanted. As Olwen, she and the lands of Northbridge were his bounty.

And tonight? That unbidden thought sparked fire between her legs. To ease it, she reached once more for the cup and drank deeply of the tart Boudreaux wine, soon draining it.

She motioned to the sergeant. “What is your name?”

“Rhys, if it pleases, my lady.” He bowed very smartly for a Welshman.

Catrin handed him the silver goblet. “More, if you will, Rhys.”

His eyes lowered respectfully, he took the cup from her. “Wine from my lord’s private stock?”

“Yea, I find it flavorful.” With that remark, she recaptured Bran’s attention, but she did not care. Defiantly, she raised her chin. The drink had emboldened her, taking the edge off the unholy fires ignited within and bringing a feeling of relaxation, the feeling her new husband came by so easily. She needed something to tolerate the sharpened gaze of the man beside her.

With her unbound hair drifting over her shoulders and without the protecting headdress, as was fashionable, Catrin felt naked at his perusal. He bent his head near and took her hand, sliding his thumb across her soft skin.

“Your fingers are long,” he murmured. “You have pretty hands. Do you play an instrument?”

“Sometimes a harp.” Her breath stuck in her throat and she offered a quick prayer that he wouldn’t ask more of her or notice the tiny knife cut on her thumb or the blisters on her palm.

“So you like music?” With his free hand, he signaled for the young troubadour who came eagerly forward. “Play for us, lad. Something suitable for a wedding feast.”

“Aye, my lord. Perchance something from my travels?”

Catrin couldn’t miss the lad’s impertinent wink, two lustful men making sport. She was the prey. Incensed, she tried to pull her hand from Bran’s grasp, but he held it tightly.

The troubadour played opening notes on his lute. Then the lad turned soulful eyes toward the heavens and began to sing in high-pitched Norman French, “Bacchus can soften / Feminine obstinacy / And bend it to / Willing consent…

Feminine obstinacy? Catching the meaning, Catrin set her jaw. Where were the sweet endearments? The courtship? She was angry for Olwen’s sake. Her sweet cousin would have had to face such a shameless display as she endured now. Would this have been her fate, too, had she been forced into marriage? No thought of love or tenderness, just a rutting, randy buck for a husband.

Rhys returned with a replenished cup, placing it on the table before her. Catrin jerked her hand free and reached for it. When Bran moved to stop her, she cast him an angry look. “What, my lord? You disapprove of a willing bride?”

He had the grace to flush and sit back in his chair. Picking up the goblet with both hands, Catrin brought the cold silver rim to her lips. As she drank, she defied him over its rim with her rebellious gaze. He watched her silently, and this time she could not read his thoughts.

Sated for the moment, she placed the cup back on the table with a thump, sloshing wine over the sides onto the tablecloth. Then casting a glance at her husband, she raised her hands high and clapped for the lad with the fine tenor voice. Others at the banquet turned to stare and then joined in with their own applause.

“Sing us another song,” Catrin called, ignoring the pointed look Meg shot her from across the hall.

Sweet, pious Olwen would never behave such. But sweet, pious Olwen was safe in the arms of nuns, not facing a wedding night in the arms of the King’s Raven. The man’s slight smile and dissolute gaze encouraged her misbehavior.

“Yea, let us have more such songs,” he said, nodding to the lad and stretching his arm possessively across Catrin’s shoulder.

His very touch fueled the fire she was trying to bank. Through the roughness of his sleeve, she felt his warmth. It seemed to scorch the back of her neck, burning all the way to the tips of her toes. As the boy’s voice rose again in song, she grasped the goblet and drank more.