Page 87 of My Hero
He hesitated. Was he hurting her? Or did she protest, as women often did, as a game? Again, he slipped his finger over the sensitive nubbin.
“Nay, Garth. Please.” She jerked beneath him, then squeezed her thighs together.
A deluge of fears fell around him: He hadn’t pleased her. She regretted her actions. He was but half a man. She couldn’t endure his touch.
But the truth wasshehad come tohim.She had sought him out. Why? Why, if there were more capable men available, if she’d been unsatisfied by him before, would she have sought him out again?
“Don’t you require…more?” he asked, all his fears perched on his shoulder, waiting for her answer.
“More?” She laughed. But it wasn’t the jeer of ridicule Mariana had perfected. Cynthia’s laugh was capricious, full of delight and relief. “Oh, Garth, more?” She squirmed away from his hand, giggling. “More and I shall die, truly. They’ll have to pry my cold bones from around yours.”
A fierce love swept through him then that had nothing to do with the remnant of fire in his loins.
“You’re satisfied?” he breathed, scarcely able to believe it. “It was…enough?”
She answered him with a giddy sigh, locking her fingers around his neck and smiling up into his waiting eyes. “Enough? How can you ask me that when I’m dying of pleasure?”
He searched her face. She spoke the truth. And her words acted upon him like a keystone dislodged from a dam, releasing a flood of long-checked emotions all at once. Gratitude choked him, and he dared not try to speak. Instead, he gathered her in his arms and hugged her so tightly for so long she squealed in protest.
He didn’t remember loosening his hold or slipping from her or rolling to her side to keep from crushing her. He thought he was too agitated for slumber. He was wrong. Within a moment, he was sleeping more deeply than he had in days.
So it was a surprise when, sometime near the hour of Matins, he snorted awake to discover the candle sputtering and Cynthia slung like a heavy cloak over his body.
“Cynthia,” he whispered, jostling her shoulder.
She mumbled incoherently.
“Cynthia, you must get up.” He rattled her again, harder this time. “Come. It’s late.”
She murmured again and snuggled closer.
He cursed under his breath. How could he have been so stupid as to fall asleep? He’d compromised both of them. He had to get Cynthia back to her chamber.
Briskly he disentangled himself from her and shrugged into his cassock, raking his hair back into some semblance of order. Then he stared down at the angel lying on his bed, and he had to smile. She looked like the victim of a shipwreck, cast ashore by a haphazard wave. Her hair spread across the pillow like seaweed, and her skin glowed with pearly luminescence. He stood there long enough to commit her features to memory, for in days to come, when they passed in the great hall or at chapel or by the garden, he wanted to remember her like this.
Then he bent to scoop her from the bed. He was never sure she came fully awake at all, even when he slipped the gown over her head. He carried her through the course of dozing bodies that populated the great hall, knowing the Abbot would be sequestered in the lord’s chambers and praying the servants were still asleep as well. He crept up the steps to her chamber, and then tucked her hastily into her bed.
He silently congratulated himself as he picked his way back to his quarters. It wouldn’t happen again, this clandestine midnight meeting between lovers. It was far too dangerous for both of them. They still lived in two different worlds. She had her betrothed, and he had his church. But Cynthia had given him back his manhood. He’d have a sweet memory to sustain him. And, with any luck, she wouldn’t remember a thing.
Unfortunately, he counted too much on three things—on the amnesiac properties of ale, that, once he’d bedded Cynthia, it would be easy to resist her, and that they hadn’t been seen.
Chapter 20
Elspeth recoiled into the shadows at the bottom of the stairwell. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stop the squeak that was wont to come out. She even clenched her eyes tightly for a moment, hoping that when she reopened them, what she’d seen would prove to be a trick of the moonlight.
But as sure as she knew the back of her own wrinkled hand, that was Father Garth carrying Lady Cynthia up to her bedchamber. She sank against the cold stone wall, suddenly feeling all of her sixty-three years.
Maybe, she reasoned desperately, willing her heart to quit its crazed jig, things weren’t as they appeared. Maybe Cynthia had gone to him to confess her sins and then…fallen asleep, or…or the Father had found her dozing in the buttery, where they’d both gone to fetch a midnight bite. Maybe she’d fallen down the stairs and…
But nay. Garth wasn’t in any hurry with her. If anything, his step was stealthy. And his face, where the wall sconce lit it up for an instant, was filled with such warmth and affection for his burden that there could be no mistake.
Garth was Cynthia’s lover, not Philip.
It pinched at Elspeth’s old heart to think of it. Aye, Garth was comely and kind and generous. He came from a fine family. He was young and hale. He’d never given her cause to question his loyalty. And the two of them together, well, they made a handsome pair with their strong features and formidable height. What children they’d—
She gave her head a hard shake.
The man was a priest.
