He released her hand and moved his to her legs, caressing them until they trembled beneath his fingers. Giles reached over and lifted her leg over his hip, drawing her closer and opening her to his exploration. Gliding over the curls and then her stomach and then back, he listened as her breathing came faster and faster. Using his fingers and his thumb, he spread the folds of her womanhood apart and pressed against the hardened bud there.
‘Does it hurt to touch there?’ he asked.
She arched into his hand even more and keened out a throaty moan as she did it. The passionate noises continued as he brought her to the edge of release time and time again, but would not let her over it. When she could only moan in wordless sounds, he pressed his palm against her curls and his finger against that sensitive place until he felt her spasm against his hand. Holding her tightly there, he waited as her release rolled over her and until she fell onto her back, her leg grazing his hardness as she did.
Giles was tempted to seek his own release until she reached over and touched him there. ‘Nay, lady, do not,’ he began.
‘Did you not say you would call me Fayth, Giles?’ she asked as she began to slide her hand down his rod. ‘Help me,’ she whispered. ‘I know not how…’
‘Fayth,’ he said on a groan as her innocent caress proved more stirring than a practised one could.
He captured her hands and guided her movements until it was his turn to moan out his release. He felt her lay back and, trying to rearrange the bedclothes, he discovered that she had already fallen asleep. Making certain she was covered, he turned on his side.
His last thought as sleep took him was that if there was this pleasure without being inside her, what could it be like when he was planted deep within?
He was gone in the morning when she woke and it was only when Ardith tended to the fire that she discovered that he’d given orders for her to be left undisturbed. Since the chamber was dark and only the occasional sound of thunder rumbled overhead, she knew that going to the village was not a possibility this day. Accepting his gift of staying in bed long past daybreak, Fayth fell back into the arms of sleep.
It was some time later that day when her courses started. As two days passed and the third began she wondered what his reaction would be to the news that she was the virgin she swore herself to be.
The bad storms continued for those three days, unabated, and she thought he must be wholly uncomfortable surveying his lands in the relentless rain. They had spoken of her father’s lands, now his, but she was unfamiliar with the neighbouring ones. She knew one reason he rode was that he sought a location on which to build a new keep in the Norman fashion.
Fayth had been working in the small room off the hall where she kept all the records of the manor, as her father had before her, when she had happened to overhear Giles speaking to his friend about the need of a defensible keep.
As much as she’d like to believe that fighting was over, she feared it was not. Each day brought reports of sightings of outlaws and William’s move north-and westward. Brice accepted them on Giles’s behalf from the messengers sent by their Norman neighbours or from the king. And the knight was none too happy when news of his own holding did not arrive.
When nothing could be moved because the wagons became mired in the muddy roads and the rain and winds continued into that third day, Brice sought relief the way men did—he challenged several of the other knights to swordplay. The rains kept her inside and no amount of cajoling would make her venture forth to see him defeat his opponents.
Finally, the fourth morning after Giles left, the sun rose full in the sky, blessing the cold, wet ground with warmth and light. The roads began to dry out late in the morning and Fayth decided it was time to venture back into the village and try to complete some of the work she’d set out to do before her husband’s return.
Chapter Thirteen
Fayth finished the last part of her inventory in the weaver’s hut and wrote down the information on her parchment scroll before she forgot. Brice appeared at the door.
‘Lady, sundown is approaching. How much longer will you need before you are ready to return to the keep?’ he asked.
Looking around the hut, she noticed one more pile of bolts of material that she’d missed. They were lucky this cottage did not burn during the attack, for they would have lost a fortune in a goodly amount of woven fabrics her father had purchased at market just this past summer.
‘Not much longer, sir. A short while?’ she asked.
‘Then heed my call this time and do not make me come searching for you,’ he said, brusquely. He paused and gave her an apologetic glance. ‘My lady.’ He bowed before leaving the cottage.
She’d been the bane of his existence these last days and he served as an example to her of why a man-of-war needed to be a man-at-war. She had no idea why his duke delayed in granting Brice the lands promised, but he did not handle the waiting well. Fayth smiled to herself over the many examples of his impatience she’d seen since Giles had left the keep, and she would not be surprised if there was a fight when he returned.
Would it be today? He was at least a day late, but he had sent word back late yesterday that he needed another day. Yet, sundown approached with no sign of him on the roads leading through the village or to the manor. A tightness in the pit of her stomach grew at the thought of his return. An unnatural, she was certain, anticipation of completing the marital act with him left her breathless at times, and she imagined—or tried to—what wondrous things he would show her and do to her now that she could prove her honour was intact.
She forced herself to breathe slowly and to push such thoughts of lust and passion from her mind, especially when she had work to complete. Her body fought her efforts, tingling and throbbing in those private places where he had pleasured her with his hands and his mouth. What would it feel like when he finally joined to her with that part of him that she’d caressed so intimately? Would the thickness and length of him hurt as he took her maidenhead and made her his wife in reality?
Her mouth grew dry, but that place between her legs where he would thrust and complete the marriage act grew wetter and wetter with each wicked thought. Dabbing at her heated face with the edge of her sleeve, she turned her attentions back to the work before her.
Fayth had divided the final pile of fabrics by type and was measuring and counting as fast as she could when the cottage door opened once more.
‘Your pardon, Sir Brice. I did not hear your call,’ she began, turning to face his bluster. But it was not Brice who stood before her.
Edmund Haroldson, the man who should be Earl of Wessex and heir to the throne of England, ducked into the cottage and quickly pulled the door closed behind him. So shocked was she that Fayth could only blink and gape at him.
‘Fayth!’ he whispered to her. ‘Are you well?’
He held his arms open to her and she ran into his embrace. His arms, strong and tight around her, comforted her as none others had since her father’s departure to the north. She clutched him just as fiercely as the memories of her life before the duke’s arrival on their shores passed through her mind. Only when he leaned away did she loosen her hold on him.
