That left Gabriel alone with Magdalene, his first action to stride to the fireplace and stoke the flames so that the logs burned even brighter, even hotter.
Then he quickly undid his sword belt and hung it on a chair, and proceeded to strip from his body the clothes that had dried to him like a second skin. His breacan. His tunic, everything discarded upon the floor along with his still-sodden boots.
Gabriel took only a few moments to stand naked before the fire, warming himself, and then he strode to the bed and eased back the covers.
With Magdalene facing the opposite wall, he wondered if she even knew that he was climbing in beside her—but she stiffened and cried out when he gathered her into his arms.
Nothing between them other than her white nightgown, which he grabbed in his fist and tore from her shivering body with a sharp rending sound—and now she screamed in fright.
“Shh, Maggie, it’s the only way tae warm you!”
If she heard him, she wasn’t comforted at all, but only heightened her struggles, Gabriel taking heart at how fiercely she began to fight him.
He only pulled her close against him, as close as could be as he lay on his side behind her, the icy chill of her skin alarming him more than anything Clovis had said.
He’d felt such coldness before when stacking the dead after a battle—heaven help him that his effort to help her hadn’t come too late!
He began to rub her body with the flattened palm of his hand, up and down from her trembling shoulder to the curve of her waist and rounded hip to her upper thigh, over and over again. Still she thrashed against him, crying out, pleading with him to stop and to release her, which heartened Gabriel even more.
One good kick caught him in the shin and he grunted, which made her kick him again, even harder. Gabriel knew then as if an angelic gift had been bestowed upon him that her will to live, to fight, was returning.
Her shivering was lessening, the warmth of his body against hers doing what he had hoped it would—prayedit would.
For indeed, he was praying…that he wouldn’t disappoint her again, and that somehow she might learn to trust him…this beautiful woman who ruled his emotions.
Anger and hurt, love and hope—like opposite edges of a razor-sharp sword and he knew so desperately which side he wanted to win.
She fought against his fierce embrace for long moments, and hard, but finally her thrashing stilled and she went limp in his arms.
Not in another faint, but her breathing slow and steady as he realized she had fallen into an exhausted sleep; either that, or she had swallowed some of Clovis’s potion—aye, but that was a good thing.
Her skin warm now and supple, her shivering ceased, her body so sweetly curved against him that Gabriel felt a tightening in his loins.
How could he not with such a woman as Magdalene in his arms, her tawny hair like tousled silk upon the pillow?
Her softly rounded bottom pressed against that part of him that grew and thickened as with a mind of its own—aye, not so good a thing for the frustrated pain it cost him.
Would she ever welcome him with open arms?
Her eyes gazing into his with desire?
His knee spreading open her thighs as she shifted her hips upward to receive him…her soft moans growing louder, more breathless, as he thrust deeply inside her?
“Ah, God…” Gabriel shook his head as if he could dispel the carnal thoughts—an impossible thing!
Yet were they carnal when between husband and wife? More so a blessing of marriage, his thankfulness so great that Magdalene was of sound mind and no lunatic at all.
He vowed at that moment to let her be the one to reveal to him why she had feigned madness, even though Clovis had already given him a sense of the reason. Yet he wanted to hear it from her lips…a revelation he knew would only come when she trusted him, aye, and mayhap even loved him.
Could he hope for such a day?
Gabriel groaned as she shifted ever so slightly against him, but still she slept on deeply while he, at last, allowed himself to fall asleep, too.
Chapter 15
Magdalene awoke with a start, her eyes blurred and her thoughts jumbled.
Where was she?
