'Are you ready to return to the castle, Mistress Julitta?' Mauger said at her elbow. His face, at least, reflected no emotion. She nodded and silently followed him to his mount. As he drew her up behind him, she discovered to her dismay that they were alongside Benedict and Gisele. The couple were pressed close together upon the same horse, Gisele smiling at the unaccustomed pleasure of being the centre of attention, Benedict's optimistic nature made exuberant by the atmosphere of celebration. Averting her eyes, Julitta grasped Mauger's belt and leaned against him, pressing her face against his solid back and closing her eyes as she had once done behind Benedict when he had saved her from the geese.
Bathhouses had taught Benedict several valuable lessons when it came to the art of making love. He knew that such knowledge sat quite at odds with what Gisele had been taught by her mother, and was not a little perturbed. It was like being invited to a feast and then being told that you could not eat any of the food spread before you. And where was the pleasure in that?
Gisele looked at him nervously. The sheets were drawn up to her chin, concealing her pale, slender nakedness. He sat up beside her, his own olive skin tanned deep brown from his busy outdoor life. They were alone and the door was barred, but the sounds of celebration still drifted through the wood. Some folk would stay up until dawn, reminiscing round the fire, talking and singing. He half-wished he was with them now, a guest himself, but he and Gisele had a duty to perform and a bloody sheet to present in the morning in token of that duty accomplished. And the other half of his wish was watching him fearfully for any sudden move.
He reached with a gentle hand to brush at a wisp of silvery hair lying on her cheek. 'You look as if you have just stepped from the land of faery,' he said softly, 'so beautiful and delicate. Look at the difference in our skin.' Adroitly he peeled aside the sheltering covers, exposing her satiny shoulder, and laid his fingers there, warm brown upon white.
Gisele looked and shivered, small goose bumps rising on her flesh. 'I won't hurt you,' he murmured, 'I promise I won't. Just let me touch you for a moment. Here, rest against me, you're cold.'
Although Benedict would not be nineteen until Christmastide, it had been more than three years since he had lain with his first woman, and in that time he had learned that to light a blaze in a cold hearth, you had to pay great attention to setting the fire. You could not brutally thrust a torch into the kindling and expect it to burn. The flames had to be coaxed and fanned.
Of course, he also knew that he could throw Gisele flat on her back and take her within a matter of seconds to sate his own lust, that it was his marital right to do so, but Benedict's was a sensual nature. He derived as much pleasure from the slow spiralling of his senses as he did from the core of the act itself. He wanted Gisele to feel as he did, wanted to see her eyes grow hazy with desire and then widen in astonishment, wanted to hear her gasp as she arched against him. He could not allow her mother's shadow to have the dominance of their wedding bed.
He continued to whisper how beautiful he thought her, and moved his hand up and down her spine in a slow, stroking rhythm that warmed and soothed. After a while she began to relax and he persuaded her to drink some of the spiced wine that had been left on the night table in case they became thirsty at their endeavours. Benedict set his lips to the place where she had drunk, holding her eyes while he tilted the cup. And then, handing it back to her, he was deliberately clumsy and spilled some of the sweetened wine upon her shoulder. Gisele jumped with surprise, then raised an edge of the bed-sheet to dry herself. Benedict quickly set the cup down on the coffer and grabbed her hand before she could accomplish her intention. Bearing it down, he leaned over her and began to kiss and lick the wine from her skin, following the track of the droplets from shoulder to armpit, to the small swell of breast and the roseate crown of tight nipple, by which time Gisele had given up all resistance, permitting him to have his way.
Benedict led her slowly through the labyrinth of desire towards its core, pausing here and again to explore and savour. She came with him, eager, and at the same time reluctant. Even as she arched towards the feather- lightness of his touch between her thighs, her breath hissing through her teeth, she kept her eyes tightly closed, protecting herself. And although she put her arms around his neck and her fingertips dug furiously into his shoulders, she refused, even at his gentle coaxing, to touch him intimately in return. It was as if he was asking her to place her hand upon the devil's branding iron.
And then, beneath his sure, soft stroking, her closed eyelids tensed and she began to gasp and buck. Benedict entered her then, and as her flesh enclosed him, he felt the exquisite closeness of release and relief. He had been holding himself in check for a long time while he concentrated on bringing Gisele to a state of excitement that would overcome whatever pain there was, and now she had reached the pinnacle, he let his body have its way, and quickly, before she descended from the height of her own pleasure. The barriers in his mind dissolved, there was nothing but her smooth, tight sheath, and himself filling it, bursting. Her throat arched, her short fingernails imprinted half-moons of lust across his shoulders and she sobbed once aloud, the sound caught back and smothered behind her teeth.
Finally, Benedict caught his breath. Bracing his weight on his elbows, he looked down at her. Still her eyes were closed. Her breathing was short and swift, and a rosy flush illuminated her face, throat, and breasts. He dipped his head to nibble her shoulder and tasted a residue of wine, salty now with sweat.
'That wasn't so bad, was it?' he murmured.
Wordlessly she shook her head, and the colour mantling her face darkened as she blushed.
'You can open your eyes, you know.'
Reluctantly she did so, avoiding his dark gaze as if they had done something shameful.
'Pleasure can be God-given too.' He rolled off her and lay down at her side. 'We are man and wife, we have not sinned.'
She nodded agreement, more to please him, he suspected, than from true belief. She raised the covers and looked down, checking that there was blood between her thighs and that some of it had smeared on the sheet. 'It didn't hurt,' she said in a puzzled, almost accusing voice.
'I suppose your mother told you it would?' he said neutrally.
Gisele frowned and shook her head. 'She said that it might, but not to worry, it would soon be over. But Father Hoel says that it is a woman's lot to bear pain for the sin of Eve, that anything else is lust.'
'Father Hoel is a sapless old stick,' Benedict snorted. 'I could have given you more than enough pain to satisfy your guilt, but I wanted it to be good for you.'
She bit her Up and was silent for a while. 'It was,' she said in a small, tentative voice, and pulled the bedclothes back up, covering herself from his gaze.
Benedict felt a surge of irritation. What was good was obviously not necessarily right. He drew her against him, his hand sweeping over the curve of her spine and her buttocks. He had intended going to sleep, but a different resolve grew inside him as he witnessed her reaction to his lovemaking. 'Next time,' he said a trifle grimly, as if responding to a challenge, 'will be even better.'
And as Gisele twisted and wept beneath the relentless onslaught of his tongue and fingers, Julitta lay in the bower with the other women, and twisted and wept too in anguish of her own. And alone with his hand, so did Mauger.
CHAPTER 45
Julitta stooped, formed a snowball from the thick white carpet at her feet, and hurled it at the young squire who had just struck a direct hit on her cloak. Her missile hit him on the side of the neck and showered in crystalline fragments down his tunic and shirt to find his skin and make him bellow. Julitta shrieked with delight and pressed home her attack. The youth rallied and chased her. Giggling, she fled across Brize's lower bailey for the safety of the stain, but her skirts hampered her, and the squire caught her by the arm and spun her round to face his handful of snow. Half-screaming, half-laughing, Julitta fought him off, her hair untwisting from its braid.
Mauger paused at the top of the wooden stairway linking the keep with the lower bailey and stared down on the tussling pair. His mouth tightened, and his hands clenched into fists. 'Arnaut!' he bellowed furiously. 'Arnaut, who gave you permission to leave your duties?' He thumped down the steps and strode over to Julitta and the squire. 'What do you think you are doing?'
