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“You’re very fertile if you indeed became with child with but one time.”
“I am or you are.”
He stiffened but his smile remained firmly in place. Did he really expect her to change her tune now?
“Then I’d best take my fill of you whilst you carry the babe. I’ll be tired of you by the time the child is born and that will be just as well. I don’t wish to have a dozen babes hanging on to me within as many years.”
She wanted to yell at him; she wanted to howl at the glorious full moon. She did neither. She lowered her head and played with the bread on her trencher. He was trying on purpose to hurt her. She wouldn’t let him see that he was succeeding.
“You have been so very kind to me, your majesty,” Daria said later to the Queen of England. “I thank you, truly.”
“Fret not, child. I will see you again. You and Roland will come to London, or perhaps my lord and I will visit Cornwall. Now, my dear, allow my ladies to prepare you for the night.”
With those prosaic words, and not a bit of well-meant advice, the Queen of England left her to the ministrations of two ladies-in-waiting. The ladies weren’t so reticent as their mistress. They’d drunk their share of wine and were thus giggling and giving Daria advice on making a man shudder with lust.
Roland paused outside the tent and listened to the women’s laughter coming from within. And then he heard Daria’s voice, puzzled and low, “Truly, Claudia, how do I do that? Just tell him to stick it into my mouth? Would I not choke? Would I not hurt him with my teeth?”
“Silly girl. Daria, you must stroke your hands over body and follow your hands with your tongue and mouth. It’s a wonderful sound.”
Roland’s eyes widened. So the queen’s ladies were as bawdy as any others. So they were educating Daria. Then his smile turned to a frown when she said, “Perhaps Roland won’t like me to do that because I wouldn’t do it well. Perhaps he would want another, more skilled and—”
“Daria, hush now. The only way for you to become skilled is to practice. Ask your husband if he minds that you practice on him. Then watch him lick his lips and watch his eyes grow large with anticipation.”
Roland didn’t hear what his wife said to that. His wife. It was almost more than a man of few years but vast experience could take in. He hadn’t wanted a wife, not yet, not until his keep in Cornwall was in proper condition and he’d become—bored. He shook himself. Bored. He wouldn’t ever become bored, and how could his mind assume that taking a wife was the cure for boredom anyway?
He pulled back the tent flap and chuckled at the drunken grins he received from the two women. Their th
oughts were clearly writ on their faces, and his sex responded. He quickly turned to Daria. She simply stood where she was, staring at him. With new eyes, he thought.
Claudia poked her elbow into Daria’s ribs. “Practice, my dear, practice.”
“Good night, Daria, and enjoy what God and the king have given you. The saints and women know there aren’t many men as potent and well-formed as this one. Aye, he’s a lovely lad, he is.”
The two women eyed Roland through wistful drunk eyes, Claudia brushing her breasts against his arm as she went past him.
Daria stared, feeling no particular anger at the woman. They’d dipped freely into the wine, and Roland was a beautiful man. She supposed it made Claudia forget herself. Roland was standing there saying nothing, merely looking at her.
“Will you take their advice?”
Her face turned instantly red. “You heard what they told me to do?”
“Aye, I heard. Excellent advice.”
She straightened her back and looked him squarely in the eye. “Then I will do it. But you must tell me what to do, Roland. I have no wish to offend you or perhaps hurt you.”
“This is a very strange conversation,” he said as he began stripping off his outer tunic. He tossed the wide leather belt onto the fur-covered floor. “The queen’s ladies were eager to teach you what to do to me.”
“They seem to understand men,” she said, frozen to the spot, watching as Roland matter-of-factly removed his tunic. There were three candles lit in the tent, in a brass holder sitting atop a small sandalwood table. There was a low cot covered with animal furs. There was nothing else in the tent. When Roland was bare to his waist, the candlelight casting darkening shadows over his body, Daria found herself staring openly at him. He was lean and firm, dark hair covering his chest. When she’d seen him in Wrexham he’d been ill and lying on his back. He’d been beautiful, she’d thought that very clearly, but she hadn’t recognized the sheer strength of him, the tautness of his arms, the fluid motion of the muscles in his back and shoulders, the ridges of muscle over his belly. She swallowed, for now he was stripping off his chausses. He stopped then and looked at her. “Why do you stand there? Get off your clothes and into the bed.”
She didn’t move. As an order from a loving bride-groom, it lacked even a dollop of warmth.
He raised a dark eyebrow. “Since you carry a babe, I can assume that you have seen a naked man. Indeed, you have seen me as well.” He rose straight and tall and naked, and the look he gave her was mocking. She didn’t want to look at him but she couldn’t help it. Her eyes fell immediately to his groin. His sex lay flaccid in the bush of thick black hair.
But she knew he would grow large, very large, and he would want to thrust himself inside her body. She swallowed and turned her back to him.
She heard him chuckle. “It’s best to begin your caressing of me while I’m still like this. Now, get off your clothes.”
“All right.” Quickly she doused the three candles, throwing the tent into gloom. The torches from without cast dim shadows into the interior, but at least he couldn’t see her clearly. She was embarrassed. Before, he hadn’t known her, hadn’t really touched her, hadn’t really taken her. But now he was well; now he was virile and eager; now he was her husband and would look at her.
