Here Be Dragons - 1 Sharon Penman (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📖

or inhibitin that it could even be enhancing. There was something very exciting Joanna's wonderment, in her surprise and her satisfaction. As sh sighed, twisted against him, he knew she was experiencing sensation utterly new to her, experiencing all the urgency and pleasure that th body could givefor the very first time. To diminish her pain and prolong their enjoyment, he sought to keep physical needs under mental thrall, making use of all the tricks he'd learned in the twenty years since he had, as an awed fourteen-year-old, discovered how sweet the fruits of the flesh could be, drawing out their lovemaking until he dared delay no longer. She stiffened under him, but did not cry out, and he felt the barrier give way with his second thrust. Joanna was gasping his name. He covered her mouth with his own, and she clung tightly, then turned her head from side to side on the pillow, shuddering, all but blinding them both with the wild tossing of her hair.Yielding to his own need, he let it take him toward satisfaction, toward that ephemeral moment of release, so fleeting and yet so overwhelming in its intensity, in its peculiar union of pleasure and pain.JOANNA awoke with an enormous thirst, a dull headache, and a profound sense of wonder. Alison at once approached the bed, offering a cup of watered-down wine. Reaching for it eagerly, Joanna drank in grateful gulps. "What time is it?" she yawned, and winced, for she'd suddenly discovered that her thigh muscles were stiff and sore."Nigh on noon, Madame. My lord Prince said we were to let you sleep, and to give you this." Holding out an unsealed parchment.This speaker was a stranger to Joanna, was a slender young woman with a delicate heart-shaped face and thick chestnut braids. "Who," Joanna asked, "are you?"The girl made a shy curtsy. "I am Branwen, Madame. Lord Llewelyn wanted you to have a handmaiden who spoke French, thought I might suit you better than Enid.I would have been here yesterday to welcome you back, but we did not expect you for nigh on a fortnight That will not happen again, I promise.""That is all right, Branwen," Joanna said absently. Llewelyn's message was a letdown, a brief two lines: "Cariad, I do have to meet again with the Bishops in Bangor, will be back by dark." No more than that unsigned but for a large scrawling double 1."Branwen . . . what does cariad mean?"

253"Cariad? Why, that is Welsh for 'beloved/ Madame," she said, and na sank back, smiling, upon the pillow.VER had an afternoon passed with such excruciating slowness. Never h A Joanna so begrudged daylight its domain. But with the coming of Husk had come, too, the snow. Joanna's spirits plummeted. When it s evident even to her that Llewelyn was not going to return in time for dinner, if he returned at all, she went off to preside over a glum meal in the great hall. The snow slackened somewhat as the evening dragged on, and twice the arrival of latecomers sent her flying to the window, watching hopefully as they dismounted in the bailey. The third time horsemen rode in, she did not even bother to look, having at last accepted the obvious, that Llewelyn had decided to pass the night in Bangor. But then Alison exclaimed, "Madame, I see lights in your lord's chambers!"Joanna's excitement was contagious, and Alison and Branwen enthusiastically set about making her ready for Llewelyn, brushing out her hair, applying strategic daubs of perfume. Looking into the mirror Alison held up, Joanna was, for once, pleased with what she saw. Her eyes reflected the color of her moss-green gown, and she was becomingly flushed, a flush that seemed to be spreading through her entire body, the throbbing, languid warmth that claimed her each time she let herself think upon their lovemaking."My lady ..." Alison turned slowly from the window. Not looking at Joanna's face, she said, "The lights . . . they've gone out."Joanna put the mirror down. "Of course," she said steadily. "I did not stop to think; after a ride in such foul weather, my lord husband would be exhausted, in truth." But the reasonableness of that did little to ease her hurt. Could he not at least have come in to bid her good night?Once in bed, she found it difficult to sleep. The memories of what she andLlewelyn had done last night in this bed were too vivid, too real. At last she dozed, only to be awakened with a shock, with the feel °f an icy breath against her cheek. Llewelyn was sitting on the bed, shook snow onto them both as he leaned over to embrace her.'Not even a lantern left in the window for me, and sound asleep in 'he bargain," he complained, caressing her all the while with his eyes, anething eager and innocent in her face stopped him, and he said in-

254stead, "Now why ever would I want to sleep alone when I could sL with you?"Alison and Branwen had discreetly disappeared. Joanna sat'eep UP, reached for her bedrobe. "Where are your squires?""I sent them off to bed, thought I might persuade you to offer hand."Joanna was as compulsively neat as Llewelyn was not, and sh snatched up his mantle and tunic almost before they hit the floor, folded them conscientiously across a coffer chest. By now he was pulling off hjs shirt, and she gave a concerned cry. "No! Over by the fire, or you'll catch your death of cold.""I do not recall you caring where I undressed last night," he said and Joanna blushed and then laughed."To tell you true, I do not even remember undressing last night," she confessed, kneeling before him to help unfasten the cords binding his chausses to his braies. "It just seemed to ... happen." He smiled down at her, and marveling how her body's needs suddenly seemed to exist independently of her conscious control, she reached for