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The result brought her right off the mat. She pushed with her hands under her until she, too, was sitting up. Until her bottom rested on his thighs and he caught her around the waist to raise her to his level. With her feet planted firmly on the floor, she used her legs to move, and this time he groaned, loud and deep, like a beast in its death throes. She set the rhythm, making him follow, and when he swore at her, she titled back her head and laughed.

He tumbled them over and tucked her beneath him. She couldn’t fight him. Her thighs trembled with the effort she had made…or was it the continuous, vibrant flow of life between them that weakened her?

“You’re mine.” He wrapped her legs high up on his back and began the final assault. “Mine. Mine.”

She heard it as a chant.

“Mine.”

As magic.

“Mine.”

She grabbed the length of hair that hung over his shoulders and jerked until he opened his eyes and fixed his attention on her face. Fiercely, caught up in his demands, in the demands of his body, she said, “Mine,” and dragged him down so she could seal his lips with hers.

It was nothing less than possession, and he recognized it. He freed his mouth, and with a shout, he gave himself to her. She felt his muscles strain and stretch through her skin. She saw his lips curl back from his teeth and the agony of pleasure that stamped every feature. As he finished, she heard him intone her name. “Edlyn. Edlyn.”

They collapsed in an exhausted heap. This union, and all they had said, bore contemplation, but Edlyn didn’t have the energy or the inclination. All she wanted to do was drift.

When he moved off her, she complained with a soft whimper.

“I’ll crush you,” he whispered and pulled the furs over her. They couldn’t take his place, and she waited for him to come back and warm her. He didn’t, and she opened her eyes just a slit to see him dressing.

Too bad, because she liked him better naked.

He saw her peeking, and as he adjusted his belt, he knelt beside the mat. “See? You are an enchantress.” Burrowing under the covers, he kissed her breast, her navel, her chin. “You may have your two possessions before I burn the rest of that…matter.”

He didn’t think much of the effects she’d accumulated at the abbey, she could tell, but she didn’t blame him.

His voice softened, and he coaxed, “Is there any other service I might perform for you?”

Give up your fighting. “Not unless you can bring my sons back from their pilgrimage,” she muttered.

“They’ll be back soon, won’t they?” Hugh asked. “No matter, we’ll wait for them.”

Surprisingly, it never occurred to her Hugh wouldn’t wait. “I know, but…I want them now.” She wailed like a child, and she waited for him to laugh at her.

Instead, he tucked the blankets around her shoulders. “Just sleep. I’ll take care of everything.” And in a whisper, he said, “And I will win our battle, my lady. That you must never doubt.”

Her sense of repose slipped away. “Not until the day you cherish peace as much as you cherish the clash of arms.”

“Battle in a good cause is a noble thing,” he insisted.

“There is more than one way to win a battle, my lord. Watch.” She smiled. “And I will demonstrate.”

“Ah.” Edlyn dug through the sack of her belongings and pulled forth those two most precious mementos. She rubbed her face on the ragged pieces of cloth and breathed in their essence. Then, carefully, she folded them and placed them in a corner.

She had to have something with which to cover her bare body also. Something more than the surcoat she’d found tossed across a stool. Hugh had made her promise not to removed anything else from the sack, but Hugh didn’t want her wandering naked, either. Having made that sensible deduction, she dressed herself in the old brown cotte she’d worn every day in the dispensary.

Now she was clad and ready for…what? Midday had passed, so she broke her fast with the bread and ale waiting on the table. Then she stood, indecisive. Should she leave? Should she stay? If she left, would Hugh’s men grin at her while she crossed the camp and tease her about her late rising? Worse, would they frown at her and think Robin’s widow unworthy to wed their commander?

And what would she say when she reached the abbey? She’d stretched the formerly beautiful wedding dress over a trunk and picked at a stain on the hem. Worse, what would the nuns say? How was Edlyn going to explain the grass stains on the white hose and splotches of mud on the painted leather shoes? The nuns had loaned her those clothes cheerfully, in a charitable spirit, and she would be returning them in tatters. The nuns would lecture her. They might even shun her, and rightly so. The weaving of cloth, the sewing of clothing, occupied every spare moment of every woman’s day, and she had ruined some of the fairest examples of the craft in her midnight rambles around the forest.

Hugh might have satisfied his need for revenge during the night, but she couldn’t pay the nuns for the damage she’d done in the same coin, and she had no other. Just as before, she was poverty-stricken.

“M’lady?”

Wharton’s rough voice outside the tent flap made her jump. She’d vanquished her fear of him, so she’d thought, but apparently the memory of his early threats lived on, and mayhap, just mayhap, her kidnapping of the day before had recalled those memories.