Netta came to her feet, her eyes glinting with stubborn pride. “I can’t claim the youngest two, but Meg, the twins, the babe you brought to the cottage with you that morning—all mine.”

Willow was staggered by the memory of Netta cradling Peg in her arms—the tenderness in her touch, the wonder in her eyes. She had never dreamed the woman was gazing into the face of her own daughter.

As Netta’s words sank into her dazed mind, she frowned. “If Mags and the baby left at the castle gates tonight aren’t yours, then who do they belong to?”

“The one you call Mags belongs to a woman who already has twelve mouths to feed. The other babe was born this night to a girl of twelve, who believed the honeyed lies of a handsome young troubadour who passed through the village nine months ago.”

Willow shook her head. “I don’t understand how they could just abandon their babies.”

“Abandon?” Netta all but spat the word. “Annie’s father threatened to drown her baby in a bucket if she didn’t rid herself of it. She was so weak from giving birth that she would have had to crawl to reach the castle gates. But crawl she would have, had I not promised to deliver the baby to Lord Bannor myself.” Netta paced to the hearth, then whirled around, her skirts snapping. “What fate would you choose for your child, my lady? To have her raised as I was, as the daughter of the village whore?” She flung a finger toward the rumpled bed with its stained sheets and musky odor. “To have every man in the village expect her to take your place in that bed when you grew too old or eaten up with pox to endure their fumbling and grunting?” Her voice softened. “Or to have her raised as the cherished child of a lord, lacking for naught except a mother’s love?”

Willow bowed her head, deeply shamed. “Why didn’t he tell me?” she whispered. “Why did he let me believe the worst of him?”

“Because he swore to me that no one would ever know those babes were not his. I made him promise that they would never have to endure the stares, the ugly whispers, the shame of being the misbegotten bastards of a whore.”

Willow didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. To protect the children entrusted into his hands, Bannor had been willing to let her believe he was naught but a rutting stallion, eager to mount every mare whose scent drifted to his nostrils. He had been willing to let her leave Elsinore with Sir Hollis on this very morn, never to return.

She laughed softly, but with a trace of bitterness. “He warned me that he has never sworn an oath he could not keep.”

“Aye,” Netta agreed, sinking down on the edge of the hearth. “He is a man of his word. When I left the first babe outside of his gates one chill November eve, I never dreamed he would claim her as his own. I could only pray that one of the laundresses or maidservants might take her in.” She shivered. “When two of his men-at-arms appeared on my doorstep the next day to escort me to him, I was terrified he was going to have me cast into the dungeon, or perhaps imprisoned in the stocks, so that everyone would know the dreadful thing I had done.”

Willow almost smiled, remembering how reluctant Bannor had been to so much as spank his rebellious son.

“I was trembling like a leaf when they brought me before him.” Although Willow would have sworn it was impossible, a becoming blush crept into the woman’s cheeks as she bowed her head. “When he dismissed his guards and turned away to pour a goblet of mead, I began to disrobe, thinking that he meant for me to trade my favors in exchange for his mercy.”

Willow arched one eyebrow. “That must have been quite a shock for him.”

“Oh, it was,” Netta assured her. “At first I thought he was going to bolt from the chamber. But then he realized my knees were knocking with fright. He jerked a tapestry down from the wall, wrapped it around me, and bade me to sit in a chair by the fire before I collapsed. ‘Twas then that he told me about his mother, and promised me that no child would ever be turned away from the gates of Elsinore, not so long as he was lord there.”

Willow recognized the fierce glow in Netta’s eyes. She had seen it in the eyes of her own reflection only a short while ago.

“Why, you’re half in love with him, aren’t you?” Willow regretted the words almost immediately, sensing that nothing else she could have said would have so cut Netta to the quick.

Netta’s lips tipped in a rueful smile. She did not bother to blink back her tears. “How could I not be, my lady?”

“Aye,” Willow murmured, reaching out to clasp the woman’s rawboned hand. “How could you not be?”

———

Willow slipped through the darkened passages of Elsinore. ‘Twas not yet dawn, and the castle was silent except for the whisper of her cloak against the flagstones. ‘Twas almost as if its inhabitants had fallen beneath the same enchanted hush as the snow-glazed world beyond the windows.

As she traversed the second level, a half-ajar door beckoned her forward.

A peculiar pang seized her heart when she saw that Bannor’s children had reverted to their old habit of sharing the same immense bed. In truth, she could not blame them on a morning as cold as this. The fire had dwindled to glowing embers, and she could see the ghost of her sigh drifting in the air. Desmond’s crow dozed on a perch near the window, his head tucked into his sleek breast. His yellow tomcat was curled up at the foot of the bed. As Willow drew nearer, the cat opened his one golden eye and blinked at her.

A tousled flaxen head rested next to Desmond’s chestnut one. After being banished from her own bed, Beatrix must have sought sanctuary in theirs. Willow wondered what Desmond would do when he awoke to find the girl nestled against his back, naked except for a fur pelt. She smiled. He’d be lucky if the shock of it didn’t cause him to tumble out of the bed and crack his noggin.

When she’d first arrived at Elsinore, she’d seen the children as naught but a passel of faceless brats, but as she traced their slumbering faces with her gaze, she realized she had come to know them in a way she had never known her own brothers and sisters.

Gangly Ennis, who strove to be the voice of reason; sober little Mary with her amusing habit of always looking at the glum side of things; generous, sweet-natured Hammish; chattering Edward; Kell with his sunny hair and sarcastic quips; strong-willed Mary Margaret; Meg and the twins, looking like a litter of cherubs with their plump limbs and dimpled cheeks.

And Desmond—still a boy, yet poised on the brink of manhood, revealing more of his father than he knew in his fierce protectiveness toward his brothers and sisters and his kindness to animals that no one else wanted.

Willow might have drifted right past the nursery had it not been for Fiona’s rattling snores. The old woman was curled up on a narrow bedstead at the foot of a wooden cradle. Peg and Mags slept side by side in the cradle, bundled up like a pair of fat, woolly lambs. Willow touched both of their downy cheeks with her fingertip before turning to go.

She was almost to the door when she heard a soft sound—not quite a whimper, not quite a coo. She slowly turned. A wicker basket rested on the hearth. She knelt to find the newborn baby nestled within. A baby who would soon grow into a sturdy little boy. A boy who would never lack for bread or have to sit shivering in the snow and watch his mother draw her last breath.

Seized by a strange urgency, Willow tucked the blanket around the baby and slipped from the chamber. As soon as she was out of earshot of the nursery, she broke into a run. She raced up the stairs and threw open the door of Bannor’s tower without bothering to knock. The chamber was deserted, the grate cold. The feather mattress bore no imprint of his body. A goblet was overturned on the hearth, as if someone had flung it there in a fit of anger.

Willow flew down the stairs to the great hall. Although the yeasty aroma of baking bread was beginning to drift out from the kitchens, most of the stragglers who had sought shelter from the snowstorm were still sleeping off the effects of the ale that had been served after Lord Bannor had welcomed his new son into his household. When Willow tripped over one of the tumblers, he simply mumbled an oath and snuggled deeper into his cloak.

Bursting into the deserted bailey, she spun around, at an utter loss. The sun drifted over the eastern horizon at that moment, striking the snow with a force that nearly blinded her. It wasn’t until Willow shaded her eyes against the dazzling glare that she spotted the lone man standing between the merlons of the battlement high above her, his dark hair whipping in the wind.

By the time Willow reached the wall walk, she had managed to steady her breathing, but not the hammering of her heart.

Bannor stood gazing across the snowswept meadows, his hands resting on the stone embrasure between the merlons. He did not turn, not even when he heard the crunch of her slippers against the crust of snow. “Did it never occur to you, my lady,” he asked, his voice as hard as the glittering crystals of ice that laced the scattered trees, “that I might also seek to spare myself the pain of bidding a third wife farewell?”

Despite the chill in Bannor’s voice, his words warmed her. He had never before addressed her as his wife. “Did it never occur to you, my lord, that I might seek to spare you that pain as well?”

“Quite frankly, it did not.”

“I just came from the nursery.” She dared to draw nearer despite his lack of welcome. “Your new son is pinking up nicely. I dare say that, thanks to your kindness, he’ll be battling wee Mags for a teat before the day is over.”

“I’m pleased that the babe will survive, but I’m in no mood to be lauded for my generosity. Not when the cost of it is so high.”

Willow kicked at the snow with the toe of her slipper, keeping her voice deliberately light. “Oh, I haven’t come to praise you for your charity, but to chastise you for your pride.”

He snorted. “ Tis the second time I’ve been accused of such a sin in as many days. Have you been talking to Desmond?”

“No, I’ve been talking to a friend.” Willow was thankful he could not see the wry twist of her lips. “One who is more devoted than you realize.”

“Devoted enough to brand me an arrogant fool, it seems.”

“Arrogant perhaps, but not a fool.” She paced behind him, expelling a mocking sigh. “If I were a mighty warrior, so feared that my name was spoken only in whispers by my enemies, I might also prefer that everyone believe my seed was as potent as my sword. ‘Twould no doubt damage your ferocious reputation if word got out that you were so tender of heart, you couldn’t bear to turn a child away from your gates.” She stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. “Even one you did not sire.”

Bannor relinquished his white-knuckled grip on the stone, and slowly turned to face her. “Idle gossip, my lady, coaxed from the treacherous throat of someone who is surely not a friend, but a foe.”

Despite the intensity of his gaze, Willow refused to retreat. “And is it also idle gossip that a woman died in a meadow not far from here? That she froze to death after your father branded her a whore, and ordered his men to cast both her and her innocent child out into a blizzard?”

If not for the rhythmic twitching of the muscle in his jaw, Bannor might have been carved from ice himself. “That child was no innocent, my lady. He had already spent countless nights huddled in the cold outside the door of his mother’s cottage, while she took a succession of grunting, stinking strangers to her bed. Even though it made him gag, he had learned to choke down every bite of moldy bread she gave him, knowing just how much it had cost her.”

Bannor turned back to the battlement, his profile as harsh as the snow-capped crags of the distant mountains. “When she died, I swore that all of this would one day be mine. I only wish my father could have lived long enough to see that day come.”

Willow stroked his rigid forearm. “Perhaps if he had, you wouldn’t have been waging war against him all these years. Tell me, Bannor, have you ever slain a foe who did not wear his leering face?”

Bannor’s dry chuckle held no humor at all. “ ‘Tis not his face that haunts me, but hers. She is the one I cannot forgive.”

Willow knew then that as terrible as the story had been, Netta had spared her the worst of it. “She loved him, didn’t she?” she asked in a choked whisper.

“She adored him. She was only fifteen when he seduced her, and she never stopped believing that he’d come back for her someday. Never accepted that he had a girl just like her in every village within a hundred leagues of Elsinore.” The bitterness in his voice ripened. “She used to tell me what a fine man my father was. How generous! How kind! How noble! When she was forced to take up whoring, she wept not because she had sold her body and soul for a crust of bread, but because she feared she would no longer be worthy of him.” Bannor flashed Willow a look that was both entreaty and warning. “Her love was a sickness of the heart. And in the end, it killed her.”

With a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, Willow realized that the deadly weapons he had collected through the years, the gleaming shields that adorned his walls, had all been painstakingly chosen to make him invulnerable to the poisoned arrow that had felled his mother. He had spent the years since she died armoring his own heart against every threat.

Including her.

It was Willow’s turn to clutch the embrasure, to gaze out over the barren beauty of the snow-shrouded meadows while the wind whipped her unbound curls from her stinging eyes. “I can certainly understand why you want no more children of your own,” she said softly. “If word continues to spread that the mighty lord of Elsinore will claim any babe left on his doorstep, we’ll soon be overrun with the little imps.”

“We?” Bannor echoed softly, as if afraid he had misheard her.

She could feel him behind her, his warmth as palpable as a caress. She had not realized how cold she was until that moment. Once Willow had been arrogant enough to pity Bannor’s first two wives for contenting themselves with less than his love. Now she felt only a strange kinship with them.

She swung around to face him, her chin steady, her eyes dry. “You’re a man of your word, Bannor of Elsinore. You’re not given to uncontrollable rages, strong drink, or blasphemy. A woman can ask no more than that of her husband. If you have naught but crumbs of affection to offer me, then I shall make do as I always have.”

“Is that all you think I have to offer you? Crumbs?” Bannor lifted his hand to her cheek, his eyes darkening with a fierce hunger of their own. “On the contrary, my lady. If you dine at my table, I can promise you a banquet sweeter than any you’ve ever imagined.”

Willow held her breath as his mouth descended on hers. His warm, rough tongue dipped into her mouth, offering her not just a sip of ambrosia, but a taste of heaven itself. She curled her hand around his nape, clinging helplessly as he swept her up into his arms.

Bannor’s mouth never left hers. Not when he carried her down the narrow flight of stairs that led to her tower. Not when he blindly kicked the door shut behind them. Not when he lowered her to her feet, unfastened the catch of her cloak, and shoved it from her shoulders. Only when he fisted his hands in her kirtle and began to draw it over her head was he forced to surrender her lips. He did so with the most heartfelt of groans.

Willow should have been shivering in her thin chemise, but it seemed both of them were immune to the chill in the fireless chamber. As Bannor bore her back against the bedpost, his powerful body trembled all over, burning with the same fever that threatened to consume her.

“I can’t bear it when you cry,” he muttered, seeking to kiss the tearstains from her cheeks.

“Not even when I’m weeping for your touch?” Willow murmured against his ear, seized by a spirit of boldness.

Not even in her boldest fantasy would Willow have dared to imagine that Bannor would drop to his knees at her feet, ease up her chemise, and seek a taste of those pearly tears. She gasped as he used his broad thumbs to part the softness of her nether curls, exposing her to the silken wonder of his tongue.

Her first instinct was to clench her thighs together, to prevent the both of them from committing a sin so deliriously shocking it must surely be mortal.

Bannor pressed his stubbled cheek to the pale cream of her thigh, his voice raw with longing. “Please, Willow...”

Willow knew he was not a man to beg. Nor a man to kneel before anyone but his king. But he was willing to humble himself so he might exalt her. By generously granting her such sway over him, he rendered her powerless to deny him anything. Stroking her fingers through his hair, she allowed him to coax her thighs apart, then pressed her eyes shut, too shy to bear the primal beauty of his dark head between her legs.

As Bannor took his first sip from her brimming chalice, Willow was seized by a pleasure so piercing she feared she might swoon. She fisted her hands in his hair, whimpering his name with her every breath. He cupped her naked bottom in his palms, making it clear that she could beg and writhe all she wanted, but to no avail. With the rigid bedpost at her back and his hot mouth pressed against her, there was no escaping the unholy rapture of his kiss.

His tongue flickered over her, probing the delicate shell of her flesh as if to seek a priceless treasure. When he finally found the glistening pearl tucked within, he suckled it until her head rolled back and her knees crumpled. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her buttocks as shudder after shudder of raw ecstasy wracked her.

When they subsided, Willow could only collapse over his shoulder, clinging as if to keep from drowning in a fathomless sea. Their sin had indeed proved mortal. She had died in his arms, and he had stolen her soul as surely as he had stolen her heart.

“Not enough, sweeting,” Bannor whispered fiercely against her quivering belly. “Not this time. This time I promised you more.”

Rising, he drew off her chemise and heaved her back on the feather mattress, then dragged his shirt over his head, his expression as relentless as if he was preparing to march into battle. Willow reached for him with both hands, unable to resist the primitive allure of his battle-scarred chest. Kicking off his boots, he fell on her like a starving man, devouring her lips, her throat, her throbbing nipples. Before she could catch her breath, his fingers were sifting through the damp curls at the juncture of her thighs, gliding through the warm honey his tongue had melted from her womanhood.

He dipped his longest finger in and out of that virgin hollow, causing exquisite shivers of anticipation to wrack her womb. Without even realizing it, Willow began to arch her hips in a rhythm as old as time itself, inviting him to go deeper, entreating him to be rougher, panting with a need she could barely comprehend.

But Bannor seemed to know exactly what she needed. Even as he was kissing her mouth with a sinuous tenderness that made her want to weep, he was joining another finger to the first. He pressed them both deep within her, then began to circle that throbbing pearl with the callused pad of his thumb. A broken sob escaped her as the pleasure crested without warning, leaving her limp with delight, yet strangely unfulfilled.

She opened her misty eyes to find Bannor resting on his back beside her, with one arm flung over his eyes. “Bannor?” she whispered.

He grunted a reply, but did not lower his arm.

Willow rolled to her side and began to stroke his chest, thinking how curious it was to be naked while he was still half-clothed, yet feel no hint of shyness. “I know how you hate these frank discussions, but if we’re to stay wed and don’t want any more children, perhaps you’d best share how you kept all the women who weren’t your wives from breeding.”

“ ‘Twas never a concern. I wasn’t willing to risk scattering a bunch of bastards like myself about the countryside. I didn’t want some son or daughter I’d never met to grow up despising me.”

Willow’s hand froze in its motion. “Do you mean to tell me that when you wed Mary, you were a—”

Bannor lowered his arm to glare at her. “If you laugh, I shall petition the church for that annulment. After I strangle you.”

But Willow’s smile was one of bemused wonder. “And in the years since Margaret died, you’ve never...?”

“Not even once. Although God knows I’ve wanted to.” His glare deepened to a full-blown scowl. “Never more than the first time I laid eyes on you, my lady.”

Willow’s heart melted at his reluctant confession. Her hand skated down his abdomen, making his taut flesh ripple in reaction. “Netta told me of another trick we might try.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Do you really think ‘twould be wise to heed the advice of a woman who has had four children?”

She leaned over and whispered something in his ear. He lay utterly still for a moment, then sprang to his knees and began to work at a stubborn knot in the drawstring of his hose.

Willow was somewhat unnerved by his sudden burst of enthusiasm. “Of course, I should warn you that Netta said there was only one sure way for a woman to keep from getting with child.”

“And that would be?” Bannor gave the hapless drawstring a savage tug that snapped it in two.

As the hose slid from his hips, Willow blushed and turned her face away, suffering a latent pang of shyness. “Swear a vow of chastity.”

Bannor hurled his hose into a far corner and seized Willow’s face in the cup of his hands. “I’ll leave it up to you, sweeting. Will it be chastity?” He lowered himself on top of her, settling his weight between her splayed thighs. “Or me?”

“You,” Willow whispered, mesmerized by the wicked sparkle in his heavy-lidded eyes.

She was still gazing into those eyes when Bannor buried himself deep inside of her. He had promised to serve her a banquet sweeter than any she had ever known, but he’d failed to warn her it would be so filling. As her body struggled to contain him, a hoarse moan—half pleasure and half pain—spilled from her throat. The pain was sharp and fleeting, but the pleasure seemed to go on and on, pulsing in time with each shuddering beat of her heart.

Kissing away the tears that had sprung unbidden to her eyes, Bannor began to glide in and out of her, stroking her honeyed sheath with such paralyzing tenderness that his absence soon became more painful than his presence. He was so much bigger than she was, so much stronger. Yet she sensed he was holding his lust in check, much as he had held his bloodlust in check when he had feared harming his children.

She clung to his powerful shoulders and turned her head from side to side, gasping for breath. “Bannor, please... oh, sweet heaven, please...”

He mistook her whimper as a plea for freedom. When he began to roll off of her, Willow wrapped her legs around his waist and rolled with him, impaling herself on the full measure of his manhood. Bannor collapsed against the mattress, groaning as if it had been he, and not she, who had been struck the mortal blow.

Willow shook her hair out of her eyes, marveling that she could contain such power and passion within her fragile body. Her exultation swelled as she watched the flickers of rapture dance across the rugged beauty of Bannor’s features with each rise and fall of her hips. He closed his hands around her waist and arched against her, urging her to take more of him when she would have sworn she’d already taken all she could hold.

Still clutching her waist, he rolled again, imprisoning her beneath him. A thrill of raw delight coursed through her veins as his hips increased their tempo. His tongue swept through her mouth, wordlessly promising that this time he would hold nothing back. He would grant her no mercy and no reprieve until she’d surrendered the last shred of her self-control to his tender mastery.

Willow had no choice but to do just that, as he angled his hips, deliberately rubbing his rigid length against that live ember buried at the crux of her curls. A scarlet haze descended over her eyes as the world burst into flames. As her womb convulsed in an agony of pleasure, Bannor’s own massive body began to shudder.

Willow could not help but reach for him as he tore himself from her, spilling his seed against the softness of her belly with a mighty roar.