Sweet Enchantress

by Parris Afton Bonds

  "And speaking of my brother,” she spat, "'tis perverted for you to lust after a holy man of God, Dominique de Bar.” Holding her skirt away, as though Dominique were the leper and not Baldwyn, Esclarmonde swept past her, adding, "And by all that is holy, I hope you suffer the consequences of God’s righteous wrath!”

  As much as Dominique had looked forward to Paxton's returning from his expeditions, she dreaded this particular return. Had he intercepted Denys’s missive? And, if so, what would be the consequences to Denys and herself?

  From the north tower, the direction in which she and Paxton had set out the week before, a spiraling cloud of dust was reported, signaling the approach of a caravan of some sort. Then came sight of Paxton of Wychchester's blazing banners that announced his imminent arrival.

  Hastily, she had her hair washed by Jacotte and then changed into a sheer, summery gown with a décolletage so low she risked coming down with an ague. But then, she would risk just about anything for Montlimoux.

  Paxton did not come directly to her but first heard petitions in the Justice Room since it was the third day of the week. On the floor above, she paced her library with a barrage of unsettling emotions bombarding her.

  At that moment, anger was foremost among her emotions, anger that he had usurped her authority and dared to preside in her place in the Justice Room. He was insufferably highhanded.

  Of course, there was also apprehension of what reprisal he might take because of the missive. Surprisingly, mixed in with the other emotions was joy at his return.

  Against the corridor tiles, there came the tapping jingle of his spurs. She went still. Her heart pounded against her rib cage. The door opened. She saw only his suntanned face, those deep brown eyes that had the power to excite her passions. He seemed to fill the entire room, making it difficult for her to breathe. Why did he not say anything?

  At last, he unfastened the silver chain at his shoulder and flung his dusty mantle over the back of her chair. Vainly, she tried to read his expression, but it seemed those days of her gift of discernment were past. She could only anticipate.

  Every forethought she had given this reunion now proved erroneous. As usual, he did the unexpected. “I missed your challenging mind, Dominique. Soldiers have little interest in any concept that beggars their minds to ponder anything deeper than the tankard's depth of ale they swill.''

  Uncertain still of the direction of his intentions, she stayed rooted where she was. "I have missed you, too, my Lord Lieutenant.''

  "Come,'' he said, pulling up a chair before her chessboard. "Entertain me with a game. Pit your mind against mine.”

  She felt it now, not as strongly and clearly as had once been her wont. But now she felt his aura, or rather perceived it dimly. The vibrations of the oranges and reds. Pure male anger. Warily, she took a seat opposite him. "Gold or rock crystal?" she asked in a most casual tone.

  "Your pleasure, Dominique.”

  "The gold.”

  Deftly, his scarred hands set up the board. In no time she realized that he knew more than the rudiments of chess. His fame as a military tactician had preceded him to Montlimoux, and he demonstrated that skill now superbly on the board. At first, she had been distracted by watching his sun-browned fingers fondle the pieces he eventually selected to move. The large fingers so powerful, the slender crystal so dainty and fragile.

  As though his skill were not enough for her to cope with, she had also to deal with his running commentary. It appeared idle enough, but she knew he was leading up to something, only she was not sure just what.

  "Our misogynist monk taught me the basics of chess.”

  "Our?”

  "Of course, he instructed me in much more than chess. Latin, literature, mathematical sciences—”

  "Your move.”

  "Check. I learned Scripture, also. Vanity, foul temper, greed, fickleness, and promiscuity are faults and sins of the woman, according to Scripture.”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  "Your move, Dominique. You are in check.”

  “Sins of the woman?”

  "Especially promiscuity. Move.”

  Before she could draw a calming breath, her fingers, seemingly of independent will, clutched her castle and hurled it at him.

  He dodged but not in time. The edge of the castle’s base clipped him on the temple. She gasped at the crimson spot that emerged. At once, her fingers shot out in the instinctive act of healing. His hand grabbed her wrist and forced it flat upon the board. Chess pieces toppled off onto the floor, where the crystal ones shattered.

  She stared at him, aghast. That she, Dominique de Bar, was capable of violence, appalled her. What was happening to her? "I am sorry! I have never done anything like that. Please believe me.”

  "Oh, I do. I have the distinct impression you are usually much more subtly cunning in your attacks.”

  The angle at which he imprisoned her wrist was beginning to hurt, but she could not budge his hold. "I know why you are angry, Paxton, but I had nothing to do with Denys’s epistle.”

  Across the width of the table, he stared her down. "I do not imagine you did unless encouragement can be attributed as a factor.”

  "You know that is not true. What occurred between Denys and me is far less than—than that which occurred between you and Esclarmonde.”

  His smile was harsh. "You speak of the fair maiden as in the past. What occurs between Esclarmonde and myself I shall decide. Just as it is in my power to decide your fate and Denys’s.”

  With his free hand, he wiped away the blood that trickled in a thin line down his jaw. Dazed, she watched as his thumb smeared a dab of blood on the inside of her wrist. "The two of you conspiring against me could—”

  "Denys means no ill will, my lord! You must understand. For him to labor in the quarry and on the walls is for him a slow death, a torture worse than anything a Dominican Inquisitor could think up.”

  "You plead well for your lover.”

  "He is not my lover.”

  Abruptly, he released his grip. "Nay, I do not think he is. 'Tis Francis you fancy yourself in love with. 'Tis Francis you think of when you compose your lays and love songs, is it not?"

  She could not confess her love for this man Paxton who ruled her so thoroughly, too thoroughly, if she were not careful. She affected a shrug of indifference. “Think what you will.”

  He rose. “I am tired. The day has been long. I bid you adieu, mistress.”

  She waited that night for him to come to her bedroom, and when he did not and when the hours passed all too slow, she surrendered to her instincts and went to him. When she opened the door, he raised on one elbow to watch her. Moonlight spilled over him. Above the whiteness of the linen sheet, his bare chest was swarthy. "I have been waiting for you/' he said.

  She heard the mockery in his voice as he echoed her own words to him once. It mattered not. Her bare feet crossed the cool tiles to his bed and she lay in his sensuous embrace, now a necessity for her physical wellbeing. Yes, and emotional, as well.

  CHAPTER XII

  It would seem that Paxton had decided to put Denys’s missive from his mind as the subject was not broached again. Yet neither did he send Esclarmonde from Montlimoux.

  But what of the nights, few though they were, that he did not come to Dominique's bedroom or carry her to his? Piqued by his withdrawal at those times, she would have resisted him when he did come to her in the deep of night, but she suspected if she had he would have turned his sensuous attentions away from her.

  What he did with his time during the day she was not wholly certain. She only knew that when he was present at meals, Esclarmonde appeared to please him. She was gay and attentive, asking questions from him that elicited elaboration. Of Dominique herself, Esclarmonde shunned all conversation. The largest of castles could not contain two embattled women, and Dominique sensed the day of confrontation coming unless the woman left soon.

  By day Dominique felt an emotional and mental paralysi
s that was relieved only when Paxton took her in his arms at night. Even then, she tried to maintain her guard, having relaxed it only that once, that night of their chess match, when she had gone to his room. His energy had overtaken her will and, netted within his lovemaking, she had achieved undeniable bliss.

  But she had pulled back. That wildly delirious sensation extracted a price she was not prepared to render.

  Her numbness was from fear, she knew, a compact, slow-moving fear that robbed her of her centeredness. Constantly, she was nagged by the worry she might lose Montlimoux to the English, that the people who counted on her might lose the livelihoods that had flourished under Paxton's rule.

  Worse, was she losing herself in ways other than the result of her physical unions with Paxton?

  Those fears amplified in the last lingering days of May, when Dominique discovered she was with child from that one night of relaxed vigil. Would Paxton's interest wane as she grew large with child, and would he then take, instead, Esclarmonde to his bed? If he was not doing so already.

  There were, also, yet other fears to plague Dominique. Would Paxton wed her off to some nobleman as he had once threatened?

  To lose not only Montlimoux but her independence, as well, to become by dint of marriage a man’s chattel was a heart-stabbing prospect.

  No, if she had to marry, better Paxton where she could remain at Montlimoux.

  But would he marry her?

  Now, more than at any other time, she needed all her wits, her clarity of vision, if she and Montlimoux—and her unborn child and its inheritance—were going to endure

  "Care to ride with me, my Lord Lieutenant?"

  Paxton glanced up from the scrolled parchments over which he labored. His eyes narrowed. Dominique stood beneath the pointed arch of the library doorway. Never before had she asked him to accompany her. "John is busy?”

  She waved a hand. "He is occupied elsewhere.”

  With the sunlight gilding her, she appeared nigh transparent, an ethereal loveliness that was almost painful to behold. Leaving her would be one of the more difficult things he had ever had to do. "Where do you ride?”

  "I go to call on some of Montlimoux's tenants.”

  He rubbed his beard-shadowed chin. Had he over-reacted to the intercepted missive from Denys Bontemps? His thinking was not as rational these days. He did not believe this young woman fey, but then there was so much he could not explain about her, about the way she made him feel when they lay together at night. She was a contradiction to everything his five senses perceived, an abomination to all his church education.

  Esclarmonde and women like her were safe, and if no more trustworthy, they were at least predictable. Esclarmonde, in particular. Like a she-dog in heat, she fairly gave off the scent of sexual hunger.

  As if sensing his indecision, Dominique said, "'Tis not just the petty noblemen, castellans, and bourgeoisie whom the lord of a demesne must supervise.”

  He battled a grin. “Be you telling me how to rule Montlimoux, mistress?”

  She stiffened, taking umbrage at his term of address, as he had known she would. Then her smile grooved dimples beneath each cheekbone. “You will admit 'tis your first gambit at ruling a county.”

  He gave up and, letting a grin come, tossed his quill on the writing desk. "Aye, I shall take a lesson from you, mistress.”

  Late spring sunlight swept the cobwebs from his brain and body. Riding beside him on her palfrey, Dominique appeared to reflect that sunlight. It purified the air and set heat to her hair, caught in that net of pearls. It glossed her tanned skin and tinctured her cheeks.

  Sensing his gaze, she turned her head to flash him a shy smile.

  Shy? This maiden who had ruled an entire kingdom and whose maneuvers in chess were worthy of any battlefield tactics?

  "There is something wrong with me?”

  Aye, she beguiled his senses, confounded his judgment, tempted his spirit. He almost genuflected, a habit the old abbot would have exhorted, especially in this situation. “No, you merely puzzle me.”

  Her brow arched. "Merely? I had hoped I was not that commonplace. How about 'truly'? Or 'absolutely'? Or 'unequivocally' puzzle you?”

  His smile came grudgingly. “I concede you are like no other.” The pleasure in her eyes quickly faded when he added, “But then the temptations of this earthly world are never commonplace, are they?”

  She returned her attention to the path her mount was taking. Her profile was as stony as a pontiff's. "How do I puzzle you, my Lord Lieutenant?”

  He preferred the use of his familiar name, but "Paxton” only passed her lips during the hours she lay in his arms. He missed her slender arms around him, like that afternoon she had ridden pillion with him.

  His mouth tightened. That afternoon he had intercepted Denys’s missive to her. “Aye. Why 'tis you have never taken a husband?”

  "Why be the servant girl when I can be mistress?” Her answer was flippant; then she added, as though seriously given thought to his question, "Have you observed, truly observed, your cohorts, once they take a woman to wife? Even those few appreciated women who have been allowed their freedom, soon even they are taken for granted. Each marriage partner ceases to seek that specialness in the other.”

  He shrugged. "Propinquity results in boredom.”

  "No.” She turned sharply toward him. Her brows knit, as if she were searching for a better answer. "Boredom has nothing to do with constant propinquity of two people. Boredom is the ever distancing of their souls.”

  Her words took him by surprise. This kind of talk made him uneasy. It made him think, whispered a voice, which surely was only a breeze.

  A clearing made for a swine pasture heralded the nearby croft of a tenant. His allodial land might render him a free man, but likewise he was free of the benefits of a liege lord's protection.

  The peasant’s house with its patch of kitchen garden was little better constructed than that of Paxton's childhood, a windowless, mud hovel containing but one room. This one was a timbered hut walled with cob, its roof thatched with river reeds. An iron plowshare and iron-bladed scythe and sickle that would harvest autumn’s crops lay unattended next to the entrance.

  “Jean-Luc and his wife are the new cotters,” Dominique explained, as he came around to lift her down from her palfrey. Her waist was so slender that he could span it with his hands. The scent of her lavender and gardenia and other unknown fragrances assailed his senses. He found himself wanting her now, although they had lain together little more than ten hours earlier. This power she had woven around him like silver ribbon around the Maypole disturbed him for he acquiesced so easily to its taming strands.

  Following her like a lap dog, he entered the windowless cottage. The animals that shared it were not favorite hunting dogs, cats, or falcons but pigs, chickens, and even a prized cow that greeted them with a nasal snort. The floor was bare, trampled earth. Against a wall, a pallet bore a flock mattress. Smoke from a fire burning on the hearth stung the eyes before fleeing through the eaves.

  A fetching girl with light brown hair worked at a kneading trough for dough. She glanced up with a welcoming smile that reminded him sharply of his sister, Alienor. Only when she came around from behind the trough and into the light did he realize this barefoot girl was older than Alienor had been when she was murdered—and this lass was heavy with child.

  “Comtessa de Bar!” She attempted a curtsy, which was little more than an awkward bob because of her condition. Only then did the girl appear to notice him. Her smile turned cautious. "My Lord Lieutenant.” Once more, she bobbed respectfully. So, even the newest of tenants was aware that he now oversaw the affairs of Montlimoux.

  Dominique placed her hand on the girl's thin shoulder. "No need for that, Marie. We merely come to inquire of the progress you and your husband are making.”

  Marie’s cheeks reddened with the unaccustomed attention. "Jean-Luc is out tending the family plots, my lady.”

  "Rye and barl
ey and oats with the second field fallow, is it not?” Dominique inquired as she stroked the milk cow’s muzzle.

  He was amazed at her memory for the tedious details of agriculture. But then, her own garden proclaimed her devotion to plants, as if they lived and felt and breathed the same as humans.

  Her display of interest eased the girl’s shyness, and the two females discussed the crops, with Dominique admonishing as she took her leave, "When the birthing time draws nigh, send Jean-Luc to the chateau. Either I or Iolande will come at once.”

  After he and Dominique began their ride back to the chateau, he said, "Your allodial peasants live little better than English serfs.”

  "But they are free. With that freedom will eventually come self-sufficiency.”

  "More aptly freedom to starve.” Now why did he feel quarrelsome? Mayhap, it was the way the day had turned overcast, with clouds boiling off to the north.

  She sent him a puzzled glance. "They are better off than living in your larger cities, where a weaver’s family huddles in a single room with not even a blade of grass to call their own.”

  "You love the land, is that not so?”

  A look of pleasure softened her angular face. More pleasure perhaps than when he and she made that journey together in passion? He did not know, for he had avoided looking at her face at that ecstatic moment for fear he would glimpse his ultimate damnation.

  "The land,” she replied. "The sky. The water. I would perish were I a weaver holed up in an attic like a rat. The child I carry will know the freedom of her heritage.”

  For a moment her statement did not register with him. Then he reined in sharply on his steed. When she continued riding, he spurred ahead, catching up with her to grab her palfrey’s bridle and yank the animal to a halt. He leaned over her, close enough to see the green flecks in her eyes. "You are with child?”

  "Yes.”

  "With child, like Marie back there?”

  Her expression made him feel stupid. "Yes.”