A Flame Run Wild

by Christine Monson

  Diego. Tonight she might find the secret part of herself that had always eluded her. In deserting the Signe party, she had embarked on some part of a quest and, in following the flute, found Jean. Jean, with his quick wit and fiery temper, the boyish vulnerability hidden beneath his cynical shell. Jean, who, but for her memories and those of women like her, might die unmounted in the north.

  At some point, Liliane stopped fighting the flute, closed her eyes and became one with the music, surrendered to Jean's delicate play of hands and mouth. ...

  The flute's silence was brief, but the very real warmth of Jean's tips against her own seemed to last forever, causing the slow beat of her heart to quicken against his bare chest. His mouth was velvet, his hand caressing the sensitive nape of her neck, twisting the silken fall of her shining hair. His tongue teased the corners of her mouth, gently probing her underlip. Uncertain of what he wanted, Liliane caught her breath, only to have him claim the inner softness of her mouth, touching her tongue in a subtle, intimate caress. Hesitantly, she returned the tiny flick until his mouth melted to hers, his kiss deepening until he dizzied her. As her head fell back, her hands ceased to press against his shoulders, moving to the shaggy curls at his temples. His eyes burned with a smoldering passion, his breath was uneven.

  "Pilar, I am on fire," he said huskily. "If you want me not, tell me now, else I shall carry you to bed and take what is promised to another man." His hand tightened slightly in her hair. "I am hard put not to claim you now in these scattered ashes."

  "I confess I have not noticed the ashes," she whispered, "but when this night has passed, I wish only to be one among them. Touch me with your fire; make me know one single spark of its light before I return alone to the terrible cold. ..."

  Alexandre did not wait to carry her to the bed, but covered her with his body, arching over her as his lips found her throat. Quick with the impatience of growing desire, his hands slipped free the lacings of her tunic to bare her shoulders. As if only then realizing what treasure he had found, he cast aside his haste. With tantalizing languor, he began to cover her soft skin with slow kisses, lifting his head at each one to watch a rosy flush tinge the alabaster flesh his lips had touched. With those kisses alone, he eased open her tunic until it slipped from the peaks of her breasts. His lips parted with the swift intake of his breath.

  "By all the angels, thou art fair as the delight of Solomon. . . ."As he slowly undressed her, Liliane shivered slightly and gently pressed her breasts high to fill his hands. His dark head bending, his lips grazed against their sensitive points until she gasped with delight. Warm as the rising sun, his mouth sought the buds of her nipples.

  She had never dreamed of this sweet pleasure, this luring, erotic witchery. In the shifting firelight; her bare flesh against his was silk upon satin, spreading a glow of enchantment. "Ah, Pilar," he whispered, "you are ivory and gold and rose, lovely beyond my dreaming. Close not against me now, sweet." His hand carried hers to touch herself, share his discovery, guide him, follow him as he caressed the hidden place that made her tremble and cry out against his throat. As she arched, she felt the hard eagerness of his own desire, the impatient readiness. "I am your prisoner, sweet Pilar," he whispered. "Free me. Free me to love you, and my body will be a slave to yours."

  She tugged at his braies with some hesitancy, and he laughed softly at her awkwardness. He guided her, letting her trace him through the cloth, letting hex feel his length and strength. Then suddenly, his clothing parted easily to bare his manhood. Feeling his hard, heated flesh, she quickly drew her hand away. Startled at seeing a male fully aroused, she was hesitant to touch him again. Then, fascinated at the luxuriant mystery of his virility, she trailed her fingers down the curve of his groin to his firmly swollen hardness. The light pressure of her hand made his body tense. "Pilar, do not ... ah, do not release me, but open . . . oh, love, open . . ."

  He eased her thighs apart and his mouth covered hers as his lithe body poised. She knew what must come and, when it came, she welcomed the pain. He pierced her swiftly, surely as a blazing arrow, direct and deep. Tears of pain and joy filled her eyes as he tensed over her, filling her, and the stab of that first invasion gradually gave way to a throbbing ache. Then the throb changed to the pulse of his thrusting inside her, quickening, deepening. He moved with greater urgency, no longer 'bringing pain but unimaginable pleasure. Her body was floating, the sweet, forbidden heat rising and curling in incandescent tendrils that engulfed them in living flame.

  Liliane's body gave a startled, trembling shudder. She then lay very stilly trying to hold on to the wild, violent magic that was slowly fading, leaving a mysterious glowing warmth deep within her. Jean felt it, too; an iridescent glow that lingered in his cobalt eyes, lingered where his body was yet joined to hers. His mouth closed over hers, and he kissed her languorously. She sighed as his lips trailed lower. "Ah, Jean, if I had known ..."

  "You would not have banished me to the rain!" He laughed,then nipped her belly so that she gave a startled yelp. "Perhaps you would not have come to me a virgin." Sinuous as a serpent, he crept lower until he mischievously peered at her between her breasts. "Sly temptress, maybe you have pretended false innocence and lured me as a forest nymph would some goatish oaf."

  Liliane giggled. "Goat you may be, but no oaf. I am untutored in love, yet splendid skill I recognize. Where did you learn such artistry, Monsieur Goat?"

  "Stews, mostly," he answered laconically. "Paris and the Holy Land have as many whores as fleas."

  The glow left her. "And now perhaps you think you must scratch again ..."

  Seeing her transparent shame, Alexandre flushed. "I ought to have my heedless tongue cut out." He touched her face. "Pilar, if you could only know ... to have you here with me tonight, of all nights, is a miracle. Your gift of innocence is far more than I deserve. I have cherished little in this world. For most of my manhood, I have lived like a vagabond." His lips twisted with bitterness. "The future promises little more. If I could offer you luxury and—"

  Her fingertips stopped the words. "I require nothing of you, Jean, especially gold. This sweet time we spend together is enough." Even as she said it, she knew she misled them both. She had not counted on the cruelty of sharing great intimacy with this man, then losing him.

  Alexandre suddenly remembered that he had told her he was leaving, that she must believe they were to be lovers only until the dawn. Perhaps Pilar had counted upon his departure to guard her reputation. He tried to shove the suspicion back. She had been so entrancing, so open, so . . . what had she really told him? She was to be married to Louis de Signe, a man she did not love. Wait. She had not said that she did not love Louis. Since he found Louis abhorrent, he had assumed her distaste. A sharp, unfamiliar pang of jealousy stabbed him. "Pilar," he said slowly, "what if I did not go north?"

  She turned in his arms. "What?"

  Deliberately, he repeated, "What if I did not go? What if I stayed and you lived with me?"

  Her voice filled with frozen panic. "You must go! I am to be married! I cannot stay with you!"

  "And I thought you were beginning to enjoy all this rusticity"—his voice hardened—"or is it merely rustics that you en-joy?"

  "Your place and your birds have nothing to do with it. Oh, Jean," she whispered miserably, "I never led you to believe—"

  He abruptly pulled away and sat up. "No, in all fairness, you did not. The idiocy was all my own. Goats are not known for cleverness." He caught up his braies and dragged them on. "You have shown admirable patience with my bleating, milady. Pear not, I shall be off within the hour and none shall know of your hedgerow dalliance."

  Liliane rose to her knees and clasped his waist. "Jean, do not torment us both. I am promised to another, whether I wish it or not... I must pay a debt of honor. . . fulfill a promise I made, even at the cost of my life." She leaned her head against his back. "Please, please ... do not hate me. Remember that I have given you all that I am free to give. I have loved yo
u."

  "No!" Alexandre hissed. Whirling on his knees, he thrust his hips harshly against her. "This is what you love. You need not whisper honeyed words to flatter my vanity. Be honest, Pilar, you wanted pleasure as much as I, with no piper to pay on the morrow. Go now to your wedding, only while at the altar, do not tell lies of honor to your husband."

  Liliane's yearning and anguish were supplanted by fury. "I cheat no one! Are you so honest that you can judge me? You, an envious parasite! What do you know of being sold as chattel? Of having your body and spirit pawed by some uncaring purchaser?" Tears of rage and pain streamed down her cheeks. She caught up one of her saddlebags and plunged her hand into its depths, men flung a handful of gold coins at his chest. "Take your pay! Take it and begone from my life! I want you not!"

  Alexandre let the money fall, his face dark with hurt and fury as he caught her by the hair. "Nay, milady. I can claim my pay in another manner!" His mouth came down hard on hers, hurting her. Terrified, Liliane bit his lip. With a gasp of pain, Alexandre threw her down upon the blanket, forcing his leg between her thighs. "I can take you, willing or not ... I can leave you without pride."

  "As you think I have left you?" Tears of sorrow filled her eyes. "So our time together ends like this, with hatred and violence."

  The anger slowly drained from him. He sagged away from her and sprawled upon the blanket. "No, it simply ends. I have never yet forced a woman. As for hate, I no longer know what I feel. Nothing. Empty."

  "I do not believe that. I have done something very wrong, but not in making love to you. I have cheated us of any possible tomorrows."

  He smiled wryly. "Could there have every been any tomorrows with a poacher?"

  "Perhaps not." Her laugh was rueful. "I dislike rabbit!"

  His own laugh sounded more like a stifled cough. "You should not joke. This is serious. Are we really never going to see each other again?"

  "Never," she answered dully.

  Alexandre shook his head in mock admonishment. "You are not being serious again."

  "What can we do?" She curled away from him.

  "We are going to change your mind.'' He turned her over and kissed her softly. "How do you like, squirrel?"

  Tears slid down her cheeks. "Jean, you do not understand. I made a promise, which leaves me no choice."

  "Promises mean so much to you?"

  "Particularly this one."

  He was silent for a long moment, then his eyes seemed to darken. For an instant, they seemed filled with stark loss—a wistfulness and longing that made her heart ache. "You are far too particular . . . and much too much of a lady for a poacher."

  "Please," she whispered, "the dawn is hot far away. Make me forget being a lady for a little while longer. ..."

  Alexandre stretched out by her side and gently stroked her face, as if memorizing it with his fingertips. His blue eyes were as shadowed as the hidden, faraway lake of Lancelot. She had thought of chivalric romances and pretty tales. Now Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Iseult became real, their unhappiness hanging in the very air, this firelit darkness. Jean's mouth was warm on hers, and when he came warm inside her, he could almost make her forget the promises, the danger that haunted her. Their passion was the only reality. And then they were drowning in a wild, fiery current, a liquid tapestry that surged tempestuously, sweeping them helplessly before it. She lost all sense of time and place. The throb of her lover within her had taken her into a swirling, wondrously colored dream, and she never wanted to return to the world. For this brief, precious time, Jean led mem to a place of mysterious fascination where faery lights, flickering and elusive, bathed them in a glow that grew ever brighter until the shower of light blinded and seared them with molten darts of rapture. Liliane felt she was dying of the dream, longing to die of this unimaginable bliss. Jean's keening cry rose with her own as his life leaped within her and branded her forever as his own.

  The ghosts of Lancelot and his queen, of Tristan and his lady, smiled sweetly, sadly, men whispered away.

  Liliane slept in Jean's arms. Her sleep was haunted by visions that beguiled and taunted her with longing and fear of loss. A cold wind chilled her as it wailed mournfully through her fitful dreams. Since leaving Spain, she had felt that wind each night; it was filled with terrible faces that pressed against hers, pressed until she could not breathe. Jacques was a monstrous gargoyle, Louis a creeping gnome. She flailed out desperately, reaching for Jean, but the place where he had been was barren as a desert. Her eyes flicked open.

  Jean was gone. Heartsick with disbelief, Liliane stared at the blanket where he'd lain beside her. Shivering in the damp dawn, she sat up. The feeble light barely penetrated the gloom, but she saw that Jean's weapons were missing. Her saddlebags were neatly propped nearby; the gold she had flung at him was still scattered across the stone floor. The fire had sunk into gray ashes, and the barren cold of the stone floor had seeped into her bones and entered her heart. Jean had left her without a word of farewell. She was alone with her nightmarish faces.

  Chapter 3

  ~

  Ding, Dong, Oh Doleful Day

  Castle de Brueil

  That same morning

  Alexandre sneezed. Misery circled him like a vulture. He had left his destrier in the lean-to for Pilar and run all the way to Castle de Brueil through the sullen dawn showers. Now the morning was as bright and fresh as a new coin, but he felt dull and exhausted. Wheezing, he had staggered into the castle and up to his room. He had called weakly for his manservant, Yves, to bathe, shave and dress him for the wedding. Inert, he lay in the bath water brought from the skullery. Through slitted lids he watched Yves warily circle him with the shaving blade. Yves was wise to be wary. Alexandre felt like cutting a throat—his own. Miserable, he submerged himself in the cold water. Pilar, as out of reach as the moon, must even now be riding to Louis.

  Liliane rose in the saddle as Castle de Brueil came into view. Rising high and gray upon granite, it towered above the rolling fields of Provence. Even from a distance, the castle looked dilapidated. While its towers seemed to have been built fairly recently compared to the ancient keep, the castle must have stood sentinel to the sea for at least two centuries. While not so stolid in architecture as most Romanesque fortresses, Castle de Brueil compensated for its vulnerable high towers with a broad moat and craggy sea-rock base. A long sand spit ran southeast into the Mediterranean Sea, which curved inland at the castle's back. Wind-battered pines dotted the surrounding fields, ringing a peasant village to the west and forming a large copse on the near side of the castle.

  Liliane took the pretty copse as a hopeful sign; if the master of the castle had not cut it down for firewood long-ago, he might not be a complete brute. He certainly had taken precautions for the Signe visit. His horsemen were mounted at intervals along the road and spaced through the fields. If any of the wedding party should wander or make a hostile move, the Count de Brueil would immediately be warned. Unfortunately, she could not say much for her own cleverness this morning. Riding in long skirts, she was late for her wedding. She had galloped until the horse was lathered, and she had probably left a trail of jewels from her embroidered mantle back to the hunting lodge.

  She felt no guilt over her tryst with Jean, only a sharp relentless pang of loss. To make matters worse, he had left her his horse and tack. The black Moorish stallion was a fine animal and probably the only thing of value Jean had in the world. The tack was worn, but it was of good quality. He must know that she had no way of returning his property. Penniless, he had left her a kingly remembrance ... in more than one way. She would remember his lingering touch and his engaging, mischievous smile until the day of her death.

  When she saw that very same smile awaiting her among the gaily dressed assemblage in the courtyard of Castle de Brueil, she almost toppled off her horse.

  Upon his first glimpse of Liliane riding steadily toward him, Alexandre's perfunctory smile froze. The left corner of his mouth twitched as his pulse
began to pound. He was stunned, delighted and appalled. The wench had lied! She had played him for a fool again, not only lying about her intended, but by having bedded a poacher on her wedding eve.

  Alexandre's gathered household was agog at his good luck. Even he had to admit that Liliane del Pinal was the most gorgeous creature he had ever seen, even among the odalisques in the Crescent slave markets and the haughty beauties of Philip's court. She was richly dressed in the stark, Andalusian style with sable-trimmed black velvet cyclas scalloped at the hip, over a yellow, long-skirted chainse and sorquenie with narrow sleeves extended over her slender hands. Her blond hair was caught up in gold filagree net on both sides of her head; the net filet that kept it in place was studded with emeralds, topaz, diamonds and amethysts. The smallest of the rings upon her fingers was larger than the simple gold band Alexandre had chosen for her from his scant store of Moorish booty. Despite her finery, the loosely braided hair beneath her filagree hinted that she had dressed in a hurry, and the hem of her black cloak was thick with dust.

  Despite his racing thoughts, Alexandre made up his mind before Ms betrothed came within ten feet of him. Liliane del Pinal was as much a Signe as her odious cousins, and he had yet to meet a Signe who was not devious. Certainly, she had already proven she was an adept and ready liar. Last night, in the midst of all her lies, his bride to be had said she owed a promise even at cost of her life. That promise was probably to Jacques de Signe, and had something to do with this marriage. On top of her lies, she had enjoyed him as a lover, gotten rid of him and acquired his horse, all at no cost to herself. One thing she'd told him rang true: she wanted no marriage with Alexandre de Brueil. And last night, Alexandre de Brueil had behaved like a swain smitten with his first love. Well, until he took her measure, she was not going to get the upper hand with his ring on her finger. And by damn, he would have his horse back!