by Susan Wiggs
Only when a breeze cooled her cheeks did she realize she was crying again. But the new tears came on a release of pain, as if Rand’s singing had drawn a thorn from her flesh.
He watched her expectantly. She swallowed. “How can you sing like that? As if—as if your soul were touched by God.”
Laughter rippled from him. “Not by God. By you.”
They weren’t touching, but Lianna felt as if she’d been caressed. I think I love you, he’d called to her, and she’d wondered about that for days, questioning his honesty and her own worthiness of it. No man had ever said those words to her, had those feelings for her. Did he still feel affection for her, or was the emotion only a passing fancy? She feared to ask, but what she saw in the pure, liquid green of his eyes made her hear the words in her heart over and over again.
He set down his harp and walked to her horse. “Let me guess,” he said, stroking the palfrey’s satiny neck. “You’ve stolen a horse and you’re running away.”
“I am allowed certain liberties,” she said quickly, leaping up to join him. His eyes were so clear, so all-seeing. Did he know she lied? She felt guilty deceiving him. Quickly she justified it. This knight-errant would never befriend the Demoiselle de Bois-Long; no one ever had.
He ran his hand over the palfrey’s withers and down her leg, pushing aside the grass to examine the iron curve of her shoe. “The horse is well tended.”
“Of course.” Lianna’s chin lifted. She tolerated no sloth in her stables. Catching Rand’s curious look, she added, “The marshal is most exacting.” Only, she thought, because he knew she’d put him out to the rye fields if he shirked his duties. She tugged at Rand’s hand. “Let’s walk.”
Gratified by her lightened mood, Rand followed. Her hair played in the breeze like threads of moonlight spun by fairies. As they fell in step together, the hem of her heather smock brushed against his leg, sending a sweet, forbidden thrill to the center of him. The browns and greens of the new season colored the landscape, and he forced his attention to the pollarded willows and stunted poplars that nodded in the wind.
“I’m convinced this was a pirate path of the Vikings,” she said, leading him over the hill that sheltered the glade. “I used to play Helquin the Huntsman when I was a child.”
He smiled. She spoke as if her childhood were long past, yet in his eyes she was a child still. “Who is Helquin?”
“Ah, you do not know the legend in Gascony.” Her arm sketched the sweep of the landscape. “All the way from the cold white country of the north Helquin came, bearing the shrieking souls of the damned on his shoulders.” She shivered and looked as though she enjoyed the sensation. The thought crossed his mind that Justine would never have savored such a gruesome tale.
“When the wild birds cry out over the marshes, the peasants say they echo Helquin’s long gallop through the centuries. I’d pretend to see him burst through the woods with all the battalions of hell at his heels.”
Rand grinned. “Would you run in terror from Helquin?”
“Certainly not. I would pretend to blow him all the way to the Zuyder Zee with a sixty-pound ball.”
He stopped walking, took her by the shoulders, and rolled his eyes. “I do not approve of your penchant for gunnery.”
Scowling, she struck him lightly on the chest. “Doubtless you would have me cloistered in a lady’s bower, carding wool.”
I would have you folded in my arms, he thought. Next to my heart. He gave her shoulders a squeeze. “I cannot dictate what you should or shouldn’t do. That’s not how it is between friends. But I would prefer you didn’t work with guns. I’ve seen the destruction they can wreak.”
“Very well, Rand the Gascon,” she said, her eyes glittering a challenge, “how would you defend a château?”
“With the might of men-at-arms and archers.”
“Knights.” She spat the word. “They indulge in looting and ransom.” Color rose to her cheeks, and Rand realized he’d discovered a topic she had often pondered, and not happily. She planted her hands on her hips. “Chivalry is but an empty spectacle, an excuse to plunder the weak.”
“Unscrupulous men, not the laws of chivalry, are to blame.”
“Chivalry is but a cloak to hide the excesses of their chevauchées.”
A sudden hideous thought struck him. “Have you been hurt by knights, Lianna? Is that why you disdain chivalry?”
She lowered her gaze. “Anyone who has smelled the smoke of a burning orchard, seen a baby spitted on a sword, heard the cries of a terrified woman, has been hurt by these men who call themselves knights.”
He swallowed hard. She was French; she’d seen these horrors, lived with them all her life. Still, she challenged everything he believed about knighthood. “Do you include me in your censure?”
She looked up. “Do you do those things?”
“No,” he said. “Never. Do you believe me?”
“I think you truly wish to protect the weak and uphold the faith. But I also think you are wrong to believe you can achieve this through chivalry.” She softened the blow by touching his cheek, adding, “You are that rare man, Rand, a man who cannot be touched by corruption.”
Her statement sent him into a spiral of self-reproach. Every lying word he told her would soon come back to haunt him. Unable to extricate himself from the dilemma, he started walking again, then surprised himself by asking, “What think you of archers?” Jesu, was he truly having such a conversation with a girl?
“Rabble,” she said. “Undisciplined rabble.”
“Can you dispute the success of the bowmen at Crécy and Poitiers?”
She glared. “A fine way for a Frenchman to speak, lauding English victories.”
Fool, he said to himself, she’ll find you out even sooner if you don’t guard your tongue. “I laud not the victories, only the way in which they were won. How many arrows could a master archer let fly in the time it takes to load and discharge a cannon?”
“A hundred arrows cannot bring down a stone wall. A single gun can.”
“What good is a firearm that hides the enemy in smoke?”
“What good is an arrow in a strong wind, a bowstring saturated by rain?”
Her vehemence delighted and disturbed him. Deliberately he sidestepped the challenge. “What good is arguing with a maid too precocious for her own welfare?”
She scowled, but he held her with a look of amused affection until the corners of her mouth tipped up in a smile. “You will never defeat my logic in this, sir knight,” she stated. “I am far too quick for you—in more ways than one.” She turned and ran down a grassy slope.
Laughing, he followed her lead past great elms, old yews, giant beeches, over half-buried stones and purplish mud, until he glimpsed the sea through rows of wind-torn hedges.
His caution swept away by her capriciousness and the lithe grace of her movements, he lunged forward and caught her around the waist. Her soft gasp tickled his ear as he swung her in the air. They tumbled together into the soft grass until, with gentle force, Rand pinned her beneath him. One hand bound her delicate wrists and held them above her head, while the other tiptoed in light caresses down her rib cage until she fairly shrieked for mercy.
“Who is the quicker now, pucelle?”
She clamped her mouth shut, refusing to yield. His fingers found and tickled each rib in turn, sending little shocks of awareness through him as her form and the warmth of her flesh came alive beneath her homespun smock.
Boldly he teased the flesh of her neck, his fingers rippling beneath the dense silk of her hair. Her skin was as smooth as ivory, as lustrous as a pearl. Wildly he wondered if she could feel the simmering heat of his desire, if she knew how close he was to letting his passion devour them both.
Sudden guilt flayed him. He was betrothed to another. Yet with Lianna his vows of chastity, of chivalry, flew on the wind, beyond the reach of reason.
As of its own accord, his touch changed to searching caresses, his fingers
tracing her cheeks, her shoulders, the dainty line of her collarbone. He explored her form and texture, wanting to stamp her image on his soul. She stirred, and a small whimpering sound escaped her. “Who is the quicker now?” he asked again, forcing lightness into his tone. “Who?”
“You...oh, you,” she gasped.
Immediately Rand released her wrists, but he touched her still with languorous strokes. Bringing his face very close to hers, he studied the clouds of pink color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.
“There is naught so heady,” he whispered, “as a battle won.”
“You do not play fair,” she replied breathlessly.
“Where you are concerned,” he said, “I forswear fairness.” The wind stirred the hedges, and a shadow drifted over her face, deepening the color of her eyes to opaque silver. She shifted beneath him, the slight movement bringing his every nerve to a state of burning aliveness.
“Lianna, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the moment we met.” He touched his lips at random over her flushed and startled face. “You make me want to forget who I am, to forget there’s a world and a time beyond this moment.”
She took a deep, dreamy breath, and he caught it with his mouth, absorbing the warm sweet nectar of her lips. The times he’d held a woman in his arms were few, but had he kissed a thousand women, he knew not one of them could seize his soul as Lianna did.
She lay still, naive, accepting. Her lips felt like moist velvet as he brushed them with his own. She tasted of morning dew and mystery, as if her body held some secret just out of his reach. He burned for her, longed to unlock the person she was, to peel away the layers of her outward identity and cast them aside like petals plucked from a daisy.
Madness, he thought, feathering kisses over her brow, into her hair. Madness to indulge in this forbidden tryst. But oh, how he wanted to explore the insanity. His hand found the sweet curve of her breast. He lifted his head. She eyed him with soft inquiry. Her lips were moist, love-bruised.
“We’d best start back,” he said reluctantly.
Wistfulness darkened her eyes. “Why?”
“Because you are a funny little pucelle who enjoys guns and tries my convictions, and I am a knight-errant bound where my travels take me.” He forced himself to speak easily as he helped her up. “Did your maman never teach you better than to consort with strange men?”
“I am an orphan, and you don’t seem like a stranger to me.”
Although she spoke matter-of-factly, he recognized the glint of pain in the sea-silver depths of her eyes. He drew her against him, startled anew by her smallness, her sturdiness. He whispered, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She nuzzled her cheek against his chest. “You’d never hurt a woman. You told me so.”
Desire swelled in him; he choked it off with a fresh dose of guilt. Before long she would learn who he was, and he’d never have the gift of her trust again.
At a leisurely pace they started back toward their horses, easing into a relationship that Rand knew could flourish only for a few more days—even hours, perhaps. He showed her a bittern’s nest occupied by four brown-speckled eggs. She showed him a limestone deposit and a ruined Roman aqueduct. He wove a crown of wildflowers and placed it on her head. She fashioned a tiny catapult from a green ash bough and showed him how to fling a stone fifty paces.
Rand scowled at the makeshift weapon. Putting it into his belt, he caught her against him. “You are impossible.”
“I am practical.”
“You are beautiful.”
“Prate not about the way I look. I would rather have you admire my skill at weaponry.”
He grinned. “Are all at Bois-Long as bloodthirsty as you?”
“Some are worse,” she said simply, and turned away.
Some are worse. Could she be speaking of her mistress? As he watched her untether her horse, his throat went tight with apprehension. Taking her by the shoulders, he stared at her. “Will your mistress punish you for taking the horse?”
Confusion, then amusement, chased across her features. “Of course not,” she said, flushing.
Relieved, he dropped a kiss on her brow.
“Will you come back?” she asked softly.
He swallowed. “I don’t know....”
“Are you leaving, resuming your travels?”
“My plans...are uncertain.”
She nodded, as if aware that what they had was tenuous. “I’ll come when I can in the late afternoon,” she said solemnly, “at the hour of the woodcock’s flight.”
Wishing the world would fall away and leave them to themselves, Rand hauled her against him and crushed his mouth down on hers.
But by the time he reached Eu, he knew he’d not go to the place of St. Cuthbert’s cross again. The selfish joy of being with Lianna was not worth the pain she’d suffer when she learned his purpose.
He rode out to sit alone on the cliffs where the breakers leaped up in an endless assault on the rocks. He longed to yank his dreams out of his heart and cast them into the sea, to turn himself back into the hollow shell he’d been before he’d met Lianna. She made him too human, too sensitive, and those qualities would serve him ill when the time came to take Bois-Long and his new wife.
He went back to the village, walked into the taproom, and found Jack Cade, who had agreed to act as his herald. Cheeks ruddy from too much hard Breton cider, Jack raised a wooden mug. “My lord of Longwood.”
Rand nodded curtly. “Tomorrow.”
* * *
Lianna lay wrapped in the cloud coverlet of a dream. She’d been dreaming of Lazare, her haughty husband. In the dream he’d stood in the shadows beside her bed, a dark, unwanted presence. But then he’d stepped closer. Darkness gave way to golden sunlight, and the figure by her bed was not Lazare at all, but Rand, his face alight with that heart-catching smile, his arms open, inviting her.
She moved toward him, reaching, getting close enough to catch the scent of sunshine and sea winds that clung to him, to feel the warmth emanating from him....
He faded on a shimmer of light, and she felt herself being pulled out of the dream and thrust into the cold gray drizzle of dawn.
Wondering what had awakened her, she stared bleakly at the long, narrow window. A shout sounded. She jumped up, wrapping herself in a sheet as she hurried to the window. The sentry at the barbican was gesturing at the causeway spanning the river.
Spying a lone rider, Lianna suddenly felt the cold of the stone flags beneath her bare feet. The sensation crept up her legs and crawled over her scalp. The traveler wore a white tunic emblazoned with a gold device. The leopard rampant.
Her throat constricted; she swallowed twice before finding her voice. “Bonne! Come quickly.” Moments dragged by before the maid appeared. Frowning at the wisps of straw in Bonne’s hair, Lianna guessed the maid had been dallying with Roland. Bonne’s sleepy, satisfied smile confirmed the suspicion.
“Honestly, Bonne,” Lianna snapped. “You’re supposed to sleep on your pallet in my wardrobe. Surely it doesn’t take the entire night to...to...” A hot flush rose in her cheeks, and, irritated, she looked away.
Bonne’s smile widened. “Not the whole night, my lady, but afterward...” She indulged in a long, luxurious stretch. “It is so agreeable lying in a man’s arms, you know.”
Lianna didn’t know, and that fact annoyed her all the more. “In the future, you’re to be here by cockcrow.”
“Yes, my lady,” the maid said, knitting her fingers together in front of her. “What is your pleasure?”
Lianna motioned toward the window. The rider was in the bailey now, his horse being led to the stables. Bonne looked out, then drew back, fully awake now. “By St. Wilgefort’s beard,” she breathed, “it’s the English baron.”
“Not the baron, but surely his messenger.”
“Gervais was up playing at draughts until the wee hours, but I’ll send for him. With your husband gone to Paris, it’s Gervais’s place to rece
ive the message.”
“Don’t you dare awaken him,” said Lianna. “I shall dispense with Longwood’s man myself.”
Bonne reached for a comb.
“Never mind my hair,” Lianna said. “Just cover it with a hennin and veil. I’m anxious to meet this English bumpkin.”
Wearing her best gown and her haughtiest look, she found the man in the hall. He was sucking prodigiously at a wine flask. Then he gaped at her, his mouth slack as a simpleton’s.
She refused to ease his task. Flicking her eyes over his ruddy hair, oiled and mercilessly furrowed by a comb, she asked, “What business have you here?”
“I am Jack Cade. I bear a message for the Demoiselle de Bois-Long.” His crude French assaulted her ears.
“I am the demoiselle,” she said in English. The language, schooled into her by tutors sent by her uncle, tasted bitter on her tongue.
He gave her a sealed vellum letter. Distractedly she noticed his right hand was missing three fingers. A cripple, she thought uncharitably. What must the master be like?
The seal bore the hated leopard device. Breaking it savagely, she scanned the message. Though long and arrogantly worded, the grandiloquent phrases could not sweeten the outrageous proclamation. King Henry, self-styled sovereign of England and France, ordered her to receive one Enguerrand Fitzmarc, Baron of Longwood, along with the customary bride-price of the uncustomary sum of ten thousand gold crowns.
Momentarily dazzled by the amount, she glanced up. Bonne had entered, bearing cups of mulled wine. The herald stared at the maid. His eyes bulged, and mangled phrases of admiration burst from him. To Lianna’s disgust, Bonne accepted the tribute with smiling grace and gave him a cup of wine.
Furious, Lianna said, “Move aside, Bonne. I want him to see exactly what I think of his message.” She rent the vellum into tiny bits and scattered them among the rushes with her foot. “Your king is a pretender! I reject his edict, and I reject the spineless lackey he has sent to wed me, along with the pittance he mistakenly thinks will make him palatable. Tell your master that he can take his foul carcass back to England.”
