Now she turned to look at Geoffrey and saw that he was regarding her from his prone position with one eye open—and that eye glimmering with wicked amusement; his shoulders were shaking with mirth. “In truth, you’ve missed your vocation!” he gasped. “You should have been an actress—you near frighted that young trooper out of his wits.”
“Did I?” asked Lenore in a shaky voice. She tried to laugh, but found she was shivering.
Suddenly from the now receding city gates came a chorus of shouts from which the words “After them!” reached Lenore with a sickening jolt. They’d made it through, but they’d aroused suspicions—probably that old woman who’d been behind them in the crowd had said something.
At the commotion, Geoffrey straightened up like a bent sapling suddenly released. “Ride!” he called to Lenore grimly and darted past her, leading a weaving path around some startled farmers, then darting suddenly off the road into the shelter of some trees, losing his hat to a low branch.
Behind them Lenore could hear a discordant clamor as some farmers joined in the pursuit. Voices called excitedly; there was a muffled thunder of hooves in the mud, and a couple of wild musket shots. She thanked God for the darkness which gave them cover, although it was dangerous plunging through the dark forest.
Her shawl whipped back, twigs tore at her hair, a branch stung her face as she raced on. Snowfire’s breath and her own steamed in the frosty air, and the cold wind tore at her throat. There was a nightmarish quality to this flight through trees that loomed up and zoomed by to right or left. They had been so light-hearted riding into Wells. Now once again they were running for their lives, with naught before them if they were caught but torture and death—or transportation and a life of slavery. Lenore bent her head low over Snowfire’s flying mane and urged him on. Gamely he responded, and Lenore comforted herself that at least the horses had had food and a bit of rest in Wells.
Always before they’d eluded pursuit fairly easily, but this time whenever they thought themselves free of their pursuers there was an outcry from some new direction. All night they fled before their pursuers, and Lenore was reeling with fatigue when just before dawn broke Geoffrey led her cautiously into a clump of trees, parted some brush, and showed her a great dark gaping hole in the hillside.
“I know this place from my boyhood,” he said, dismounting, “when I visited a great-aunt who lived near here. ’Twas a secret place where I hid when I did not wish to be found.”
“Your aunt, is she still alive?” asked Lenore, dismounting and studying the entrance. She had always been frightened by caves and had no desire to enter this one.
“Long since dead, her property sold,” he said. He pawed in their saddlebags. “We’ll need candles, and I dare not strike flint until I am well inside lest the light be seen by the wrong eyes. Do not follow me, Lenore, until you see a light within.”
Shivering, Lenore waited until she saw a wavering light from deep within the cavern. Then, leading the two horses, their hooves ringing on the cavern’s stone floor, she headed toward the light, catching up with him and stumbling along as he led them deeper and deeper down a twisting path between huge boulders that opened up suddenly into a great echoing chamber, its ceiling lost somewhere in gloom above them, but filled with eerie, long-reaching stalactites and stalagmites. By the wavering candlelight they seemed to move and glitter, and from somewhere came the drip-drip-drip of water trickling, the source that had created these majestic stone icicles.
Lenore slumped wearily down on a stone hummock and studied the cavern. Perhaps, she thought wearily, her tired thoughts becoming fanciful, this was Merlin’s crystal cave. They had reached the end of their strength, the end of their luck. Perhaps Cromwell’s troops would catch them now and hang them out of hand; perhaps this was the place where lovers died.
Geoffrey found a small stone grotto just off this spacious vaulted room and called to her. She staggered up and entered it through a narrow way composed of two great rising stone cones, and so hidden that it was almost like a low box just offstage in a theatre.
“We’ll be quite snug here,” he said, his voice for once showing strain, and even through her own numbing fatigue she realized how tired he was and her heart went out to him. “Even should they search the cavern they’d be unlikely to find us for we could crouch down behind the stones and the horses could be well hidden in the short passage behind that screen of rocks just there.” He indicated with a nod, carefully setting down the candle in a little depression in the floor.
Lenore studied the stubby candle in fear. “We have only two candles,” she murmured. “Suppose—suppose they go out, Geoffrey? Think you we can find our way out again through this maze?”
“Find our way out we certainly will,” he told her energetically. “’Tis long since I’ve been here, but I remember these first passages well enough. And to make sure you don’t catch your death in those wet clothes, I’m off to find us some firewood to build a fire, for ’tis cursed cold in this place.”
Lenore, whose teeth were chattering, said, “I’ll go with you.” She had sunk down on the cold stones, but now, afraid to be left alone in this great echoing place, she staggered again to her feet.
Geoffrey hesitated, but seeing the beseeching look in her eyes, he relented. “I’ll tether the horses to this stone post so they’ll not wander off and fall through any holes in the flooring. We’ll bring back firewood.” He took off his cloak and wrapped it around Lenore. “Ye look cold,” he said.
She did not deny it
Quickly they retraced their steps, and Geoffrey wedged the candle in some broken rocks so that only the weakest of light lit them to the entrance. Outside the world seemed almost unnaturally quiet and a handful of frosty stars, looking clean-washed by the rain, beamed down.
“Perhaps I should look for a spring,” Lenore suggested. “We’ve a bit of food with us, but we’ll need water to wash it down.”
“Sit in the entrance and wait for me,” said Geoffrey quietly. “Remember, I know this cavern. A short way behind the great room is an underground stream. We will not lack for water, nor will the horses.” He was off, catlike, into the dark, and Lenore, bone tired, sank down and rested her head on her arms. She was almost asleep, though half freezing, when the sound of a twig breaking beneath his booted foot announced Geoffrey’s return. He was carrying a huge armload of broken branches and Lenore stood up, wavering on her feet.
“I’ll help you with that,” she offered. She reached out to help him with his load and suddenly the stars whirled around in a wild circle and retreated into blackness. Lenore had fainted.
She came to in the grotto, with a crackling fire beside her and Geoffrey kneading her hands and feet, trying to warm them. The firelight played across his dark hawklike face, gave rich highlights to his gleaming dark hair, and lit the concern in his gray eyes.
“Are you all right?” he asked sharply.
“Yes.” She stirred, realizing he had wrapped her in his coat as well as his cloak, and was but thinly clad in the pervading chill of the cavern. “You must take back your cloak, Geoffrey.” She sat up dizzily.
“No.” He pushed her back, eyeing her keenly. “This fainting of yours .. . have you not something to tell me?”
She hesitated, blushing. “You have guessed?”
“Aye. Stupid of me it was not to realize it before, since you’ve been pale and wan so many mornings. When will the baby come?”
“I—I don’t know. Early in June, I think.”
He studied her, the fire making golden lights dance in his gray eyes. “The first night I took you?”
“I believe so,” she said, hurried.
His voice softened and he reached out to caress her hair with a gentle hand, smooth it back from her flushed face. “I'd not have let you ride today had I known, for it could have brought on your time too soon. Lenore”— he pressed his face into her hair and his voice was muffled, hoarse with emotion—“I am grateful.”
Mov
ed, she clung to him and tears swam in her eyes and almost but not quite spilled over her long lashes. And to think she had been half afraid to tell him!
He slid under the cloak with her, his arms wrapping about her warmly. Lenore moved against him, loving the feel of his powerful body.
That night he took her with a tenderness that made her feel more loved than all the wild nights they had known together.
This is how it will be, she thought blissfully, rubbing her cheek against his. When we are married, this is how it will be.
When she woke, the fire was out and the darkness about them was absolute. She knew moments of terror while Geoffrey, cursing, worked with his flint to light the only bit of candle they had left. Stiff with cold, but refreshed from their rest, they made their way to the entrance and found to their surprise that it was already dusk. All day they had slept soundly in the depths of the cavern.
At the entrance there was a sudden rustle of wings behind them and a great wave of screeching bats flew past them from the cavern to darken the sky for a moment.
Lenore stifled a scream and fell against Geoffrey. Had she known those creatures were in there with her . . . !
“ ’Tis all right,” he comforted, encircling her slender shoulders with a protective arm. “The bats fly out in the evening to feast on the night insects of the fields. By day they sleep in the cavern depths.”
“How do you know so much about bats?”
“As a boy I was of an adventurous nature, exploring bogs and holes and thickets—any place that was forbidden. Not only this cavern did I explore, but others. Once I was lost for two whole days in a cavern.”
“Two whole days . . .” she whispered, shuddering.
He smiled. “By now I think our pursuers will have tired of looking for us where we are not, and be back to chasing their neighbors’ wives and daughters—the ordinary pursuits of normal men!”
He was trying to rally her, and she gave him a wan smile. But when they had wended their way into the starlit valley below and the horses were grazing hungrily on a convenient haycock some farmer had piled up in his field, Lenore looked past her tall Cavalier at a pale new moon and asked, “Where do we go now, Geoffrey? What road is open to us?”
“I have thought on it,” he said, “and there seems but one answer: we’ll to Oxford. In your condition ’tis the best solution, for I know a woman there and her house should be safe for us.”
“A—woman?” asked Lenore faintly.
He smiled at the inference and leaned down to kiss her lightly on the lips. “My old nurse,” he said. “She left us long ago to go and live with her son in Oxford. If she’s still alive, she’ll welcome us.”
But not approve of your alliance to me, a woman who bears your child but not yet your name, thought Lenore with a sinking heart. Her anxiety showed on her face.
“Come, come.” His smile was reassuring. “You’ll like Oxford, save that it’s damnably damp and cold.”
Their progress through the countryside had changed, for she had not known Geoffrey to use such caution as she now saw him exercise, taking no chances with her at all, leaving her hidden in copses and behind rock outcroppings while he tried for food at out-of-the-way cottages and woodcutters’ huts where word of fugitives would be slow to penetrate. Lenore knew this new care of her was due to her pregnancy, and took vast pride in it.
The weather was cold and crisp now, and Lenore, her face cleaned of ashes in a crystal-clear spring, rode swathed in enough old clothing to make a ragbag. But Geoffrey kept her warm and well fed and tried to amuse her as they made their way by a stealthy circuitous route toward Oxford.
Once near a tiny hamlet they walked their horses through a shallow ford and drew up beside a small stone church that made Lenore think pensively on marriage and how her unborn child would need a name.
“What is it?” asked Geoffrey, reining up as he saw her halt and sit her horse, wistfully gazing up at the low steeple with its single bell to peal for weddings and funerals and all the great events of village life.
“ ’Tis a church,” she said softly, looking up through gnarled oak branches to which red-brown leaves still clung, at the gray stone walls, tracing a path to the wooden doors that must have opened to admit a hundred brides....
From his hawklike face his gray eyes studied her, their expression inscrutable. Suddenly he leaned over and slipped an arm around her waist. “Lenore, I know what you’re thinking,” he murmured. “And God knows I would marry you this very day, but—I cannot. I already have a wife.”
Lenore stiffened. She turned a stunned gaze toward him. “A wife?” she asked in a faint, incredulous voice. "Did you say a wife?”
“Aye, a wife,” he sighed. “I had not meant to shock you, but—”
“Not meant—!” Bright spots of color stained her cheeks. “Did you think I would take it calmly?” she cried. “When it is your child I carry in my body?”
He winced. “At first it did not seem important to tell you,” he admitted, frowning.
“And then it was too late, I suppose?” She studied that dark loved face bitterly.
“Just so.” He bent down to kiss the lobe of her ear. It was a gesture meant to soothe her, but Lenore jerked away as if his touch had seared her.
“And this woman?” she demanded in a tight voice. “This wife of whom I have been so late to hear—where is she? Why, is she, not I, riding beside you and sharing your lot in caverns and hovels?”
Geoffrey frowned. “You are right to be angry, for I should have told you of her. She is in France. ’Twas an arranged marriage, Lenore. Some friends of mine, knowing my impoverished state, sought to better it—they found me an heiress.”
An heiress! Lenore flinched. “And where is your heiress now?”
“I left her with her family when I took ship for Scotland with the King.”
A wife ... in France. Lenore’s fingers were clenched white and her head was whirling. She fought to keep her voice under control. “Have you not heard from her?” she asked tightly.
“Not once. She was eager to wed me, was Letiche, for she thought I was possessed of a fortune—and I leaped to the bait, for I thought she had one.” His laugh was grim “Furious still is Letiche, I’ve no doubt! She’d thought to wear ropes of pearls as my wife—and I thought to inherit a duchy, no less!” He sighed. “The French are full of guile.”
“So are the English!” choked Lenore. “I’ll not stay with you another day!”
She shook off Geoffrey’s restraining arm and dug her knee into Snowfire’s side. Startled, the white stallion took off as if the devils of hell were after him. Geoffrey yelled after her, but his bay could not catch her racing mount. She rode on blindly, unaware of the biting wind that whipped her face, conscious only of a deep pain stabbing somewhere around her heart. Married! Ah, she’d never thought of that. Never. Geoffrey had seemed so ... so wild and free and unshackled. And desirable.
And—hers.
Leaves brushed her cold, tear-stained face as Snowfire, filled with alarm by Geoffrey’s shouts and Lenore’s wild weeping, veered from the rutted cart track into the forest, but Lenore did not care where he took her or what happened to her. Geoffrey had given her a deep wound that she would never forget or forgive, and all her bright dreams of wedding vows exchanged, of a flower- and rush-strewn way to the church, were shattering one by one like crystal goblets flung away by careless merrymakers, and the bright shards were her glistening, heartbroken tears.
For her there would be no circlet of myrtle, no jeweled betrothal ring or enameled hoop, for her no bride-ale or leaping over the stile ... never for her.
Snowfire swung sharply left to avoid an onrushing tree trunk. Lenore, her feet not even in the stirrups, put a hand up to her tear-blinded eyes and a low-hanging branch swept her from the saddle to land in some heavy bushes. She lay there, sobbing.
Moments later Geoffrey thundered up. He was white to the roots of his swinging dark hair. “My God, are you hurt?” he cr
ied, disentangling her from the broken branches of the bushes.
“Let me be,” she said in a shaken voice, striking away his helpful hand. She dashed away her tears, looking to see where Snowfire had gone. Only now had he come to a halt in the distance and turned back to look at her questioningly. With a convulsive movement she sat up and tried to untangle her hair, which had come loose from its pins and was tangled with the twigs and leaves.
“You might have thought of the child you bear,” he said accusingly. “Before you chose to bolt!”
“So might you!” cried Lenore on a gust of fury. “For it will not have a name!”
He winced. “Lenore,” he said. “Listen to me—”
“No, I will not listen to you!” she shouted, jerking her hair free with an effort and giving a cry of pain as some strands of it, wrapped around the twigs, were pulled from her head. “At least I did not deceive you, Geoffrey! I told you I was handfasted—but you did not tell me you were married!”
“You did not ask me.” He was imperturbable again as he reached out and set her firmly on her feet; he kept his grip on her though she struggled angrily to be free, slapping at his hands. “Now listen to me.” His voice was hard as steel. “Nothing is changed between us, Lenore. I have a wife in France who’ll ne’er set foot in England. I no longer go by the name of Wyndham, but by the name of Daunt. And to the world you are my wife—Mistress Lenore Daunt. When our child is born it will bear that surname—Daunt. And bear it proudly, I hope. Save that I cannot take you to the church, Lenore, I’ll be your faithful husband, I swear it. And we can live together as man and wife.”
She studied him from tear-bright, disillusioned eyes. “Do you feel nothing for her, this French girl?” she demanded huskily.
“We were married but a week before I left the country. She was hot for my arms until she found I’d no fortune.
Then she turned me out of her bed and berated me like a very termagant. Believe me, I was glad enough to go. Lenore, Lenore, I tell you it will make no difference between us. You’ll bear my child and I’ll hew to you henceforth.”
This Towering Passion Page 12
