But ... in the wide hallway below, clustered at the foot of the stairs leering upward, was a knot of men. In the forefront she saw faces she recognized, those who had been with Lord Wilsingame at the theatre: the lean de Quincy, lounging against the newel post as if to be in position to seize her first; reptilian Flemmons with his elegant yellow wig and his elegant rose satin ruffles; young Alverdice, his heavy face flushed from wine, swaying on his feet, mouthing newly learned obscenities; Lymond, Taggart, they were all here. Indeed the nine or ten seemed to have swelled to beyond a dozen. Mingled among those she knew were some she did not recognize by name, but at least four of them she had seen about the theatre; they were a vicious lot, known for their shocking exploits. Several faces she could not see behind the great plumed hats and enormous curled periwigs, but there were many, so many! It seemed to her anguished view that Lord Wilsingame had invited all of London to witness her shame—and partake in it.
“Ye must start down now,” hissed Elsie, crouched behind her lest she spoil the effect. “Remember, walk right past them into the big room at your left. ’Tis there they’ll have their sport with ye.”
Lenore swallowed. Life was not that dear! She did not reply to Elsie but gripped the mirrored plumed fan—and the concealed scissors—the tighter. Her delicate jaw had a grim line. The elegantly dressed gentlemen below would be disappointed if they hoped to have sport with her tonight!
With a regal gesture she lifted her head and tossed back her lovely hair so that it rippled about her back and shoulders like shimmering silk. She made a startling picture in the clinging, low-cut black silk gown, with her large grave violet eyes shadowed by long thick lashes, her brows dark wings against her white forehead, her slightly parted mouth seeming to promise so much. A pulse beat in her slender throat, and the candlelight gleamed on her white shoulders and arms, dramatic against the black silk gloves. The eyes below feasted on that throat and on the pearly tops of her round, beautifully molded breasts—almost fully exposed against the rich clinging black silk of her seductive gown—that rose and fell with her rapid breathing.
Lenore no longer hesitated, for she knew what she must do. Somewhere down the Thames, poor destroyed Emma quaked—she had gone through all this, and it had broken her. Now was her own moment of trial—and it would not find her wanting. Long ago Geoffrey had called her brave. Tonight she would prove it. She would take her own life before she would let this evil pack have her for a plaything.
Some fierce female instinct deep within her made her determined to flaunt before them the beauty that would never be theirs. To make them hunger and burn for what they would never enjoy. To snatch the cup just as they were about to drain it.
With a provocative, swaying walk she moved on her black satin slippers lightly down the stairs. Below her, rapt and avid, the pack waited.
“Gentlemen, our evening’s entertainment approaches,” observed Lord Wilsingame. “Is Mistress Lenore not a delicate repast to whet the most jaded palate?”
Midway down the stairs Lenore paused and gave Wilsingame a mocking smile. From the landing above, Bonnifly frowned. Was the wench going to balk at this point and have to be dragged downstairs, after all? Others had tried to flee back upstairs when they saw how many awaited them below!
Resting a hand gracefully on the railing, Lenore wafted her plumed fan with an airy gesture. She posed there so that her elegant shoulders and plunging neckline showed to best advantage. So arrogant was her stance that she might have been a princess about to greet her subjects. Below her rose a collective sigh.
Cold and hard, her voice rang out. “You will have to kill me, Wilsingame. For I will not submit to you while I live!”
“Kill you?” From below Wilsingame laughed unpleasantly. “We but wish you to provide us with an evening’s entertainment such as Marnock says was your custom in Oxford.”
Her flung challenge had been answered. Lenore dropped the ostrich fan, which swung from a ribbon around her wrist, and the scissors flashed in the candlelight as she raised them high. “Then throw another dead woman into the Thames!”
“No!” shouted a voice from below.
But Bonnifly had crept soft-footed down the stairs behind her. Even as she brought the scissors down he arrested their flashing flight with a wild leap and pinned her to the balustrade with his heavy body. The scissors were torn from her grasp and clattered down the stairs into the hallway below.
“There’ll be no gainsaying us, mistress,” growled Bonnifly. “ Tis not,” he mocked, pulling her down the stairs with him, “as if ye had a champion!”
“I am her champion!” cried a ringing voice, and Lenore twisted about in Bonnifly’s grasp. Her eyes were staring in her head at the sound of that voice. Before her paralyzed gaze a dark head reared up topped by a wide plumed hat above a great black periwig, and a tall, lean, russet-clad body swept impetuously past Wilsingame and up the stairs. Swiftly drawn, a naked blade flashed in his sinewy hand, and Lenore stood rigid as the point of that cruelly sharp blade was suddenly pressed against Bonnifly’s throat.
“Release her!” roared a voice calculated to strike terror into the bravest. Hastily, before the menace of that dark, saturnine face so near his own, and the blade that already had drawn a drop of blood from his pulsing throat, Bonnifly dropped Lenore’s arm and stepped back, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste.
“Geoffrey!” whispered Lenore, and sagged against him even as his long left arm reached out to catch her.
From the hallway below, Lord Wilsingame let out a bleat of dismay. “Wyndham—man, are ye mad? ’Tis but an orange girl from the theatre! We intended her no harm!”
Grimly, back to the wall, Geoffrey came down the stairs supporting Lenore with one arm. “Not only will ye do her no harm this night or any other—we will have your apologies to the lady, as well!”
Lord Wilsingame’s face suffused with color. He appeared to be choking. “Ye have my apologies, Mistress Lenore,” he said in a stifled voice, and then burst out, “but why, Wyndham?”
“This woman is mine,” said Geoffrey tersely, sweeping by him.
“By what right?” From the shuffling group, de Quincy’s cold voice rang out.
Geoffrey turned on him a face so threatening that Wilsingame and the others fell back a step. “She is mine by right of possession,” he said coolly, making steadily for the door.
They had almost reached the door when de Quincy’s sword flashed from its scabbard and he leaped forward. “I challenge that right!”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” Wilsingame was dismayed. “Let us not quarrel! Wyndham is our honored guest. All can be resolved! You may have the wench first, Wyndham—all can be appeased.”
“Nay, I will have her first!” cried de Quincy insultingly, making his blade sing in an arc through the air.
“You will not have her at all!” Geoffrey roared, pushing Lenore behind him. Her heart was beating so hard she thought it would fly out from her chest. Geoffrey! her soul sang.
“De Quincy, remember Wyndham is a court favorite!” pleaded Wilsingame in a tragic voice.
“De Quincy is the best blade in London.” Flemmons’s laugh jarred. “He will kill you, Wyndham—court favorite or no!”
“And if he does not,” chimed in Bonnifly heavily from the stairs, his gaze passing Geoffrey to rest on Lenore’s white bosom, “the rest of us will bring you down.”
“There are too many of them, Geoffrey,” Lenore whispered. “If you kill de Quincy, they will be on you in a pack.”
He turned his head, keeping his wary eyes trained on de Quincy. His voice, barely a whisper, reached only her ears. “Flash your fan mirror in his eyes when I lead him back to the door.”
The mirror in her plumed fan! She had forgotten that. Tense, she watched Geoffrey step forward, presenting his naked blade to de Quincy. De Quincy’s blade snaked forward to meet it. Blade slid along blade; for a moment their faces were close, they were smiling grimly into each other’s eyes—then both s
prang back.
But for a moment Lenore had seen surprise in de Quincy’s face—he had thought his sudden thrust would bring Geoffrey down, she realized. Now they circled each other, making sudden thrusts and parries, both wary antagonists, for each knew the other’s reputation with a sword.
There was rapt attention on the faces of the men, and Lenore shrank back toward the door, surreptitiously testing the mirrored fan, which she held tensely in her black-gloved hand, to see exactly where it threw the light from the crystal chandelier overhead. Ah . . . there it was, a circle of light on that bust of Plato. Now she flashed the light on the eye—there, she had it, a flick of her fingers could control its beam.
The swordsmen were evenly matched, and as they lunged and withdrew, the company fell back to give them room lest they be pinked in passing. Scant attention was paid to Lenore, although from the back of the hall the footman Bales kept an eye on her lest she try to escape. But Lenore knew they would bring her down within moments—and Geoffrey, too, for all the swords would be unsheathed then and they would hack him to pieces. Stiffly she stood there, giving them no cause to think her in flight.
The swordsmen were too evenly matched. Their blades clashed, they sprang back—feints, parries, lunges. Once de Quincy stumbled over a footstool, cursed, and recovered as Geoffrey’s blade brushed his hair; once Geoffrey slipped on a corner of the carpet and righted himself in time to let de Quincy’s singing blade sweep harmlessly by. Geoffrey, ever attacking, had pressed de Quincy back and back, almost to where the footman stood. Now he seemed to weaken, and de Quincy, pressing his advantage against an apparently tiring opponent, was leaping forward in renewed attack, pressing Geoffrey back and back toward the front door whence he’d come.
“A bit rusty, Wyndham?” taunted de Quincy with sinister emphasis.
“I may be, but my blade is not,” panted Geoffrey. He was imperturbable, but to all present he gave plain evidence of tiring.
De Quincy chuckled; he was a cool executioner. “I will have you the next time,” he boasted. “I will split you like a chicken just as we reach the wench!”
Geoffrey’s back was to Lenore, who was pressed against the wall. Slashing, striking, de Quincy pressed his opponent. Geoffrey parried, but his blade seemed a trifle lower. De Quincy’s cold eyes gleamed. Soon he would finish this!
Borne back, Geoffrey had almost reached the door. Oh, God, she must time this exactly right! She could do it but once, for de Quincy would cry out and someone would leap forward and wrest the mirrored fan from her grasp. Geoffrey had fallen back—de Quincy was about to lunge forward for the kill!
With a tiny twist of her wrist she flashed the shining light directly into de Quincy’s triumphant eyes.
Instinctively he jerked his head to the right. A slight movement, but it deflected his aim at the moment of making his thrust. A matter of delicate timing, and at the crucial moment the light had blinded him.
Geoffrey took full advantage of it.
Suddenly not tired in the least, he brought up his sword and swept de Quincy’s blade from his hand. As it clattered across the floor and de Quincy—who had disemboweled so many men—stood before him rigidly, waiting to be impaled, Geoffrey suddenly grasped his tall opponent and flung him with all his force at the others who had crowded forward to watch the finish—and to kill the victor.
As de Quincy’s flung body bore them backward in a tangled heap of satin knees and elbows, boots and spurs, Geoffrey whirled—but Lenore already had the door open and was running through it. Geoffrey went through it like a shadow and slammed it behind him.
Outside a stable boy—the same sallow-faced messenger Wilsingame had sent to Lenore—was holding Geoffrey’s horse, for Geoffrey had agreed to come in “for but a moment” at Wilsingame’s urging.
Snatching the reins from the amazed stable boy, who retreated before that naked blade, Geoffrey landed in the saddle in one smooth leap, swept Lenore up before him and tossed a golden coin to the stable boy. “That’s for tripping the first man to clear the door!” he called—and they had swept past the gaping boy and were thundering down the narrow track through the maze of tunnels between the houses that bestrode London Bridge.
Clinging to him, Lenore could not believe it. Geoffrey! This moment had been dreamed of, prayed for. . . . For a wild moment she could almost believe she felt the pain of the scissors biting deep into her breast—and that she had died and gone to heaven.
For it was sheer heaven to cling to Geoffrey as she had in the days of their wanderings when they were perpetually on the run, to sway with the strong horse galloping beneath them, to feel the wind in her face and blowing her long silky hair—and pressed tightly against her breasts Geoffrey’s broad back, pressed tight against her inner thighs Geoffrey’s lean thighs, reminding her, reminding her ... of long, wild nights with the cry of the loon and a feeling of Eden before the Fall and fierce primeval delights.
Behind them now there was a muffled howl as men spilled cursing out of Wilsingame’s house and shouted for the stable boy to bring their horses—but Geoffrey and Lenore now had a long lead. Though they were traveling double, none would catch them now before they reached Southwark and the safety of an inn.
Lenore floated back to earth as Geoffrey galloped into the courtyard of the Tabard Inn in Borough High Street and dismounted. He swung her down from the big black horse, holding her a little longer than was necessary while she thrilled against his hard body.
A bright-eyed stable boy with a shock of tow hair hurried up, and Geoffrey tossed the boy a coin. “Mount up and ride my horse through the streets until you lose the rabble who follow me here—be about it, man!”
The stable boy blinked down at the gold coin in his hand. He did not hesitate. In a bound he had leaped astride Geoffrey’s horse and a moment later had cleared the courtyard, clattering fast away. Geoffrey drew Lenore back under the shadow of a pillar as Lord Wilsingame and his disappointed guests straggled by, their hooves thundering on the cobbles, their voices raised in an assortment of complaints and curses.
“The boy knows how to ride—they’ll not catch him,” said Geoffrey with satisfaction. “Nor will they know where we went. By tomorrow, when they’ve had time to think about it, they’ll become frightened—we’ll have no more trouble with them.” He turned a stern visage to Lenore in the deserted courtyard. The moonlight gleamed down on his great periwig and plumed hat, caressed his broad shoulders, and shadowed his eyes. “Where is Michael,” he growled, “that he would allow this to happen?”
“Michael?” Lenore was staggered. “Michael is dead, Geoffrey!”
“You are a widow, then?”
“A widow? Michael was killed by robbers before we reached Banbury—I fled, for ’twas claimed I murdered him!”
Geoffrey’s head lifted abruptly, and in the moonlight she saw that his dark face had gone blank with astonishment. “But I searched for you on the road to Banbury, at Coventry—everywhere. When I could not find you, I believed you fled with Michael to America.”
She just stared at him. He had searched for her?
And then the ice jam about her cold heart melted and she felt warm again, free again, in love again. Geoffrey had not deserted her—he had searched for her! Her happy heart sang the words like a refrain, it was she who had deserted him—not the other way around! Gilbert had lied, Gilbert had lied!
“And all this time”— her soft voice caught—“you did not forget me?”
“Lenore,” he said huskily, “your face has haunted me. Though I thought you had fled me, you were always there destroying my delight in other women.”
Ah, so he had not gone back to Letiche . . . Her heart leaped. “So it has been for me, Geoffrey,” she whispered. "Always”
He took her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes. “Lenore, I was wrong in Oxford, wrong about the child—I came back to tell you so, but found you gone. Gone with Michael, they said. Come inside, Lenore— Wilsingame’s crowd may ride back this way.�
� He opened the inn door and as she went through it, a bell above the door tinkled. They found themselves in a spacious, empty room filled with rugged tables and chairs and benches, and facing a large stone hearth where banked coals glowed. Geoffrey turned to her again. “When my search proved vain, I came back to Oxford to wring the truth from whoever knew it—and was jailed by the Ironsides. But forget you—never!”
She gave him a soft look and touched gentle fingers to his lips. Time enough for explanations tomorrow; but for now ... she had him back! Back after the years of pain and loneliness. Back in her arms; for he was always in her heart. “Hush, Geoffrey—the innkeeper is approaching.”
“Your pleasure, sir?” Rubbing sleepy eyes, the fat innkeeper bustled forward.
Geoffrey looked fondly down at Lenore. “A room for the night.”
“Aye, sir. What name?”
Lenore spoke up. “Daunt. We are the Daunts of Williamsburg—in the American Colonies.”
Something flamed up in Geoffrey’s eyes, and she lifted her head proudly and looked back at him, a splendrous woman in the candlelight with her white shoulders gleaming, her half-bared bosom seductive against the low-cut black silk. Her violet eyes were lustrous and slanted at him provocatively through dark lashes, their flickering light promising reckless delights. She smiled up at him, that swift, blinding smile that was like summer sunshine breaking through the clouds, and in that smile was a sweet promise of what was to come. Of what had always been there ... just for him.
From the street came two rollicking male voices singing a raucous drinking song off-key, and from the stableyard came the giggles of a kitchen maid meeting one of the grooms in a dark corner—giggles and a sharp slap and an aggrieved feminine voice crying, “You promised you wouldn’t!”
This Towering Passion Page 49
