"As soon as what, my friend?"
"As soon as I confront the bloodthirsty bitch who cast Tessa and me into Encina's hands, as soon as I find out what the hell this insanity is all about. They could have burned her, Bastion—burned her alive."
Rafe felt a warm hand close over his shoulder and tighten in a bracing squeeze, but Bastion's comforting gesture failed to penetrate the fury still throbbing through Rafe's veins nor did it dull his fierce resolve to hasten back to England.
He would return to the land that had crushed his pride, shattered his life, and then given it back to him, filled with a love more beautiful than any he had ever known.
He would go back to the grandfather he had turned his back upon.
And he would confront the woman, that haunting, eerie woman, who had entangled him and Tessa within her dark and sinister web.
Chapter 16
Dawn was dancing with the moon, trailing skirts of mauve across the Spanish sky. Rafe watched the lady of morning bewitch her lover, saw the moon's impassive face fade into gold, lost once again in her brilliant rays.
He lifted his face to the breeze that wafted sultry and warm across his cheeks, listening to the burble of the rill that tumbled in cool sapphire beauty near his feet. And he wondered if any place in England could hold such sweet serenity.
His gaze shifted to the overgrown path that wound down the hillside from the hovel and disappeared in the distance. Bastion had dashed away on his dun-hued mount before the stars had faded, riding off to arrange secret passage for Rafe and Tessa on a ship bound away from Spanish shores, a ship that would sweep Tessa out of the Inquisition's grasp, that would carry Rafe away from his homeland, perhaps forever. He closed his eyes at the pain that possibility struck through him, remembering the somber glow in his friend's dark eyes.
"Even with Encina dead, it would be impossible to gain you a pardon," Bastion had warned. "The inquisitors had no idea who I was and no reason to connect me to Tessa's escape, but you, Rafael, now stand guilty of wresting from the Inquisition a woman condemned for witchcraft."
"Do you know what their evidence against her was, Bastion? A marionette she had carved—a puppet to amuse children."
"I fear the Holy Office was not amused, and they will be even less so now that they have been made to look like fools before a crowd of Spain's finest citizens. Unless you wish to widow your Tessa before you've had the pleasure of filling her with your sons, you must never return to Spain again."
Never return again...
It sounded like death. So permanent. So hopeless. But despite his reluctance to admit it, Rafe knew Bastion was right. It would be folly to risk his life just to wander these sun-baked hills—especially because of the woman who lay sleeping in the hut on the rise above.
So after his friend had ridden away, Rafe had stayed outside, sitting near the ruins of the herb garden Brother Ambrose had so loved, beside the stream where he had splashed as a child, and he watched, for perhaps the last time, the glory of a Spanish sunrise.
"Rafe?"
He had not heard the soft footsteps approaching, had not had time to banish the shadow of melancholy from his features. He cursed himself inwardly, knowing from the sorrow in Tessa's voice that she had seen his sadness and sensed its cause.
"You will miss coming here. You will miss Spain. Won't you?" she asked softly.
"I don't know why." Rafe's lips curled into a rueful smile as he plucked a tiny lavender flower and cradled it in one hard palm. "From the time I turned fourteen until now, I've spent no more than eight months upon land. I was always happier roving the waves, seeking out exotic ports, new adventures. Ambrose was dead. I knew nothing of my family. There was no one for me to come back to. Spain was just there, like the air, wildwitch. But now that it is gone, I feel as if some part of me is dying, some part I never even knew existed."
He stopped, looking up into her great dark eyes, not wanting to shadow them with any more pain. There was a depth of understanding beneath those thick lashes that wrenched at his heart, a kind of tenderness and softness that had not been evident in the wild-eyed harridan who had tumbled from the cliff.
He raked his fingers through his hair, and his voice was unsteady as he thought of the anguish that had so changed her. "It doesn't matter, Tessa, leaving here—what with the Inquisition poisoning the land. All that matters is that you're safe. When I think what almost happened to you because of me..." A choked sound rose in his throat.
"But it didn't happen to me. And even if it had, it would not have been your fault. " Rafe felt her hand drift, whisper-soft, over the wind-tossed waves of his hair. "It was Encina's evil that ensnared me, Rafe, and Morgause Warburton's trickery."
"I dragged you into the midst of their plot. I was the man whom Encina wanted dead. It was my blood for which he thirsted. And Lady Morgause was trying to use me as well. She wanted me for some dark purpose of her own. Murder... sweet Savior, she wanted me to murder someone. She told me so when she summoned me to her tower room."
"Who was it? Whom did she want you to kill?"
A bitter laugh shook him. "I never knew, never even wondered who it was she wanted dead. I thought her plot was but some madwoman's rambling, and I dismissed it as such. I hardly spared it a thought once you freed me from Warvaliant. I was too lost in my own pain at discovering that I was not one with the proud Spanish, that the mother I had worshiped like a Madonna was English."
"It was a shock," Tessa said, "one of many you'd been forced to endure. You had just lost your ship, you thought Bastion dead, and you knew Encina had set the Lady ablaze. You'd been wounded and hurled up on an enemy shore. And then, when all seemed hopeless, you discovered that the blood of your worst enemies ran in your mother's veins. It is no wonder you weren't thinking clearly. It is a miracle that you were able to think at all."
He heard the faint rustle of Tessa's skirts as she sank down beside him, curling close to his side. Her warmth seeped into his skin, and yet he felt as though he deserved none of its sweet comfort.
"Wildwitch, don't you see? It was my selfish wallowing in my own pain that nearly got you killed. I should have known that a woman like Morgause would be eager to have me silenced forever once I suspected her secret. I should have known that a man so desperate to kill me that he was willing to burn my ship would not simply rest once he discovered his will had been thwarted. If I had but dragged myself out of my grim reverie long enough to consider the danger I had placed you in, none of this would have happened."
"And then you would have stalked away from Elizabeth's court and out of my life forever." The words were soft, so soft, and they twisted in Rafe's gut like a knife. "The love you have offered me is precious, Rafe. So precious it was worth facing Encina."
"It was worth nothing, Tessa." Rafe's fists knotted. "The love I gave you was too weak to withstand even the battering of my pride when you tried to save my life. I saw you try to spare me there in the queen's chamber. Your eyes begged for understanding and forgiveness. For what? For risking your own life in Warvaliant to save mine? For deflecting the queen's wrath from a man who snarled and roared at her like a caged lion?"
"Rafe, you—"
"No, Tessa!" Rafe turned on her, his hands delving deep into the tumbled curls at her temples, his whole body shaking with fury at his own stupidity and fear at the danger that had nearly consumed this woman he loved. "I can't listen to you spin excuses for me anymore. You watched your mother burn. You faced rape at Lord Warburton's hands. When you might have been spared the horrors of that dungeon, you plunged in after me, to tend my wound, knowing that your actions would bring the wrath of Warburton down upon you. And after your puppet-playing in the queen's presence, you took your pride in your hands and offered it to me."
His voice thickened, his eyes sweeping every beloved plane and hollow of Tessa's face, his heart burning with her pain. "Tessa, I threw it back in your face, everything you had given me. And then, as if that was not enough, I took from you even more
."
"I gave it to you willingly, Rafe. You took nothing."
"You're wrong, wildwitch. And I'm going to take even more. Because I can't help myself. Because you're the only thing in this madness that makes any sense anymore."
Rafe saw her eyes darken, her lips part as his hands swept down her body with desperate hunger.
"I told you before, Santadar, you've never 'taken' anything from me I didn't want to give." The sad-eyed waif shifted before his gaze into the wildwitch he had named her. He marveled at her strength, her courage, her tenderness. Marveled that, after all the pain he had dragged her through, those lustrous dark eyes still held the purest of love for him, the hottest of passion.
"I need you, Tessa." He eased her down upon a bed of flowers. "I need to feel the life in you, the fire, the forgiveness."
He kissed her, his mouth branding hers with the love he had denied her in Elizabeth Tudor's palace, with the love he had feared he would never be able to offer her again when they had ripped her from his arms outside Encina's loathsome prison.
His hands shook as he removed her clothes, his eyes closed as his mouth trekked over her body, savoring the honeyed warmth and creamy smoothness with his tongue. His hands bracketed the curve of her hips, his fingers eager for the feel of her. Then he froze as a sudden gasp that was not of pleasure came from her lips.
His eyes snapped open, and he drew away, his gaze skimming over what his mouth had just caressed.
Bruises marred her delicate ivory skin in stomach-wrenching blotches. A fist seemed to slam into his vitals as Tessa scrambled to draw the folds of her skirt over her nakedness.
"Tessa... what did he do to you? Encina, that cursed bastard!"
She would not meet his eyes, and in that moment he knew that she had indeed faced the full fury of the Inquisition.
"Why?" Rafe blazed. "They had all the evidence they needed to condemn you! For God's sake, all that kept me sane while we were trying to effect your rescue was the certainty that they would not use their horrors on you to gain a confession."
He caught her chin in his fingers, forcing her to look at him, and it was as though some malevolent giant had dashed his feet from under him. Bile rose in his throat. "It was me, wildwitch, wasn't it?" he rasped. "They needed your confession to implicate me."
"Nay, Rafe, I—"
He stopped her protests, laying his fingers upon her lips, seeing the truth in that savaged angel face.
He tried to speak, but couldn't. Lunging to his feet, he stalked to a gnarled sapling on the bank of the stream and buried his face in his hands.
"Don't, Rafe, please," Tessa begged as she stood up and hastened to him. "It is over. It doesn't matter."
"It doesn't matter?" Rafe wheeled on her. "Tessa, how can you say that? You suffered torture for me. How can I ever touch you again? How can I kiss you without hating myself for the knowledge that while Encina brutalized you, I was at Bastion's castillo, mad with worry, plotting your escape, but safe. Safe while they—"
"While they stole away all chance for me ever to know happiness?" There was an edge to that wood-nymph voice, a determined light in her eyes. "You've been lashing yourself about casting away happiness because of your stupid pride. Yet now, when you see a few welts on my skin, your blasted honor sticks its nose in again. You can't bear knowing that I suffered these bruises for you. You can't touch me, hold me, kiss me, after I nearly got myself killed over you?"
"Tessa—" He tried to halt her flood of angry words, tried to cling to his own white-hot guilt, but her chin thrust out, her face flushed scarlet.
"Damn it, Santadar, you owe me!" One small fist thumped against the wall of his chest. "You owe me a lifetime of kisses, the feel of your hands on me, the joy I feel when you come into my body and reach so deep it seems you touch my very soul."
"Tessa!" He cried out her name the instant before his lips crashed down upon hers, his eyes burning with anguish and wonder. The folds of cloth she had clasped about her breasts now fell from her grasp, whispering down to pool about their feet. His arms closed about her with a tenderness that belied the raging passion building within him, his shaft throbbing and swelling as she pressed herself against him.
But it was not tenderness she needed from him. She craved the quick, hot blaze that always flamed between them. He sensed it in the way her hands swept restlessly over his chest, dragging off the soft silk that had enveloped his shoulders.
"Wildwitch," he said against her lips, "I want you, too. Here. Now. But I don't... don't want to hurt you."
She pulled away from him, her eyes glistening in that wondrous enchantress's face. "You already have. Now heal me, my phantom. Heal me."
She drew him down onto the rumpled folds of her gown, her teeth taking nips from the bronzed flesh she had bared. Rafe's jaw clenched as her tongue skimmed over one of his ribs, then down the line of black silk that bisected the muscles of his stomach. She toyed with the dip of his navel, then pressed a kiss to the waistband of his breeches with such sweet fervor he ached from it.
Then she was easing away that last barrier between them, the soft breeze sweeping down the winding stream cool upon his fevered flesh.
He grasped her arms, wanting to draw her in to his kiss, but she shook her head, the rich cascade of her hair tumbling down in a lake of midnight silk upon his belly. Her tongue flicked out, moistening her full berry-red lips. Then she was lowering her head yet again. Rafe felt her breath, hot and damp upon the nest of hair at the apex of his thighs, and he scarce dared hope that she would touch him there with the warmth of that full, sweet mouth.
She cradled him in one hand; then her lips drifted down to taste of his hardness. The taut muscles of his stomach jumped as she encircled him, drawing him into the wet haven of her mouth, teasing him, loving him until he could bear it no longer.
"It feels so good..." He squeezed the words from a throat rough with pleasure. "No, love. No more, lest you unman me."
He grasped her arms, dragging her up, sweeping her over until she was pillowed upon the folds of her gown. "I love you, Tessa," he said, his knee parting her thighs as he pressed himself deep. “I love you."
He caught the rosy tip of her breast in his mouth, suckling and teething it as he drove himself against her, willing his love to pour deep into the woman who had suffered so much for him. And afterward, when the madness had possessed them both, he led her into the sparkling waters of the stream and pleasured her there until neither of them could stand.
Over and over he brought her to ecstasy while she drove him wild, until there was nothing left untouched between them, no bruises of body or spirit that had not been soothed by their hands, their lips, their loving.
As Rafe drew her into his arms on the stream bank, allowing the heat of the now-cresting sun to dry their sated bodies, he knew that nothing and no one could ever come between them again.
As though she had read his thoughts, Tessa propped herself up on one elbow and gazed down at him with love-filled eyes. "It is over now, isn't it, Rafe? All the pain, all the fear. It's over."
"Not quite, wildwitch." Regret laced his voice, but he couldn't lie to her now, even to shield her from what was to come.
"I don't understand. Do you think they might find us?"
"Here? No, love. No." He threaded his fingers through her hair, cupping the back of her head in his palm as he pulled her down against his chest. "No one can touch us here. But once we leave these shores and sail back to England—"
"England?" She pulled away from his grasp, and he hated the darting fear in her eyes. "Are you mad? We can't go back to England any more than we can stay here. Rafe, you were an enemy captive and you escaped the queen. And they no doubt think I aided you. You humiliated Her Majesty, betrayed her trust, as did I, and she'll never forgive either of us. She'll cast us into the Tower and order us executed or, at best, imprisoned for life. We have to go someplace else, perhaps to one of the ports you've been to and loved."
"We have to go ba
ck there, wildwitch. We must finish this." Rafe levered himself to a sitting position and caught her face in his hands. "Don't you see—"
"I see that you're being as stubborn as ever, and as crazed!"
"Tessa, all my life I've lived with ghosts—the death of my parents, not knowing who I was. Nightmares tortured me when I slept, and I'd wake, my body drenched with sweat, my mind filled with my mother's face, bloody and battered, the monster that was Encina leering at me. That ghost has been banished now, laid to rest. But now there is a new terror within me—the terror I feel for you."
"I'm fine, curse it."
"Do you think Morgause Warburton is going to forget we ever existed, Tessa? Especially when she finds out that Encina is dead and that we eluded even the might of the Inquisition? Encina said he killed my family because my father discovered that he—Encina—was embroiled in some plot with an English person, a plot so dangerous it was worth murdering an entire family—a grandee, his wife, his son.”
"Encina could have been scheming with anyone—anyone, Rafe—all those years ago."
"Why, then, did he enlist Morgause's aid in capturing us in England? And how was he, a Spanish inquisitor, able to move about Elizabeth's palace, however stealthily? Without the aid of a woman with the power of Morgause Warburton, it would have been impossible. There must have been some alliance. I feel it, sense it."
"It doesn't matter, Rafe!" Desperation carved deep lines between Tessa's brows as she pleaded, her hand clutching at his arm.
"Yes, it does, Tessa. For all her oddity the woman is powerful. Rich. And she has a son who is as ruthless and brutal as she is. And we—you and I—know of her link to Encina and know that she is seeking to do murder as well."
"If they had as much power as the queen herself, they could never find us. We can lose ourselves."
"Where?" Rafe demanded, unable to yield to her even that small hope. "In some port town reeking of poverty and despair? In some country foreign to both of us, where we would be outcasts forever, running from shadows?"
To Chase the Storm Page 22
