Violet v-5

by Jane Feather

  Tamsyn twisted her body sideways, trying to bring her legs up to lever against him, but he swung himself over her, straddling her, sitting on her thighs with his full weight so she felt hammered into the ground, arms and head pinioned, her body flattened.

  “Espadachin!” she threw at him again. “I may be a bandit, but you're a brute and a bully, Colonel. Let me up.”

  “No.”

  The simple negative stunned her. She stared up into his face that was now as calm and equable as if they were sitting in some drawing room. He looked positively comfortable. She could feel the wet wool of his drawers prickling the skin of her thighs. He hadn't gone into the water stark naked.

  Her astonished silence lasted barely a second; then she launched a verbal assault of such richness and variety that the colonel's jaw dropped. She moved seamlessly within three languages, and the insults and oaths would have done an infantryman proud.

  “Cease your ranting, girl!” He recovered from his surprise and did the only thing he could think of, bringing his mouth to hers to silence the stream of invective. His grip on her wrists tightened with his fingers on her chin, and his body was heavy on hers as he leaned over her supine figure.

  Tamsyn choked on her words beneath the pressure of his mouth. She heaved and jerked beneath him like a landed fish waiting for the gaff. Her skin was hot, her blood was boiling, there was a crimson mist behind her closed eyes, and his tongue was in her mouth, a living presence within her, probing and darting, and her own tongue wouldn't keep still but began to play in its turn.

  Everything became confused. There was rage-wild rage-but it was mixed with a different passion, every bit as savage. There was fear and there was a sudden spiralling need. Her body was liquid fire, her mind a molten muddle. Her arms were still held above her head, his mouth still held hers captive, but the hand left her chin, moved down between their bodies, caressed her breast, reached down over the damp, hot skin of her belly. Her loins of their own accord lifted, her thighs parting for the heated probe, sliding within her so that she cried out against his mouth.

  His fingers played upon her and his flesh moved within her, deep, smooth thrusts that carried her upward onto some plane where the air crackled, and fire and flame swirled around them. And then she was consumed in a roaring conflagration in which her body no longer had form or limits, when she flowed into the body that possessed hers with such unfaltering, unerring completeness that the boundaries of her self no longer existed, and amid the blazing glory of this extinction was the terror of annihilation.

  Julian came to his senses slowly, aware first of the warmth of the sun on his back, then the breathing, living softness beneath him. He gazed down into her face. Her eyes were closed, her skin flushed, lips slightly parted. He still held her wrists above her head; his other hand was braced beside her body. He gazed at her as if he could make sense of what had just happened… and then the warmth of the sun on his back became cold steel.

  He couldn't see it, but he knew the feel of a sword against his skin, the press of the rapier tip along his backbone. He couldn't see the man behind him without turning his head, but he could feel the warmth of a stranger's flesh, the rustle of breath that brought the fine hairs upright on the nape of his neck.

  “Say your prayers, man. You have thirty seconds to make your peace with your Maker.” The voice had the soft lilt of the Scottish Highlands, but it carried the chill of the grave. The rapier tip moved against his ribs, pressing into the taut skin, ready for the home thrust that would pierce his back and then his heart.

  Julian experienced pure terror for the first time in his life. Facing death on a battlefield was nothing like this. That was a hot and hasty matter of luck and fate. This was execution, cold and slow. And for some reason he knew there was nothing he could say or do to alter the fact of this approaching death. Although he had no idea why it should have come out at him from the warm early morning on the heels of a glorious passion.

  “No!” The girl beneath him spoke with sudden urgency, coming out of her trance, her eyes shooting open, awareness flooding back into their dark-purple depths.

  “Gabriel. Gabriel, no!” She tugged at her still captive hands, and Julian released them. She pushed against him, struggling to sit up, but he couldn't make another move without the deadly tip of the rapier sliding into his body, so he stayed between her thighs, thinking amid his terror of how ludicrous he must look, of how it was the stuff of farce to face death in such a position.

  “Gabriel, it's all right.” Tamsyn was speaking with desperate intensity, knowing the speed and the deadly fury of the giant standing over the colonel. He believed she'd been hurt, and it was his life's work to protect her and avenge her hurts. She owed the English colonel some grief for the way he'd treated her since he'd rescued her, but not for what had just happened between them. It was an act of insanity for which they were both responsible, and he didn't deserve the death Gabriel was waiting to hand out with the detachment of a man who'd lived all his adult life by the sword.

  “Gabriel, nothing happened that I didn't wish for.”

  She spoke now slowly and carefully, but the urgency of her message was still clearly to be heard.

  Julian's blood ran cold, hearing it. She knew his executioner, and she was as afraid as he was of what the man would do. He remembered how she'd flung herself from his horse when he'd rescued her from Cornichet, saying she had to find Gabriel. It seemed that Gabriel, whoever he was, had found her.

  “You were running mighty fast for someone who wanted to be caught, little girl,” the voice at the end of the sword said slowly and full of doubt. The cold steel tip remained pressed against Julian's bare back.

  Tamsyn thought rapidly. How to explain something she didn't understand herself “It's very confusing, Gabriel.” She fixed the man's gaze with her own. “I can't explain it, but truly nothing happened that I didn't wish for.”

  A silence that seemed to Julian to last an eternity was abruptly broken by a roar of laughter. The cold tip of steel left his back.

  “Och, little girl! And what would El Baron say to see you rolling in the grass like a wanton milkmaid?”

  “'Things happen, hija,'“ Tamsyn said, her voice slightly shaky as she tried to sound humorous. She thought the danger was over, but you could never be absolutely certain with Gabriel.

  The colonel inched away from her, easing himself from between her thighs and away from the sword, whose tip now rested lightly on the ground beside his hip.

  Tamsyn sat up. “You know that's what he would have said, Gabriel. He would have given one of his shrugs and smiled at Cecile as he said it.”

  The laugh boomed again. “Och, aye, lassie. I reckon y'are right, at that.” He stared at Colonel, Lord St. Simon with a curiosity that was not exactly friendly, but neither was it threatening. “So who's your gallant, little girl?”

  “Good question.” Tamsyn regarded the colonel quizzically. His immediate danger was over, but with Gabriel's arrival she herself now had the upper hand, and the thought of a little revenge was very tempting. “We haven't been formally introduced as yet. But he's a colonel in Wellington 's army.”

  Julian said nothing until he'd managed to pull on his sodden undergarments, discarded somehow in that crazy conflagration. He felt a little less vulnerable with them on, but not much. The new arrival was a giant oak of a man with massive limbs, bulging muscles beneath his jerkin, graying hair caught in a queue at the nape of his neck. His complexion bore the blossoming veins of a man fond of his drink; his washed-out gray eyes were sharp, however. Crooked teeth gleamed in a wide, full lipped mouth, and he handled a two-bladed broadsword as easily as if it were a kitchen knife.

  “If you wish a formal introduction, Violette, I'd prefer to make it in my clothes,” St. Simon said dryly.

  “Make yourself decent, little girl,” the giant instructed, keeping his eyes on Julian. “The colonel and I will discuss a few matters while he dresses.” He gestured with his sword along the b
ank to where Julian's clothes lay.

  Julian shrugged acceptingly. The ball was no longer in his court, but he had twenty men a quarter of a mile away, and the situation would change as soon as he was in a position to do something about it. With the appearance of nonchalance he strolled back to his clothes, La Violette's defender walking beside him, his great sword still unsheathed but his expression bland, his pale eyes mild.

  Julian was not, however, disposed to relax. He had the unshakable conviction that the giant's mood could change in the beat of a bird's wing.

  Tamsyn scrambled into her clothes, casting half an eye along the bank where the English colonel was dressing, Gabriel leaning against the rocks, idly tracing patterns in the grass with the tip of his sword as they talked.

  It had been many months since she'd succumbed to such an impulsive fit of passion. She knew, because she'd been told often enough, that she shared her mother's devil-may-care impulses, and the passion that ran deep in the veins of both her parents had flowed undiluted into their only child. She had been taught to regard such bodily hungers without prudery. They were perfectly normal among adults and should be satisfied without guilt. But she didn't think El Baron or Cecile would have regarded that wild encounter with approval. One didn't fraternize with the enemy.

  And soldiers were the enemy… a personal enemy.

  The images flooded in again, the screams, the steaming reek of blood. Her father standing in the midst of a yelling circle of men in the tattered uniforms of many nations, their faces twisted with the rapacious viciousness of greed, their senses drunk with blood. His great sword slashed from side to side but they kept on coming; shot after shot pierced his body, and it seemed to the two powerless watchers on the heights that he couldn't still stand there alive with the blood spurting from the holes in his body-and yet still he stayed on his feet and bodies fell beneath his sword.

  Cecile lay in the shadows, dead by her husband's hand, a small black smudge on her forehead, where his merciful bullet had entered. El Baron's wife wouldn't fall victim to the rapine hungers of a vile mob of deserting soldiers. And his daughter too would have joined her mother in death if she'd been in the Puebla de St. Pedro that dreadful day, instead of hunting with Gabriel in the hills.

  Slowly, she blinked away the images, put the anger and grief behind her. She'd led her own small band since that day. Those who'd escaped the massacre and others who'd joined them, all were prepared to follow El Baron's daughter as they aided the partisans, tormented the French, avoided direct contact with the English, and took what payment came their way.

  Until that double-dyed bastard, Cornichet, had set his ambush. Tamsyn had no idea how many of La Violette's band had escaped the French in the pass, but she had been their target. The baron had long ago entrusted his daughter's safety in his own absence to his most trusted comrade, and Gabriel had fought beside her and for her. But one man, even a giant, was no match for fifty. They'd both been swept up like spiders, before the broom.

  But what was done was done, and bewailing the past was pointless. It was now a question of making the most of their present situation. There must be some advantage to be gained from it. There was always an advantage if one looked for it.

  She tucked her shirt into the waist of her britches and walked toward the two men, carrying her shoes and stockings, enjoying the feel of the cool, mossy turf beneath her feet.

  The colonel's bright-blue eyes rested on her as she approached, and Tamsyn's scalp lifted, her heart quickening. What was done was done, she told herself firmly. That moment of madness was in the past. It had nothing to do with the present situation.

  Chapter three

  JULIAN FASTENED HIS SWORD BELT AT HIS WAIST. ARMED, HE felt immeasurably more secure, although the giant's sword was unsheathed, and the colonel was certain the man would be as fast and deadly with his weapon as any soldier he'd encountered.

  The girl was walking toward them along the bank, carrying her shoes and stockings for all the world as if she were on a picnic by the river. He still couldn't get his mind around what had happened between them. His anger and injured pride at the ease with which she'd outsmarted him had turned into something else. Something darker and more powerful than simple lust, so that he'd lost all sense of reality, of duty, of purpose in a scrambling tangle of limbs and the heated furrow of her lithe body.

  And it had lost him his prisoner and almost his skin.

  His fury at himself was boundless.

  He had quickly dismissed the possibility of calling to his men. They'd not hear him from the woods, and they certainly couldn't get to him quickly enough to support him in a fight with Gabriel and his broadsword. La Violette, however, was unarmed-Cornichet had seen to that--so he had only one serious opponent to contend with.

  “Colonel, Lord Julian St. Simon, he calls himself,” Gabriel declared as Tamsyn reached them. “Quite the aristocratic gentleman.” He picked his teeth with a fingernail, his mild eyes regarding the colonel with the same dispassionate curiosity. “It seems you owe him a favor, little girl, but I daresay you consider it paid.”

  Tamsyn flushed at this barbed comment and said swiftly, “Not in the way you mean, Gabriel. We'll leave what happened back there out of any negotiations.”

  “Negotiations?” Julian's eyebrows quirked. “Now, what could that mean, Violette? But, forgive me, I assume you have some other name. Since we're performing formal introduction…” He offered a mock bow and the tension in the air between them crackled. HIS body still retained the memory of hers as his brain fought to banish all such memories, and he knew it had to be the same for the girl, for they'd taken that mad flight together.

  “I'm called Tamsyn,” she replied. “If it matters to you.” She shrugged, but both the gesture and the carelessness of her tone lacked conviction.

  The name was as much of a puzzle as its owner. “Oh, it matters,” he assured her, adjusting his hastily tied stock, his fingers now moving in leisurely fashion through the linen folds. “Tamsyn. That's a Cornish name. “

  “It was my mother's choice. How do you know it's Cornish?”

  “I'm a Cornishman myself,” he responded. He was surprised at the sudden flash in her eyes, almost as if someone had lit a candle there.

  “Are you?” she said casually. “I believe my mother's family were Cornish aristocrats too.”

  The colonel's rather heavy eyelids drooped. His eyes were hooded, his voice a casual drawl. “Forgive me, but what was a Cornish aristocrat doing in a Spanish bandit’s bed?”

  Gabriel moved the mighty sword lifting. “Watch your tongue, Englishman,” he said softly. “You insult my lady at your peril.”

  Julian raised a hand in placation. He didn't know whether the man was referring to La Violette, who was certainly no lady by any of the standards he understood, or to her mother, but in the face of the broadsword and the fierceness in the giant's eyes, instant retreat struck him as the only option. “Forgive me. I meant no insult to a lady.” He laid a slight inflection on the last word. “But surely it's an understandable question.”

  “Perhaps, but it's hardly your business, sir,” Tamsyn said coldly. “It's no business of any soldier.” The bleakness of her expression startled him. The dark-violet eyes were looking through him, and there were ghosts in their depths.

  But of course, La Violette had taken over her father's band at his death. Julian had heard some story of a raid on El Baron's mountain village by one of the rogue groups of deserters, composed of disaffected soldiers from the English and French armies, who rampaged through the Peninsula, looting, raping, murdering without qualm.

  Gabriel had moved ominously closer, and he judged it politic to change the subject. “You mentioned negotiation, Violette.” It seemed a more appropriate name in present circumstances. His eyebrow lifted again in question.

  “There'll be no negotiating with a damned soldier,” Gabriel said harshly. “Come, little girl. Since you owe the man your life, we'll grant him his. But let's be out o
f here, now.”

  “No, Gabriel, wait.” Tamsyn put her hand on his arm. “We owe Cornichet,” she said slowly. There was a gleam in her eye now, a slight twist to her lips. The confusion had dissipated, and her feet were back on solid ground. Cornichet had killed her men, quite apart from his treatment of her, and he should pay for that. She couldn't expect the English colonel and his men to engage in unprovoked battle with the Frenchmen-the rules of war forbade such a personal encounter. But they could help her to have a little vengeful fun with Cornichet.

  “The English milord wishes me to talk a little with his commander. I might be willing to hear what Wellington has to say, without agreeing to anything in advance, of course. But I'd wish for something in exchange.”

  Gabriel was silent, and Julian recognized now that the man's role was not that of decision maker. St. Simon might have to watch his neck with the bodyguard, but matters of leadership were the province of La Violette.

  “In exchange for what, exactly?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

  She shrugged. “Why, in exchange for my company to Elvas, of course. I make no promises about what I might be willing to discuss with Wellington, and I'll require your assurance-the oath of a Cornish gentleman…” Somehow she invested the words with a wealth of derision. “Your assurance that no attempt will be made to coerce me. I will come willingly and I will leave when I wish.”

  Julian wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake the derision from her eyes, make her swallow the dripping contempt in her voice. What possible right or justification did she have for doubting his honor?

  “And if I give those assurances,” he said frigidly, “I'm to assume you'll accompany me of your own free will?”

  Tamsyn smiled. “In exchange for a small service, sir, yes. I give you my word. My word, Lord St. Simon, is given rarely and is the more precious for that.”