Wild Wind

by Patricia Ryan

  Luke frequently chided Alex for his carelessness with his things, for he was forever misplacing items of importance. This ribbon and the purse that housed it were the only possessions Alex had ever taken pains not to lose.

  Alex lifted the ribbon and wrapped it around his hand. It looked like a bandage in the moonlight. Bringing it to his nose, he fancied that he could detect just the faintest hint of roses.

  Idiot. He uncorked the flask and quickly finished the job of emptying it. Reeling from the wine and the day's events, he lowered his head to his makeshift pillow, pressed his ribbon-wrapped hand to his chest, and gazed into the starry heavens.

  And remembered a sweet and sultry summer afternoon nine long years ago, an afternoon that bound him for all eternity to Nicolette de St. Clair.

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  August 1064, Périgeaux

  A feverish heat held the world in thrall that day, spawned by a sun that burned like a torch in a cloudless Aquitaine sky. The air shimmered in waves above the sheep meadow through which Alex and Nicolette strolled on their way to the cool shadows of the woods to the south.

  Alex couldn't believe his good fortune in persuading her to take a walk with him alone. Her mother would have been outraged, but Lady Sybila had taken to her bed after the noon meal, having succumbed to the heat—and she wasn't the only one. When Alex had arrived at his cousin's home, adjacent to his, for his daily visit—a habit born several weeks ago, when the lady Nicolette had come to spend the summer there—he found that most of the household had chosen to sleep away the afternoon rather than put up with the scorching heat.

  Happily, he'd discovered Nicolette by herself beneath an old oak, re-reading one of the books she'd brought with her. He wondered, not for the first time, how she could be content deciphering page after page of ink scratchings for hours at a time. Joining her beneath her tree, he had pleaded with her to slip away for a walk. She'd balked at the impropriety of being alone with him, finally consenting when he swore a solemn oath not to take advantage of their solitude; she knew already that he did not take oaths lightly. And she'd made him promise not to tell anyone, lest her mother find out.

  She looked extraordinary that day, in a pale green tunic of the most delicate, filmy silk trimmed in heavy bands of silver braid. A demurely shapeless garment when she stood still, it drifted around her as she walked, clinging intermittently to a slender thigh...a graceful hip...a tantalizing swell of breast. It took every chivalric instinct Alex possessed to keep from staring openly.

  The heat imparted a bloom of color to that extraordinary face of hers, highlighted by the unaccustomed austerity of her hair, which she'd pinned up in deference to the heat. She glowed as if from within, an ethereal creature, not of this world. Not of this region, at any rate, her particular brand of pale Norman beauty being a rarity this far south. She was an exotic creature, strange and elegant and full of mystery. From the moment she'd arrived in Périgeaux to visit her cousin Phelis, Alex had been obsessed by her. As long as he could remember, his sword had been the focal point of his life. Now his every waking thought was of Nicolette de St. Clair. He lived for those brief moments when he could exchange a few words with her—always under the watchful eye of others. But this afternoon, for the first time ever, he had her all to himself!

  As they approached the edge of the meadow, they noticed something curious; actually, it was Nicolette who pointed it out. A group of sheep had abandoned their grazing and ventured into the woods, where they could just be seen, all gathered in one place. They never left the meadow.

  "Come," she said, "let's go see what's drawn them there."

  She reached for Alex's hand, and his heart stopped. Looking abashed to have been so forward, she stilled just as her fingers brushed his palm, and turned quickly away. His heart hammered wildly; his palm tingled where her fingertips had grazed it. He looked after her as she strode toward the sheep, wondering how she would react if he should run after her and take her hand in his. Would she welcome the gesture, or consider it a violation of his vow to keep his distance?

  "Come along," she called over her shoulder. Realizing the moment had been lost, and rebuking himself for his childish indecision, he sprinted after her. As for what had prompted her to reach for him in the first place, it seemed to him that she was unusually relaxed this afternoon. In fact, the farther they got from Peter's house—and her mother—the more lighthearted she seemed.

  "Look at this, Alex," she said, squeezing among the placid sheep to investigate. They were all clustered together near an outcropping of rock that rose high among the snarled foliage and ancient trees.

  "Here, let me." He muscled his way through the dusty animals. "You'll soil that beautiful tunic."

  What he found, emanating from the rock through a blanket of thorny vegetation, was a current of deliciously cool air. The sheep were basking in it as a respite from the brutal heat.

  "Perhaps there's a spring in here, or an underground stream," Alex suggested as he set about tearing the concealing shrubbery away from the rock—sweaty work despite the cool draft.

  "You'll get your tunic dirty," she said. "And ripped."

  Envisioning his stepmother's fury should he present her with yet another shredded tunic—an unfortunate consequence of swordplay—Alex took off his belt and tunic, hanging them over the branch of a tree. As he rolled up the sleeves of his damp linen shirt, he noticed Nicolette's gaze light on his forearms. He glanced at her and she swiftly looked away.

  Gradually stripping away the prickly growth—and earning scores of scratches in the process—he revealed an opening in the rock, small and low. But deep.

  "'Tis a cave!" she exclaimed, joining him in pulling away the last few branches. Her delight was infectious. They both trembled in anticipation as they squatted down to peek into the cavern's dim interior.

  She grinned at him. "I didn't know we were going to have an adventure!" She had an oddly beguiling mouth, her lips naturally rosy and rather wide, but not full. He loved it when she smiled, yet her smiles had always seemed oddly restrained—until now. There was something so rapturous in her expression of happy triumph that it made his heart ache.

  Alex cleared his throat and said manfully, "I'm going in."

  "I'm going with you."

  "Nay. It could be dangerous."

  "Nonsense." With an airy wave of her hand, and bending low, she ventured into the dark aperture. "This cave has been closed off for a very long time, considering how troublesome it was to clear away all that old growth. There will be no bears to eat us—and I'm not afraid of spiders."

  "That's fortunate." Following her at a crouch into the cave's cool interior, Alex grinned. "Watch out for the bats, though."

  "Where?" She bolted upright, thumping her head on the low ceiling of rock overhead.

  He winced, feeling like a drooling lackwit. "'Twas a jest. I'm sorry. Are you hurt?"

  "Aye!" She rubbed her head, but she was laughing, thank the saints. "I'll have a lump the size of a swan's egg—see if I don't."

  I'll kiss it for you. That's what he wanted to say. Instead, he said, quietly, "I am sorry. I'm such a dunderhead."

  She graced him with an astonishingly luminous smile. "I don't go on adventures with dunderheads."

  He grinned in absurd gratification as she turned and continued deeper into the cave. "Here, let me go first," he said, hurrying to catch up.

  "We'll go side by side," she said. "That's fair enough."

  It seemed to Alex that "fairness" had little to do with safeguarding the weaker sex, but seeing as he saw no real danger at hand, and was eager to be as close to her as possible, to revel in her warmth and the spicy-sweet scent of her, he graciously let her have her way.

  The cave opened up several yards in, the floor dipping down somewhat and the ceiling rising over their heads, enabling them to stand fully upright. What they saw when they did so stole the breath from their lungs. For long moments, all they could do was turn in slow, meas
ured circles, staring incredulously at the cave walls.

  They had been painted, embellished with myriad images in tones of rust and black and sepia. Most of the pictures seemed to be of animals. Alex recognized a deer and some sort of bull. Some of the others were less identifiable. Small figures of men with spears were interspersed among these creatures, as if hunting them.

  "Look." Nicki pointed to the dark outline of a tiny hand, her expression wistful. "A child."

  "Who did this?"

  "I can't imagine." She crossed herself, shrugging self-consciously to find him watching her. "It makes me think of a church, somehow."

  Alex nodded and followed suit. There was something almost holy about this long-empty chamber, a sort of rustic sacredness.

  "These pictures must be at least a hundred years old," Alex said in his most authoritative voice.

  "Older than that," she murmured, then pointed. "The cave continues that way."

  They followed a sort of narrow, meandering corridor until they reached the apex of another downslope, steeper than the last, and peered into the vast darkness beyond. From somewhere up ahead came the gentle slapping of water against stone—the source of the cool airstream that had drawn the sheep, and which was raising goose bumps on his sweat-soaked body.

  "How far in do you think it goes?" Her soft inquiry resonated in the great empty space. He could barely see her, the light from the small opening through which they had entered having almost exhausted itself.

  "I don't know." Wild to go exploring, but mindful of her feminine limitations, he said, "I suppose we should go back."

  She chuckled. "You want to search further."

  "I'm thinking of you. It's so dark, and we don't know what the footing's like. I'm wearing boots, but you've just got your slippers, and your skirts might get in the way..."

  "Here." Kicking off her kid slippers, she lifted her skirt above her ankles, holding it with one hand as if she were about to dance the tourdoin. Something about her girlish smile and those pale, bare feet on the cavern floor touched him deep inside his chest. She was so different this afternoon, not the pale, enigmatic beauty he'd adored from afar all these weeks, but a real human being, lively and vital and full of childlike wonder.

  "All right," he said quietly. And then he tentatively reached out and took her free hand in his. "In case you fall."

  She contemplated him for a moment, and he feared she would pull away from him. But presently her lips curved in a slow, sweet smile, and she murmured her thanks.

  Alex guided her with careful steps down the slope, grateful when it leveled out. He could barely manage to put one foot in front of the other. The very rock seemed to shift beneath him, so overwhelmed was he to be touching her. Her hand felt like the cheek of a baby, inconceivably soft, and it was warm, and it was hers, and she was letting him hold it. Nothing that had happened to him in his seventeen years had given him such dizzying joy.

  The darker it got, the more cautiously they trod, until at last they stood in near total blackness in the midst of what felt like a great fathomless void. The soft sloshing of water was closer now.

  "Must be an underground stream," he said.

  "Aye."

  The absence of light was so complete that he couldn't see Nicolette standing right in front of him, although he sensed her gaze searching for him through the darkness, as his searched for her.

  "We'd best go no farther for now," he said. "We can come back tomorrow with a lantern."

  "Aye." Her voice had a shivery quality he'd never heard in it before.

  "Are you afraid?" he whispered.

  Her breathing quickened. "I don't know."

  "I'm right here." He reached for her other hand, and held both; they felt wonderfully warm in this cool abyss. The ragged rhythm of their breathing echoed off unseen walls of rock, until the sound of the stream faded away and it was all he could hear. He didn't know which breaths were his and which were Nicolette's.

  "Do you want to go back?" he asked her.

  "Nay. Not yet."

  The coupling of their hands felt like his tether to earth. Should she release her grip on him, he might fly off into the infinite blackness, lost for all eternity.

  But she didn't release him. Indeed, she chose that moment to tighten her grasp, her fingers achingly soft against his callused flesh. A drop of water rang in the darkness.

  They stood for some time in breathless silence, in this cool, dark, strangely hallowed place, indifferent to the slow and steady passage of time in the mortal world above them, just being there, together.

  Something was happening, Alex realized, inside of him—inside both of them. Their souls were splintering apart and merging together into a new and marvelous pattern, like ice crystals melting and re-forming on a frozen lake.

  He was changing. They were both changing, profoundly and for all time. He felt it in the depths of his soul, and he knew she felt it, too.

  They'd been united, always and forever, in a spiritual bond that could never be broken.

  They were one.

  * * *

  "I'm in love with her," Alex whispered to his brother.

  "Which one?" Following Alex's gaze, Luke peered at the three young women chatting before a window in the great hall of their cousin Peter's manor house.

  "Lady Nicolette, of course!" The other two were married, Phelis to Peter and Alyce to their brother, Christien. And both were large with child, for pity's sake!

  "Hush!" Luke scolded, darting a wary glance toward their father and stepmother, being greeted by Peter not two yards away. "Do you want the whole world to know?"

  "Yes!" Alex watched as Nicki, unaware of his scrutiny, nodded in response to something her cousin Phelis was saying. She wore her favorite tunic today, a silken gown of snowy white. Backlit as she was by the midday sun streaming in through the window, she looked like an angel who'd floated to earth just for him. Her radiant hair, crowned with a circlet of gold, hung in two long braids interwoven with white ribbons, exposing the pearl earrings dangling from her delicate ears. "I want to shout it to the heavens. I can't, but, God, how I want to. I love her, Luke. I'm unbearably in love with her. I used to laugh at the jongleurs and their silly romantic cansos. Now, finally, I truly know what it means to be in—"

  "Oh, hell." Luke expelled a great and weary sigh.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Have you told her how you feel?"

  Three weeks had passed since his revelation the day they'd stumbled across the cave, but he hadn't yet been able to work up the courage to declare himself. "I will, soon. I just—"

  "Don't. Have you told anyone else?"

  "Nay. Well...just Father Gregoire. Her mother would be—"

  "Good. See that you keep your mouth shut."

  Alex frowned at Luke's sharp tone. He'd waited weeks to confide in his beloved brother, conscious of the danger—mostly to Nicki—should they be found out. Now he wished he'd kept his counsel.

  From across the hall, Nicki glanced in his direction, then abruptly looked away. Her mother must be close at hand. He scanned the hall, swarming with servants setting up tables and the guests mysteriously summoned by Peter that morning for dinner and a "special announcement." Presently he spied Lady Sybila de St. Clair, who dominated her otherwise strong-willed daughter's actions—even her thoughts, it seemed—with steely authority. Ever the grim widow, Nicki's mother was enshrouded in one of her several black tunics, her hair concealed beneath a white couvre-chef. The severe hooded headdress, and that dour expression, ruined any beauty she might once have possessed and added years to her age. How could a girl as incandescently lovely as Nicki have been born of such a creature?

  "That's why you've lost interest in your training this summer," Luke muttered disapprovingly. "You've been mooning over a girl."

  "I'm not just 'mooning over' her, I love her. And I haven't lost interest in my training." Alex was already celebrated for his mastery of the sword, despite his youth—perhaps because of it.
He would not let his skills rust away. "I've simply taken some time to myself this summer, before we have to report to Duke William."

  "Does Lady Nicolette know that you'll be leaving Périgeaux in two weeks to wield your sword for the duke? That you have no home and no immediate prospects of one?"

  "Of course. I tell Nicki everything. I can talk to her—"

  Luke grimaced. "'Nicki?' Don't let anyone else hear you call her that. For God's sake, Alex. What are you thinking of, courting a lady of her rank when you can offer her nothing? Have you lost your senses entirely?"

  "Absolutely. I'm in love. Have you never been in love?"

  "I'm a soldier."

  "'Tisn't an answer."

  Luke's expression sobered. "Yes it is. We're landless knights, both of us. 'Tis best that we form no attachments of any kind—I've told you this a hundred times. Some day your sword and my crossbow may earn us property, but until then we're unmarriageable, and you'd best remember that."

  "I know I can't marry."

  Luke's eyes flashed. "Then you have no business dallying with a highborn lady like Nicolette de St. Clair."

  "I'm not 'dallying' with her, for God's sake!" Alex whispered furiously. "I love her. I respect her. She's a pure young girl, and I've done naught but hold her hand." Luke would probably laugh if he knew how deeply it had moved Alex the first time he'd closed his hand around hers—how it moved him still, just to touch her in that chaste and simple way.

  "Young girl?" Luke said. "She's older than you."

  "By only two years," Alex said defensively. "And she looks younger than nineteen." He watched her smile at some jest of Alyce's. It was a smile he hadn't seen before—reticent, almost melancholy. But then, she still tended toward an almost grave sort of decorum when other people—notably her mother—were hovering about. It was only when they were alone together in their cave that she seemed truly at ease, not the proper and unapproachable Nicolette St. Clair, but Nicki—his Nicki.