The way he frowned, his winged brows sloping at the outer corners in an expression of confusion, made her doubt her initial suspicion. As if making up his mind then, he said, "That only supports the rumors that began when you attempted to bring Patric back to life.”
"What? That I am a sorceress?”
He swung down from his saddle and looped the reins around a stunted oak. Her gaze bypassed the short, hazelnut doublet to fix upon his muscled legs. There was a world of difference between his hose-sheathed calves and the lance-thin ones of King Edward's sergeant-of-law.
"Do you deny it?” he asked. "You work with alchemy. You perform spells over cats and humans. You conspire with spirits.”
"What do you mean by that?”
"I spied on you in the oratory deep in a trance.”
"Oh.” She needed to divert him and remembered her purpose. "Since you are well versed on sorcery, my Lord Lieutenant,” she held her clothing loosely now, so that one hose slithered down to plop atop her bare toes, ". . . surely, you must know then that a sorceress—or a witch— cannot be a virgin because . . ." It seemed to her she was chattering nervously.
Watching her steadily from beneath those strong, falcon brows, he listened with a deadly calm.
". . . because a pact with Satan requires a woman giving herself to him sexually.”
His brows lowered, and a nerve flickered faintly in the rigid jaw. "So 'tis said.”
She summoned courage to let her shield of clothing slide slightly, revealing a daring expanse of rounded breasts. "Then if I am a virgin, I cannot be a sorceress, is that not so?” Passion dilated his pupils. His finger loosened the neckband of his shirt. "Exactly what are you aiming at, mistress?”
"Of course,” she continued with false bravado, "only the man who took me to his bed would know if I am virgin and, therefore, not a sorceress.”
He reached out and took her upper arm. Her clothes tumbled to the ground. "Me thinks you a succubus, mistress, but I care not that you come to seduce me in my sleep. I want you in my waking hours as well."
His expression was tortured. His jaw clenched, the veins in his temples pulsed. Sweat sheened his upper lip, already shadowed with a beard at this hour. His training and beliefs and very philosophy of life warred with this elemental passion. A passion so great that she trembled with fear for what was to come. She knew she would be irrevocably changed before the afternoon was out.
“What of Captain Bedford?” she asked softly.
"I have sent John to escort the Lady Escalamonde back to the chateau.”
Then he had intended for this to happen as well as she, whether he knew it consciously or not. This moment was no coincidence.
Her hands at her sides, she suffered him to touch her face in an almost wonderingly exploratory gesture. For all the roughness of his skin, his touch was light. A curious tingling began where his fingers had been and followed them as they curved around her neck, then traced the curvature of her collar bone. Now she knew that delicious sensation his cat felt whenever he stroked it.
She kept her eyes fixed on his. Fluttering light shone in their depths. She could feel her own body lighting up in response to the translucent subtlety in his. Her eyes closed. The feeling of his touch was wonderfully terrifying. He had an extraordinary power to excite her.
She felt his lips kiss the hollow created by her collar bone, as if he were tasting her skin. Her lids sprang open. "I must warn you,” she murmured, her breathing shallow, light. "There is a legend about this place."
He eased her to her knees and sank to the soft grassy bed opposite her. "That it is enchanted?”
She reached over and began to loose his doublet, saying, "That if you meet a fairy by the waterfall—”
“Are you truly a fairy, what the French call fée?” His voice was deep, stressed with the passion he constrained.
"—and drink its water, you will fall in love with her.”
His dark eyes never left her face as she divested him of his clothing. "I do not believe in superstitions, mistress.”
At that she smiled. "And 'tis no superstition that, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas that the gaze of a woman during her menstrual times can dim and crack a mirror?” she teased. “Or that her blood is injurious to any plant she touches, or this?"
Her fingers stroked the length of that totally masculine part of him, and he shuddered like one of those mythological dragons in fever. His lids closed. In her work of healing, she had seen men unclothed but never a man so perfect of body. She found she wanted to continue to touch him.
"Here in Languedoc," she said softly, "we tell the story of a man known as Fauvel. Actually, he is half man, half horse. The peasants vie for the privilege of caressing him. He is the embodiment of sensuality.”
With a groan, he grasped her palm and held it immobile. His eyes burned like the bonfires of Midsummer Midnight. "I am no imaginary creature.”
She was amused by his seriousness. "I did not think so, my Lord Lieutenant.”
“Paxton,” he corrected. He pressed her back and stretched out alongside her to rest on one elbow. He stared down at her with an expression that reflected racing thoughts. His breathing became shallow and rapid to match hers. She perceived the latent violence that threatened to take shape as the coming sexual act.
She raised her hand and let it conform to the strong, square line of his jaw. “Sex is not a weakness, Paxton. ‘Tis the life force. 'Tis divine.” Her hand dropped to touch him between his legs again, and she delighted in the lightning that sparked his eyes and in his smell, heightened by his heat. “'Tis not only here but in your hands when you touch me and in your throat when you speak. To take me with any other thought is the misuse of your sexual power and will only leave you splintered, Paxton of Wychchester."
She did not know whether he understood what she was trying to teach him, but when he pulled her under him it was with a ginger movement that might have been the forerunner of gentleness.
Her mind, eager for knowledge through experience, took note of all. Breath was the spiritual energy that animated everything, and the sharing of his breath with her in the form of his kiss was the key act to experiencing her, whether he knew it or not. The delicious moment continued when his tongue stimulated her upper lip, thereby stimulating the moist spot between her legs.
She took the lead, her tongue making contact with his, that first act of penetration. He seemed not threatened, only more thoroughly aroused. His tongue joined with hers so that they went beyond individual boundaries into that mating act of passion. In that deep kiss, she drank of his essence and life force, beginning the union of their polarities.
After that, all her analysis ceased as they began the dance of creation and destruction. Wherever he touched her—her ear lobes, her breasts, her waist, her thighs—came alive so that her entire body was aquiver.
Wherever she touched him—his thick mahogany hair, his groin, his muscled throat, his hair-garlanded nipples—the heat of passion danced between them.
She was moist and needy. He was hard and wanting. There was no pain of entry, only the dance of union. Then came that moment, just before he emptied his energy into her, that she could feel herself being pulled from her body: a wind, the sense of spinning, faster and faster, an intensity of sound and spiraling, a humming that grew louder and louder, echoing with the crescendo roar of the waterfall.
If she could but stay with it, she knew she would achieve that state of ecstasy that would verily allow her to pass through walls.
Yet there was that fear, too, that if she did not hold tight to her will power she would be peeled away and sucked into the cracks of oblivion, that she would expand to the point of disintegration.
Her body was wreathed in a finite, sweet torture instead.
She came crashing back down through the cracks of the sky to find herself in Paxton’s arms, holding her tightly. His breathing was raspy but, to her delight, it was not that exhausted breathing that came with promiscuous sex
.
A slight smile curved her lips. She was fertile ground to be revered, and he the rain that nourished her crop. She was the chalice for alchemy, he the magic wand.
He raised on one elbow again and stared at her with perplexity tugging his brows down even further at the outer corners. His gaze wore a slightly dazed expression. "Me thinks you have given me some kind of potion, mistress.”
She laughed lightly. Her fingertip traced the line of the scar that indented his upper lip. "Impossible! Have you drunk from the waterfall yet?”
"Nay, but I shall do so now, if only to prove Sweet Enchantress you are no sorceress and have no hold me.”
She drew her hand between her thighs and held up for him to view her fingers, smeared with his the white of his male seed and the red of her virgin's blood. "This should prove it well, messire. I am no sorceress and have made no pact with the devil."
"Paxton is not the sort of man to be obsessed with a woman, is he?” Dominique asked insouciantly. The tapestry she tried to embroider looked like the work of a hand palsied by chilblains. Gone for the moment was her dexterity with the needle.
"That is not for me to say, my Lady Dominique,” John Bedford replied cautiously.
She could not understand Paxton, why he behaved as he did. Baldwyn called him a man's man in a comradely tone, which put her on edge, and confessed to enjoying his rakish company.
Paxton had permitted her to resume her lifestyle, though she was hampered by his soldiers quartered there. Fortunately, he was absent more than present at the chateau. He continued to travel the countryside, inspecting the fiefdom of which he was now in supreme charge. The day following their tryst alongside the waterfall’s grassy banks, he had chosen to ride out from the chateau again. Supposedly to meet with one of her estates’ castellans about surplus crops. Or so John told her.
Although she had heard reports that he was far from popular among her people, the bourgeoisie and petty noblemen were said to respect him. In the Justice Room, she grudgingly witnessed that he ruled intelligently with a velvet glove rather them an iron gauntlet. Nonetheless, she resented his appropriation of her authority.
"Oh!” she gasped.
"What is it, my lady?”
She held up her forefinger. A tiny spot of blood tipped it, where she had pricked herself with her embroidery needle. Inactivity was causing her to be careless these days. "I would never make a knight, John. My aim with the lance would be as poor as with my needle.” He left his seat in the window embrasure and crossed to her prie-dieu chair. He knelt and took her hand to examine its minor injury. “Me thinks ye possess the courage of the best of knights,” he said, smiling.
“Courage, mayhap. But not accuracy.” Now why had that needle prick happened? Symbolic of something else?
His eyes widened. "Why, 'tis already ceased bleeding!” His gaze deserted her fingertip to peer up at her with amazement.
“Then you may cease your tender ministrations, Bedford,” Paxton said from the doorway. His face was beard-shadowed. He looked weary but nonetheless formidable. She could feel his force from halfway across the room. It was like the lull in the air before the onset of a sultry spring storm, motionless but threatening with unseen power. And something in her responded to his masculine force, deny it though she may.
Beside her, John rose to his feet in an easy stance. His ruddy complexion was none the redder for his lieutenant’s derisive words. Surely, he guessed what Paxton's suspicious mind was wondering.
That two of her maids-in-waiting were also in the room did not alter Paxton's suspicion. His assumption of ownership of her irritated her. Did not the ownership of her mind give her the right to also own her body?
She composed her features into a tabula rasa. "How are the affairs of my estates progressing, my Lord Lieutenant?”
His mild gaze lowered on her. "Your domestic steward has been teaching me about overripe grapes and mold.” He turned to leave but paused to hurl her a smile that pricked like her needle. "Noble rot I believe it is called.”
So, even Iolande was consorting with the enemy. The old woman admitted as much, while Dominique dressed for dinner later that evening. “You should be delighted the Englishman is showing an interest in Montlimoux’s vineyards, my child. You are too young to remember, but during the Albigensian crusade, many of the French soldiers ripped up the vines of the various fiefs they occupied. Fortunately, a considerable portion of Montlimoux's escaped the crusade’s pillaging.”
"Ah, but not its torturing.” She pulled her wrist away from Manon’s grasp and, sending the startled maid on her way, she fastened the multitude of buttons tightly seaming each sleeve. She could not help her testy mood. She feared Paxton of Wychchester's methods might not appear as brutal as the crusaders, but they could accomplish the same ends.
"I must make him marry me, Iolande.”
"Paxton?” The Jewess stared at her as if she were in the throes of an epileptic seizure. "Have you taken leave of your mind? Bind yourself to the service of a male?”
"The man cannot bind my soul, Iolande.”
"Can he not?”
Iolande's nose twitched so that Dominique had to laugh. "Well, at least, he has not seduced you over to his side, as I had feared.
She grabbed up her mantle to leave, and Iolande called after her, "Be careful not to sell your soul for Montlimoux, as I do fear.”
Jugglers demonstrated their agility before the high table that evening. Bells dangled from their hoods’ two elongated points. Some jugglers tossed ahigh knives, baskets, and brass balls, while others walked on their hands or threw wonderful somersaults. One even had a clever monkey that pantomimed the guests.
Dominique felt distanced from the frivolities. John Bedford’s blue eyes twinkled with tears of laughter. At the table's center Esclarmonde giggled charmingly and turned her lovely face up to Paxton’s in a moment of shared amusement. Watching Francis’s sister, Dominique sensed an unevenness about the young woman. It was as if Esclarmonde were not in touch with her reality, as if she performed like the monkey, cued by tugs of the juggler’s rope.
Of course, it could be that Paxton’s tremendous male force blighted the energy from those around him. She knew she alone was a worthy adversary for him. And he knew it, too. His calculating gaze clashed with hers.
The sudden heat that coursed through her took her by surprise, as did the peculiar lurching in her stomach. On reflection, she supposed she should have expected as much. The battle was going to be for the retention of the soul.
CHAPTER X
Was Paxton taking Esclarmonde to his bed?
Dominique was not certain. If not within the chateau, the two certainly had the entire countryside to conduct their trysts.
Her memory recalled with annoying clarity his strong, confident body, that tall, battle- hardened torso. Her hands still held the memory of his long, muscular back and its obvious male member, so arrogantly jutting, taunting her to touch it, to stroke it as she so fervently desired. Her dreams, some of them anyway, revealed again and again his proud chin and intelligent dark eyes.
The other dreams . . . lately they had been unpleasant, though she could not identify exactly why. When she awoke, her memory of them would be blurred with only an impression left of a forewarning. Ever since Paxton's arrival she had felt disoriented.
Apparently not Paxton. Was his energy, the energy of the violent warrior, stronger than her own?
And what was his design on Esclarmonde? A design to infiltrate himself into the French court at Avignon? Was that the amorphous warning in her dreams?
She knew that he was currently instructing Francis's sister in backgammon. For the last three evenings, the couple had adjourned to the Justice Room to play the game. The clatter of the rolling die mingled with their laughter and murmured voices.
Dominique experienced frustration at having failed in her purpose to capture Paxton's unrelenting interest. If only she could convince him to marry her so that when he abandoned Mon
tlimoux for this Pembroke he coveted, his—and her—heirs would retain Montlimoux.
But how? When already his masculine ego was being stroked by the most fairest of what he contemplated as the weaker sex, albeit one whose chief vice was "carnal lust, insatiable and incalculably stronger than man’s.”
At least, that was the gist of the conversation between him and a Goliard. At dinner that night the wandering scholar argued brilliantly, for all his youth. "Publicly our clergy decry pleasure experienced purely for the sake of pleasure as a sin but you will notice, messire, that they have no qualms about privately making their housekeepers their mistresses.”
Esclarmonde's silence was explained by her disinterested expression. Dominique likewise remained silent, although she had the impression that Paxton wanted to bait her. While she had championed the Goliard’s viewpoint, she deplored an argument solely for the shock value of irreverence. These wandering scholars spared no one and no subject. God and the devil, Aristotle and the Pope, canon and feudal law, all were held up to ridicule.
“My Lord Lieutenant, I wish to retire. Tomorrow will be a long day."
Leisurely, he swallowed the sweetmeat and drank from his goblet before he deigned to answer her. “You have my permission.”
If Hugh had not been behind her, her chair would have toppled, so abruptly did she rise from the table. His permission! Never had she behaved so overbearingly and unreasonably with her own vassals. Why on earth was she attracted to this lout?
Fuming, she paused at the minstrel gallery's balustrade and glanced into the banqueting hall below. Paxton did hold the possibility of revitalizing her county, she reminded herself, as she watched a teasing Esclarmonde slip a sugared almond between Paxton's lips.
Strangely, Dominique felt no jealousy, only a poignant sense of loss, a wistfulness, for what might have been. She had had this feeling that her path and Paxton's had not crossed by mere chance. How else to explain the color and sound that had inundated her when she had merged with him? That exquisitely light, out-of-body sensation afterwards?
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