Sweet Enchantress

by Parris Afton Bonds

  That was what this outing was all about. Dominique had arranged it, down to the meeting with the young lass, large with her own unborn babe. "You are certain?”

  "Why, yes. I am my own body.”

  "You said ‘her.’ You know that the child you carry is a girl.”

  "Of course.”

  "How?”

  "I just know. 'Tis a communication of sorts.”

  He turned his head to stare off at the constantly shifting clouds. Now they formed castle battlements, enclosing, confining. He shivered. Memories of the taunts of childhood playmates flooded through his mind; the chanted "Bastard! Bastard!”; in the fields, fair days, or Mass at the cathedral, when others accompanied their fathers. And he was alone, a boy taking on the responsibility of himself.

  He became aware that she was watching him, waiting. This extraordinary and strange young woman who had captured his fancy. No, more. Captured his imagination. He aligned his hand with her cheek. That singular curve of cheek, of breast, of lashes that set her apart from all other women. She stared up at him, searching his face, for what he knew not. "The child will not be baseborn, Dominique. We shall marry.”

  Relief softened the tension of her mouth, and her lips regained their enchanting fullness. "You do not ask who is the father. I am grateful for your trust.”

  His fingers slipped down to the hollow created by her collarbones, such fragile bones to conceal such a formidable will power. He felt her pulse accelerate. "Were I to suspect any other man of fathering your child, my answer would still be the same. It—she needs a father.”

  He could tell his answer stung her, yet she maintained her composure. "But? I hear further reservation in your voice, Paxton.”

  His fingers dropped away to seek the familiarity of the hilt of his misericord. His lips compressed. "Aye.”

  She caught his hand between hers. "I speak truly, Paxton. I am not asking for your love, only your name. And the right to remain at Montlimoux."

  He wished he could read behind her eyes, peer behind the layer of flesh and skull into her vital and unconventional mind.

  "Is it the fear of being tethered like a mill horse to the grinding post, the fear of boredom with me?” she prompted quietly.

  He had to smile. "Never that. Not with you. Nay, but it is a fear.” He squeezed her hand gently for all that his words were stern. "A fear I am certain the Church will dissipate when your Francis marries us.”

  "The banns have been published.”

  Dominique nodded her head in acknowledgement of Baldwyn's latest news and laid aside her spade, her garden work forgotten. Two more successive Sundays with the banns posted for all to read at the cathedral steps and then . . . then she would be owned by a man. That the man was Paxton of Wychchester weighed heavily in favor of submitting to the marriage.

  Still, she had hoped, nay yearned, for that one person who would love her fully, unconditionally, who would be her equal in all ways, who would vanquish not the occasional lonesomeness but the loneliness. That aching feeling of incompletion. Of emptiness. Of being like the unicorn, the only one of your kind on earth. Sometimes, she felt such sorrow for what would never be that tears would come to her eyes.

  The thought of Francis’s visit anon eased that pain. There was yet another pain, that of rejection, of not being enough of a woman to hold a man.

  Hesitantly, she spoke to the Templar of it. "Baldwyn, with the exception of you, I have had little experience with the male sex. I . . . Paxton has not . . . we have not shared each other’s bodies since I informed him I was carrying his child. Am I already . . . repulsive to him?”

  Baldwyn lowered his bulk to one knee, careful not to crush the sprigs of thyme. "Verily, I have not had any experience with maidens who were . . . whose child I fathered. But, mayhap, 'tis like when a knight prepares for a holy crusade. Fasting and abstinence, you know.”

  She rubbed the moist earth between her fingers. "He is not fasting, Baldwyn.”

  "So, you fear he is not abstaining either?”

  "He rode out again with Esclarmonde yesterday.”

  "I see. It could be worse. Passion invokes in some men all that is base and vile.”

  "Unfortunately, this is not the case. His passion is . . .” She searched for the right word and finished by saying, ". . . is both exciting and disturbing.”

  The giant's black eyes laughed. "Mayhap, you have met your match in this male.”

  "I should hope not. Paxton’s male egotism is so thick it would take a pickaxe to penetrate it!”

  He peered at her from beneath his hairless brows. "You are certain, Dominique, you want to go through with this yoking?”

  "There is the babe.”

  "I might remind you that for the major part of your life you were raised without parents. You realize, do you not, that marriage with Paxton of Wychchester may be worse than no marriage?”

  Her lips pressed together. "I shall abide.”

  "He is a pragmatic man trained to violence.”

  "He is capable of gentleness.”

  He lumbered to his feet and stared down at her with a wealth of compassion in his rheumy eyes. "Well, as the peasant says, ‘Wake not a sleeping wolf.’ ”

  CHAPTER XIII

  "Francis!”

  Dominique flew down the staircase to greet the bishop. His slender fingers tilted her chin up so that he could look into her joyous face. His black eyes glinted with their familiar appreciation of her. "You grow more beautiful, Dominique.”

  Laughing, she withdrew her arms from around him, albeit reluctantly. He was her security. "But not enough that you would forsake your calling for marriage?”

  His lips were curled in reproof. "You swore long before I to remain unfettered by the chains of marriage. Now you wish to forfeit your freedom?”

  "’Tis a choice between the lesser of—” She broke off at the sight of Paxton and Esclarmonde striding into the room. Their faces were flushed from the summer's heat.

  Both stopped short, then Esclarmonde broke free from paralysis and rushed to hug her brother. “Francis, Francis!”

  Paxton paused to collect Arthur, who had padded across the great hall to greet him. Then, the cat cradled in the hook of one arm, he strolled on toward the guests at a more leisurely pace. His gaze skimmed Dominique with an indifference that made her blind with fury. She carried this man's child! Physically, they had become momentarily as one, if not spiritually and mentally. Surely, he owed her the courtesy of deference, at least.

  "We are obliged that you will be performing the marriage ceremony, honorable Father.” Paxton’s tone was polite enough, but Dominique sensed a derogative undercurrent. For a man who revered the Church, Paxton did not seem to apply the same esteem to this Vicar of Christ. From between narrowed lids, he surveyed the man from his embroidered shoes, past his brocaded gown and the gold pectoral cross, up to his bishop's mitre.

  Francis appeared not to take umbrage. Though not as tall as Paxton and without his physical presence, Francis possessed an imposing demeanor that came partly from his savoir faire and partly from an intense psyche that made her even forget that he was also most handsome among men. "Why, this is an opportunity for the Church. Church tradition sanctifies marriage.”

  "It sanctifies marriages but not love,” she said derisively. Yet, all the same, her eyes were fixed on the powerful hands that stroked Arthur so gently.

  "Love—or passion?” Esclarmonde retorted, her lips parted and her heavy-lidded gaze directed meaningfully at Paxton.

  Dominique swung away, ostensibly to order refreshments but in actuality to collect herself. Instinctively, she sensed Paxton and Esclarmonde had lain together recently.

  Her self-control was practically demolished. Her intuition regarding people and situations was now unreliable. Was this all the result of harboring another life within her?

  Later that evening, Francis persuaded Dominique to adjourn with him to their childhood haunt, her mother's laboratory. At the prospect of sharing her
passion for alchemy with another who appreciated its powers, old excitement stirred in Dominique.

  Francis swept one long finger over the dust that lay upon the counter. "Your interest in alchemy has waned?”

  She picked up one of the philtre vials and held its prism to the candlelight. "No, Francis.” Her voice sounded weary even in her ears. "’Tis not lack of interest but the inability to concentrate. These days all I do is pace. And fret. It seems I have no control over my destiny.”

  He took the vial from her, standing so close it was as though his black velvet mantle enveloped her. In contrast to the candlelight glow, his black eyes appeared bottomless. "Your present life is analogous to alchemy, Dominique. Putrefication, the rotting, of one substance merely begets another. You stagnate, here, Dominique.”

  She sighed. "Mayhap, I do, Francis.”

  "In Avignon, the most adept at astronomy and alchemy and metallurgy gather to discuss the soul and body of matter. The most intelligent of philosophers come from as far as Arabia, Greece, and the Orient to argue and debate in the papal palace.”

  An ember of interest flickered in her. "To such as they, I am but a fledgling.”

  "There is much I could teach you,” he said low, his breath barely stirring the hair at her temples.

  "My Lady Dominique?” Iolande called.

  Both whirled as the Jewess rounded the last steps of the spiral staircase turret. "What is it, Iolande?” Dominique asked.

  The old woman glanced at Francis warily, and Dominique said, "Tis all right to speak before the bishop.”

  "A soldier arrived with a missive for my Lord Lieutenant.”

  "Yes?”

  "Tis about Denys Bontemps.”

  Dominique’s floundering insight momentarily regained its former strength. “What about him?”

  "He has fled the Lord Lieutenant’s regiment quartered at the quarries outside Les Baux. He killed one of the guards in his escape.”

  Dominique snuffed out the candle and pulled the coverlet over herself. She missed Paxton’s large, protective body lying next to hers, his warm skin, and cool breath. Missed the way in sleep his arm draped almost possessively over the indenture of her waist. It was more than missing. It was an ache. Now that she was to be his possession, he no longer was interested in her.

  The uninitiated on his pathway always and only wants what he cannot have and is in-different to what he already possesses. Yet if someone else coveted that possession, then the owner would battle to keep it. That probably explained Paxton’s repressed anger that apparently only she perceived that evening. Francis’s arrival challenged Paxton's total possession of her.

  This internal warring made her sleep restless that night. Even when dreams visited, she knew she would not recall them lucidly the next morning, as had been her ability before Paxton’s arrival disrupted her life. Would the hurting inside, this wanting of him, ever go away?

  Wisdom told her there was security only in oneself, that there one finds the source of all happiness that makes it possible to give that happiness away, the source of all love that makes it possible to love others. But her emotional body cried out at Paxton’s easy dismissal of her, that she was of no consequence.

  Her latent senses stirred within one of those nebulous dreams, warning her that something was amiss. She struggled to regain conscious-ness, the kind of struggle where one tries to cry out at some impending disaster and cannot. Consciousness surfaced at last, emerging to find a darkness darker than the night hovering over her like the owl of death.

  Her scream was smothered by a human hand. Hard, rough, sinewy. She could smell dust, perspiration, and anger within its palm. Her flailing arms and legs were weighted by a body much larger, heavier, and more powerful than hers. She groaned against the silencing hand. Her teeth sank into its flesh, and she was rewarded with a curse and momentary freeing of her mouth.

  Her scream was cut short as the darkness coalesced into features that she recognized. "Denys!”

  "You would not wait for me!” His growl of rage was laced, too, with anguish.

  "I do not underst—”

  "The banns, damn your soul. You and Paxton—”

  Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. “I had no choice!”

  His hot breath was a hiss. "You always had choices, Dominique. You made the choice of keeping Montlimoux. I loved you. I would have given my very breath of life at the tourney to have you and love you. I would have labored seven years for the privilege merely to gaze upon you each morning for the rest of my days. But you sold your body to Paxton for Montlimoux!”

  "No! There are circumstances that you do not understand. That go beyond just myself or Montlimoux or Paxton.”

  "My God, Dominique. Seven years!” She heard the frustration and hurt rasping his voice. Sweat—or tears—dripped from his face onto hers.

  "I did not ask this of you, Denys. Nay, I even tried to tell you that there was no hope for that which you desired.”

  "Is it Paxton's hands you desire? Touching you like this. And this?”

  She wriggled beneath his groping hands, stroking the inside of her thigh, squeezing her breast.

  "Such a long time,” he gasped. "So long without you.”

  Her fists pounded his shoulders ineffectively. "No, Denys. Do not do this thing. Please, do not—"

  Suddenly, his weight was lifted from her. "What—" Denys yelled, then came the sound of scuffling, the thud of her prie-dieu overturned. Candles carried by alarmed servants flooded the room with their light. Like two magnificently built wrestlers at a fair, Denys and Paxton thrashed on the floor. Paxton was naked, proclaiming he had just come from bed. But whose?

  He slammed a fist into Denys’s nose, and blood splattered on the hems of those nearest the two grappling men. Their writhing bodies, their hoarse grunting, the odor of their perspiration mixed with blood, their fury that tasted like sulphur in the air . . . her dreams had turned into a nightmare.

  Screaming. Could that be her high-pitched voice, reverberating against the walls like that?

  She bolted from the bed and threw herself at the two. "No! Stop it!”

  An elbow, a fist, something slammed in her temple. Red and green lights shot behind her eyes. Hands tugged her, yanking, dragging. She was being quartered, her limbs to be rendered separately to the four spheres. Then, the blackness of the void.

  "The dungeon is forbidden to ye, my lady.”

  The excuse of working in her laboratory was not believed by Captain Bedford. "John, Paxton cannot execute Denys for treason. Denys did nothing against Paxton.”

  Regret at gainsaying her plea softened his reproof. "The man dared to touch Paxton's future bride.”

  She paced the library anteroom, rubbing her palms together. "This is foolish! One man's life in retribution for another’s pride?”

  "’Tis something a woman would not be understanding.”

  She whirled on him and, her hands on her hips, snapped, "No, a woman does not under-stand violence and brutality and murder. We understand living and nurturing and loving and giving!”

  He almost winced from her counterstroke. He folded his arms. "Ye cannot visit the dungeon.”

  She returned to her bedchamber. Her chattering maids-in-waiting could discern from her tight lips and flashing eyes that silence was imperative, and they industriously applied their needles to their linens.

  Only Iolande dared approach her. Her face was a mask of tortured wrinkles. "Denys must not die.”

  Dominique roused herself from her preoccupation. "I know that! But what can I do? I have been a virtual prisoner here myself for months.”

  The old woman rubbed at her gnarled hands, aching and disfigured by chilblains. "Paxton would give heed to the Church. Ask Francis to intercede for Denys.”

  "Paxton might listen to the Church, mayhap, but not to Francis. He mistrusts Francis."

  "You, then, are Denys's only salvation. You must appeal to Paxton of Wychchester as a last resort.”

 
; Dominique’s footsteps slowed. She sighed. "I know. I know.”

  The old Jewess shuffled to block Dominique's tread. She caught the younger woman's forearms and fixed her with a fierce gaze. “You will do what is necessary?”

  In the darkness, his hand shot out and captured her wrist, twisting it sharply so that she fell across him on the bed. At the cascade of her hair across his face, he gasped. "Dominique?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She trembled, whether from fear or desire, she was not certain. Mayhap, a powerful combination of both. She had no idea what she was going to say.

  He took the burden from her. Releasing his hold, he asked, "Why have you waited to come to me until now?”

  "I did not think you desired me, my Lord Lieutenant.”

  "But you think I do so now?"

  His sardonic tone was a slap, and instinctively she reacted by smacking him back— with her hand. The thud of the impact resounded in the room. Then he grabbed her and rolled atop her, and her breath went out of her with a whoosh. "You came to plea for Denys's life, is that not so?"

  She could feel his heat, his anger, and, yes, his desire. She wanted to lie, but a higher truth responded. "Yes. He is my friend.”

  "Your friend?” His growl was almost a purr. "Then show me what your friend is worth.”

  She hesitated, unsure what to do, and his hand tangled in her hair, turning her head so that her lips were crushed beneath his. This invasion of his mouth, an act of passion with no tenderness, no care, no giving, no deep intimacy infuriated her and incited her. She bit his lip, and he nipped hers back.

  "That is the best you can do?" he taunted.

  Somehow, without understanding how or why passion took fire inside her, consumed her. Her entire body throbbed. Her emotional and physical body screamed for more of this addictive passion. And yet, after he took her and momentarily slaked the frenzied desire in her, she lay within his arms, feeling drained, tired, empty.

  As if he could feel her slipping away from him, he said, "I am pleased that you hold by your pledge to King Edward to choose my will as yours.”