“Ah, you’ve seen Jenkins, I expect,” he said with an apologetic twitch of his mouth. “My head grounds-keeper. Not a fan of letting children run wild over the place, I’m afraid. He cultivates various wild species in the wood and he would rather the children were restricted to the lawns. Very jealous of his territory. He won’t frighten them—he simply makes sure they aren’t heading for any vulnerable plantations.”
This didn’t quite put to rest her feeling of disquiet. “Has he been in your employ long?” Rosalind asked.
He looked startled. “Oh—oh yes, my dear! All his life. I knew his grandfather very well. They—uh, the family lost their estate. Oh, you have nothing to worry about with Jenkins. Quite the right sort. He’ll see the children come to no harm.”
Most evenings she had dinner with her host after Sam was in bed. He was a very cultured and educated man, and as well as an enormous interest and learning in Parvan and Bagestan culture and art, he was also fascinating to listen to on the subject of his local area, which was rich in early British archaeological remains. He told her about several prehistoric sites within a half hour’s drive, including a stone circle, which Rosalind immediately decided to visit at the first opportunity.
“Perhaps you know we have a rather splendid specimen of a prehistoric standing stone on the property itself,” he told her early in her visit. She had wandered around since, half looking for it, but without success.
“I haven’t found your standing stone,” she said one night over dinner.
“Well, it isn’t always easy to find,” he said, his eyes twinkling as he drank his wine. “But it is a tradition of the stone that people must find it for themselves. Some people stumble upon it almost instantly, but most find it rather difficult. And there are one or two who have never found it. I can tell you, as I tell all my guests who are interested, that it lies in the woods in the southwest quadrant of the property. But beyond that, my dear, it’s up to you.”
She couldn’t get Najib al Makhtoum out of her mind. In the library, working on the manuscript of ancient mystical wisdom entitled The Knowledge of the Knowers, she could close him out, but at night, in her bedroom, he haunted her. Once she dreamt that he was standing over her bed, and called his name aloud. She woke, and in her dream-clogged state she seemed to feel his essence all around her.
If only she could have been sure she could trust him….
It didn’t help that Sir John was constantly talking about his time in Bagestan and Parvan, reminding her of her own past, and the links she now had to the area. She wouldn’t be able to run away forever. When whatever it was was over, if it ever was, she was going to have to deal with the family and her inheritance.
Several times she was on the point of asking Sir John if he knew the Bahrami family, or the al Makhtoums. Sometimes she had the feeling that he was waiting for something from her. But she was always held back by the thought that such questions from her would inevitably lead to questions from him, and to having to explain things to him.
For all she knew, Sir John might know the very people Najib said were looking for Sam.
She got into the habit of rising early on fine mornings and going out to wander for an hour before breakfast, hoping to find the standing stone. In the southwest quadrant of the property the woods were thick and very old, and while some paths ran right to the high stone wall that bounded the estate, others simply petered out in the middle of the woods.
She headed that way again, but this morning her mind was less on the mysterious compulsion of her forebears to stand stones upright in the forest than on a problem she had not considered before she laid such an elaborate false trail and disappeared—how she was going to find out when the danger was over and she and Sam could safely return to their lives.
She was following the course of a gurgling stream through the ancient forest as she pondered. The trees she slipped past were those which had been sacred to the Mother Goddess long ago—aspen, oak, ash, hawthorn, and elm, and the sun dappled through their branches onto the forest floor, making every spot sacred. She might almost be walking into the past, stepping back through the centuries to a time when the forest was new, her head so clouded with thought that she lost that firm grip on her reality and slipped through to another….
There was a place at which the stream broadened and, stirred in its journey by a sudden twisting of rocks and massive tree roots, rushed into a series of tiny rapids. The path ended at a large tree on its bank, and the wood behind was thick with brambles and holly.
Rosalind recognized it as the point where she had several times turned back, but she was wearing a short dress and the morning was very warm and, her mind elsewhere, she decided to press on. Sir John had said the way to the stone was not easy.
She bent and slipped off her shoes and, carrying them in one hand, clutched at the thick low branch the tree offered her and stepped down into the water.
It was deeper than she had thought, the hem of her skirt just brushing the surface. The water was ice-cold, but the bottom was pebbly and her footing felt secure. With the low branch as her support, she climbed carefully over one or two of the thick, gnarled black roots that twisted half across the stream, and then clutched the broad ancient trunk of the tree itself.
She passed under a branch, came around the tree, and saw, thirty feet away through the trees, the rough circle of a clearing, bright with early sunshine. And on the edge of the clearing, in the shade of a great oak, was, unmistakably, the standing stone.
She could almost feel its power from here. Her mouth open, Rosalind stood entranced. After a moment she came to, moved along the length of another helpful branch of the tree above her, out of the tangle of roots, and into shallower water. One heave on a branch brought her up onto the bank, and she stood staring. She had entered a place where magic still was deep in every part of nature.
She stopped only briefly in a futile attempt to wring out the hem of her skirt, and then, barefoot, and making no noise, she stepped towards the clearing and the stone.
It was the largest single standing stone she had seen, well over six feet. Broad at the base, curving up almost to a point at the top, it gave the unmistakable impression of a woman kneeling, her rounded thighs and massive buttocks resting on her heels. There was even a hint of arms, with hands resting on the lap.
She saw without surprise as she approached that the lap was a human-size seat. Come to the Great Mother, was the invitation. With a smile of wonder Rosalind crept forward, stepped into the dappled sunshine in the clearing, and stood staring at stone that seemed to pulse with life.
She was thinking of nothing at all, only sensing the deep compulsion to go and give herself back to the Mother, to seat herself in that lap and connect to the wisdom that was there. She approached, feeling the rich fertility of nature all around her, and herself as part of the whole. The sensuality of moss on stone, of the leaves under her feet, of the green of the trees, the sun dappling the thick grass, was a primary, revealing without words how the world was being renewed by constantly recurring creation, the forever intertwining of male and female, the cycle of birth and death, sex and spirit.
In her state of altered awareness the movement near the stone seemed only part of it all, the life of the universe. When a shape detached itself from the Great Mother, when she saw a tall, dark man gazing at her from the shadows that danced over Her stone, he seemed a necessary part of the vision she was experiencing. Some part of her recognized the ancient truth that male and female called to each other in Her presence, and that Rosalind’s own presence had of necessity summoned up the male.
But she was completely unprepared for the fact that the man was Najib al Makhtoum.
Seven
A dozen conflicting emotions attacked her at once. She wanted to run, she wanted to stay, she wanted to scream…she wanted to seduce him. Rosalind had a sudden vision of how the ancients had worshipped at this stone, soliciting the Great Mother for fertility of the fields and of the womb
, and felt a wild compulsion to repeat that rite with Najib.
He still stood in Her shadow, wearing loose black trousers and a black polo neck shirt, and the skin of his firmly muscled arms and face was tanned. In the Celtic tradition, dark men brought good luck. A dark man should be the first across your threshold on New Year’s Eve, to ensure luck throughout the year. And wasn’t there some ancient tradition, Rosalind thought crazily, from before the time when people understood the full role of men in reproduction, that sex with a dark man would bring fertility to a barren woman as well as to the fields where they lay?
So the voices of the ancient gods of the place whispered in her, tempting her to the rite they loved best.
Rosalind turned and fled.
She ran barefoot through the thick grass, and the dark pursuer was caught off guard for a moment, so that she gained a lead. The gods settled to watch with satisfaction, for it was right that the maiden tested the man, and they loved the chase. Aspen and oak, holly and hawthorn trembled as she passed, and now and then a blossom blew into her path, or tumbled on her hair, for flowers were ever a part of the sacred rite….
Holly scratched the girl’s strong bare legs, drawing stripes of blood on her flesh, and all trembled in anticipation of that other, virgin blood that would soon paint her thighs. But still they urged the brambles to catch the man and hold him, for the chase was delicious and they would prolong it if possible. It was so long since humans had thought to please them in this way….
The madness led her this way and that with perfect precision, and at last she obeyed the necessity and ran headlong back into the same clearing, where the grass was soft and suitable for a bower, where wildflowers danced in the wind, where the Goddess waited. And then, obedient to the gods’ will, the grass tied itself against her foot, and the maiden was flung full length on the green bed, ready for the offering.
The dark man was close behind now, and needed no prompting from grass or root to fling himself down beside the girl as she tried to rise, his dark arm embracing her with the strength the Goddess loved. The girl rolled and struggled still, for the man must prove his power to the Goddess before she submitted.
They gave him what encouragement was fitting. The grass caught her skirt and tumbled it up around her hips, and wildflowers dressed her massy hair, and a blossom kissed her luscious, wanting mouth as they struggled in the grass.
“Don’t be such a fool,” Naj cried. “I am not here to hurt you!”
His voice cut through the crazy panic that had consumed her, and Rosalind lay still in his grasp, subsiding into the thick grassy carpet. She looked up into his face, panting hard.
“How—how did you—find me?” she asked.
His arm was stretched across her, his hand clasping her side just behind her breast. He lay above her, his gaze snared by hers, her panting breast beating against his hand, as if he had captured a wild animal.
“I had to find you,” he said in his throat, and rivulets of feeling sprang up to trace over her skin and flesh. Her body twitched spasmodically.
“Najib,” she protested, but under the protest her voice quivered with desire. For a moment they were still. The only movement came from a soft breath of wind like a sigh over the grass of the little clearing, and two pink blossoms that flung themselves against her cheek and lips. One rested tantalizingly at the sensitive corner of her mouth, but when she lifted a hand to brush it away, his hand prevented her.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he bent his lips to the blossom, and kissed it with a tenderness that sent a shaft of feeling, painful with intensity, shooting through her. Her breath sobbed and she closed her eyes, not to see, then opened them again because she had to.
Slowly, slowly, the dark man clenched his fist in her thick hair, then unfurled strong passionate fingers again to cup her head as his lips whispered from the petals of the flower to her cheek, so softly she did not know whether it was his lips or the blossom that brushed her, nor did his lips know whether it was her cheek or the flower they kissed with such tender passion. Again she closed her eyes.
His lips, or the petals, moved over her cheek, the bridge of her nose, between her eyebrows, over her trembling eyelid. Slowly her arms twined up the strong trellis of his own arms, and her hands pressed against his neck and into his thick hair.
His wandering, tender lips, with painful sweetness, traced their way back to the blossom of her mouth. He lifted his head then, and she opened her eyes, and they gazed into each other, half drunk. Then his mouth moved closer and slowly, slowly, their lips touched, tasted, and drank.
They lay entwined in a fast-flowing river of sensation. It coursed through them without mercy, and stirred into little rapids wherever their bodies met. Her fingers threaded his hair, pressing his mouth against hers with a hunger so deep it seemed to come from the earth itself. His hand pressed her side, stroked her breast, burnt its way down to her hip, and found her naked thigh, her bent knee. Her flesh was firm, her skin smooth, warm from the sun. His fingers slipped around under her knee and, his thumb stretched wide to clasp her, ran down the long line of her thigh, past the tickling grass to her hip.
Meanwhile his tongue toyed with the corners of her mouth, his teeth nibbled the lips, and then, as if this stirred him too deeply, his other hand left her hair, moved to imprison her chin and throat, and his mouth possessed her lips again with rough hunger.
She heaved a breath when he lifted his lips, and opened her eyes with lazy pleasure. His thumb came to rest in the sensitive space where leg met body, and his fingers lazily curled around and trailed back up her inner thigh, making her yearn for more.
And then, with curious abruptness, the world returned. Who was he? She didn’t even know him. She didn’t know what he really wanted.
“My God, what are we doing?” she cried, as panic of a different kind stirred her.
Najib smiled, his teeth strong and white against his tanned skin.
“Don’t you know?” he murmured, still absorbed in the mood that had captured them.
“Let go of me,” the maiden panted. The watchers trembled with surprise. A wildflower flung itself against her cheek, to remind her of her duty.
“Rosalind,” he whispered urgently.
“Let go.”
The warm wind that had been twining her hair into the grass died, the leaves of the trees stilled, as if for a moment nature held her breath. Naj closed his eyes and heaved a deep sigh, then released her and rolled over on his back, his breathing fast.
Rosalind pushed herself up to a sitting position, wondering what the hell had got into her. The wind returned, stronger and with a chill in it. She pulled her wet skirt down over her bare thighs and shivered as the wild mix of fear and sexual arousal in her ebbed.
“How did you get here?” she demanded, turning to look down at him. A cloud drew over the sun, and he dropped his arm and gazed up at her.
“How did you know where to find me?” she repeated.
The expression on his face made her gasp. He hadn’t moved, but Rosalind was drawn to his hunger as if he dragged her with his arms. She jerked back, resisting the compulsion in her blood, and rolled to her knees.
“In this wood, because I followed you. In this place—” He lifted his arm, bent with his elbow resting in the grass, to gesture in the direction of the house. “I knew you were here because I brought you here.”
She reeled as if he had struck her. “You—what? You brought me? How ridic—how?” She demanded again, and a cold dread began to weave through the unfamiliar pattern of emotions that wrapped her. “How did you bring me here?” she asked, her voice rasping.
Overhead the cloud that had obscured the sun was very quickly building into something threatening. Rosalind glanced up uncertainly and shivered again as the temperature in the little clearing seemed to plummet.
“Sir John is a very old friend of my family. Naturally he was concerned for your safety and that of your son. You are safe here only temporarily, however. It is no
t possible to secure this estate as tightly as is necessary. Other steps must be taken now.”
His words were causing a dread in her like suffocation. “Do you mean he only hired me because… What steps?”
“Perhaps we should save the discussion.” Najib flung himself to his feet in one quick, graceful movement. “It is going to rain.”
“Ow!” cried Rosalind, as the first drop struck her on the arm with unpleasant force, and then she saw tiny white balls bouncing on the grass. “Hail!” she cried in an incredulous voice. “It’s hailing!”
“Let us get under cover,” Naj muttered, helping her to her feet. She was shivering now, her wet dress gluing itself to her thighs uncomfortably as the hail flattened the grass. The wind whipped the hailstones against them with a certain malice, and they ran into the woods towards the narrow path she had fled along before and stopped under a tree.
“How weird that I came right back to the same clearing,” she murmured, staring back into the clearing. “Where’s the stone?” The Mother had disappeared. “It should be—”
“It is there,” Naj said. “But it is not easy to see from this direction.”
Rosalind stared in amazement. He was right. The stone was there, but from this angle, the colours blended in with the trunk of the huge oak behind it, and unless you knew what you were looking for, the Goddess seemed to be no more than a part of the gnarled tree.
“No wonder people don’t find her,” she murmured.
The angry hail battered the world, but amongst the trees they were spared the worst of it. Naj led her along a narrow path. She was only faintly surprised when the one they were on met the river path she had taken before.
“How did you know I would find the standing stone today?” she asked, with a return of paranoia, but he only shook his head.
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