by Jo Ann Wendt
Her throat convulsed. Then burst.
"Dove!"
At the bottom of Wattling Street, he whirled even before the shriek was fully out of her mouth, as if he'd been listening for it, willing it, wanting it.
"Dove!" she shrieked again. Seizing her skirts, she went flying. Dove didn't hesitate an instant. Eyes bright and fierce, he came bounding through the crowd, knocking people aside left and right. For frantic moments, it seemed she would never get to him, and her hysteria rose. A sea of people separated them. People blocked her way—people in front, people to every side, people blocking her, people in the way, Marguerite, Lady de Mont, people, people.
"Dove," she shrieked in anguish. "Dove, Dove don't leave me!"
And then, suddenly he was there, grabbing her, crushing her in his arms. "I won't, I won't. Jericho, I won't."
He crushed a feverish kiss to her mouth,- then swept her through the gawking crowd to her door, pushed her inside, stepped in, slammed the door shut and banged the door bar down. There, at the bottom of the hot airless stairwell, there in the cavelike darkness, they sprang into each other's arms and kissed wildly.
"Dove—"
"Sweeting—beauty—Jericho.''
They couldn't stop kissing. Hot, overheated, on fire with need, they couldn't stop kissing, they couldn't stop touching. Inches away, on the other side of the door—on the other side of the world!—Wattling Street ebbed and flowed with its familiar strident foot-traffic, but here in the cavelike stairwell, there was only the sound of their wild panting, their needy kissing. His hands were all over her—on her breasts, her neck, her face, gripping her buttocks, plunging between her legs.
When they couldn't get close enough, Dove tore off his shirt, and Jericho wrenched her bodice down, wriggling her arms free of it. They moaned, flesh touching flesh, their love whispers as wild and shaky as their kisses.
"Dove, I missed you so—"
"Oh, beauty—when I found you gone I went insane—"
"I left you a letter—"
"Did you, did you? I didn't find it—"
Wild and ardent, he scorched her neck with hot kisses, then passionately lapped at her skin, his tongue hot and quick. When her lips greedily sought his, he eased her against the wall and held her there, kissing her, his knee gently wedged between her legs. His mouth went everywhere. His kissed the birthmark on her breast, the birthmark on the nape of her neck, the one on her wrist. He was so excited that he was almost rough.
She grew drunk on his kisses. Drunk on the smell of his sweat. Intoxicated by it, she inhaled it until she grew dizzy. When he tore his hot mouth away and gave her an instant to breathe, she pressed her scorched cheek into his hot, musky chest and clung. He radiated heat like the sun.
"Dove? It's going to happen, isn't it?"
"Yes. God help us, grubworm, it's going to happen."
He swept her up the stairs. Then, while Jericho hid her breasts with her crossed arms, Dove sprang to the schoolroom windows and yanked the curtains closed so violently a curtain ring flew. He sprang into her sleeping closet and did the same. Then, they hastily shed their clothes, their eyes upon each other, bright and scared.
A few shaky moments later, lying naked upon the bed, waiting for him to shed the last of his garments, she spread her legs for him, supposing that was what she should do. A tender expression sprang into his flushed, excited face, and, she knew she'd done something naive. Bars of hot fire striped her cheeks. But when she clamped her limbs shut, Dove leaned down and stopped her with a passionate kiss.
"It's beautiful! You're beautiful, Jericho. You have done exactly right for me, exactly right."
"Dove, I never slept with the king—"
"I know, I know. I never really believed it. Not really."
Then, he lowered himself onto the bed, between her legs. The straw mattress crinkled, and he was there—male, naked, hot, eyes bright with excitement, his fine shoulders and his spill of golden hair shutting out the world. She felt shaky. Hot and cold at the same time. As if she were coming down with the ague. She ought not to be doing this. It was wicked. She didn't care. She wanted . . . wanted . . .
"Tell me what to do. I w-want to do it right."
"Do you remember when you learned how to skate? In New Amsterdam? On Collect Pond?" He pressed a scorching kiss to her cheek. She moved her mouth so her lips could find his. She was so hot, so hot.
"Yes."
"You were such a little girl. All freckles and bones. You listened to everyone's instructions. But you didn't really learn how to skate until you stepped out on the ice and tried it, did you?"
"It's like skating, then." Drunk with his sweat smell, she could not stop inhaling. Breath after breath after intoxicating breath. Dove . . .
"It's like skating, beauty. But it's also like spring rain, gentle and wonderful. It can also be like a hurricane. It can blow you off your feet and sweep you into waters so tempestuous—so turbulent and deep and whirling, that you feel you're going to drown—"
"Dove?"
"What, what?"
She felt so hot, so cold, so shaky.
"Bring me the h-hurricane."
"Oh, beauty! I'm going to bring you a hundred hurricanes."
Later, when it was over, when he'd finally gained control of himself, when his own wild heartbeat had slowed and he'd looked down to find her lying limp as a flower beneath him, her maidenhead a smear of blood on the sheets, he felt so shaken he couldn't think. Lord, lord, what had he done?
Easing off her, he grabbed a towel from a peg on the wall, tucked it between her legs, then sat on the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands. He trembled, profoundly shaken. God, what had he done? The one thing he'd vowed not to do. He'd taken Jericho. He'd taken his own bondslave. He'd deflowered her. No man of honor does such a thing! Shame welled up. Then guilt. He felt so guilty, he was overwhelmed by it. Dazed by it.
Numb, he gazed around the shabby hovel she lived in. Wall pegs held her few clothes. A shelf held her few pretties—ribbons, a comb, a cracked mirror, a sprig of wild- flowers that she'd picked somewhere to brighten her room. She owned so little. And he had taken the one thing of value she owned, her virginity.
He breathed raggedly, confused, ashamed. Guilt seared him. He'd plotted her seduction this summer. He knew that now. He'd softened her up and when her innocent heart had opened to him, when she'd been ripe for the plucking, he'd ridden into London and taken her. Self-revulsion rose in shimmering, sickening waves.
He thought of John and felt sicker still. Bad enough to harm Jericho. He'd broken a sacred vow. Even if John never learned of today, their friendship would be altered by it. For Dove would always be aware that he'd taken John's woman. His guilt would drive a wedge between them. Dove knew that from this moment on, he would behave differently toward John—warier, alert, tentative in every overture. He would not be able to look John in the eye. He wanted to weep.
''Dove?"
"Jericho, don't talk to me, don't talk. I have to think."
"Is-is something wrong?"
"No. It was wonderful." And it had been. He'd had virgins before. But never anyone as sweet as Jericho. This had not been a coupling. This had been a mating. He knew the difference. A mating. He wiped a shaky hand over the beads of sweat on his upper lip. God. What if she quickened from this? Or what if Marguerite found out?
"Dove? What's wrong?"
"Jericho, be silent, damn it!" He lifted himself off the cheap straw mattress and began to dress, swiftly pulling on his clothes, dressing any which way. He had to think. He had to be alone.
Jericho turned her face to the wall, tears springing up.
Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. How could he turn on her like that? Only minutes ago, they'd lain entwined in the tenderest embrace she'd ever known. Now? Her throat throbbed. Had she done something? What had she done? Or worse, had she failed to do something? Had she failed her woman's part? Was he disappointed?
Though she tried to hold them back, t
ears of chagrin seeped hotly under her lashes. That was it, of course. Dove was disappointed. He wasn't used to bedding ignorant virgins. He was used to being with ladies who knew all about bed. She? She had been naive and ignorant. She'd even yelped in pain when he'd tried to force her maidenhead. Her yelp had frightened him, and he'd had to withdraw and start all over again. She closed her eyes in shame, remembering, fighting back the tears. Naive, ignorant, stupid.
She listened to his ragged breathing, as he dressed. He was so eager to leave her. His quick footfalls sounded. He went out into the schoolroom. She heard him help himself to then- mulled ale. The tankard thudded on the table.
She lay there hurting, wounded so deeply she couldn't even cry. By and by, his footsteps returned. "Jericho. Get up. Get dressed. We need to talk."
Only that. No loving words, no reassurance. Somehow, she found the energy to drag herself up off the bed, to wash and dress. When she came into the schoolroom, Dove was standing there, hat in hand, ready to leave. That hurt, too. He couldn't wait to leave her. She gazed at him steadily, but he wouldn't meet her eyes.
"Jericho, what happened in there . . . it . . . was a mistake."
"A mistake?" Her voice shook.
Listlessly, he tapped his hat to his thigh. "A mistake," he repeated unhappily. "Jericho, I never meant for anything like that to happen. I never meant it in a million years. If I could undo it, I would. It was a mistake."
A mistake? Is that what he called it? All the tenderness, the sweetness between them had been nothing but a mistake? Her stomach lurched.
"Jericho, it was a mistake."
"If you say that again, I will be sick in the slop pail."
Desperately, she threw her gaze out the window, keeping her eyes on St. Paul's Cathedral, on the acres of lead roof as it caught the last rays of the setting sun.
He sighed wearily. "Grubworm, please don't take it so hard. Please. I beg of you. You'll break my heart."
She was going to be sick. She swallowed.
"How do your women usually take it, Dove? With smiles, laughter? With witty repartee?"
"Grubworm."
There was a long silence. Even with the first sounds of evening—women hurrying to the public pump at the bottom of Wattling Street, wooden buckets clunking—she could hear his weary discouraged breathing. A "mistake." It hadn't been love, it had been a "mistake."
"Jericho, I didn't come here today to make you unhappy."
She threw him a resentful look. "Then why did you come! Did you need someone to sleep with this afternoon? And so you decided on me?"
"Jericho, listen to me. Please. Don't tell John. Whatever you do, don't tell John."
Her cheeks heated like fire.
"Do you think I would tell him! Or tell anyone? This was private. Private between you and me, Dove."
"Jericho, listen to me. Please. I want you to marry John. And the sooner the better. What we did today, what happened in that bed . . . could have consequences. The mistake had best be covered. For your sake. And for mine and Marguerite's. I may have quickened you, sweeting."
If he'd hurt her a moment before, it had been a mere sting compared to this. He didn't want her, and if he'd put his baby into her, he didn't want that, either. He was passing her on to John. Like a used shirt.
"You'd best go, Dove," she warned shakily, the hurt slowly finding its defense in anger. "Go now. Go."
"Jericho ..."
"Go!"
He gazed into her anger, then drew a coin pouch out of his shirt. It jingled heavily as he set it on the table. She stared at it, incredulous, disbelieving.
"Are you paying me, Dove?"
"Grubworm, don't say such a thing." He came forward to take her in his arms, but she recoiled from him, as if from a snake.
"Are you paying me for this afternoon? Like a tart? Like a whore?"
"Grubworm, don't. Don't be like this!"
Her voice shook. "Get out of here, Dove. Get out! This is my house. I want you out of it. Leave. Go. Go."
"Sweeting? I care for you. I do."
"Go!"
His bright hazel eyes burned with misery. Nevertheless, he obeyed. He set his jaw, wheeled around, and trotted down the stairs with quick, light steps. Wounded to the very depths of her soul, Jericho grabbed the offensive coin purse and ran to the landing. Shaking the coins into her palm, she flung them as hard as she could. Coins smote his back, the back of his golden head. When the last coin had rung in the stairwell, spinning on its metallic edge before toppling, he turned unhappily.
"I'm sorry, sweeting," he said softly. "I'm sorry as hell."
"Get out!"
He left. Jericho buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
It was Black Bartimaeus, patiently waiting outside, who later gathered up the coins and squirreled them away for a rainy day. But he never mentioned the coins to her, and for that, she was grateful.
She tossed and turned and wept bitter tears into her pillow all that night, but when she rose in the morning, she lifted her head high and went on with her life on Wattling Street. She put Lord Dove de Mont out of her mind. He didn't exist. She had never heard of him.
She didn't shed another tear. That is, she didn't until her monthly flow came, and then she cried in sheer relief. But one or two of those tears fell for quite the opposite reason. Now she had nothing left of Dove at all. Not him. Not his baby. Not anything.
Chapter Nineteen
An eerie, pulsing glow woke Jericho before dawn on Sunday, September the second, a light so faint as to be no light at all, the silent glow waxing and waning in her bedchamber window. Throwing off her bedsheet, she went to the window on bare feet and looked out. She could see nothing amiss. London still slept. The familiar jumble of close-packed rooftops presented itself, the steep angles rising every which way in the darkness.
Moving silently, so as not to wake Black Bartimaeus where he slept in the schoolroom on his pallet, she went to the schoolroom windows and looked out. There, she saw it. To the east, perhaps a mile away, a rosy, ever-changing glow pulsed on the horizon. An unnatural sunrise? No. Not sunrise. Fire.
She breathed uneasily. Her first impulse was to wake Black Bartimaeus and make him look too. But she couldn't. He needed his rest. His heart was troubling him again. Though he tried to hide it, she knew the signs—his shortness of breath, his long pause at the bottom of the stairs before climbing up to their rooms.
In spite of Black Bartimaeus's objections, she'd paid five shillings to bring a doctor from Poultry Lane to bleed him and prescribe new medicine. She'd had his horoscope cast to encourage him, and she'd gotten him a fresh rabbit's foot for good luck. She didn't know what else to do, and she was scared. John had been dear, casually bringing this heart tonic or that, taking care not to alarm Black Bartimaeus with over- concern, but just behaving in his kind, ordinary, decent way.
John. Gazing anxiously at the pulsing glow, she wished John were in the city. But he wasn't. He'd gone to Arleigh Castle for Dove's wedding and would not be back for a week. Dove . . . Dove's wedding. Misery welled up. Today was Sunday, September second. On Tuesday, September fourth, Dove would marry.
Heavy-hearted about that, uneasy about the fire—London's house-timbers were coated with pitch to preserve them, and pitch could bum like a torch—she didn't go back to sleep. Quietly, she dressed, then read by candlelight until daybreak. Pax joined her, padding into her chamber, his rough old nails clicking lazily over the floor.
Uneasy, she didn't go to Lord's Day services that morning. But, a multitude of Londoners did. Sabbath Day church bells rang cheerfully all over the city, and Londoners strolled about, indifferent to the cloud of black smoke rising in the east. Dear life, she thought. A fire is nothing to a Londoner.
At ten of the clock, when the wicked black cloud grew larger, she and Black Bartimaeus put on their hats and walked down to the Thames, where watermen clustered in their rowing boats, touting for customers. She buttonholed a sweaty young waterman who seemed glad to rest o
n his oars for a minute and talk with a pretty woman.
"The fire isn't near Seething Lane, is it?" She was worried about John's house.
"Nay, missus. Nowheres near Seething. The fire, she started on Pudding Lane, missus, about midnight," he shared, his bold eyes raking her over. "Started in the king's baker's house. Prob'ly, the sorry fool didn't damp his oven proper b'fore going t'bed. Though he's denyin' it to Peter's tune, y'may be sure. The sorry fool."
"Is it as bad as it looks?" Worried, she glanced upriver, but couldn't see far. The Thames meandered through London in twists and turns. The smoke rose blacker now, the fire undoubtedly lapping up the pitch-coated house timbers.
"Three hunnert houses gone already, missus."
"Three hundred!"
"Ay. The fire, she's spreadin' faster'n the plague last sumr mer. The fire, she jumped up on London Bridge no more'n a tad ago. 'Tis the wind, missus, the damned Belgium wind."
She nodded. Londoners hated an east wind. Besides being hot and dry, a Belgium wind was thought to be unlucky.
"Can you row us to London Bridge?" She glanced worriedly upriver. If she could see the fire, she could better assess the danger. Pudding Lane and London Bridge were nowhere near Wattling Street. Still . . .
" 'Twill cost ye three shillings."
"Three!" She swung her head, eyes blazing. "Why, that's highway robbery. The distance is but slight. Worth a few pence at most."
"Then walk," the young man said cheekily. "If all London goes up in the blaze, my hire'll be six shillings by nightfall, prob'ly a whole guinea tomorry." The selfish oaf looked pleased at the prospect of his city burning down, making him a rich man. Jericho wanted to slap him.
"We'll walk," she snapped. "And glad to. Your company would likely make us sick!"
She and Black Bartimaeus hurriedly backtracked to Thames Street and struck a fast pace toward London Bridge. Jericho's anxiety grew with every block they walked. Thames Street was crowded with warehouses that were packed to the rafters with flammable goods: tallow, oil, spirits, wine, tar, pitch, turpentine, hemp, hay, lumber. If Thames Street caught. . .