His lips pressed her hair. She tilted her head and looked in his eyes and saw that he did understand. He just did not believe that when the time came, she would really leave.
And in that instant she knew that she would not want to. It would mean abandoning the best friend she had ever had, and walking away from the closest bond she had ever experienced. A part of her would be torn away. Even as she rewove the shredded fabric of her life, there would be new holes that could never be filled.
She tasted the anguish she would know that day. The claims of the past, of her family and her brother, would make leaving inevitable. She had sworn oaths to her father's memory that she could never forget. There was more at stake than her contentment, and the happiness that she had found in this garden and with this man.
His embrace tightened and he lifted her to a kiss. Not gentle, the way he usually started. Not careful, but fevered and deep. Passion blew through her, blending with the sadness until a heart-searing poignancy filled her. He kissed her as if he had seen the future in her eyes, and sought to argue his cause. Much of her, too much, wanted him to win the debate.
He stood, not moving her position, and carried her to the hawthorn tree and sat on the bench with her limbs still wrapped around him.
He pulled her shift off her shoulders and pushed it up her hips until it bunched thickly around her waist, covering almost nothing. His kisses stopped, but the fever did not cool. He eased her back until her shoulders rested on the table's edge and her naked body angled away from his, much like one of his statues on the inclining board.
His hands moved over her body. He might have been the molder and she the clay. He stroked and smoothed and circled, watching his hands with deep concentration. Her own hands could only reach his forearms, and she clung desperately while the sensations aroused by his determined caresses riveted her awareness.
“You always start out holding me as if you do not know if you want this, Joan, even though you do.” He palmed her nipples until she arched with craving. “You cling as if you fear it even as you desire it.”
The urging pleasure left her too shaky to respond.
“The abandon still frightens you. What are you afraid that you will lose when you embrace it? A past world that does not await your return?”
He slid his hands down her arms and released her hold. He placed her palms on the table until her arms spread their length from her propped shoulders. “I do not want any restraint on your passion today, not even that of an embrace.”
His hot eyes examined the path of his hands down to her hips and thighs. He eased her up so he could mold her bottom in his palms. He frankly observed the rhythm of her body, as if he could see the hidden, itchy pulse causing it.
He looked to her eyes, and she knew what he was going to do. And so it did not shock her too much when he rose, and slid her back on the table until she lay there naked in the breeze, like a rustic, erotic feast. He stood over her, and his rough hands worked their wonderful magic, forming her passion into a mad delirium.
He raised her legs and bent her knees and set her feet on his shoulders. Cradling her bottom in his palms, he lifted her hips high like a sacred cup, and bent to her.
For one moment she feared the pleasure would die, but it did not. Trust helped her take a new step and accept a special freedom. The triumph produced an astonishing euphoria. Most of her senses left her. Nothing existed but the torment of pleasure and the blurred pattern of leaves and sky and sunlight above her head.
She climbed with frightening intensity until nothing mattered but her need. Her body begged and then, in the distance, her voice did, too. He lowered her hips and put his hand to her, stroking where his kisses had created a throbbing sensitivity. She looked down her sprawled, open body to see him watching her face while he brought her to a violent, long release.
It left her drifting in a foggy madness of saturated senses. He brought her back on the bench again, straddling him as she had before. His masculine scent and the hardness of his arms and chest encompassed her as she sagged into his embrace.
His quiet voice flowed into her ear. “The next time it happens like that I want to be inside you.”
“Perhaps I can soon. I want to.”
He kissed her temple. “Perhaps it is not the past that interferes so much now, but the future. I want you to think about that. Maybe, in living for what you must do in the future to avenge what happened in the past, you are not allowing yourself any life in the present.”
She would think about it. She would. But not now. She did not want that confusion yet. She just needed to hold him in this serenity that he had given her.
So peaceful. If she stayed here forever, she might be happy. The day might come when she never thought about what had been lost, because she reveled in that which had been gained.
Perhaps she should repudiate the duty. She could accept what had happened. She could be the new Joan in a new life and a new world. The notion appealed to her more than she expected.
A slight sound broke her sated happiness. She turned her head and looked down the garden. Mark had entered through the portal, and now bent and slid something behind the high flowers along the wall.
The sword. Mark had not gone to the river at all. She had found another shilling missing, and guessed that he had taken it to pay someone to teach him. That was how he had spent the Lord's day. Wielding a sword, and preparing himself for vengeance.
He passed them on his way to the house, but he did not notice them entwined in the shade of the tree.
She tried to immerse herself again in the contentment she had just known. She fought to reclaim the innocence of it, but she could not.
She turned her head to where she could see the bench, with its big stone statue near the center and its little clay one at the other end. Despite their different sizes, they balanced each other on that long plank, and created a pleasant harmony. A perfect design.
She branded her memory with their forms, and Rhys's feel, and the sound of his heartbeat. She wanted to remember the unity of this day forever.
CHAPTER 18
JOAN'S STATUES STOOD in a dignified procession on the tall table Rhys had made for her. Everyone in the market who walked by noticed them.
A lady who had purchased the Saint George brought a friend back to consider the Saint Sebastian. That one had attracted a lot of attention. Clad only in a loincloth and tied to a tree stump, he looked up to heaven, waiting for the martyr's palm. The arrows piercing his body had not diminished his strength.
The woman eyed the naked chest far too appreciatively. Joan really did not want to sell it, and named a price of two shillings in the hope of discouraging a purchase. It did not work. There was no bargaining, and the coins instantly appeared.
Joan was sorry to see the statue go. She had followed Rhys's lessons about studying real forms when crafting their replicas. Saint Stephen's torso, face, and legs, as a result, were very familiar ones to her.
She watched Saint Sebastian being carried away, and her heart glowed for the man who had been its model. If Rhys had never given her anything but this improvement to her craft, she would have been grateful forever.
But he had done so much more.
She spent most days managing the tile yard now. It hummed with activity the way it had during Nicholas's life. The King's pavers kept many workers busy, especially her. Still, every day she arranged to steal an hour or so to make her saints. The work was hard and tiring, but she had never known such contentment. And waiting at the house were the little pleasures of sharing bread and stories with Rhys, and eventually the perfect bliss of sleeping in his arms.
Her happy contemplations distracted her. She gazed blindly at her row of saints and thought about that feather bed, and what occurred there, and the way that she never remembered the bad experiences anymore.
She calmly made a decision. She was ready to make it complete. She would make this union all that it might be. She would forget while she could, and
later, much later, she would remember when she must.
She did not see the new patron approach. She did not notice him at all until he stood by her table. Even then she did not look up and greet him, but let herself enjoy the warmth of her decision, and the way it stirred her blood. She regretted that Rhys was not at the house. If he were, she would pack up these statues and run back at once. She might even give them all away if it would hasten her return to him.
Rhys would be joining her soon. He was coming to fetch her, so they could visit the King's chambers again and remeasure the floors. She suddenly could not wait to see him.
The man did not move on. His presence intruded more and more. Still only half conscious of him, still absorbed with her joyful resolve, her lowered gaze saw him only in bits and pieces.
Fine boots. A rich, green, knee-length cotte. The stark line of a good sword.
A vague, spicy scent.
Caution roared through her, stunning her into alertness. Her instincts remembered that exotic, dangerous smell. It made the skin on her neck and scalp prickle.
She froze and refused to look higher. Fear and horror shrieked, obliterating her contentment. She just kept staring at her saints, praying that she was wrong.
A hand reached out. One finger wore a ring that she had seen before.
Her heart dropped and broke, and she knew for certain that her happiness had just been destroyed.
She recoiled from the touch on her chin, but that did not stop him. He forced her head up, until she looked into a face that she loathed.
“Why do you act as though a ghost has appeared?” he said. “After all, you are the one who is supposed to be dead.”
For one despairing moment she wished that she were. For an instant she regretted not walking into that lake three years ago.
He tilted his head and studied her face, much as her patrons did her statues. “Still lovely. And much more clever than I ever suspected.”
She did not move. She had never let him see her fear, and she would not now. But utter terror filled her like an unending, shrill whistle.
Guy Leighton was the devil incarnate, wearing the face of an angel. Beautiful. Almost ethereal. His golden hair and violet eyes and perfect, fine-boned face still appeared boyish when he was calm. But she had seen the fires of hell in those eyes, and the sickening pleasure he took in meting pain and death. Considering his ugly soul, his physical beauty struck her as a type of sin, a corruption of nature itself.
She had seen at once how crippled his heart was. He had sensed that she could tell. It had fascinated him, and fed both his vanity and his cruelty.
Another man ambled over to inspect her wares. Guy gave him a deadly smile. The man hustled away.
He still held her chin. He did not release it. He merely walked around her table and drew her toward the Cathedral wall, leading her like an animal.
He forced her into the shadow, against the stone, and blocked her body with his. Arm braced above her head, he scrutinized her face.
“I have been looking for you, Joan. All week I have been visiting markets in search of the pretty blond potter.”
“How did you know to look?”
“A man came to me. He had been in this city while on pilgrimage, and saw you at a market. Since he had heard of your demise, he could not believe it was really you, but I did. I knew at once that you had deceived me, and not truly died while crossing that river.” He lightly stroked her cheek. Her stomach turned violently. “It wounds me that you ran away after all that we had shared, and the risks that I took for you. You are an ungrateful bitch, Joan.”
The last part came out in a brittle tone. He sounded like a lover who had been betrayed. He acted as though she had abandoned something beautiful. Maybe he thought that she had. The world existed for him only as he saw it.
“Too ungrateful to deserve your attentions. Everyone thinks me dead, and as you can see, I might as well be. Leave me to my humble life and let everyone assume my bones lie in that river.”
He found her desperate argument amusing. “It is not so simple as that.”
Nay, it was not. He had not come here just looking for her at all.
“Your brother survived, too, I assume.”
He made the query very blandly, but she saw the sharp interest in his eyes. And something else. Something she had never seen before. Fear.
“He did not. I almost didn't, either. The river swept him away. I caught a tree branch, but he—”
“Neither of you crossed the river where we found the clothing washed up. It was a ruse, and your breathing body proves it.”
“Nay, he died. I swear it to you.”
“The man said that he saw a blond youth of Mark's age with you later. And a tall dark haired man.”
A new fear spiked, this time for Rhys.
“The man was a stranger. The youth was his kin, and not my brother. I do not know either of them, and was just chatting as one does in markets.”
He took her face in his hand and held it to a deep examination. His grasp squeezed her cheeks just enough to hurt.
“You are lying. You were never good at it, and three years have not taught you much there. He lives, as you do. That is most awkward, Joan. I told my lord that you had both died. It will be very inconvenient to explain the mistake.”
“Then do not explain it.”
He leaned against the wall so that his body lined against hers. His hold released her cheeks and slid lower, caressing her neck and shoulders. She suffered it to buy some time for Mark and herself and Rhys, but her essence cringed with revulsion.
“I have missed you. I think that I even mourned a little when word came that you had perished.”
“I doubt that you have missed me at all. I am sure that your bed is never cold.”
“It is not the same. You were a compelling challenge. Having you gave me wonderful pleasure. I do not think that taking a keep surpasses it.”
“Nonsense. When you take a keep, you can put men to the sword.”
“And when I took you I could make you feel things against your will. Surely you have not forgotten that part.”
She suppressed the urge to vomit, and closed her eyes to him. She stopped breathing so she would not inhale that spicy scent. She wanted him to be gone, and for this day to begin anew. She prayed that when she opened her eyes she would be in Rhys's feather bed and discover this had been a nightmare.
Guy's fingers drifted over her face, outlining her nose and chin and jaw. “Perhaps I need not explain to my lord. Maybe we can continue the bargain from before. No one has ever understood me as you did. I have felt your absence.”
She looked at him in shock, and saw that it was partly true. Not because of physical things. He could get that from other women.
His perverted vanity had always enjoyed her hatred too much. It drew him the way affection did normal people. Everything was upside down with him. Deformed. Her hatred had engrossed him the way love did other men.
He was right. She understood him very well. Even better than he guessed. He might offer the bargain again, but he would no more honor it now than he had the first time. She had never truly kept her brother safe. She had merely delayed his death back then. The accidents that had almost claimed Mark's life had forced her to see the truth. That had been the final degradation, realizing that she had sold herself for nought.
She remembered the exact moment when she had finally admitted that to herself. Pressed against the Cathedral wall, she experienced the hopeless bleakness again. But that dark moment had given birth to anger and strength, too, and now their fires rekindled in her blood as well.
She had beaten this man once. Outsmarted him. She could do so again. She would not let fear defeat her. She would not be his victim.
He had journeyed across England because of her and Mark. He stood alone now, and had searched the markets with no retinue. He had been ordered to make sure that Mark died like her father and all the other men and squires who had defended
that keep, and he had come looking for her on his own because he feared Mortimer's learning that he had failed to extinguish every witness to that massacre.
Which meant that only he knew that she and her brother were still alive.
She had to delay him. She needed time to find Mark and get out of London.
“You offer the same terms? My brother will be safe?” Her whole body rebelled against the words. She almost choked on them.
“I will shield him as I always did. It is only a small deception of my lord, and you are well worth it.”
Guy Leighton spoke with sincerity. Lied with impunity. He believed the words as he said them, but would easily abandon the promises when they proved inconvenient. That had always been the most frightening thing about him. He possessed no conscience at all. No normal sense of wrong.
He took her arm. “Come with me now. I am staying at the palace, but no one there will know you. You can show me how grateful you are before we get your brother.”
A spitting denial almost screamed out of her. She fought to keep the disgust out of her voice, and the resurrected memories out of her mind. “You can not think to stay at Westminster, with Mark and me in your chamber. There is no way we can be safe there.”
“It is only for a short while. I leave two days hence.”
“Then I will come to you two days hence. I am not yours until my brother is safe away from here, and until I see that you are committed to your side of our agreement.”
“You will come now, and tell me where to find Mark.”
“Nay. It will be as I say, or I will die before you ever learn where to find him.” I will die before I let you know about that house.
“Three years have made you too sharp-tongued. This humble life has turned you shrewish. I much preferred you as you were, girlish and biddable.”
“I am no longer a girl. If that is what you want, go find another.”
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