Defiant Desire

by Anne Carsley

  Charles went over to the pile of wood and trash, gathered an armful, and tossed it on the fire, causing the blaze to leap and soar as the warmth began to spread. His face had lost the mask of caution, his eyes their hooded glitter. Julian wondered at the flood she had unleashed and how long it had been since he had spoken of these matters festering in his heart.

  “I traveled—Venice, Padua, Geneva and elsewhere—a clerk living on little. My uncle died and I entered into the title, but the king was very ill then and I knew that I would be ill-advised to go home. I met Beth—Elizabeth Tinta, part French, part English, maybe a little Irish—in Rome, where she was taking in the Holy City of the Pope with her grandmother, who was very old and wealthy. Young as we both were, we fell fiercely in love. The old lady opposed it and had my antecedents checked. She thought it was for the money. Beth knew better. We ran away and were wed by a priest in a little town in northern Italy, then we moved about. We learned that King Henry had been notified and that it was demanded that I return. I think it would have been my death, for no one defied him in those last days. Religious strife was going on everywhere between Catholic and Protestant, some places less violent than others, but we never noticed. Spies had been put onto us by power of the grandmother’s wealth, and they waited to close in. We were living in a border town then, a dispute arose in one of the taverns over religion, it spread, and I returned to our little house . . . you know what I found.” He stood staring into space, the dark face closed up and anguished.

  Julian knew. The pregnant young girl dead and raped, the perpetrators not to be found, troops coming in to quell the populace, both sides blamed. Charles hating then and that hatred growing with the long years.

  “Beth. Blue eyes, black hair, always laughing and telling me I was too somber, that our child would learn laughter from her. He would have been a boy. We had ten months together. Nothing and everything. The old woman died of the shock but blamed me for all that happened and made sure that it was known. Her wealth was given to the Church; that was the greatest irony of all. I cared for nothing then, and so I returned to England. Squire Harry, God’s light on earth, was dead and Varfair mine. I once loved it; now it could fall to ruin and I would only watch. The young king was most interested in what were called the injustices of his father’s reign; I was honored, given sympathy, asked to travel in his concerns. All useless and too late. I grew to abhor the Protestants even more and the Catholics the same. They were all fanatics, and the boy king was one of the worst. I saw things in Geneva and the German states that tore my very soul. I went to Spain and encountered the workings of the Inquisition. I felt myself drowning in hatred and loss. Nothing mattered. It was during this time that I met Prince Philip of Spain at a minor court function. We both had too much to drink and began to talk. I spoke of Beth, and he told me of his first wife, Maria, who died in childbirth, and of the son whom the doctors suspected would never be normal. He had loved her deeply, he said, and did not expect it to come again. We shared pain and it seemed to lessen; later we drank and sported together often. He told me that I might wed where I would, but he must obey his father, Emperor Charles, in all things. Further, he confided, madness ran in his family, and he feared it above all things. Adherence to the true Catholic faith might bring relief, and he would bring all he could to it. He had the makings of another fanatic, but we were true friends in those days, and I began to think life could be palatable. I owe him much, Julian. But England and her welfare are foremost.”

  Julian understood. If she had been a man her story might be very much the same as Charles’s. The fire was hot now, and she shrugged back the cloak, then lifted the heavy hair from her neck. Charles watched her and his mouth softened.

  “I returned to take up my duties to King Edward, but my cynicism showed and I was no longer welcome in the councils. He decided to reward my past service with an heiress. A man must be wed, he said. Geraldine was only a child, and I knew the propensity of her breed, but I allowed the betrothal. It was easier than struggle. Then I left court, traveled again, tended Varfair, relearned the pleasures of the intellectual life, dreaded the eventual day of marriage, even returned to see the king when those around him felt a different voice was needed. I saw Philip of Spain in those years and saw him growing more determined that all the world should be Catholic, yet we remained friends, though not as we had been.

  “I was on the Continent when the young king died and through Mary’s triumphal rise to the throne. I vowed to stay away, but she knew my history and wanted to watch me. I was commanded to return, and I knew that I wanted to live in England despite everything. The Spanish marriage was about to become a reality; I thought I might be some mitigating influence on Philip. It was with horror but no surprise that I learned of the Spanish wish to officially establish the Inquisition in England. Queen Mary was besotted with him and would do anything he wished; moreover, her own Spanish blood and Catholicism told her this was the right thing to do. You know my views of her. It was from those days at court that I vowed to bring her down—to fight against my ruler and my friend. It was a bitter choice, but I could do no other. Many that I met were of like mind and we joined forces. I do not know why they fought, but I desired freedom of thought, not to be ruled by religion which permeated every facet of life. I want my country to go forward in rationality and not to be steeped in blood and hatred. Elizabeth, pure English born, can give us a chance. That is my cause and my belief.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Julian said, “I am glad that you have spoken so freely to me, Charles. My own cause is less noble, I fear. I simply want personal freedom, to live as I choose, to believe or not as I wish, to wed or not to wed.” She looked up and saw the gray eyes intent on her face. Her blood began to move more swiftly, for she knew that look and wondered if her own face mirrored it.

  “Julian, dear Julian, that is what every person in this land wants. That is my cause.” His voice was low and throbbing. One hand reached out to touch hers and then drew back. “I have vowed myself to it, and there is no room for anything else. I loved Beth with all the passion of a young man’s first love. Geraldine and I would have had a mutual arrangement, beneficial to us both. Then there was you, Julian, with your pride and outspoken bravery and your beauty. I was lured and had to have you.”

  “Charles.” She could only whisper his name, proud beyond the telling that he could share so much with her. Dread began to build, for she thought she knew what he would say.

  “I called it the power of the flesh, and perhaps it was in the beginning. But this struggle for England’s very life demands everything from those who work for it. I cannot involve another innocent. My own feelings can have no precedence. The cause is all. I will do anything for it. I suppose that I, too, am a fanatic.” He laughed a little unsteadily.

  Now Julian saw the reason for his reticence and coldness; he would have scorned to mention the stories about him at the court or to suggest a refutation. He would withdraw and walk his own path, a man apart. He might be suspected, but actual proof would be all the harder to come by and conspiracy not really considered by those who knew his temperament. His heart was locked away because of the past and for the achievement of the larger goal. If he could give it, Julian thought that he might truly love her, but Charles Varland would never speak those words until he was free to do so.

  “Perhaps you are right to call yourself a fanatic, Charles, but I must call myself one as well. The Inquisition is a dreadful thing. You must do what you have to do.” Julian Redenter had her pride also; she would not demand what he could not give. How well she understood the anger that often ruled him and the gentleness that vied with it. Understanding enabled her to give him the reassurance he sought, proud that she could do so for his sake. “Do as seems right; I understand all that you have said.”

  Charles sat back on his heels and looked straight at her. “Old Clara saw our linked fates. I have spoken to you as to no other person in years. This time here may be a
ll that we have. Ever.”

  Julian said, “While the storm lasts there is this time of sharing.” She spread her palms to the fire and his swordsman’s fingers closed on them.

  “This time of sharing,” he repeated, “so long as it is understood that you and I have different destinies. That there are no demands.” His jaw jutted slightly, and the pulse in his throat began to hammer.

  Julian had learned in the events of the past months that the moment must be taken, for in very truth there might not be another. She had prayed uselessly in the Tower and yet had been delivered from madness by her own determination. The whirl of events had brought her to this time, and she would have lied with her last breath to have and prolong it. That premonition which seemed a part of her in these days rose again to tell her that never again would she be with Charles Varland in this manner.

  She lifted her face to his. “There are no demands, nor will there be.”

  He brought her hand to his mouth as the fire blazed higher beside them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Charles and Julian lay together on his heavy cloak in front of the fire, their bodies locked in a passionate embrace. Her shining hair spilled over his arms and her hands pulled him ever closer. His mouth took hers, held and drew from it. In this first eagerness, this first search for satiation, there was only hunger to make up, for all the times that they had not taken each other. Julian felt the wetness of her loins and the pain in her breasts, the ache that had begun to permeate her body. She moved her hands up and down the firm length of Charles’s back and buttocks, tugging at him, moaning for the beginning of the delight that would lift them both.

  He turned her over on her back and rose slightly above her, his eyes looking down into hers, but this time there was no struggle over mastery. They were man and woman, woman and man. His mouth corners rose in a half smile which she returned, knowing that he remembered the last time and their battle. His manhood stood firm and erect, and she shuddered for the pleasure it would bring them both. She writhed on the soft surface of the cloak, her breasts moving with her hips in the gyrations that would soon grow deeper.

  “Now, Charles, now!” Her hunger would not be denied.

  “Yes!” He thrust into her slowly and deliberately, withdrawing a little and then going deeper. She lifted to meet the thrustings, her hands drawing him closer until at last he was atop her, and they were one in the timeless rhythm which would draw into consummation. Julian felt the fire lick at her body and thought for a second that the actual hearth flame had extended. Then Charles kissed her again, and the heated blood ran so savagely that she cared nothing for external matters, only that he pierce her more deeply, that she pull him yet more hungrily into her. The burning rose, exploded, and yet was not enough. They held each other, whispered, and lifted again in the joining that welded and did not loosen. Sweat beaded their bodies, drenched them. Charles reached for Julian’s hand and clasped it. That above all else brought the tears to her eyes.

  They slept and woke to passion, then returned to sleep again. Julian roused once when Charles went to check the storm, thought that the snowflakes in his dark hair and the flush on his high cheekbones from the cold added to his physical beauty, smiled at her own whimsy, and fell into the depths of satiated slumber once again.

  “Julian? Julian, wake up.” His hands were warm on her breasts, touching the already lifted nipples, rubbing the fullness of them and luring her up from the warm depths where she dreamed of him.

  “And the dream is real.” Her lips shaped the words, her eyes told the rest. There was no need to speak more, for he understood.

  Now Charles led her into strange paths, into the hot thickets of desire and the glowing pits of savagery barely withheld which paused and culminated in tenderness. Now she bent to his urgings and, after the initial hesitation, took him in her mouth and moved her lips on the pulsating shaft while her fingers clasped the firm buttocks and trailed gently over the flat stomach. His carved face seemed a thousand miles above her and his pleasure a shattering thing that burst in her mouth and made her tremble with the power of it. Now she lay in her turn while his mouth explored the tiny lips of her maiden mound to send tongues of molten flame straight over her. His fingers explored the crevices that his own tongue traced out and spread out. Julian lifted to his mouth, tongue, and fingers, then fell again to find his mouth drawing on her breasts, tracing out their curves and then the spear of him taking the trembling, willing quarry which became in the next breath the Amazon huntress, bold for to seek.

  Now Charles lay prone, his hands on her own smooth moons while she lifted up and down on the impaler that never rested but rose again rejuvenated. Her heels thrust side and backward, her hands stroked and touched and coaxed. He held back, almost daring the skill that had burgeoned under his teaching and her own instinct to bring him to the edges. Julian caressed, licked, and let her fingers drift in his secret places until the wide brow was tinged with red and dripping with sweat. She lowered her head to take the swollen tip of him into her mouth, working at it with instinctive lore, her two fingers reaching for his hilt, the almost green eyes shining into his, which were black with desire. From rapidity she went to such softness that each second lasted an hour. Her body shone pink and white in the firelight, and Charles was the dark man of legend and fantasy; their mingling would create a new race. Julian had the brief thought and then fought to hold back the shudderings that heralded her own collapse. She began to convulse and looked at Charles, who could wait no longer as he gushed forth. The quaking rhythm took her as well, and they went separately into the sweetest oblivion of them all.

  Later they cuddled close together as he played with her satiny hair that covered his chest. “You are marvelous learned in these matters, my dear lord.”

  “It is a talent. I am modest.”

  “I, also. Have you no compliments?”

  “Ah.” His lips found hers and the drowsy comments drifted into murmurs of contentment that were punctuated with laughter as he tickled the smooth contours of her sides and back. Julian tangled her fingers in the dark hair and nuzzled his firm chin before burying her face in the cup between neck and shoulder. He tilted her head back and kissed the long line of her throat with little soft movements that were curiously like those of his first taking of her. She began to tremble and one hand went to her chest; it, was growing hard to breathe and the wings of rising desire gave no respite. Once again the sweet tyranny began.

  Once Julian had longed for freedom and security. Now in this cellar of a burned-out castle with their only food hard bread and stale cheese, their drink melted sleet, their warmth each other and the blazing beams hauled in by other long-ago fugitives, she was happier than she had ever been or was ever likely to be again. They did not talk of the future; for them there was none. By tacit agreement they shared their pasts with each other, the golden moments of laughter or poignancy, Elspeth’s admonitions, Uncle Roger’s absentmindedness, childhood escapades, experiences of the great world and the knowledge of the inner world that existed for them both in history and poetry and mythology. Julian prayed to the God in whom she barely believed that the storm would continue; these days together would lighten all her days to come. For Julian Redenter there could be no other man; she had always known that. Yet unlike her mother, unlike the very queen of' England, she would live despite the immolating passion that tore and shook her at every movement Charles made.

  “My little fire-goddess, lady of light, the beautiful one.” The soft words curled in her consciousness as he touched her lifting nipples while they lay in love’s exhaustion during a time that might have been night or day.

  “Flattery.” She turned her head and looked into his eyes, which were clear and warm in these unguarded moments. “ ‘I know that I speak truth. I look at you and am water which pours down me, so like the very god . . .' ”

  She stopped and the laughter tumbled forth.

  Charles rose on one elbow and assumed a horrified expression
. “Is that all you can quote of Sappho, the divine poetess? We must look to your Greek. Let me see, what is the name for this most delectable section of your most delicious body?” He touched her quivering mound with a fingertip.

  Julian moved languidly to one side, then caught him around the neck and they tossed together in mock battle, laughing in their nudity, rolling as the puppies did in spring, caught in delight in this shining time of their lives that renewed and restored them both with Aphrodite’s golden blessing.

  She came awake suddenly and reached out to feel the powerful body that had been beside her so often of late. In a moment he would whisper extravagant words into her ears, then gather her close as the fires mounted in them both. It seemed to Julian that she could not get enough of him nor he of her in these days that were so short. She turned on her side to see if he were playing a trick, lying just beyond the reach of her fingers. He was gone, but his cloak lay over her for warmth in the event the fire should die down.

  “Charles? Where are you?” She called softly, then more urgently. A mounting sense of danger made her leap for her clothes and thrust the dagger into the band at her waist. A few steps to the passage and a glance upward told her all that she needed to know.

  The blowing storm had ceased. The land was rimed with ice, and a freezing wind nipped at her exposed face. The sky was heavy and gray, a thick cap fitted down after the wildness of the past days. There was some snow but not enough to impede progress. Julian knew what that meant, and she knew the face that she must wear. Their bargain had been made, and now it was time to keep it.