The Hourglass

by Barbara Metzger

She rubbed her body against his, her bare breasts against his bare chest. “Perfectly.”

  Perfectly certain or a perfect fit? He groaned. “I want to be tender and slow for you, but I have waited so long, wanted you so badly. I do not know if I can hold back if you keep doing that.”

  She did that, and more, pressing against him. Now they were touching from tip to toe, reveling in the bare skin, the hard length of him, the soft roundness of her. “We can have tender and slow the second time.”

  “No, you deserve more. You should have a far better man than I, and a more patient lover.”

  He was loving her very well right then, his hand sliding between her thighs while he kissed her breasts, her throat, the ticklish spot on the side of her ribs.

  “Oh, my. Elgin never—”

  He stopped her words with a kiss, then said, “Remember, Elgin never enters our bedchamber.”

  She had to laugh, looking at the sky and the broken walls, the flowers and the sea of grass. “If this is our bedchamber, then poor Elgin is not welcome anywhere.”

  “Exactly.” Then he showed her exactly how a woman’s body should be worshipped and adored. He was not her first lover, but he was the first to introduce her to a woman’s pleasure. He taught her how lucky a woman was, to be able to reach ecstasy until she was limp with satisfaction, and once more.

  “But what of you?” she managed to gasp.

  “I am enjoying myself as I never thought possible. Just hearing your sighs, feeling your body tremble, seeing the glory on your face, brings me more pleasure than anything I have ever done. I might never need to complete the act.”

  She touched the evidence of his own desire. “Hmph. And here I thought you never lied.”

  Her touch made him forget every principle he ever had. “You are right. I want to be inside you more than I want to take another breath of air. I do not care if I die tomorrow, I would have that now.”

  It was her turn to stop his words with a kiss. “There will be no talk of death in our marriage bed, my lord. No talk of leaving.”

  “You are right, my lady. There should be only love between us now.”

  She stroked him more firmly. “Now, Coryn, come to me now. I need you. All of you.”

  He was glad enough to obey her wishes before his body betrayed them. While that might not have been the longest lovemaking of his life, it was the most thrilling, the most complete, the most earthshaking.

  “I never knew…,” she began when he rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of his chest.

  But the earth shook again before she could complete the sentence.

  Then Olive cawed.

  Genie tried to make out the words. “He is afraid of something.”

  “No, he is saying ‘Ar, Frieda,’ not ‘afraid.’” Coryn jumped to his feet to see the crazy woman atop the wall of rubble, hurling rocks down on them.

  “Get down, you fool,” he shouted. “That whole pile will collapse.”

  “And bury you! The same way it buried my future, my life! Your stones did it, and your family never noticed. My father should have been lord of the Keep, not yours, who never came home. My family took care of the Keep for all these years. You cared for nothing! Now you come here with your doxy and desecrate the very ground.”

  Ardeth started to roar out a reply, but a boulder under the lunatic’s feet was dislodged. It came tumbling down, stirring the smaller rocks beneath. Ardeth threw himself on top of Genie, protecting her, as he felt the stones bounce and fall, striking his bare back, the ground, and Genie.

  “No!” He yelled, shoving rocks away from her. Blood was everywhere, his or hers, he could not tell. As soon as the rocks stopped falling, he gathered her limp body in his cape, in his arms. “Genie, talk to me, dear heart.” He brushed back the short curls and saw most of the blood was flowing from a gash on her forehead, right near the temple. “Oh, God, no!” He told himself that head wounds bled copiously. They were often not as bad as they looked. He grabbed for his discarded neckcloth to blot at the wound, unmindful of his own nakedness, his own injuries.

  Then he saw the light, that telltale, unmistakable light, and cried out again, this time in anguish.

  The cloaked figure appeared, as if from the dust of the stones, hourglass in hand.

  “No, you cannot take her,” Ardeth yelled. “Take me instead!” He pressed Genie against him, as if to hide her.

  The voice that whispered through his mind sounded disappointed: “You know it does not work that way, Ar.”

  “But I have two months left!” Two months to heal Genie and give her a new life to carry. “I cannot go yet!”

  “I am not here for you or your wife. It is the madwoman whose time has come.”

  Ardeth looked around. Now that the dust had settled he could see that the last remaining wall of the old fortress had fallen, burying Spotford’s sister under it. This time there would be no rescue.

  This was not Genie’s time. He could breathe again. Ardeth neither put her down nor relaxed his grip on her, but he did stare at the cowled figure. He could not recognize the physical form, which seemed larger than most of his former associates’. But the voice, that murmur in his mind, seemed familiar.

  “Do I know you?”

  “You ought. You are one of the few who ever cheated Death, you know.”

  Himself? Ardeth almost dropped Genie after all. “I—”

  “You cheated and lied and swindled your way back here. You broke every rule, Ar. You took every advantage of your position.”

  Ardeth could not protest his innocence, not when the evidence against him was in his arms.

  “You even gambled with the Devil, my my.”

  Ardeth waited for the thunder to roll and the lightning to come, striking him dead. Instead, he heard, “Good job, Coryn of Ardsley. Well done. Do not tell any of the others, but it was high time Old Nick met his match.”

  “Then you are not going to take me back?”

  “A rogue like you? I should say not. Besides, you won your wager. Today you are a man, if that is what you want.”

  Ardeth looked down at Genie, still unconscious in his arms. “It is.”

  “Then so you shall remain until your sand runs out. I so decree. Of course you will not remember any of this, but I will.”

  He reached out an invisible hand to lay on Ardeth’s forehead, but Ardeth stepped back. “What about the hourglass? I never found it.”

  The cloaked figure moved his hand to Genie’s wound, which stopped bleeding. The edges of the wound closed up, with no stitches, no bandages, no sticking plasters. “I’m afraid it will leave a scar.”

  Ardeth wiped the dried blood away, using his neckcloth and his tears. Under the curls, over a swollen spot, was an X, with both the top and bottom closed in. An hourglass. “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome. People so seldom thank the Grim Reaper, you know. It was my pleasure. But you can do me a favor. I’d appreciate the Devil’s good-luck charm. One never knows when one might need to strike a bargain with Old Nick.”

  Ardeth found the bone in his pocket and tossed it into the air. It disappeared, along with all of his memories of another life.

  Genie groaned right then, even as he heard Mr. Spotford shouting for more help, other men running, calling for horses and ropes.

  She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “You are here, after all. I dreamed you had left.”

  “Of course I am here. I would never leave you, sweetings.”

  “Never?” She touched his cheek, staring into his eyes, looking for the truth.

  “Never, I swear. Why would I go anywhere without my love, my heart, my soul? Till Death do us part, remember?”

  EPILOGUE

  Death ignored the crow. Without instructions, Olive figured he’d live as long as Ar. And if not, the earl’s children and Olive’s nestlings would grow old together, generation after generation. Olive would teach the chicks how to talk, and how to watch out for the children of the man who had pulled a g
remlin from Hell. Yes, that would make a good bedtime story.

  Oh, and he would teach them about love, too.

  “Alive! Alive! I love. I love.”