Lifting the roots aside, he lighted another candle he took from a crevasse in the rocks. They passed through three more caves, climbing over rubble and past twisted roots that had come through the earth from above, perhaps over hundreds of years. Finally, she saw a gleam of light and smelled fresh air.
They were high above the river, but under an overhang. One needed to squeeze between two boulders to see the water.
“Oh my,” she said softly. “This is where you were swimming that first night.”
“Aye.” He set his hands on her shoulders and pointed. “There’s a shallow spot there, a place where the water is still.”
They stood together, looking up at the moon. Its light bathed his upturned face. She was struck again by the certainty he was not of peasant stock.
He led her back through the maze of caves to the brilliantly tiled chamber. This time, he walked her about the perimeter, his candle held aloft, and she gasped with wonder at the lovely mosaic work that allowed the room to feel like a woodland bower.
They stood before a simple altar. There were many candles on it, and he lighted them all. Many were candles marked to tell the passage of time. Who had placed them here?
When the chamber was ablaze, she gazed up at a very realistic-looking, and very naked, woman whose hand was on the shoulder of a bowing stag.
It was the Roman goddess, Diana.
“Does she not look like you?” he asked. “It is how I see you. You are my Diana, my huntress.”
He stood but a few feet behind her. As he spoke, he took her candle.
“Your huntress?” she whispered, though no mortal man could hear them.
“Aye.” He pulled his mantle from her shoulders and spread it on the floor in the very center of the chamber. “It was your skill with the hunting hounds that saved my life the first day we met.”
He undid his cross-garters. She put a hand to her heart. It beat so rapidly, she thought it might leap from her chest.
Next, he drew off his tunic and the long linen shirt he wore beneath it. She took a closer look at Diana so she could not see him strip off the rest of his garments.
The candles sent wisps of smoke to the high blue ceiling. Joan remembered that smoke was supposed to carry the prayers of the faithful to heaven. She sent a prayer to the pagan Diana that she was not making a mistake trusting this man.
And if it was a mistake? Why did she not flee down the corridor and avoid these gut-twisting decisions?
Because she wanted to join him on his mantle and know the touch of his hand again and the taste of his mouth.
“Come lie with me,” he said.
She knew what she would see when she turned around, but the sight of him standing in the center of the chamber, his body lighted by the blaze of candles, was magnificent.
He looked like a statue carved in marble, every muscle delineated by light and shadow. He wanted her.
She drew off her loose overgown and let it fall from her fingers to the floor. Her undergown and shift followed.
“Let down your hair,” he said.
She did as bid. Her hair felt like silk as it slid down her back to brush her buttocks. Never had she been so aware of herself as she was in that moment, the cool air on her skin, the sound of her breathing, the scents of her body.
Anticipation of his touch puckered her nipples and sent moisture to flood her insides. She understood its purpose now.
She stepped on the mantle. The fur lining caressed the soles of her feet.
He settled his warm hands on her hips. “My Diana.”
“And who are you?”
Adam wondered how he should answer her question. I am Adam Quintin, a member of a company of men you hate. Or I am Adrian de Marle, son of a banished baron. Making love to her felt dishonest under either name.
He cocked his head and looked over at the mosaic. “I must be the stag, for it is only he with whom Diana has spent the centuries.”
“And the stag bows down to the goddess,” Joan said.
Molten heat cascaded through his body as he knelt before her. He pressed his lips to the soft skin of her belly.
She stroked his hair from his brow, and as he made the kiss more intimate, her hips shifted—not away, but closer.
Kneeling as he was before her, aware of her near innocence and how different she was from every woman he’d ever met, he knew he would not trade all the silver pennies in his coffers for this one moment with her, this tiny sliver of time, when he knew by taste, touch, and scent that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
Joan stood with her fingers entwined in Adam’s hair and gasped for air, air scented by the dust of the ages and the heat of their arousal. The touch of his fingertips, his lips, his tongue, drove sense away. She wanted more.
When he urged her down on the mantle, she went willingly.
He entered her. She moved with him as if they had been partners for as many centuries as this chamber had lain hidden.
She kissed his throat, now slick with the sweat of his passion, and then sealed her mouth over his to possess every essence of him from the salty moisture to the very breath of his lungs.
Then, as the stag stands poised before the hunter, he fell still as stone. And like the stag who makes a final leap, the hard muscles of his back, thighs, and arms tensed for the last, deep thrust.
She imagined she could feel every scalding drop of his seed as it flowed into her.
It was not imagination that her body screamed for a repeat of the rippling sensations she had experienced that morning. She thought that like a hunter who has missed the stag with his final arrow, she might cry aloud for wanting it.
He must have heard her silent plea or known all too well a woman’s needs. He kissed down the length of her body. He kissed the inside of her knee, and brushed his lips up and down the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. Again and again.
Her body went taut as a drawn bowstring. She arched and moaned—made sounds she could not restrain.
He licked up her inner thigh. She blindly opened to him and accepted the intimate tasting.
He knew how to draw the bowstring so it must break. He did it with his lips, tongue, and teeth. Though she fought it, sensations whipped her like a severed string might lash whatever lay in its path.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Adam stood at the altar and looked from the cold Diana to the warm woman who lay on his mantle, her limbs sprawled, gaze fixed on the blue tiled ceiling. A sense of modesty must have overcome her, for she suddenly drew in her arms and legs and rose.
She was shaky on her legs like a new fawn as she walked around the chamber. She plaited her hair, aware of his gaze on her, he thought, for she hunched her shoulders a bit, protecting her nudity from his view.
Adam went to the mantle and sat down. He could feel the warmth of her body on the soft fur. He looped his arms about his knees and pleasured himself with the look of her, from her slender, delicate ankles, up the slim column of her spine, buttocks still rosy from his hands. His cock stirred again.
When she turned, he was struck, not by her full breasts with their dusky tips, but instead with the glimmer of the candle flames in her eyes.
“Can you see in the dark?” he asked. “If I snuff these candles, can you see like the deer can at night as it ranges the hills? Would you find me if ‘twas dark?”
His heart beat faster when she walked slowly along the altar, a small smile curving her lips. At each candle, she licked her fingertips, then pinched out the flame. One by one.
Then it was dark—as black as if someone had drawn a mask over his head. His blood rushed so fast in his veins he could not hear her steps.
He stood up. “Where are you?” he asked.
“Find me,” she whispered from the left. He whipped around and put out his hand, but found nothing.
A tiny sound made him turn again, to the right this time. He slid his foot forward to the edge of the mantle and stretched out his arms. “Come. Do not play.”
<
br /> She gave a low, soft laugh. It seemed to come from in front of him so he slid forward again, hands searching the air.
“Joan.”
“Adam.” His name came as if from the lips of a phantom. It came from behind him and in front of him at the same time. She had spoken only as loudly as necessary to cause an echo.
He turned. And turned again. His flesh was hot. Arousal surged through him with such intensity, he grew hard enough to come apart without even a touch. Sweat broke out on his back, chest, and thighs. The soles of his feet grew slick, as did his palms.
She set her hands on his hips from behind. The intense arousal grew to almost painful proportions.
He realized he could smell her—musk and outdoors, heat and his seed. She stroked her fingers up and down his hips, skimmed his thighs, his buttocks. His eyes were wide open, but he saw nothing. He could only feel, breathe deeply, accept her caresses.
She stepped up against him, touching him with the tips of her breasts, the down of her womanly hair. Her mouth was warm and moist as she kissed his back. Then she was gone.
Loss rippled through him. His body throbbed for an ending.
“Joan.” He said her name sharply. “Where are you?”
“Find me.”
He whipped to her voice, took a quick step, and touched naught but air.
She laughed—not with the giggle of a Lady Mathilda, but with a low, seductive sound of joy.
This time, he closed his eyes and remembered how he had shot the arrow whilst blindfolded. And so, he smiled to himself as he envisioned his huntress walking naked in a forest meadow, seeking the stag who would come to her call.
He envisioned the shape of her, the gold-brown tumble of her hair, and when the air stirred he put out his arm and she was there. He encircled her waist, drew her in, her back to him.
How perfectly they fit.
When he opened his eyes, he still saw nothing, but every other sense had ripened to her.
“I am Diana’s stag,” he whispered at her ear, spreading his hands on her hips as she had on him. Her bones were delicate, her skin warm.
He urged her down to her knees. In his head, he was the stag and she the one he’d chosen for his mate.
He took her as the stag would his woodland lover.
She moaned his name and within moments he was overcome as she met each of his thrusts with one of her own.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Will your father be looking for you?” he asked.
Joan shook her head. “Nat���s wonderfully delicate in his sensibilities and would never look in my chamber after I retire. He might say my name, and if I did not answer, he would not know whether I was missing or merely asleep. And he would not seek the answer.”
“Good for me.” He kissed her brow.
“I hear a river rushing, but I think ‘tis only the blood in my head.”
“Can you hear my heart beating?”
They lay entwined on his mantle in the darkness. She placed her hand on his chest. “I can feel it.”
She climbed astride his body, settled herself on him, and smiled when he groaned. With a shake of her head, she spread her hair out. Then she took up a handful of it and rubbed it across his chest.
“Joan.” He said her name with a quick, sharp gasp.
They bumped noses when he raised his head at the same time she bent to kiss him. Her laughter and his mingled in the chamber and bounced around them.
He fell still, but his muscles were tense as she stroked her hair back and forth over his nipples. He began to breathe quickly when she ran her hair over his belly to his groin.
It was a heady feeling, Joan realized, controlling a man’s pleasure. She licked his skin after her caresses. She tongued his nipples. His throat. His ribs. His belly.
“Mon Dieu,” he whispered. His fingers were gentle as they smoothed the hair on her head in a rhythm that matched the strokes of her tongue.
The black chamber broke down restraints she might have felt if he were watching. She kneaded every sensitive inch of him, tasted him, whispered her breath on him as her tongue brought him to the edge of the madness that coursed through her veins.
And she knew he felt as she did, for he moaned with every slide of her tongue and the sound echoed around them.
Adam could not hold the moans inside. He moaned again and again and again until the sound had no end and no beginning.
Joan pulled away. Icy air ran over his skin.
“Joan. Sweet heaven, where are you? Come back.” He put his arms out in search of her.
She must have felt the shift in the air. “Put your hands down, Adam. I’m still here.”
“Why did you stop?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Joan?” He knew just where she was by her voice and the heat of her. He swallowed her up in an embrace. Unerringly, he found her lips, kissing her gently, but holding her so tightly she couldn’t shift an inch and avoid his questions.
“You are thinking something and it made you wary of me again,” he said.
“Not this time. I thought only how kissing you…that way, made me feel frantic. Here.” She took his hand and pressed it to her belly.
He slid his fingers lower. “No more frantic than it made me.”
They knelt knee to knee, every inch of their bodies touching as they had their first moment together, in the lodge.
“Pretend we have never met,” she said, covering his hand. “Pretend you do not want Ravenswood and I am not a servant. Pretend you’ll not hurt me.”
Adam swallowed hard; his throat filled with a lump. “Is that how you feel when you are with me? My inferior? You did once kiss me on the lips before any who might have been in the bailey. Did you not think yourself my equal that day?”
“‘Twas a mad impulse. I forgot myself. I cannot do so again. Now, hush, and indulge me. Forget who we are. Let me forget who I am.”
“You are not a servant in my eyes.”
“I am a servant to Lady Mathilda.”
“But you are not to me.” He pulled his hand free.
“Just for this night, Adam. Indulge me. Now, when you cannot see me and I might be…a lady of the king’s court. Perhaps even…a Mathilda…so lovely every man wants her. Forget that my hands are not very soft and my skin not perfect.”
How could he convince her she had naught to fear from Mathilda? “Joan—”
She placed her hand over his lips; his words died in his throat. If it was silence she wanted, then that is what she would get.
He gathered her supple body into his arms and bore her to the floor. He kissed her eyelids, lingered on the cheeks she disdained, paid homage to the golden dusting of marks he could not see, but found he already knew by heart.
As he ran his fingertips after his lips, he thought he must tell her how foolish she was the instant they stood in sunlight—so she could watch his face and know he told the truth.
Her hips lifted against him, her thighs opened. He slid into her with ease for she was slick with his seed.
In the complete dark, he felt things he’d never felt before—how her muscles tensed on him, how her thighs quivered with each shift of his body.
He used her moans to guide him, to tell him when to move more gently—or press harder, or deeper.
“I must end, my love,” he said. He hardly recognized the hoarse voice that issued from him. “Forgive me. I must.”
She turned her head, holding him as he heaved through his release. He buried his moans against her neck. Then he felt her answering tremors, the quick churn of her hips, the breathy gasps against his temple.
And he tasted the salt of her tears.
Then it was done. She moved away and he heard her fumbling for her clothing. He reached out and grabbed for her hands, missing, then grasping her wrists. With a quick jerk, he held her still. He conjured her face and stared where he imagined her eyes to be, looking into their depths to understand her. “Why did you weep?”
“I did not,” she said.
“Let me light a candle so I may see the lie in your eyes.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“I tasted the salt of your tears. Does our lovemaking bring you grief?”
“Nay.” She touched his lips with her fingers. “Rest easy. It brings me joy, naught but joy. I was overcome; that is all. It is a womanly thing, I believe, weeping for joy.”
She shivered.
“You’re cold.”
“Aye. Allow me to dress.”
She shifted from his arms, and he felt rather than saw her draw on a cloak of distance along with her clothing. With a sigh, he searched cautiously across the chamber to the altar and struck the flint to light a candle. The one small halo of golden light fell across Diana.
“This is you,” he said. “You are the huntress and I am surely the stag who pays homage.” He found his clothing and pulled it on. “You know that you are probably with child.”
“Or will be,” she said softly.
He handed her a candle and wondered what she thought inside. Her expression was as shuttered as Richard’s lodge windows had been. “I will see to you and the child. You have my oath on it,” he said.
Her hair was a wild tangle of gold and brown. It cascaded across her shoulders and breast. While she plaited her hair, he examined her face. Suddenly, he saw doubt and mayhap fear in her gentle eyes. He put out his hand and smoothed a few strands of hair from her brow. “And if it is a daughter, shall we name her Diana?”
* * * * *
Joan chose to leave the Roman chamber by the river way. If Nat was out and about this early, and found her, he would only see her come from the fields outside the castle, and she could say she had been searching for Basil.
How quickly the lie came to her.
Adam had taken the way through the crypt. As Joan stood on the river’s edge, by the spot where Adam had gone swimming the first night, she looked up at the great towers of Ravenswood, now clear in the dawning light.
One of the reasons the Roman entrance was so hidden was the way the towers and walls were situated. Here, at this point where even the river’s flow was sluggish, no one on the wall or in the towers could see her.
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