“I did not know such pleasure was possible,” she whispered as he played her as masterfully as she did the piano keys. “Will you visit me often so you can teach me more?”
“I doubt I will return,” he said without regret. “I will show you my home, instead.”
Chantal knew her tasks and her life were here in France, and disappointment washed over her, but she wouldn’t let tomorrow ruin the moment. “Perhaps someday,” she agreed, so he would not stop his caresses.
He pushed deeper inside her. “Soon,” he warned, “you will have no choice. But it will not be bad if we have this.”
The stars sparkled inside her again, and she was well beyond arguing. Convulsing in his hands, she took his seed and let pleasure seal the bond between them.
Perhaps, when he was gone, now that she knew what pleasure was, she would find another lover.
“You can’t. You are mine for eternity,” Ian’s voice murmured seductively as he pulled her into his arms with her last shudder of climax.
As if he could read her mind! Chuckling softly, she snuggled against his shoulder while the water lapped between them, soothing the pain of hearing him admit that he would soon be gone, never to return.
Thirteen
Striding across a field to reach her father’s stable, Chantal felt decidedly odd after experiencing an awe-inspiring night of lovemaking in a bath and still waking alone. She decided to approach this day’s tasks with more caution. That she still longed for Ian’s company when her physical needs ought to be satisfied told her she was becoming much too attached, too quickly, to a man who had said he would not stay.
The promised expedition to the country should have provided the distance she needed, but her tight satin jacket chafed at her aroused nipples, reminding her of the previous night. She firmly diverted her attention by seeking the right horse to safely spirit her brother-in-law from France. She refused to be distracted by the barbarian striding swiftly ahead of her — instead of offering his arms to assist her and Pauline across the manure-strewn pasture.
“Your father is generous in offering Pierre one of his horses,” Pauline said, regret tinting her gratitude. She stepped delicately through the grass with her skirts lifted and her eyes on the ground. “I only wish he need not leave at all. I am losing everything that is familiar to me.”
Chantal swept Marie off her feet before the little girl could explore a particularly ripe horse patty. “We must learn to adapt to survive,” she declared bravely, mouthing phrases she knew were true but with which she did not feel comfortable. “We have dallied too long in a past that no longer suits the present.”
“Change comes too fast,” Pauline protested.
Watching Ian striding confidently toward some goal she could not detect, Chantal had to agree with Pauline’s sentiment. The revolutionary transition from abstinent widow to sexual playmate had certainly left her off balance.
Ian had left his monk’s robe on the farm cart they’d taken for this visit outside the city. A breeze indecently plastered his shirt linen to his powerful torso. Despite the strength in his square shoulders, he was more lean hipped and sinewy than broad. He moved with the agility and grace of the thoroughbred that had caught his fascination.
“Does your friend know horses well?” Pauline asked, also watching Ian’s eager step. “Pierre is not a good horseman. He needs a gentle pony, not one of those great beasts.”
“As far as I’m aware, Ian does not know horses at all.” Chantal watched in puzzlement as her lover leaned on the paddock fence to survey the mares, then turned his head as if listening to a distant call. Bypassing the docile animals, he headed for a fenced area past the stable.
Still holding Marie, Chantal bit back a squeal of fright as she recognized Ian’s destination — at the same moment that Papa’s stallion caught wind of an intruder.
Muttering an oath, she handed Marie to Pauline, then lifted her skirt to race across the grass toward the fence Ian was vaulting with the ease of an athlete. “No, Ian! Not that one! He’s mean.” Worse than mean. Just last year, the stud had trampled a jockey.
Ian didn’t appear to hear her.
“Ian, wait!” she cried.
He didn’t even turn around to see what she wanted, drat the man. She had spent her life among musicians, courtiers, and gentlemen. She had no experience with uninhibited beasts who did not believe the rules of society applied to them.
“Ian!” she screamed as the distant stallion angrily tossed its head and flared its nostrils.
Seemingly blind to the danger, Ian still didn’t turn around.
She had no one to call on to help. Pauline was wisely hustling the children into the stable. They’d left Pierre in Paris. The stable boys seldom appeared except at feeding time.
At Ian’s continued advance, the stallion reared, whinnying his displeasure. A descendant of England’s champion Matchem, the thoroughbred was no mere Arabian, but a powerful animal bred for strength and stamina.
“Ian, no! Stop!” The gate was too far away. She clambered on a fence rail, tugging her skirt and petticoat to an indecent height so she could sit on the top rail and swing her legs over.
The stallion offered another loud challenge, then broke into a trot — straight toward Ian.
Perhaps, if she could run along the fence, she could distract the animal —
The stallion charged into a gallop. Ian halted in the center of the pasture — too far for Chantal to prevent disaster. She covered her mouth to keep from screaming her horror and prayed frantically as her feet touched the ground inside the fence. Maybe if she distracted the stallion quickly enough, he wouldn’t have time to trample Ian into a bloody pulp.
The idiot man didn’t even see the danger when the horse was almost on top of him. He stood still, as if wanting to be run over. Terrified, Chantal couldn’t bear to stay sensibly near the fence. She ran toward him, screaming bloody murder, hoping to terrorize the animal into changing course.
She stumbled and almost fell on her face when the stallion pranced to a sudden halt and nudged Ian’s shoulder with his muzzle, for all the world like a friendly puppy looking for treats.
Heart pounding so hard it left her light-headed, Chantal watched the amazing, terrifying, beyond-annoying man scratch the stallion’s nose and rub behind its ear as if he didn’t recognize a miracle when he saw one. Uncaring of her fragile muslin, she sat down in the grass and bent her forehead to her knees while she learned to breathe again.
Ian was so much a part of her that she felt as if she would have died if he had.
She vowed to make him pay for that. She’d been perfectly content living without the responsibility for anyone but herself….
At the sound of pounding hooves, she jerked her head up.
With only a bridle to control the temperamental animal, Ian had gained the horse’s back and was racing across the field straight toward the fence on the far side. And he’d said he didn’t know horses!
She couldn’t endure any more terror. Her stomach clenched, and she squeezed her eyes shut as the stallion’s muscles bunched. He will break his neck taking that jump.
She waited for screams of agony. Instead, she heard only the sound of hooves racing away, and she looked up again. Horse and rider rode merrily across the next pasture without any evidence of disaster. A man who had never ridden a horse could not instantaneously ride like an experienced cavalry officer. If the wretched man had lied about his knowledge of horses, what else had he lied to her about?
She hummed in growing fury, stood, and shook out her skirts. So much for trusting her instincts. She could have been making love to an assassin, for all she knew.
* * *
Meshing his mind with the magnificent animal’s, Ian stretched out and let his muscles move in tandem with his mount’s. The wind tore through his hair, and he was riding the universe in a manner that exceeded even that of his exercises with his staff under the night sky.
Why had no one ever told him of t
his astounding animal? Had Sky Riders in ancient times been denied this powerful instrument of knowledge? To what purpose?
The forward rush of motion focused all the fragments of his thoughts, impressions, and instincts into a steady stream of visions clearer than any he’d ever known. The images hit him one after another with the power of terror and fury.
Despite his joy in his newfound skill, Ian suffered gut-wrenching horror as his mind’s eye collected pictures of human heads rolling into a basket, beautiful women reduced to rags and shame and dragged in carts through jeering mobs, cities burning, armies marching —
And Murdoch there, in the center of it all.
Gagging on his nausea, Ian shut down his senses before the psychic violence destroyed him. Closing his eyes and taking deep breaths, he rubbed the stallion’s proud neck, whispered in his ear, and slowed him to a cooling trot. Still linked muscle to muscle with the horse’s motion, he let his head clear slowly, gradually coming back from the heavens and taking in his surroundings.
Somewhere in their mad race, they’d jumped the fence and left the stable far behind.
Chantal! She’d been terrified. Enrapt in fascination with the stallion’s mind, Ian had ignored her foolish fears, just as she would ignore him if he tried to tell her of his vision — and his terror that she would one day be one of the women in a cart, rolling to her doom. The sky was red with blood that would soon rain down on all of France.
Stomach roiling, he asked his mount to turn home, promising rich feed and much gratitude in return. The animal shook its mighty head, enjoying the wind in its mane, but obediently he broke into a canter in the direction from which they’d come.
Ian mentally reexamined his fleeting visions. The horse’s steady pace eased the task, but not the pain, of revisiting the violence.
By the time the stable came into view, Ian knew that Murdoch, the king, and the chalice were all intertwined. He was on the right course. He just hadn’t planned far enough ahead. He needed to save the king and the chalice from treachery, then capture Murdoch and return to Aelynn before true revolution erupted.
He needed Chantal to go with him, sooner and not later.
He was prepared to die in his effort to stop Murdoch, if Murdoch’s ambition was to control France with the aid of the chalice. He could not allow an Aelynner to wreak any part of the violence he’d just Seen. But he refused to leave Chantal alone and helpless in the terror to come. Which meant he needed to change his plans and transport her and the chalice safely from Paris before he went after Murdoch.
She wouldn’t want to go. That knowledge gnawed at his innards.
The party of women and children sat in the cart, eating the picnic lunch they’d brought with them. Ian would think it a cheerful domestic scene if he did not recognize his amacara’s rigid posture. Even from this distance, he could tell she was frightened and furious.
He’d known that taking a mate at a dangerous time like this was a risk, but not taking her would have been equally risky and decidedly less pleasant. At least, knowing she was angry with him, he wasn’t riding around in a state of unrequited arousal. When she thought about their lovemaking, he knew it, and his body responded accordingly.
The amacara ties were already binding them, despite their unorthodox vows. He did not dare explain to Chantal that if she thought lustful thoughts, he would respond in kind. And vice versa. She had too much control over him as it was, and he needed to act on his own for now.
He supposed he ought to be grateful that she had yet to conceive his child, but the failure nagged at him. If only he’d been able to find that blasted mark, he could be convinced that she had a talent of great worth to Aelynn, and he might understand the motive of the gods. But the candles had guttered out before they’d left the bath, and he’d been too besotted to examine her when she’d tugged her sheets tightly to her chin and fallen fast asleep. He’d have to be a brute to wake her by lighting lamps. Besides, his decision was already made. The mark wouldn’t change it. Perhaps the gods meant for them to conceive on Aelynn, where Olympian spirits waited. Taking Chantal to Aelynn complicated his life beyond measure, but he needed to do it.
He slid off the stallion and walked it around the paddock, delaying the moment when he must face Chantal’s ire. When a stable boy finally arrived, Ian handed over a coin, and translating the images in the animal’s mind, he asked for the best oats and some carrots.
Then, unable to dally longer, he approached the cart.
“Did you have a pleasant gallop, monsieur?” Chantal called sweetly. “I had no idea you were such an accomplished rider. Do you practice on racing dragons in your country since you don’t have horses?”
Ian uttered impolite oaths under his breath as he rested his boot on the cart step and reached for the hunk of bread the little boy offered. He had no way of telling her about Aelynn or his mental skills until she wore his ring. “I have never before encountered such an intelligent animal,” he said truthfully, avoiding a direct answer.
“Or a better-behaved one. Tell me, do all creatures do as you ask?”
He didn’t have to read her mind to know that dart had two prongs. Even the old mule stirred restively at her pointed barb.
“Some creatures are more contrary than others. Usually the more intelligent ones,” he admitted, tearing off a hunk of bread with his teeth.
At home, he was a peacemaker. Here, he was a roil of turbulent emotions he had little experience handling.
“Intelligent creatures with minds of their own,” she agreed, maintaining her sweet accents so as not to disturb the children, although Pauline looked at her oddly and the mule shook his head. “It must be difficult dealing with contrary minds that disagree with your omniscience.”
Ian wondered what would happen if she learned how her voice affected others and deliberately directed her ire in his direction. He expected it would be painful.
“If I knew all,” he replied, “I wouldn’t be here trying to find the best solution to our mutual problems. I’m always open to suggestion.” Well, perhaps not always. He’d ignored her fears of the horse. And he had no intention of leaving her in Paris. So perhaps she had some right to complain. Eventually, she’d understand that he knew best.
“Then I suggest, in your omniscience, that you choose a steady mare for Pierre so he can leave. Papa is obtaining his passport as we speak.”
After the visions he’d seen today, he’d changed his mind about the plans they had made last night. They needed to be modified.
“I don’t think the documents will be sufficient to see him safely from the country,” Ian declared, reaching for the cheese and a cup of wine that Pauline handed him. He was always starving after he’d had a vision. “I have been listening, and security between here and the north has tightened. The soldiers fear invasion and are wary of spies.”
“You mean, they are afraid the king will escape,” Pauline said with bitterness.
“That, too.” It took more time to plot his actions than to process his visions. He had to think quickly on how best to accomplish everything at once. “A lone man on a rich horse that he rides badly would arouse suspicion. A cart or carriage carrying women and children going to a wedding would pass more freely.”
Chantal glared as if she saw inside his head.
Fortunately for all concerned, she could not.
“You want us to go with Pierre?” Pauline asked in dismay.
“For your king and country, I think that wisest,” he agreed without inflection, hoping Pauline understood.
She did, and her expression grew thoughtful. Von Fersen had set the escape for tomorrow night, with the light of the full moon to guide them. It would be a matter of coordinating the escape of Pauline and the children instead of just Pierre — and without their being aware of the king’s escape, persuading Chantal and her father to accompany them. Even without his premonitions, Ian could see that Alain Orateur would be murdered within months if he stayed, and that Chantal would never le
ave without him.
That, he could not allow.
Fourteen
“Non, non! This is inexcusable,” Pierre protested, pacing the music room, where they had gathered that evening. “I cannot endanger my sister and the little ones with this reckless plan.”
Chantal thoroughly approved of her brother-in-law’s wisdom in this matter, even if she questioned his wisdom in his choice of loyalty to the church instead of king and country. He, at least, saw the fallacy of involving the innocent in his escape.
“I will not be talked out of it,” Pauline insisted. “We will go with you wherever you choose to go. Paris is no longer the home we once knew.”
Chantal tapped her friend’s tones out on the piano keys and knew she was speaking falsehoods. But what was Pauline hiding with her brave words? Fear? That was very likely. But there was more than fear in her voice. What had happened to the flitting butterfly of society that Pauline once was? She’d had reason to change, Chantal supposed. With most of the French nobility, and even the king’s brother, gone across the borders to the safety of the Hapsburg courts, society was not what it had been. And Pauline was not cut out for revolutionary thoughts.
Perhaps her friend would be happier with the exiled court. Chantal wanted to weep at the thought of letting her and the children go, but she had no right to prevent Pauline’s happiness to aid her own. She could only hope the separation would be short.
“I have reason to believe the countryman I seek is traveling north,” Ian said from across the room.
He’d physically removed himself from the family discussion by setting up a chess game on the far side of the salon and playing against himself, but he’d obviously been listening.
Chantal sat at the piano to avoid looking at him, but she was intensely aware of his presence just the same. Even though he was quiet and appeared scholarly, Ian was not the kind of man one could easily dismiss from one’s mind. Sometimes, she thought she felt the vibration of his enormous energy from across the room.
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