by Speer, Flora
When she again became aware of her surroundings, Theu was stroking her breasts, which were still covered by her bra, for he had not given her time to remove it.
“This gossamer fabric is like cobwebs,” he whispered, setting his tongue against one nipple. India squirmed in pleasure. Seeing her reaction, he transferred his attention to her other breast.
“This can’t be happening again,” she moaned. “Not so soon.”
“Why not, if we want it to happen? I wish we had loved more often. It’s my only regret about our time together. So many days I have ridden southward with you, watching you while my desire for you grew and grew, wondering if we would come together again or if you would disappear forever. Now we have so little time left before I have to leave you. For this afternoon we will enjoy each other without waiting, and without concern for how often. Nor will I ever repent what we do. I love you too well to feel guilt.”
“In that case …” Boldly she touched him, delighting in his immediate response and in the pleasure he displayed at her actions.
“You are like wine in my veins,” he said. “I am drunk on you. I reel with happiness each time you accept me into your lovely body. But I would not have you think I am only a rough warrior. I can be gentle.”
“I have no objection to your fierceness,” she murmured, acknowledging a renewed sensation of aching emptiness as his hands and his mouth began to arouse her to fever pitch. She reciprocated his every caress, growing more and more shameless in what she did to him, until he begged her to stop lest he lose all control. Obeying his harsh whisper, she lay back on his cloak and let him do with her what he would.
She thought he would never stop stroking or kissing her, thought she would die of wanting him inside her, and believed he would burst from his need of her, before slowly, tenderly, he entered her once more. Then, with infinite care and patience, he showed her what his kind of gentleness meant, and she wept with the beauty of it and gave him all of her heart without reservation.
“I love you,” she whispered, tears upon her cheeks.
“I have longed to hear you say it,” he replied, “for though I once swore never to love again, you have conquered my heart. Know now the proof of my love.” His mouth covered hers, he moved still deeper into her, and together they dissolved into a long, breathless kiss.
“I will love you forever,” he whispered. “Forever.”
She lay beside him with the sun shining down upon them, a soft golden warmth on her closed lids. He was sleeping. She could hear his peaceful breathing. They had eaten and talked and slept. She knew he would waken soon and love her again.
She was completely relaxed, her body pleasured beyond anything she had imagined possible in her earlier life. The physical component of the love between herself and Theu was so strong and so explosive that at times it overwhelmed her. Yet even during the height of their passion there was always something more than the joining of two bodies. There was a spiritual joining, too, a combining of their souls and hearts in which each took what was needed, each gave completely to the other, and both emerged stronger and more firmly bound together. Fierce and gentle, valiant warrior and tender lover, staunch friend and loyal follower of his king, Theu was all she could ever want in a man. She felt him move beside her and knew he was watching her.
“Lying naked in the sun, you will burn your fair skin,” he warned.
“It’s your back that will be burned,” she teased, not opening her eyes just yet. “You have been sheltering me all afternoon.”
“I would shelter you for the rest of your life if I could.” His lips touched her eyelids, each in turn, then her cheeks, and finally her lips. She raised languid arms to encircle his shoulders, not because she feared he would draw away, for she knew he would not, but because she wanted to touch him, to caress and hold him, as evidence of her love.
“I will love you once more,” he whispered, nibbling at her earlobe, “and then we ought to leave. It will be dark before long, and the path down this hill will be difficult for the horses.”
“Does that mean you have brought other women here? Is that how you discovered the tricky path?”
“What an insult!” That he was not insulted at all she could tell from his laugh. In an abrupt movement, he broke from her embrace to straddle her, holding her wrists at either side of her head. He lowered himself slowly, trying to look angry and not succeeding because of the love in his eyes. “I rode this way yesterday, seeking a safe place to bring you. That is why I know the path.” His mouth was by now only a fraction of an inch away from hers.
“We do seem to spend a fair amount of time making love in the open air,” she said, longing for his kiss. Her lips parted, she looked straight into his silvery eyes.
“There is no place more private than the out-of-doors. I love to watch the sun on your face and your hair, and it turns your eyes to amber-gold. My love.” His lips touched hers lightly, stirring warmth and deep tenderness in her. Her mouth was still open, so his tongue slid into her, touching her own tongue with silky heat. Between them, where their bodies were pressed together, she felt his manhood surge into powerful hardness yet again. He laughed softly, the sound of strong, confident masculinity
“You have that effect on me,” he whispered.
“As you have on me, though it doesn’t show so obviously.”
“I can see it in your eyes. I always can.”
This was a long, slow, highly emotional, and ultimately tearful fusing of their separate beings into one, and when it was over she lay exhausted and trembling, still weeping, watching him dress and buckle on his ever-present sword.
“Come, India, we must go. The sun is near to setting.” The golden shafts of light illuminated his face, turning his skin to the marble translucence of a heroic statue, catching the moisture remaining on his own lashes and making them sparkle. She caught her breath at the beauty and the grandeur of the man she loved. “Come, my dear girl, my beloved woman. I don’t want to go, either, but I have obligations I cannot forget.”
She pulled on the tunic and trousers she had worn for so many days, and stamped her feet into her boots. While he went to release the horses from the tree where he had tied them, she shook out and refolded his cloak. Hearing him behind her, she turned to smile at him, standing with her back to the slowly setting sun. He dropped the horses’ reins and came toward her.
“The sun on your hair is like rosy gold,” he said. “How I love you.”
She leaned against him, wanting one last kiss before they ended the perfect afternoon.
His arm was about her waist when the peach-gold light surrounded them.
Chapter 18
“I got her!” Hank shouted. “Stand back, Willi. Here she comes!”
The light was so vivid that it made Willi shut her eyes, but she could still hear the machinery humming and throbbing.
“All right! Way to go!” But Hank’s cry of triumph was cut short. “Oh, my God! I got somebody else too!”
Willi’s eyes flew open again. There, still within the boundaries of the shining peach-gold globe of light, stood India, her hair oddly longer than it had been when Willi had seen her last just the day before, her tunic wrinkled, but she was alive and apparently healthy. Beside her was a man unlike any man Willi had ever seen before, a creature with such a hard toughness about him that Willi stopped her welcoming forward motion toward India and stood gaping as the man drew a gleaming sword and threatened Hank with it.
“Ahnk!”` the man shouted and launched into a long sentence Willi could not understand.
“Willi,” India cried, “Willi, I’m all right. Don’t worry—”
There was a roar from the computer, a vibration that rattled the office door, and India and the man with the sword vanished.
“No!” Now Willi did run forward, to pound on the computer in unbearable frustration before she turned on Hank. He backed away from her, looking frightened. Willi raised a fist at him. “Get her back!”
�
�I can’t. I keep blowing that damned – oh, what’s the use? You wouldn’t understand.” Hank ran a hand through his hair, leaving it more disheveled than it already was. His own frustration at the failure of his repeated efforts in India’s behalf boiled over into shrill anger with Willi as his target. “You, Wilhelmina, are overly emotional and intellectually incapable of comprehending the historic and technological significance of my work. I have single-handedly achieved a major breakthrough here.”
“Don’t go looking for a Nobel Prize,” she told him sourly, “because, come tomorrow morning, I’m going to see your job on the line unless you succeed in reversing your experiment.”
“If you would stop screeching at me like a banshee, maybe I could get some work done,” Hank shouted.
“I do not screech. I am a lady,” Willi said, lifting her chin and drawing herself up to her full height of five feet, three inches. “A gentleman told me so.”
“Ha! Not you,” Hank declared, still angry. “You are a witch, a shrew, a termagant, a pain in the neck, and just plain stupid, but never a lady. You are also interfering with my work.”
Willi never had a chance to tell Hank how unjust she thought his accusations were. Without even a knock this time, Professor Moore entered and bore down on Hank with a fearsome glare in his eyes and rage written all over his elderly face.
“Young Mr. Brant tells me you have a key to my department office,” the professor said. “Hand it over, Mr. Marsh.”
“I don’t know any Mr. Brant,” Hank declared.
“I believe you let him into my office earlier while I was not there.”
“Oh, him,” said Hank. “Who is he, anyway?”
“He is the younger brother of the gentleman who will replace me on January first,” Professor Moore responded. Putting out his hand, he added, “The key, if you please, Mr. Marsh.”
“Oh, all right.” Hank pulled out his key ring and began to search for the correct key.
“You have a remarkable collection there.” Professor Moore looked shocked. “Do you have a key for every door in this university?”
“Not quite.” Hank gave up the history department key. The professor frowned at it, then at him.
“I am sorry to have to say this, Mr. Marsh, but I am going to have to report you to the head of Campus Security first thing tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I want you out of this office.”
“This isn’t your department. You have no right,” Hank began.
“I have every right to stop dishonesty when I encounter it,” Professor Moore responded. “I assume the disreputable jacket on the floor is yours. Pick it up and leave at once.”
“Wait!” Willi cried. “Professor Moore, you don’t understand. Hank is in the middle of an important experiment. If he stops now, he will have to begin all over again, at the beginning, and that will cost the university a lot of money. Just let him stay here and finish what he started. It won’t take much longer.”
“It was my impression,” said the professor, “that you two were not working at all. You have been in here smooching, haven’t you?”
“Absolutely not,” Willi declared with great feeling. “I have no desire whatsoever to ‘smooch’ Hank, er, Mr. Marsh. I just want to help him finish his work successfully. Please, Professor Moore, it’s terribly important.”
“You do seem dedicated.” He appeared to be softening.
“I am,” Willi said, struggling against the panic she felt at the prospect of Hank being stopped before he could retrieve India. “Please, just give us until the university workday begins tomorrow morning.”
“I ought to save university funds whenever I can,” the professor said thoughtfully. “Very well, let the experiment continue.” He added, with a look at Willi, “I always did have a soft spot for a pretty girl.”
“Thank you,” Willi said. “You won’t be sorry.”
“I will still report Mr. Marsh in the morning. Now, are you certain Mrs. Baldwin will return today? She has been gone for a remarkably long time, and I do have that typing waiting for her. You haven’t said where she went.”
“I expect to see her back in this office any time now,” Willi assured him. “I will remind her about the typing.”
“Thank you.” With a last severe look at Hank, Professor Moore allowed Willi to see him out of the office.
“Okay, Hank,” Willi said, “you may think I’m stupid, but I just bought you all the additional time you are going to get. Start using it.”
But Hank was too upset to go back to the computer immediately.
“What are all these people doing, wandering around the building on the Sunday before Christmas?” he demanded in an offended voice. “First that Brant guy, now old Moore comes in here for the second time. Why don’t they stay home and decorate their trees? If I have one more interruption while I’m trying to think, I swear I’ll—”
“Mr. Marsh, is everything all right?” asked the janitor, opening the door and poking his head into the office. “You just blew another circuit down in the basement.”
“We’re fine. Just fix it – and fast,” said Willi, pushing the door shut again.
“-give up,” Hank finished, throwing his hands into the air in disgust.
“No, you will not. I won’t let you give up.” Knowing he needed encouragement, Willi faced him with a smile, trying her best to hide the cold anger she felt toward him. For India’s sake, she would be nice to Hank for a while longer. “You almost succeeded on this last try. You only need one more attempt, Hank. Just one more. Come on, you can do it. You know you can.”
Chapter 19
In a blast of peach-colored light, India and Theu stood once more upon a hillside near Agen. The first thing India became aware of after realizing where she was, was the sound of frightened horses. Dropping his sword and letting go of her, Theu leapt to the animals to catch their reins before they could bolt.
India watched him wrestling with the horses, unable to do anything to help him because she felt too slow-witted and clumsy to move. By the time Theu had tied the horses to a tree and returned to her, she was swaying on her feet.
“Sit down until you are steadier,” he ordered.
“No.” She leaned against him. “Don’t let me go. Hold me.” His arms were reassuring, providing stability and a measure of safety.
“Did it make you sick, too?” she asked.
“I was only dizzy for a moment,” he replied. “India, I saw your time. I caught a glimpse of the world in which you once lived. There was a room with pale walls and glowing white boxes.”
“That was Hank’s office.” She was feeling a little better with his arms around her.
“It was an ugly place,” he said. “Everything was smooth, with no decoration, and so little color.”
“Did you see my friend, Willi? She was there, too.”
“I saw a girl who looked like Bertille.” He took a deep breath. “I could never live in that world, India.”
“I know.” She burrowed into his chest, clinging to his strength. “I don’t think I could live there either now. Not after knowing you.”
They rode back to Agen in the way they had originally begun their travels together, with India seated in front of Theu on his horse. Her own horse was tied to Theu’s saddle and ambled along behind them. India lay against Theu’s chest, still feeling unsettled and ill after her brief trip to the twentieth century and back.
“Theu,” she said as they neared Agen, “let me go into Spain with you. Let me be with you for as long as I can.”
“It is impossible, and you know it.” His mouth was hard, and it seemed to her that her words had broken their earlier closeness, driving him away from her. “When I am on campaign, all my thoughts must be on my men and on the coming battles. Your presence would distract me from the things I have to do. Nor would I put you into the danger you would surely face along the way and when our battles are fought.”
“Please,” she begged, thinking with fear of their coming sepa
ration.
“I cannot allow it. Do not ask again.”
But she did ask again, not of Theu, who she knew would be immovable on the subject, but she could ask Marcion and she did, during her second evening spent with Charles and his family and friends.
It was a quieter night than the previous one. Hrulund, apparently preoccupied by thoughts of the march that was to begin on the morrow, and perhaps by thoughts of the hard days to come after the morrow, confined himself to only a few mild boasts and then sat talking with Autar and Turpin. Hildegarde was plainly unwell, but did her valiant best to appear cheerful before her husband and his companions. Around the reception room, friends gathered in small groups to say their farewells. Men and women stood together holding hands or arm-in-arm, and a few overwrought young girls burst into tears throughout the course of the evening. While Theu spoke to Charles, India sought out Marcion.
“I want to go, too,” she said. “I can ride well now, and I would find ways to be helpful.”
“Under no circumstances would Theu allow it,” Marcion replied with uncharacteristic seriousness. “You would only be in the way. We would have to worry about you, perhaps even rescue you from the Saracens. The conditions on the march and in our nightly camps would not be suitable for you. A woman does not belong in a military campaign.”
“In my country, women are soldiers, too,” she cried. “And what about the women who follow the army?”
“You are not one of them.” Marcion was horrified. “Do not bother Theu with this foolish plan. He would never agree to it. Let him think of you safe here, with the queen and the other ladies. Give him that peace of mind, so he can devote himself to warfare.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do.” His mood turning gentler, he became once more the friend she had known since Saxony. “You love him and you do not want to part from him. It’s natural enough. No one can blame you for what you are feeling, but give up this foolish idea. India, Lady Remilda has said that I may have a few moments alone with Bertille, and she is beckoning to me. I must leave you.”