“Don’t.” He scrambled gracefully to his feet, and the moment was broken.
He’d done that before, she remembered, that day at the Maid and Minion. She’d tried to touch him, and he’d flinched, and said...what?
“I am death. It is death to touch me.”
And death he had been, for that failed assassin.
Her eye fell to his torn sleeve, garnet velvet black with blood. Thankfully, the bleeding seemed to have slowed. But the sight of the injury restored her wits.
“Oh, for the love of Bride!” She leaped to her feet. “Why are ye tending me? Sit ye down, and I’ll bandage ye.”
“Bandage me?” For some reason, the notion seemed to alarm him. “I don’t need a bandage. See, the bleeding’s stopped.”
“Rubbish! Ye’ve lost a fair amount of blood. Do ye want to be fainting in the corridor? Sit down, I tell ye.”
He looked as though he wanted to keep protesting. Cautiously he perched on the very edge of the divan, wounded arm drawn protectively to his chest.
Linnet found warm water, some wine as an antiseptic and fresh linen for bandages, then paused to tug discreetly at her loosened bodice. She felt dangerously exposed, loose and immoral in this state of disarray, breasts rubbing against her linen smock.
The night’s exertions had wrought havoc on her unruly hair. It tumbled around her shoulders in a riot of mahogany ringlets. Smoothing it behind her ears, she sat carefully beside him, close but not touching.
“Now then,” she said briskly, “let’s have yer doublet.”
“Surely that isn’t necessary,” he murmured.
“Never tell me ye’re shy, my lord. I won’t believe ye, after all I’ve heard about yer exploits.”
“You’re the most infernally stubborn woman.” His mouth acquired a mutinous tilt. “I’m a fast healer. I tell you I don’t need tending.”
“The Devil ye don’t. Ye’re bleeding all over my settle this minute, ye cloth-heid!”
Exasperation was a clumsy disguise for her spiking concern. When he grimaced and shrugged irritably out of the rich doublet, she nodded encouragement. But her relief was short lived. Beneath he wore a white silk shirt foaming with Bruxelles lace, the torn sleeve sliding down his arm, left shoulder and breast spattered in shocking scarlet.
That splash of vivid crimson made her stomach clench. Hissing with concern, she busied herself with the linen.
His gaze lingered on her downturned features, a look she felt like a physical touch. “You don’t have to do this, Linnet. It’s just a flesh wound, isn’t that what they always say?”
“Don’t be so bloody stubborn, man. Do ye think ye’re immortal?”
“Hard to believe, I know,” he murmured.
Buffeted by conflicting impulses, she paid little heed. Should she cut away the sleeve and preserve his modesty—whatever dubious claim to that virtue he still possessed? Or yield to the medically prudent course and ask him to strip from the waist up? She must ensure all his injuries were tended.
As an unwed maid, she was unaccustomed to male nudity—unless she counted the panoply of disjointed images from her madness, the shocking license she’d seen in the Summer Lands. But that was a dream, only a dream.
Just as she’d thought the ethereal gilt-haired beauty named Rhiannon was a dream, and Lord Beltran with his fiery sword, until Elizabeth Tudor told her they were real.
She cleared her throat. “I’ll never manage to tend ye through yer shirt, aye? Best if ye, um, take it off.”
He shot her one of his signature looks, brows climbing, gaze brimming with mischief. Face burning, she ducked her head to fiddle with the bandages. After a moment, he began working his way out of the shirt—and stopped, hissing with pain.
“Joshua’s Trumpet, this is a devilish sensation,” he muttered. Impatient, he unsheathed his knife. It was a main-gauche, a basket-hilted long knife, elegant and deadly as the man himself.
Its sudden appearance made her flinch, still jumpy from the night’s assault. The bitter taste of fear flooded her throat.
“Sorry,” he said briefly, and sliced the bloodstained silk from top to bottom. When the garment gaped, he snared the fabric on the blade and distastefully flicked it aside.
He presented a study in shocking contrasts, clad in the puffed and slashed trunk hose and high boots of a fashionable exquisite, naked above the waist save for his ever-present gauntlets and the silver medallion glinting at his throat.
Firelight burnished the blue-black silk of his hair, spilling like a veil around his shoulders. It played over the lean slope of his shoulders, the sinewed length of his arms—both sensual and sinister in his silver-stitched gauntlets—the taut narrow line of his abdomen. The ruddy glow darkened his nipples to wine. He was like a racing horse, supple and rangy and twitching with nervous energy.
Erotic.
The word surfaced in her brain, though she’d never before dared to use it.
Linnet moistened her lips and swallowed past a bone-dry throat. The air around them seemed heavy and hot. Banked heat pulsed like an ember in her belly.
Face flaming, she fumbled to soak a cloth in warm water. Desperately she focused her gaze on the wound—a shallow slice across his left shoulder.
“Seems ye’re a lucky man.” Her soft voice barely stirred the expectant silence building between them. “Properly cleaned and tended, this should do ye no lasting harm, save for an interesting scar. Ye can have it for a conversational topic at the bathhouse, aye?”
Steadying her trembling hands, she raised the dripping cloth. His gauntleted hand closed over hers, a handspan above his naked flesh.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
Her hand enveloped in warm leather, she stole a glance at him. “Why not?”
An inward struggle flitted across his mobile features, an odd mingling of caution and yearning.
“How far should I trust the old serpent?” he breathed. “As well as Eve trusted him with the apple?”
Hurt stabbed through her. She tried to recoil, but he wouldn’t release her.
“Ye can trust me, to be certain,” she said stiffly. “If ye’d rather have the physician—”
“No.” His mouth curved upward, a small secret smile. “’Tis you I trust, Linnet Norwood, and none other. You haven’t a sly or deceitful bone in your entire...delightful...body.”
“Oh.” A wave of heat broke over her. The molten heat in her belly throbbed like a heartbeat. “Aye then, let me—I mean, ye must be tended.”
“I know.” Gently, he squeezed her hand. “It’s only that I am...decidedly unaccustomed to being touched. Be careful of me, Linnet.”
She would have thought he warned her to go gentle near the wound. But, somehow, his concern seemed directed toward her.
She met his wide, strangely innocent gaze. By firelight, his eyes had lightened until they were nearly lavender. “I don’t fear ye.”
“But you should, Linnet. You really should,” he told her. His hand fell away.
No doubt he was correct. His mere presence in her chambers should terrify her. Anyone who found him there—say the Constable, searching room by room for the Frenchman’s killer—would mistake the scene for passion.
Linnet herself couldn’t be certain it wasn’t. Her feelings toward the man were a dangerous tangle of contradictions, exasperation, annoyance and fascination all mixed together.
For the moment, he required healing—and that she could provide.
Carefully she placed a hand on his arm. The lightning shock of contact jolted through her. Heat radiated from him like a fever, though surely it was too soon after the injury for that. His skin jumped and twitched beneath her light touch.
“Easy now,” she whispered. “I won’t hurt ye.”
Deftly she cleansed the area with a mixture of wine and honey, an antiseptic her old nurse had used for tumbles and scrapes. When she reached the injury, he uttered a small, involuntary exclamation.
“Maskim Xul!”
&nb
sp; After that he stilled, and watched her work with childlike fascination.
Seeking to distract him, she murmured, “What tongue was that? Ye’ve an accent I can’t place. ’Tisn’t the Danish, is it?”
“It’s old Sumerian,” he said, tight-lipped.
“Oh, aye?” She surveyed him with interest. Beneath her careful fingers he tensed, hissing at the sting of raw wine on the open wound. “Where’d ye learn it? I’ve a scholar’s love of language myself, but Sumerian—I thought that a dead tongue.”
“It’s been dead for millennia. It’s the oldest mortal language. I’m blessed with the gift of tongues.” He grunted softly as she pressed a clean square of linen against the wound. “You’re an educated woman. Which tongues do you speak?”
“Oh, my studies are my refuge. I’m no true scholar.” Despite her modest demurral, his interest warmed her. “Since childhood, I’ve collected Faerie tales from around the world, fantastical tales that sweep ye away to other times and places—anywhere but here, aye?
“So I speak a fair bit of Greek and Latin, good French and Italian of course. My old nurse taught me a bit of Gaelic. Which tongues do you have?”
“All of them.” He shrugged. At her incredulous stare, his brows winged up in challenge. Then he laughed.
“Ah,” she said, exasperated, “ye’re jesting. Are ye never serious?”
“Why? It’s a useful trait in a messenger. And a messenger is part of what I am...or was.”
Abruptly he was brooding again, as though a shadow slid across the bright sun of his character. He was changeable as quicksilver, mercurial as a Tudor. And he was clearly in pain, though he said naught of it. His shoulder must be throbbing like the very Devil.
To divert him, she touched the silver medallion at his throat. The Hebrew symbols flashed in the firelight. From her vantage, she could see them clearly, and fixed the symbols in her scholar’s memory:
סמאל
“’Tis a fine, curious piece.” She traced the symbols with a light finger. “What does it say?”
“My name in Hebrew.” Oddly intent, he watched her. “Useful to know, if ever you should wish to summon me.”
A delicate chill rippled across her skin, as though a ghost tiptoed over her grave. She voiced an uneasy laugh. “If I wish to summon ye, I’ll send a message to the Strand. But likely it won’t be in Hebrew.”
He laughed softly, eyes gleaming through the veil of hair that curtained his face. She wondered suddenly if that luxuriant mane was as soft as it looked. Moving on instinct, she slid her hand over the sleek raven fall of hair and smoothed it back.
Glossy as mink beneath her fingers, and decadent as sin. He shivered under her touch, dark lashes falling to screen his gaze.
“Until now,” he whispered, so soft she strained to hear, “I’ve been afraid to allow this. Human contact, this communion of the flesh.”
“That seems a pity.” Her fingers wound in the glossy tendrils. “Why is that?”
“This precious gift of life is so fleeting, so fragile. I don’t want to—hurt someone.”
“Ye won’t,” she said with certainty. “Ye’re a good man, Zamiel of Briah.”
Her finger slid along the edge of his ear. His breath shuddered like a man in ecstasy.
“I killed a man this very night.” His lashes swept up, revealing eyes that glowed with lavender light. “And two others before your eyes the day we met. By rights, you should stay well away from me.”
Of course he was right. Any association with him, a man whose colorful reputation had seared like a meteor through the Tudor court, could do nothing but damage her marriage prospects.
Notwithstanding his quick jests, the fatal beauty and angel’s voice that won the Queen’s favor, his origins were too obscure and the man too dangerous. Aye, she ought to send him packing.
No matter what else came of it, the Queen had granted her access to the Royal Archives. High time she recalled the purpose of this expensive, exhausting, dangerous journey that brought her to London in the first place.
Still, she hesitated. If she drew back now, after what he’d said, she’d be conceding his argument. Wouldn’t her retreat reinforce this damaging belief that he hurt people, that he didn’t deserve the simple comfort of touch?
One way to prove it, the wicked thought flashed through her. She’d prove she wasn’t afraid of him, that he himself had naught to fear.
Swift as thought, before she could reconsider, she leaned toward him.
She’d meant to brush his satin-smooth cheek with her lips, no more—she who’d never kissed a man in her life. But as she swooped to deposit this fleeting caress, he turned his head with a swift-drawn breath and captured her mouth with his.
Caught off-guard, she blurted a surprised sound and gripped his shoulder—not the wounded one, thankfully—to hold him at bay. Hot bare skin seared her palm, stretched over sinew taut and jumping with energy.
The quicksilver heat of his mouth enveloped her.
Beyond doubt, she ought to rebuff him. Instead, she felt herself opening to the moment like a flower beneath the summer sun. Her lips were melting, parting, yielding to the kiss. The potent spice of hippocras filled her mouth, mingled with the grainy sweetness of sugar wafers.
Sweet mercy, the taste of him would set her drunk. Already her head was spinning. Her hand tightened on his shoulder.
With a stifled groan, he gripped her head in both hands and deepened the kiss—fumbling, urgent, with none of the seducer’s easy finesse.
He kissed her as though he was starving and only she could nourish him. Kindled by his hunger, the same leaping fire of need blazed to life within her. She’d thirsted all her life for a kiss like this. A low, aching cry shuddered through her.
He kissed her as though he was drowning and her kiss was a lifeline flung over the turbulent waves. A heavy tide of yearning rolled through her and pooled between her thighs. Her nipples hardened and chafed against her smock. Even that fleeting stimulation sent frissons of pleasure zinging through her blood.
Breathless, mindless, she twined her arms around him, half-falling over him on the divan, and met him kiss for kiss—
The rattle of the door sounded like a warning tocsin. Gasping, she tore herself free and leaped to her feet as the door swung open.
Juggling a heavily laden tray, Blossom bustled in with a bright smile.
“Ye’re in luck, milady, and no mistake. There’s roast suckling pig and a fine capon—oh, zounds!” Blossom goggled at the sight of her mistress, flushed and flustered, her loosened bodice sliding from her shoulders and tousled ringlets tumbling loose. Next, the girl’s scandalized eyes drank in the half-naked man blinking on the divan.
Simple the girl might be, but she was capable of adding two and two and coming to the obvious conclusion. With a Glencross servant, loyalty to her mistress would ensure discretion. But Blossom was London-bred, and the girl loved gossip as a child loves comfits.
The tidings of Linnet’s ravishment, greatly magnified in the telling, would be all over court by breakfast.
“Ooh, milady...”
“Thank God ye’ve come, lass.” Seizing control, Linnet stepped smoothly between the fascinated tiring-girl and Zamiel, thus buying him a few seconds to regain his own composure. “My lord’s old fencing injury opened up during the dancing. I’ve bandaged the wound, as ye can see, aye? Set down that tray and take away this basin, why don’t ye?”
Blossom exclaimed in dismay over the blood-stained linens and hurried to do as bidden. The girl was kind-hearted and diligent, but curiosity shone in her bright gaze as she stole peeks at the injured lord.
Cheeks flaming, Linnet hardly dared look at him herself—although it was dire necessity, not debauchery, that had compelled her to bring him here.
At the edge of vision, he shrugged carefully into his doublet. Her head cleared marvelously without the sight of his naked shoulders, lean and rippling with muscle, and the taut plane of his abdomen to distract her.
His shirt had been utterly ruined, no longer even suited for the rag bag. While Blossom was distracted, Linnet tossed this evidence of violence into the fire. She could do naught about the bloody bandages Blossom would take to the laundress, or risk stirring the girl’s curiosity to a boil.
She prayed no connection would be made belowstairs between her mysterious late-night guest with his “fencing injury” and the dead Frenchman in the courtyard.
By the time Zamiel assumed his doublet, she’d twisted her irrepressible curls into a chignon and restored her gown to some semblance of decency. Now she felt profoundly grateful for the tiring-girl’s presence. Linnet made impersonal inquiries about his comfort—tolerable—and his horse—stabled and waiting—without once meeting his gaze.
While Blossom trotted to and fro, humming under her breath, Linnet ushered Zamiel to the door in a flurry of conventional courtesies.
“Well then,” she said brightly, “I’ll say farewell and thank ye—”
As she gripped the door to swing it closed between them, his gauntleted hand came down over hers.
“Linnet.” His voice was wry, yet laced with a determination that made sparrows flutter in her belly.
“Aye, my lord?”
Battered by misadventure he might be, but Zamiel of Briah had not lost his irrepressible sense of humor. At her formal address, the corners of his mouth turned up—the same mouth that had ravished her. Her own mouth still felt rosy and swollen from his kisses.
Even now, it took no more than the satisfied glint in his roguish gaze to turn her knees to water.
“When are you going to start calling me Zamiel?” he murmured. “I’ve saved your life twice now. Surely we both realize I would have done far more tonight than kiss you, if not for your servant’s well-timed return.”
He paused. “You contrived that, didn’t you? Clever girl.”
Linnet shot a hunted look over her shoulder. Blossom was poking the fire, strategically placed where the listening was best. Pushing out an exasperated breath, Linnet herded her difficult guest into the corridor and pulled the door almost closed behind them. Still, she maintained her protective grip on the handle.
Laura Navarre - [The Magick Trilogy 02] Page 12