Linda Barlow

by Fires of Destiny

  “Damn my father! How can he do this? He’s bluffing. Your father is his neighbor and our families have a long association with one another.”

  “I fear that will not stop him. Your father and mine were never particularly friendly, and now Roger has pushed Sir Charles too far. Besides, the entire debacle has done immeasurable damage to his credibility at court. Geoffrey de Montreau has been doing his best to make your father look incompetent. If Sir Charles wants to retain his position of power with the queen, he must do something to demonstrate his strength. That’s why I believe he is serious about this.”

  Alexandra couldn’t fault his analysis. From a political standpoint, it made sense. “Geoffrey is still in London?”

  “Yes. He has turned coat on his employers and is now comfortably installed at Westminster, advising our English generals on French fortifications.”

  “Sweet Jesu! You mean he has thrown over his many years as a career diplomat? But why?”

  “Your father’s opinion is that Monsieur de Montreau is still obsessed with his lust for revenge.”

  “He must be mad.”

  Alan shrugged. “He is being well paid for his services. But forget about him. The question is, what are you going to do?” While Alexandra paced, her brow furrowed, her father’s document clenched in her fist, he added, “I have a vessel ready in the harbor; we can set sail as early as dawn tomorrow. If you return with me, nothing will happen. As your father explained to me, he’s not being unreasonable. He doesn’t demand that Roger surrender. All he wants is you, safe at home again.”

  “It’s not that simple, Alan. Don’t you see? It’s not as if I were really a hostage whom Roger would be glad to get rid of. My father is forcing him to choose between his father, whom he hates, and me, whom he loves and plans to marry. Whom do you imagine he will choose?”

  “Are you suggesting he would allow my father go to trial for heresy just to keep you in his bed?”

  “Have you forgotten the way they battled one another last summer? There’s no love between them. Do you honestly think Roger would lift a finger to save him?”

  “Yes, I think he would. I think something inside him would flinch at the thought of his own father burning at the stake on his account.”

  “You may be right; indeed, I hope you are, for I don’t think he could face the rest of his life knowing he was the cause, however indirectly, of the baron’s death. Certainly I couldn’t face it.” She shuddered. “‘Tis a diabolical choice.”

  Alan said nothing. His brother was a man of honor, surely, whatever his feelings toward his father. However difficult it might be for him to renounce his liaison with Alix, he would do it, surely, to save their father’s life.

  *

  It was late in the evening before Roger returned to the Argo. Alexandra had sent Alan, who was exhausted from his rushed journey, to bed; Francis also, still weak from his chest wound, had retired earlier. “I want to be alone when I tell him,” she had explained to Alan.

  Roger was in a jubilant mood when he strolled into his cabin at ten o’clock that night. He was also, for the first time in weeks, a little drunk. “We’ve finally secured that shipment of Flemish lace,” he announced, coming over to the desk, where his lover was fretfully pretending to read Sophocles, and looping his arms around her shoulders. His lips nuzzled her ear. “Suleyman’s Haseki Sultan Hurrem will be pleased, and so will her daughter, Mihrimah Sultan. But best of all: look, poppy-top.” He unfolded a legal document not unlike the one Alexandra had hidden under her book. “See what I’ve got for us? ‘Tis a special license to wed. I saw the priest. He’ll marry us as soon as all the arrangements can be made. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. Since we’re not from his parish, I had to bribe him with a little wine, which quickly turned him into a most agreeable fellow.”

  “Evidently he shared his bribe with you.” A couple of days! She and Roger were to be married in a couple of days.

  He laughed softly. “Don’t start, woman. Complain too much about my vile habits, and I might change my mind and decide not to have you after all.”

  She knew he was teasing her, but no laughter would come. She dreaded what she must tell him. Maybe she should have allowed Alan to do it.

  “Why aren’t you abed?” He caressed her throat with his clever fingers. “Beloved,” he murmured. “I’ve been imagining you waiting for me beneath the blanket, your body bare and open, your blood feverish for me.” The hand dipped to her breasts and stroked more insistently. Alexandra’s eyes closed as a liquid knot of desire formed deep in her vitals, spreading its demanding heat all up and down and through. She couldn’t bear the thought of a separation from him.

  “Roger.” With an effort she removed his hand and looked into his hot brown eyes. “Wait, we must talk. We have had a visitor aboard the Argo today.”

  “A visitor? Who?”

  “Alan. He’s alive and well, thank heaven. My father set him free, and he has followed us from England with news.”

  “What news? Where is he?”

  “Asleep. Tom gave him a berth for the night. He was deathly weary. In the morning you can talk.”

  He cupped her chin with his hand. “Something’s wrong. I can see it in your eyes.”

  She did not doubt it. In the weeks they had been together the bonds between them had grown almost psychic in intensity. There were moments when they could truly read each other’s minds. He knew when she was worried, angry, sad; he empathized. And when she was joyful, as she nearly always was in his company, he laughed with her, enjoying life as he had not done for years.

  “Alix?” His hands were still, his voice gentle. “Tell me Alan’s news.”

  “He wants me to return to London with him, and—oh, my love—and I think I’m going to have to go.”

  Roger stared at her dumbfounded for a moment; then slowly his expression changed. He looked upset. “What the devil are you talking about? I’ll eviscerate Alan. I’m very glad to hear he’s alive and free, but what game is he playing, damn him?”

  “It’s not him—”

  “It’s never him! You protect him like a lion does its cub. He loves you, you little fool. He wants you for himself.”

  “No, Roger, truly he is just a messenger.”

  “‘Tis your father, then. He must have sent Alan. The lad wouldn’t have got out of England otherwise. Douglas will stop at nothing to prevent our finding happiness together.”

  Wishing she did not have to confirm this, she lifted her Sophocles and handed him the document that lay beneath it. “If I do not return, my father will carry out the threat implicit here. He is proposing, in effect, an exchange of hostages.”

  Wishing he had not consumed quite so much vin ordinaire with the good priest, Roger read and reread the warrant. “What the hell is this? My father’s life for yours? But you’re no longer my prisoner. I don’t have to surrender you; you’re going to be my wife.”

  “If you’ll think back upon the way you took me, you’ll see that it probably hasn’t occurred to him that happiness could be possible between us. He thinks to extricate me from what he must believe to be a harsh captivity.”

  “Well, he’d better think again. We’ll send Alan back as witness to the truth of our love and commitment to one another. Anyway, Douglas would ever harm my father.”

  “Alan thinks he will. They’ve been uneasy friends, at best, over the years. And since your escape, my father’s position at court has become untenable. He needs to take strong action of some sort, or be judged a bungler.”

  Roger tossed the document down on the table beside the matrimonial license. “No. This is an empty threat. I am not so easily drawn. We shall pay it no heed.”

  But Alexandra had had several hours to think, and despite her own initial skepticism, she was now inclined to agree with Alan that Sir Charles was serious. “You don’t know my father when he’s in a temper. He’s stubborn. Even if it began as a bluff, ‘twill end as a tragedy, for if I do not return, h
e will, in wrath at your refusal, carry out his threat.”

  But Roger was in no mood to listen to reason. He seized her around the waist, carried her to their bed, and laid her down. “My father’s heretical leanings are his own problem. I warned him last summer that he was being indiscreet, and he paid no attention. Am I his keeper?”

  “Those are Cain’s words.”

  “As you keep reminding me.” He knelt on the mattress beside her, his sensual mouth hardening with the old cynical, world-weary expression she remembered so well from those days of deep conflict between father and son at Whitcombe. “But apparently it’s patricide, not fratricide, that you would accuse me of now?”

  He was angry and not a little drunk, a combination she was a little wary of. “I’m not accusing you, I’m simply—”

  “You’re passing judgment, the way you always leap to do. Well, hear this, my wise moral arbiter: the Baron of Whitcombe has washed his hands of me often enough. His fate is his own affair. When I was absent for ten years, he survived perfectly well without my assistance. Charles Douglas has miscalculated. I will not peal out like a bell at the slightest pull of my ropes. Particularly this rope. For it is attached to nothing, Alix. To nothing at all.”

  “My love, we are speaking of the man who gave you life. ‘Twould be a simple thing, my returning to placate my father. It need not separate us for long. If I can save a life by doing so, how can I refuse?”

  “Easily. You can reject this blackmail, as I am doing.”

  “But don’t you understand that if you allow your father to be sacrificed, you’ll feel the weight of it on your soul forever?”

  “I understand nothing, sweetling, except this.” Pressing her back on the mattress, he lowered his mouth and kissed her hard. His tongue ravaged her mouth, arousing all the dizzy, heated cravings that she experienced nightly in his arms. Weakness stole through her limbs, and the familiar yearning flashed in her loins.

  He lifted his lips to whisper, “I will not allow you to leave me. I could not bear a life without you. Your loss would weigh far heavier upon me than his. He has never been a father to me, and his welfare is none of my concern.”

  “One day, I fear, you may regret your decision.”

  “No.” His hands swept over her breasts, forcing the fabric of her bodice down around her waist, baring her flesh to his hands, his eyes. “He destroyed my love for him many years ago when he beat me persistently for no good reason. He is nothing to me now. You, on the other hand, you are my sun, my moon, my stars. You I adore with my whole heart.”

  Oh God, she thought, torn apart by her love for him. She did not resist his lovemaking; she could not. He was her other half. God forgive her, but his unwavering decision thrilled her. He would not give her up for anyone, for anything.

  She arched in his arms while he kissed her eager lips over and over again. His kisses were like honey to her, his touch was like fire. He sucked her nipples into his mouth, teased them, deliciously tormented them. He eased her out of the remainder of her clothing and touched her intimately with hands that knew exactly how to arouse her to the point where desire roughens into fierce demand. She watched him tear his garments from his body; shamelessly she opened her thighs for him as he lowered himself to the mattress and thrust inside her without further ado. Despite his haste, she was ready for him; so ready that it took him only a short time to hurl her into incandescent light. He captured her cries inside his mouth as he kissed her passionately, over and over again. Then he caressed her breasts and began to stroke her slowly, deeply, guiding her slender hips with his hands until he felt her quicken again.

  There was something more intense than usual about their loving; a quicksilver desperation, a poignant ferocity that compelled them to touch, murmur and kiss in ways that they had never touched, murmured and kissed before. “Roger, I can’t,” she whispered a few minutes later when he still showed no signs of slowing or stopping or finding his own release. “It’s too soon, it’s not possible, I—”

  “You can. I’ll help you. Here.” His control seemingly absolute, he withdrew for a moment and reared up on his knees. Before she knew what he was about, he had lifted her from the waist and slid the pillows beneath her. “Now put your legs over my shoulders,” he ordered, pulling her into position and smiling wolfishly as he stilled her long enough to drive himself inside her.

  She gave a little cry as he penetrated far more deeply than ever before. “Am I hurting you? You’re so small inside, beloved. If it hurts I’ll stop.”

  “No, don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

  He chuckled and accelerated his rhythm, simultaneously caressing her sex with tender, knowing fingers. “You see?” he gasped, as his control began to evaporate. “You’re entirely open to me this way; I can pleasure you with my hands as well as with my body. And watch your sweet expression, too.”

  “I love you,” she murmured, over and over as he stroked her, worshiped her, spun her into mindless delight. When the convulsions that finally shook her body died away, she added, “Until death and beyond, you are my only love.”

  “Before God, you are my soul, Alix.”

  But when the dazzling love passages were over and they slept, her dreams were troubled by images of fire and death. She tossed restlessly, beset by guilt. Sometime in the dark of the middle of the night she made her decision: soon, well before dawn, while he was still asleep, she would waken Alan and they would slip away. She understood why Roger still loathed his father. As a child, she had seen him many times, bruised and bloody after the beatings the baron had inflicted upon him. But she did not have it in her own heart to hate the baron, who had always treated her kindly. She could not allow her father to sacrifice him on her account. There would be no peace to be found in happiness that was purchased at such a price.

  She made her choice, and then she wept and held her beloved close until it was time for her to go.

  *

  “When I get my hands on her, I will beat her ‘til the blood flows,” said Roger.

  He was in a towering rage. Alexandra and Alan had slipped away before dawn; no one was quite certain how, but it was apparent she was gone. Alan’s ship had already set sail for England. By the time Roger had realized his lover had left him, the departing vessel was no more than a speck on the horizon.

  “I will make her regret that she ever dared to defy me.”

  “Stop being so melodramatic,” Francis said irritably. “We both know you would never harm a single lock of her hair.”

  “She’s left me for Alan!”

  “She left in his company, not in his arms.”

  “But why, Francis, why?” He was in agony. His face was rough and unshaven, his eyes hollow and dark. In his hand he held a scroll of paper signed and sealed with various official flourishes. He held it up for Francis to see. “This is a special license for us to marry. It’s what I thought she wanted from the day I returned to Whitcombe last year. I would have stood beside her in church and made her my legal wife. Alexandra Trevor, the future Baroness of Whitcombe.” He took the document and ripped it down the middle. “I’ve never offered marriage to any woman before.” He tore the paper again, more violently, faster, reducing it to shreds. “I will not be so quick to do so again. When I find her, she’ll not be my wife but my whore.”

  “For God’s sake. You know full well why she’s left.” Francis picked up the other document and perused it once more. “She’s softhearted; you’ve always known that. She lacked the nerve to call her father’s bluff.”

  “It’s not nerve she lacks, damn her! She has nerve to spare. And she’s probably right that Douglas isn’t bluffing.”

  “Then she’s done you a favor. You don’t want your father’s death on your conscience. I know you too well for that.”

  Roger ran both his hands through his hair and cursed. It was true he understood the line of thinking that had prompted her to leave. She didn’t want to be the means of his holding himself responsible in later years
for his father’s death. One day, I fear, you may regret your decision.

  And he had regretted it, far sooner than she’d expected. He’d lain awake regretting it, knowing, even before she left him, that he could not allow Charles Douglas to arrest and try his father.

  What he resented—what, indeed, he could not forgive—was Alix’s lack of trust in him. Why did she always expect the worst? Killing his brother, killing the Queen of England, killing his father? If she loved him as much as she claimed to, why did she continue to think so ill of him? Why the hell had she slipped off in the middle of the night, assuming that his drunken proclamation had represented his final thoughts on the matter? ‘Twas certain there was no love lost between him and the Baron of Whitcombe, but he couldn’t stand by while Douglas destroyed his father any more than he could have remained at Whitcombe last fall and harangued the man into another heart attack. Yes, he still resented the beatings he had received as a child, but dammit, he wasn’t a murderer. How many times did that fact have to be drummed into Alexandra’s stubborn skull?

  “She’s a rash and reckless woman, forever taking too much upon herself. I’ve had enough, Francis. When I find her, I’m going to give her a thrashing she’ll never forget.”

  “When you find her? What the hell do you intend to do?”

  Roger covered his face with tense, white-knuckled fingers. He heard the understated note of alarm in Francis’ voice and recognized the emotion from which it sprang. Francis loved him; Alexandra loved him. Between them they had the ability to cut his heart from his body. He’d been wise to protect himself for so many years from love. He was lost now. He was a tortured man. “You know full well what I intend to do.”

  “Like your headstrong mistress, you will return to England.”

  “Aye. That I shall.”

  Francis sighed. “The stake awaits you there,” he felt obliged to point out. “Or rather, since you’re not exactly a dissenter, the traitor’s gibbet.”

  Roger shrugged off the reminder. Without Alix, he was dying anyway. Now that he had given himself over to love, there was nothing else for him. A life without her by his side, in his arms, in his bed, was inconceivable now. If he could not have her, he would gladly surrender his body to death.