She made a sound like a spitting cat and twisted her head away from him, even though it hurt her, for her hair was pulled painfully as he kept his grip.
“Well,' he said pleasantly, “then I’ve no choice except to enjoy you right now, have I? Faith, it might gentle you a bit at that!”
“I’ll scream loud enough to bring all the Ironsides in this part of the country down on you!” Lenore threatened fiercely. But for all her bravado she was frightened, and her breath came faster as she drew quickly away from him.
Geoffrey’s eyes gleamed and for answer his mouth suddenly crushed down on hers and he pulled her to him, flattening her soft breasts against his brawny chest. She gasped as his tongue probed wickedly and his hands sought places she had thought inviolate from him. Wildly she told herself that it was only her fury that made each touch pulse and ring through her body in tormenting waves. Now his hands were swiftly undoing her bodice and pushing down her chemise impatiently. With an electric shock she realized that he was impudently caressing her bare breasts. They tingled beneath his touch, and to her rage the soft round peaks of her nipples tensed to hardness. She thought he chuckled at that and was so incensed she nearly wrenched her shoulder out of joint in a desperate bid for freedom.
But her opponent in this battle of wills was tall and broad-shouldered and strong above the average. Easily he held her, and when she was trembling like an aspen in his arms—both from the unwonted exertion and from something else she refused to give a name—he bore her gently to the ground, falling upon his arms so that she landed softly, still writhing in his grip.
Abruptly—and in horror—she was aware that her skirts were riding up around her hips, that a warm hand hand had brushed aside the skirt of her chemise. She started violently as that same hand now parted her thighs and his lean leg came down firmly between her knees. Every touch of him seemed to bum her, and she gave a great lurch as his hard masculinity made a sharp deft thrust within her.
With a moan she made a last savage effort to twist away from him and was aware of a scalding madness that was stealing over her as he held her in that firm unyielding yet somehow caressing grasp. Rhythmically he moved within her, and her pulse beat violently as the blood cascaded through her veins in wild rhythm. Her whole tempestuous body was giving him back its wild answer—and to her shame, it was an answer such as she had never given to Jamie, for all she’d been his handfast bride. A sob caught in her throat at her body’s hot betrayal, for now as the flames of his passion mounted, her back arched toward him and she pressed upward fiercely against him in a rhythm that matched his own.
Over to their right came the sound of hooves and a hoarse cry. “See anyone?”
She felt the lean body above her stiffen to rigidity and her heart almost stopped until another voice, frighteningly near, said in a thick West Country accent, “Nay—no one. ’Twas only a deer.”
There was a grunt and the first voice called. “Then we’d best be off, for ’tis men, not beasts, we’re hunting this night!”
She lay rigid as the hoofbeats faded away, but the pulse in her forehead continued to beat. His mouth left her lips for a moment and she heard him murmur, “Lenore, Lenore. . . .” in her ear, felt his hot breath tickle her ear, and turned her head away with a moan.
Moving triumphantly now, as if he sensed her hot surrender reveled in it, he deliberately drove her on to peaks of passion, swept her down wild reckless valleys and up tumultuous slopes to reach the very heights of desire—and fulfillment.
When he had finished and she lay silent and panting, he lifted his head and kissed her eyes, which were wet with tears.
“Come,” he said softly, “ye’ve no reason to weep.”
She jerked away shakily from his hand, but this time she did not struggle as they mounted Snowfire. She only kept her head turned from him bitterly, so that he could not see the shame and rage etched on her tear-stained face.
Her handfast lover was dead, she had been violated by a stranger and—damn him, must he hold her so close? Her breasts were resting on his arm, making her remember what it had been like a moment before on the cool grass. She wriggled to be free of that arm, but the motion seemed only to please her captor. It was in that position that they rode on, with Lenore sulking and her dark cavalier airily content with life.
All that night they rode through woodlands, resting occasionally, avoiding the sound of troops. Through most of the next day and the following evening they hid. Though there was a little food in Snowfire’s saddlebags, they were still ravenously hungry. When Geoffrey would have touched her, Lenore turned a cold white shoulder toward him, and he desisted.
“I hope you know now not to leave me, mistress,” he said on a cold note of warning. “For you might end up romping in the hay with an entire Roundhead regiment.”
Lenore shivered, but she kept her back turned to him. She had not spoken to him since he had raped her.
“Come now,” he said cajolingly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. We’re safe enough for the present.” He reached out and patted her arm.
Lenore, whose gloomy thoughts had been on Jamie, jerked it away. “Have you no respect for grief?” she demanded bitterly. “Or do women always fall to you like ripe plums?”
“Not always,” he said, moving away from her. And added quietly, “You are not the first woman to have lost a lover to war.”
“Don’t remind me of it! Had we not quarreled—”
“Ah, so he left you in anger?” he said thoughtfully.
“ ’Twas over another woman—a silly quarrel,” burst out Lenore, furious at the implication. “Jamie would have left to join the King in any event.” She was not entirely sure that was true, but it eased her conscience to believe it. She flashed Geoffrey an angry glance, to find his hard gray eyes looking at her with some sympathy.
“I begin to understand you,” he murmured. “ ’Tis not your heart but your conscience that pains you.”
Had Lenore had something in her hand at that moment, she would have thrown it at that thoughtful saturnine countenance, as it was, she tried desperately to hold her wavering thoughts on Jamie—golden Jamie whose handfast bride she’d been, Jamie her true lover. Not this—this maddening cavalier whose lightest touch made her tremble!
“Perhaps we should declare a truce for a time, you and I,” he said in a quiet voice. “Our situation is desperate enough. If we are seen to quarrel it will attract attention, and we must use the same story or be suspect." To her mutinous expression, his gaze took on a steely look. “D’ye yearn for the gibbet, mistress?” he asked softly. “For the Lord Protector’s judges would be glad to place you there—after the Lord Protector’s troops have had their fill of your charms.”
Lenore paled. For a moment she saw them trapped, taken. Saw that long lean body beside her bound and thrown to the ground. Saw the glittering eyes of the troops in the firelight as they gathered around her—men too long without women to care for the niceties. Saw herself, screaming, tossed from man to man ... all the night long. A vision of hell.
Who was to say the same might not happen to her if she returned to Twainmere? Her only safety lay in the company of this hated cavalier who watched her with a narrow gaze beneath straight black brows.
“I will do or say nothing to endanger us,” she said in a low reluctant voice. “And now”—her tone sharpened as she remembered he had raped her—“if you will spare me your comments?”
“It is enough that we understand each other,” he said in a stern voice, and turned his aquiline features away from her.
When they mounted he continued to ignore her, hauling her up before him as unfeelingly as if she were a sack of meal. He kept his face turned away from her as if he cared no more for her than she did for him, although her soft breasts still bounced on his lean arm and her hip was pressed tight against his hard thigh. She shook her head as she felt the irritating brush of his shoulder-length hair, which swung occasionally against her cheek as he turned his head ale
rtly to study the terrain.
Lenore had been sitting stiffly upright and now she tried to stretch her aching back muscles.
“Are you comfortable, mistress?” he asked suddenly.
Lenore sniffed, straightened up again, and forebore to answer. Angrily she tried to keep her wavering thoughts on Jamie. And Twainmere. And all that she had lost . . .
They reached Stourbridge, their arrival half concealed behind a farmer’s big haycart, but checked as they saw the road ahead was blocked by a troop of Cromwellian horse. They were leaving abruptly when Geoffrey’s sharp eyes recognized, in a cluster of beggars milling around as if afraid to enter the town, a face he knew.
He reined in. “Hal,” he called in a low voice.
Warily a shuffling beggar, bent under a large pack, looked up. Instantly his eyes lit up, and he detached himself from the raffish crew and shuffled forward with a swift glance behind him. “Around yon turn there’s a thicket, Geoffrey,” he muttered. And loudly, “Alms, for pity!” The rest of the beggars might have joined them, but Geoffrey gave Snowfire a jab with his knee and they were off around a turn in the road they’d just traversed before the lumbering farm cart could move enough to give Cromwell’s soldiers a clear view of them.
Into the thicket they plunged, Lenore protesting angrily in her fear for Snowfire’s eyes at the thorns, and tearing the skin on her arms as she tried to sweep the reaching branches away from his head. Once inside, they waited.
In a little while the thorn bushes parted and the “beggar” joined them. He bowed deeply to Lenore, who gave him a wan and somewhat puzzled smile. As he straightened she noted the finely drawn lines of his face, the delicate skin of his hands—a gentleman’s hands—and was not surprised to learn that this was Lord Harold Trowbridge, late of the King’s party, who’d come by this way. She listened as Hal Trowbridge gave Geoffrey a grim picture of the extent of the Royalist defeat: two thousand dead, three thousand taken prisoner. King Charles was in headlong flight—even the royal coach with all his papers and four hundred pounds in money had been left to the Roundheads.
Cromwell’s victory was complete.
Geoffrey sighed. “ Twas an evil day we rode south from Scotland, Hal.”
His friend nodded curtly. “An evil day indeed. And now there’s an end to it.” He too fetched a sigh. “The King was here with some sixty of his officers. ’Twas here I left them and traded my clothes with a beggar. The poor devil thought he’d the better of me in the bargain, but that well-known red velvet coat of mine may get him flung into jail as a Royalist!” He touched Snowfire with some envy. “You’re lucky to have such a fine mount, Geoffrey—even though he must carry double. I lost my horse a ways back. She’d been hit by one of Ironsides’ balls and was bleeding bad. I couldn’t see her suffer, so I finished her off.” He looked sad. “She was a good nag and had been with me for a long time. So I left the royal party, for I could not accompany the King on foot.”
“Where do you go now, Hal?”
Hal shrugged. “I’m safe enough. I’m making my way to friends nearby who can hide perhaps one man in their priest hole.” He looked from Geoffrey to Lenore, anticipating the next question. “But three . . He shook his head wearily. “They’d refuse.”
“Whither went the King’s party, Hal?”
“To a safe house at Boscobel, I heard one say.” Geoffrey was thoughtful. “Can y’ give me directions to Boscobel, Hal? Mayhap they’d shelter us, too, if they can care for sixty horse!”
Lenore hardly listened as Hal gave Geoffrey directions. She was light-headed from lack of food and fighting exhaustion. She’d had several days’ hard riding, the crushing blow of Jamie’s death, and the turbulent emotions that Geoffrey had stirred up within her. Her head drooped as Hal left them, moving stealthily out of the thicket. They waited a while and then followed.
Snowfire was tired, too. He was dragging when, in a driving rain, they reached the estate of Boscobel and swiftly identified themselves.
Aye, the King’s party had been here, they were told as they were ushered into the hall out of the wet. They’d fed him buttermilk and eggs and purée of milk and apples. They’d cut his hair with a knife and dressed him as a woodsman. He had hidden out in the woods in a hollow oak in the rain while the house had been searched, and was now gone. In answer to Geoffrey’s insistence that he must rejoin the King, they conjectured that the King was perhaps gone to Madeley where a Mr. Wolfe had hidey-holes for priests.
Lenore revived a little as their hostess served them fricassee of eggs and bacon and some of that same purée of milk and apples, which was served, she was told proudly, in the same black earthen cup out of which the King had supped. She listened as all at the table fell warmly to discussing the battle. The conversation was full of “might-have-beens.” Had not the earthworks they called the “Royal Fort” fallen, had not the foot soldiers been pushed into the narrow confines of Worcester’s streets had Leslie’s horse not defected ... It made Lenore sad to hear it, and she bent her mind to other things hot private memories that still seared her, and bitterness that chance should have thrown her afoul of the law so that she must ride in company with this— this rapist!
Suddenly her mind was jerked back to the present, for across the hastily spread boards her gray-bearded host mused, “ Tis strange how wild rumors spread. Tis said at the height of the battle a naked avenging angel with long golden hair came charging down the hill on a white horse and disappeared into the city looking for the King but he had fled. So the avenging angel disappeared and left the field to Cromwell. Think you there is any truth to the story?”
Lenore choked on her purée, but Geoffrey smiled expansively and nodded toward Lenore. “ ’Twas this lady, garbed as you see her now.” He then launched into a smooth lie of being swept away from the King’s guard and lying thought dead on the battlefield until night when he was “revived by this lady who was looking for her husband among the slain”—again he nodded toward Lenore.
Their hosts were touched by this recital—especially since the reminder of Jamie’s death brought tears to Lenore’s violet eyes—and gallantly offered them shelter at Boscobel, but Geoffrey was of the opinion that the house might well be searched again and they’d best away from it, lest both they and their hosts suffer.
Lenore roused herself from her grief. “Snowfire is too tired to go on traveling double, even though he’s eaten and drunk,” she told Geoffrey flatly.
Her host gallantly interceded to press on Lenore a bay horse left by one of the King’s cavaliers as too winded to continue, but now with rest and feed quite recovered. Flustered by the welter of lies and half-truths Geoffrey had so skillfully spun about her, Lenore hesitated, but Geoffrey hastily accepted for her. So to her irritation she found herself riding away from Boscobel on a smallish bay while beside her Geoffrey bestrode her beloved Snowfire.
“Why did ye hold back at their offer?” Geoffrey exploded testily when they were well out of sight and hearing of the house. “God’s truth, ye needed a horse!”
Lenore swung around in the saddle to face him angrily. “ ’Tis you who need a horse, Geoffrey Wyndham!” she flashed. “I have a horse, and I’ll thank you to return him to me. Now!”
Geoffrey gave her an astonished look. Then he threw back his head and laughed, a long peal of mirth that lit his dark face and seemed to light the rainswept gloom. “I cannot do that,” he explained, “for this white stallion is the faster horse, I’ve no doubt, and I’ve no mind to let you go charging off into danger the moment it suits your fancy.”
A hot flush covered Lenore’s cheeks. He’d already had his way with her—what more danger was she likely to encounter than that? Her scathing expression spoke volumes.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “And I’ll own I’m sorry, Lenore—not for holding your lovely body in my arms, but that I did not wait till ye were ready to welcome me.”
She stiffened. “That day will never come,” she said in a bitter voice.
Lenore’s head whirled. Why had she not indeed? It had been a clear opportunity to strike back at him for taking her. “I—” she muttered. “I—they might have killed you had they thought you played the King false. They might have killed us both,” she added hastily, for something flickered in his eyes. In another moment he was going to thank her for shielding him! “Snowfire is tired,” she said desperately, “and this bay horse is rested. Snowfire’s been carrying double, and you are much heavier than I. Geoffrey”— she was pleading now for the white horse she loved—“if you’ll let me ride Snowfire, I give you my word I won’t try to escape.”
Her dark cavalier hesitated. “In women’s word I place little reliance,” he said grimly.
“You can rely on mine!” she flashed. “Get off—I’m changing horses with you!”
There was the ghost of a smile on his face as he dismounted.
“Perhaps you’re giving your word because you like my lovemaking?” he suggested softly.
It was too much. Lenore’s open palm cracked, across that smiling mouth, and she felt her arm caught in a grip that hurt. His dark face was thrust down close to hers, and there was the devil’s own light in his eyes.
“Do that never again, mistress,” he warned in a low level tone. “Or I’ll turn you across my knee and pull up your skirts and spank your white bottom till it’s pink as your cheeks!”
He let go of her arm and suddenly seized her by her slender waist and lifted her from her bay mount to Snowfire’s white back. Lenore thought the tired horse brightened, and she patted his neck and ran her fingers lovingly through his thick mane. She was rewarded by a soft whinny.
Geoffrey was watching her. Perhaps it was compassion she read in his face. “We must go softly now,” he cautioned as he mounted. “For the countryside is alive with Cromwell’s men. They know now the King has slipped through their fingers, and they’ll be searching everywhere.”
This Towering Passion Page 7