This Towering Passion

by Valerie Sherwood

  She scurried back downstairs and Lenore smiled at the retreating figure. She turned back to working on the fire. She got the fire up to a blaze and went to bed.

  It did not occur to her that she had forgotten to latch the door.

  CHAPTER 12

  Lenore dreamed of Dartmoor. They were camped again in the shadow of the high tors. She could hear the night birds calling. A great gnarled oak spread twisted branches overhead and Geoffrey was beside her, warm, wonderful, murmuring words of love in the moonlight. His strong arms held her and his lips caressed her; there was a sweet wild clamor in her blood, a stirring of the senses as her woman’s body roused to passion.

  She awoke slowly, sensuously, coming out of a deep warm sleep to find strong arms about her, hands intimately caressing her. Geoffrey was back! Luxuriously she sighed and opened her eyes. The fire had burned down, but there was enough of a glow for her to see that the head pressed into her shoulder had not dark locks but light.

  This was not Geoffrey!

  Panic seized her. She gave a violent involuntary lurch away from the arm that held her. But her attacker must have been expecting that, for his grip tightened painfully, and the scream that rose in her throat was abruptly silenced by a scarf that was thrust roughly into her mouth to gag her.

  Choking and desperate, she fought her unknown adversary. His head lifted, and looking up with wide, terrified violet eyes she could see who it was—Gilbert! A Gilbert with red-rimmed glittering eyes and reeking strongly of ale. There was no chance to reason with him, for the gag he had stuffed into her mouth, and which almost stopped her breathing, enforced her silence except for the moans and gasping breaths that escaped her as she struggled.

  “Lenore.” Gilbert had half risen above her flailing, writhing body, but now his hands seized her shoulders in a painful grip and brutally he pressed her down upon the bed. His tousled caramel curls fell down upon her face, fell into her eyes, making her blink as he deftly dodged the blows she tried to rain upon his narrow handsome face. “Lenore,” he panted, “let be. ’Tis not as if ye were a virgin, nor yet an affronted wife—we all know ye’re Geoffrey’s doxie!’’

  She managed to give him a sharp kick that temporarily numbed the toes of her right foot. He gave a short yelp, and his weight fell on her. Abruptly he let go of her shoulders, seized her wrists, and savagely yanked her arms up over her head. With his other hand he administered a sharp slap that made lights dance before her eyes, and his foot slapped down on her right ankle, holding it paralyzed.

  “ ’Tis me, not Geoffrey, ye want,” he told her thickly, and she realized then how very drunk he was. “Ye want me! All along ye’ve wanted me, enticed me—admit it!”

  With a bitter, strangled sob, she turned her head away from that drunken face, writhing beneath him in an attempt to free herself. Her ankle was twisted painfully beneath his foot and she moaned, hardly audible above his rasping breathing. Half suffocated in his brutal grip, she could hear her chemise tear, feel the fabric lightly burn the skin of her buttocks and back as it was ripped from her violently. The bedclothes had long since departed, slid to the floor as they tussled back and forth.

  Naked now, she fought him, her body smooth and supple in the light of the dying fire. Almost suffocated, she tried to dig a knee into his groin, and he drew back a hand that had been squeezing her breast and slapped her again on the side of the head, this time so hard that for a moment the world swam away from her and she sank into momentary darkness.

  Out of the dark she fought her way back inch by inch, aware only of a terrible necessity to survive, to fight. Something was holding her, something she must somehow escape! Comprehension came slowly, forcing its way into her ringing head. Gilbert rode atop her, Gilbert drunk and determined. The gag was choking her, she must have air. But now—oh, God, now he was jerking at his trousers, her hips were pinioned powerless beneath his, he was—he was—!

  “Mine,” he muttered on a hot breath into her ear, as his male hardness made its savage entrance. “Mine at last!”

  Tears streamed down her face as he took her. In wild grief she tried to stiffen, tried to make of her very flesh an inert barrier to show him how much she despised him. But her resilient woman’s body that fitted so easily into the crook of a man’s arm betrayed her. Against her will she found herself relaxing, against her will she felt her senses quicken and wild darting responses race along her nerve ends as Gilbert relentlessly probed her most sensitive, secret places. Shamed and bitter, her breast heaving as she fought him and that more powerful adversary—herself— she felt herself yielding, yielding.

  At her involuntary response, Gilbert’s head lifted again and he stared down at her. For a moment of agony that would be forever seared into her memory she looked up into that narrow, handsome face, gilded by the firelight, and saw there a look of triumph. Tears of rage blurred out his image, but she heard his low, drunken laugh.

  More gently now he lowered himself back upon her, handling her more like a woman than a body to be punished. His long fingers no longer bruised, but caressed, sensually. Though he kept her wrists tightly manacled in his fingers, he explored her naked body with his free hand, savoring the delights of her, pinching, probing, making her wince and moan. Delighted with this evidence of passion, he moved within her with a lazy rhythm, impudently caressing the silken flesh that quivered in fury and desire at his touch.

  Such shame as she had never known filled her. Oh, God, that she could not control this quickening! That she should melt against him until his passions were so roused that he seized her with renewed violence. His pace increased to a pulsing feverish rhythm that swept her along like a leaf over bouncing rapids and exploded over a high waterfall into a deep gorge that left her falling, falling, until she lay spent and bitter, violated and used.

  He flung off of her with a low oath, tossing back his damp curls. “You’re splendid, Lenore! Superb!” He ran a hand down over her body as she twisted away from him, rolled off the bed, and gained her feet, jerked the suffocating gag from her mouth.

  “Geoffrey will kill you for this,” she said in a low dangerous voice.

  Gilbert laughed—a reckless sound. He lay on his back in her bed, naked and wet with perspiration in the cold room. “I think not,” he said carelessly. “Who will tell him? You? A woman who goes to bed, leaving her door unlatched?”

  Lenore’s face whitened. Shaken, she stared at him. Had she done that? Had she indeed forgotten to latch the door after she let the cat out? It must be true, else how could Gilbert have got in?

  “Then I will kill you!” she cried hoarsely, and flung herself forward, striking at his groin with her fist.

  He caught her arm, swung her body onto the bed, and jerked her upright as he rose to a kneeling position on the bed. His angry face was thrust into hers. “Play me no tricks, Lenore, or I’ll teach ye a lesson ye’ll never forget!”

  “If you hurt me,” she panted, “Geoffrey will want to know how I come by my bruises!”

  “True.” He considered her dispassionately, and she saw that had sobered him. “But then ye’d have to explain to him how I chanced to be here, and I’d tell him ’twas by your invitation.”

  “Geoffrey will believe me,” she said in a tight voice, trying to break free of him. “He will cut you down like a dog, Gilbert—even if you swear I left the door unlatched for you!”

  Gilbert shrugged and let her go. She fell away from him, slid off the bed, caught hold of a chair back to get her balance. She straightened up and his insolent eyes raked over her naked, panting body. “Mayhap Geoffrey would believe you,” he said in a cold voice. “But you’ll tell him nothing, Lenore. For if you do, I’ll alert the authorities to Geoffrey’s activities and he’ll be arrested before he can do me any mischief.”

  “Get out,” she said thickly, reaching for her tom chemise and clutching it against her with trembling fingers, to ward off his gaze. “Get out before I kill you myself!”

  His laugh was low and nasty. �
��You’d best be careful in your manner toward me,” he warned. Swiftly he rose and adjusted his flowing trousers around his lean legs. Bitterly she guessed he had left his boots in the hall and tiptoed in, once he had ascertained the door was unlatched—that was why she had not heard him. With a graceful gesture he brushed back his thick golden hair and picked up his fur-trimmed cloak and hat. “ ’Twould not do for Geoffrey to suspect we are lovers, Lenore—I do but warn you.” He paused thoughtfully. “We’d best not meet here in future. ’Twould cause comment. My rooms, I think.”

  With a sob, Lenore reached down and picked up the closest thing within reach—her shoe. With all her force, she hurled it at his head. Gilbert ducked, caught the shoe in one hand, and tossed it contemptuously away from him. He stood before her, arms akimbo, a tall, glittering figure in his fawn satins, the angular lines of his face made satanic and evil by the light of the dying fire. His voice held a note of menace.

  “You are my doxie now,” he growled. “Ye’d do well to remember it.”

  “I am Geoffrey’s!” she flashed.

  He shrugged indifferently. “I do not object to sharing you with him.” He sauntered to the door and stood a moment looking back at her as she crouched by the chair, holding her chemise like a shield in front of her. His tone was deliberate, cold. “You’ll keep your silence about this night, mistress—and about all the nights to come.” Like stones, the words fell crushingly on her ears. “You will do it because you’ll remember—even as the hot words rise to your lips—that I hold Geoffrey’s life in my hand.”

  “May you rot in hell!” sobbed Lenore.

  “More like, I’ll find paradise in your arms,” he sneered. “You’ll change your mind when you have thought on it.”

  Then he was gone and Lenore dropped her chemise and threw herself at the door, latching it with shaking fingers. Naked and trembling, she leaned against it. She could hear the small scuffling sound as Gilbert sat on the stairs pulling on his boots, then soft footsteps tiptoeing down the stairs. Plainly Gilbert did not mean to compromise her with Mistress Watts.

  No, having had her once, he meant to have her again. Doubtless he planned to fill in for Geoffrey whenever he was away! Tonight he’d be slipping like a shadow through the streets, carefully avoiding the watch—but next time he meant to have her spend the night in his rooms, returning her with the dawn!

  Shame and mortification such as she had never known flooded over her so that she sagged against the door. This could not be happening to her! A sense of doom pervaded her, dragging her down. Geoffrey was away somewhere prowling the roads. Who knew when he would be back? Perhaps he was never coming back, perhaps he was lying in the snow at this very minute, his blood staining the white snow red. . . . She swayed in terror at the thought.

  Abruptly she sneezed—and realized that she was not only naked but freezing cold. The fire was almost out and the embers gave little warmth. Shivering, she found her chemise. It was so badly torn she cast it aside and instead wrapped herself in her shawl and fell into bed, hiding her face in the pillow as dry sobs wracked her body.

  She was still awake when the first light pinked the sky.

  Grimly she faced the dawn and the cold hearth. Gilbert had wanted her—and he had taken her. Now that he had taken her, it had but waned his ardor. She had little hope his threats were empty or that this drunken romp would be the last he would try with her.

  The alternative? To tell Geoffrey and let him revenge himself on Gilbert. Ah, but she could not do that, for Gilbert would exact his revenge first and expose Geoffrey’s activities. That would mean the gibbet for Geoffrey.

  In silent agony, she rocked back and forth in the bed. What . . . could . . . she . . . do?

  Her bitter musings were interrupted by Gwynneth, Mistress Watts’s serving girl, who came up to build the morning fire. When she had it blazing, she laid down the poker and asked Lenore if she was ready for her breakfast.

  “I want bath water first,” said Lenore. “Lots of it.”

  “But the room be cold yet,” protested the maid. “If ye wait till after breakfast—”

  “Now,” said Lenore harshly. She felt as if Gilbert’s touch clung to her everywhere, and it made her skin crawl. “Tell Mistress Watts I’ll want clean sheets today. I’m—I’m expecting my husband back.” It wasn’t true, she had no idea when Geoffrey would return, but it was an acceptable reason for changing sheets on the wrong day of the week.

  Gwynneth gave her a puzzled look and scurried away muttering that Christmas Eve was no time to be changing sheets!

  The hot bath in the small metal tub which Gwynneth set in front of the hearth made Lenore feel better. While Gwynneth changed the bed linen, she lingered in the tub, scrubbing herself until her flesh glowed bright pink, rubbing herself dry on the linen towels Gwynneth had brought her. She dressed slowly, ignoring the breakfast tray Gwynneth brought up. “I’ll eat later,” she promised. “Would you ask Mistress Watts for a needle and thread? No, don’t bother, I’ll ask her myself.”

  She squared her shoulders and went downstairs. Best to know at once if Mistress Watts had heard any unusual sounds in the night, or had seen Gilbert slipping out. Mistress Watts was bustling about, preoccupied with preparations for Christmas, and gave Lenore the needle and thread with an absent smile. Lenore could detect nothing in her landlady’s manner to indicate knowledge of the nocturnal activities of young “Mistress Daunt” upstairs. Perhaps, even if she had heard something, she had paid no attention, for she had two student tenants who lodged in the back and came and went at all hours—it was because of them that the front door was never locked. As she left Mistress Watts and went out into the hall, both students strolled by, nodding a civil greeting, and Lenore bore her needle and thread back upstairs with a sigh of relief. No trouble from that quarter, then.

  There remained, of course, the sticky problem of Gilbert and what to do about him. Lenore walked to the window. Bleakly she gazed out through the little leaded panes into the snowy alley below. She turned away with a sigh. She had a chemise to mend—Geoffrey must not return and find it torn like that. It would make him wonder.

  Lenore was not very proficient with her needle, and mending the torn chemise took her a long time. Finished, she held it up and surveyed it critically. She had been more skillful than usual. Geoffrey might not notice, so neatly was it mended—even if he did, he would assume it had been torn in some less dramatic way. As she laid it down, her gaze fell on the untouched breakfast tray.

  She must eat, Lenore told herself abruptly. Not for herself, but for her unborn child—Geoffrey’s child. Hardly tasting, she forced down the gruel, now cold and congealed, the milk in the pewter tankard, and took a dispirited bite out of the red apple from Mistress Watts’s basement bin.

  Restless and upset, she yearned to throw on her green cloak and red shawl, slip into her clogs, and take a brisk walk in the snow. But—Gilbert and his sleigh might lie in wait around the corner of Magpie Lane. And how would she explain fighting with him in the street if he stopped and tried to put her into the sleigh by force? For that matter, how did she know that he was not on his way over now to pay a “call” on young Mistress Daunt?

  A shudder went through her, and she hurried downstairs with the breakfast tray—for she did not want to open the door, believing it was Gwynneth come to clear the dishes, and see Gilbert standing there instead. She returned the needle to Mistress Watts, thanked her and said, “I’m not feeling well; I intend to sleep all day so—so I’ll be rested for Christmas. If you should see anyone about to mount these stairs, would you ask them not to disturb me?”

  Mistress Watts gave her young tenant a sharp look, for this was the first time such a request had been made of her. “Ye do look flushed,” she said with a frown. “Do you need something from the apothecary? Or perhaps ye should be bled. Dr. Micaw says the humors—”

  “No, no, ’tis nothing—I am but tired.” Lenore hurried back upstairs and latched the door.

  Tomo
rrow was Christmas, and Gilbert planned to give her an expensive present—a fur muff, which she dared not refuse. Doubtless he’d exact a price for it!

  In blind rage, she struck the pillow on her bed with her fist. Gilbert’s head would not lie there again! It would not!

  She threw herself onto the bed and tried to think, but her hammering thoughts gave her a headache, and she looked wan and pale when Gwynneth knocked. “Mistress Watts thought since ye not be feeling well, ye might relish supper up here.”

  “Thank you, Gwynneth.” Lenore opened the door to admit the little maid, who set the tray down and turned to go. “And thank Mistress Watts, too. Have you a family, Gwynneth?”

  “Six sisters and three brothers—living,” Gwynneth told her proudly. “We would be sixteen of us all told—had all lived, but six did die at birth or soon after. My youngest sister is two years old.”

  Two years old! No wonder poor Gwynneth had to work long hours. “I wish you a merry Christmas, Gwynneth,” Lenore told her soberly, wondering what she could find to give the girl tomorrow. “And I’ll bring the tray down myself—tomorrow morning.”

  The girl brightened. “As soon as I’ve finished clearing up supper. I’ll be away home—we’re roasting chestnuts tonight!”

  She looked so happy at this unusual treat that Lenore swallowed as she watched her go. The lot of girls like Gwynneth was hard, a life of drudgery from childhood, and nothing to look forward to but more of the same. While she—! Drudgery would not be her lot—shame, more likely, or a short merry dance on the gibbet! She lifted her chin defiantly as she latched the door behind Gwynneth and heard the girl’s feet tripping lightly down the stairs. She would find a way out of her troubles. Somehow.

  Dutifully, Lenore ate the pork pie and pasty which Mistress Watts had sent up, and downed the cider which accompanied it. With the food her sagging spirits rose a little and she sat by the window watching the snow flake down. Would it never stop snowing? she wondered irritably.