This Towering Passion

by Valerie Sherwood

  Geoffrey made it out of town that night, using a ruse he had used before, and headed southwest, leaving behind him Oxford’s stone spires, tall and pale in the light of a rising moon.

  He never looked back—except once when he thought he heard sounds of pursuit. His memories of those months in Oxford were not concerned with the towers or their lodgings . . . they were memories of a woman, soft and sweet in his arms, a splendrous woman who had melded into his arms and into his heart. He would carry the memory of her with him all his tormented days.

  For a while he turned highwayman, ruthlessly taking what he wanted where he found it, for life had been none so good to him of late and he was haunted by what he had lost. With a black scarf wound around his face and a steady pistol cocked and ready, it was a wintry pair of eyes indeed that he turned toward the scared coach travelers who had the misfortune to cross his path by night. There was a price on his head now, but he shrugged that off. Doubtless he would die as he had lived—violently, in his blood on the highroad, with none to mourn.

  And when he rode recklessly into market towns on fair days seeking a bawdy respite from the rigors of the road, and lost himself in the packed humanity that surged between the stalls, it was at the girls with red-gold hair that he turned his somber gaze, seeing in the flash of their bright hair in the sun a brief glimpse of the alluring woman he had lost. His face grew grim as he remembered. All that a man could want he had had—and thrown away. He cursed himself for his folly, and drowned his memories in wine.

  It was a reckless face Geoffrey turned to the world now. He took ever more chances, for he cared little whether he lived or died. But a ball in the arm from an alert coach driver temporarily ended his career on the highroads. Mending, he drifted toward the coast.

  At Dover, wise in the ways of the hunted, he fell in with a smuggler named Rice who brought French laces and French brandy across the channel duty free and pocketed a neat profit. On Rice’s next trip across the channel—a dark, moonless night was chosen for the run—Geoffrey accompanied him. They were not lucky; midway across the channel the moon came out bright, and they were chased by a British revenue cutter. Almost in sight of the French coast, the cutter launched a nine-pound shot into their side. The next shot broke the mast —and when it fell, the heavy wooden mast caught Rice across the head and broke his neck.

  Geoffrey did not wait for the cutter to come alongside. He went over the side and into the longboat. Fortunately clouds once again obscured the moon, and his going was unobserved. He rowed mightily toward the distant coast. A few cold stars were breaking through the murk when he pulled the longboat ashore in the surf and raked the empty coast with a keen, hard look. Without money, without friends, cast up on a foreign shore, something dogged in him refused to give up. He was determined to survive, and his first thought was how to get back to England. But what held England for him, indeed, what held any place for him—now that Lenore was gone? He might as well stay here!

  But he knew a moment’s sadness as he thought how, had things gone differently, he and Lenore might this day be landing on another coast—the American coast, ready to start a new life. He looked at the cold stars and hoped —with a pain like the twist of a knife in an old wound— that Lenore was happy with Michael, that he would make her a good husband and give her the kind of home she deserved.

  Then he started a long walk toward a distant winking light that might be a candle in a cottage window, or might signify a town. As he strode along in the salt air, his mouth twisted into a grim smile at the irony of this landing on the French coast—he had made good the threat he never intended; he had gone to France.

  PART TWO

  * * *

  THE FORSAKEN

  CHAPTER 20

  On her sad journey north, away from the town that had become, in her heart and mind, her home, Lenore kept her head high, but her gaze upon the sweet summer countryside around her was bereft.

  The long wild road she had ridden with Geoffrey was behind her now, the trauma of Wells, the sharp, brief glory she had known as “Mistress Daunt” in Oxford— and the bitterness, the lies. Love was behind her, too, lost somewhere in the ruins of her life. Lenore felt she would never again know the wild, fierce sweetness that had drenched her as she clung to Geoffrey, the wonderful fulfillment as a woman that had been hers as she rode beside him.

  But . . . though she had lost so much, she had not lost all. Fiercely she clutched Lorena to her breast, soothing the pretty child with a swift kiss or a soft caress if she cried. “You will be good,” she whispered brokenly to the baby, her lips brushing that small pink cheek. “Yes, and you will be beautiful—and your beauty will bring you good things, not harm as mine has done.”

  For that it was her beauty that had brought her to this cruel pass, she was certain. It was beauty that had made Geoffrey desire her, that had made Gilbert scheme to win her and finally to take her so savagely by force . . . beauty, too, that had made Jamie the Scot seek her for his handfast bride.

  Like a quicksand made of pearls, her beauty had dragged her down—and now it had finished her. She was on the run again, this time alone, for Michael would leave her at Banbury. And although she had faced up to her future bravely, in her heart she knew the chances of a woman making a living racing and betting at the fairs was not good.

  Lost, lost Lenore . . . sadly she watched her reflection float by in a still, shallow pool as they rode along the riverbank. A vivid shadow—Lenore, young and lovely as she rode erect and proud on her white horse, her fair face reflecting nothing of what she had suffered. Snowfire, after his long, tiresome winter and spring spent mainly in the stable, was undaunted and ready to run. It was difficult to hold him back to match the sedate pace of Michael’s mount. So glad was he to have her on his back again that he danced and arched his white neck, tossed his silky mane, and whinnied to her in small, soft sounds. Lenore patted him ruefully and sighed. This was to have been such a wonderful time for her, these first weeks with the wonder of her firstborn in her arms and lean, sardonic Geoffrey by her side.

  Michael was fretting because he had left with his baggage to be sent the clothes he wanted to wear tomorrow—and because he was grimly afraid the garter that held up his hose on his left leg was coming loose. His frenzied mind was checking over what was in his saddlebags and bundles that flopped about his horse’s back—no garters, he was sure of it. He would doubtless arrive in Banbury a figure of fun. Though he loved Lenore and would have followed her anywhere, he was already having second thoughts about this wild flight from Oxford and had little to say.

  In her suffering, Lenore was almost oblivious to Michael’s silence. She was used to Michael’s doglike devotion and found it comforting. When she thought about him at all, she hoped vaguely that he would find some smiling girl with enough income to keep him in the red raiment he so loved and forget all about his infatuation for her.

  As they rode along and Michael observed the beauty of the woman who sat her saddle so easily beside him— or more often just ahead, for it was difficult to hold back her prancing mount—his spirits lifted. He was secretly glad that Geoffrey had treated Lenore so shabbily, leaving her and going to France, for it had given him this chance to woo her and perhaps to win her. Any guilt he felt when she turned her head and he saw the shadowed pain in her violet eyes he dispelled with the airy thought that he would be much better for Lenore than Geoffrey. He daydreamed that she would give up this wild scheme of racing at the fairs and ride with him to Coventry, where his mother would see at once how beautiful she was and how he had to have her and immediately consent to their marriage. His father would mention bitterly the inroads Michael’s Oxford education had made on their finances, how he had hoped to recoup through a rich marriage arranged for his handsome son, but he would come around if Mother did. Michael’s father always came around to whatever his mother decided was best—like spending all this money on an Oxford education for Michael and dressing him like a peacock all in red so that people wo
uld notice him.

  Lenore scarcely noticed Michael’s wistful smile, his covert admiring glances. Immersed in bittersweet memories of Geoffrey, she swallowed painfully and said, “Yes, yes,” to something Michael said, unaware of what his words were. Around her bees and cicadas hummed and songbirds flitted through the summer meadows, and great trees dipped leafy green branches into the reflecting water at the river’s edge. She had left Oxford as she had arrived, she thought wryly—unnoticed.

  In that she was mistaken. Their departure from Oxford had not gone unnoticed. Hardly had they cleared the city gates when they passed a pair of riders, headed south. The road was well populated at that point. Produce-laden farm carts streamed into the city, and along the edges of the dusty road strode sturdy country lads, and occasionally broad-hipped, deep-breasted country wenches swung by carrying baskets of eggs and herbs and sometimes live chickens with their feet tied together, into town for sale. In the bustle of all this coming and going, Lenore, preoccupied with her sad thoughts, did not notice the two riders—the big, coarse, black-bearded man and the small, sandy, weathered one—who reined in their horses and turned to stare speculatively after her and Michael.

  This pair, whose names were Tubbs and Swan, had ridden in from Banbury, where—after a bad knife fight in which wiry little Swan had carved up a local drayman— the constable had warned them to leave before the fair started; drifters like them could give Banbury a bad name. So Tubbs and Swan had mounted up and were now headed into Oxford to see what pocket might be picked or what purse cut. A pair of cutthroats who’d long ago left all their scruples behind them, they were used to leaving places in a hurry. They’d been harried out of London, out of half a dozen towns since, so it was no novelty to be turned out of Banbury with their fair coming on. It had, however, put them in an ugly mood, and Swan, a wizened little fellow with coarse, sandy-red hair, a broken nose, and a slight limp, who was as quick with a dagger as any in Shoreditch, had been casting about him for easy prey on the road south.

  As Michael and Lenore passed, he reined up. “Did ye see that?” he asked Tubbs in a low voice. “The wench and the stripling?”

  “Aye,” rumbled Tubbs, rubbing his matted black beard. He was a huge man with small, mean eyes and a voice that rasped almost painfully in his throat—souvenir of a barroom brawl in which he’d caught a flying bottle in the Adam’s apple. His gaze followed Michael’s heavy baggage and Lenore’s supple body thoughtfully. It was a tempting combination.

  “A sight like that do heat the blood, don’t it?” Swan was almost licking his chops as he looked after Lenore. “Now, there’s a piece I’d like to get my hands on.” He moved aside to avoid a passing farm cart. “The lad travels heavy—think you there could be something of value in those bags?”

  Tubbs, who had been thinking the same thing, grunted. “The lad’s armed with a pistol—I could see it.”

  “I doubt yon pink-cheeked lad can use it,” sneered Swan. “Anyway, the girl’s to my liking. How say you we turn about and ride north?”

  The farm cart had now gone its creaking way, and there was a momentary lull in the traffic headed into Oxford.

  “Not so far north as Banbury,” Tubbs reminded him. “Or we’ll land in jail.”

  “Nay, not so far as that. I say we take them somewhere twixt here and there—some likely spot. The wench reminded me of a tavern maid I knew in London—same color hair. She were a hot one. Not so pretty as this wench, though.”

  “I have eyes for the girl, too,” rumbled Tubbs. “So if ye’re thinkin’ not to share her—”

  “We’ll share her,” agreed Swan quickly, fingering his dirk as Tubbs’s mean little eyes fixed on him. He had seen friendlier eyes on a charging boar. “But ’tis not to be like last time when ye was too rough and killed the girl afore I got my chance at ’er!” he warned in an aggrieved voice.

  “Agreed,” said Tubbs laconically. “We’ll take care of the lad first and split up his belongings.”

  “And then we’ll split up the girl!” finished Swan with an evil cackle and a flash of broken yellow teeth.

  Heavy-handed Tubbs gave his companion a long, slow look from those little eyes. He’d been thinking of parting company with Swan before he got a dirk stuck through his ribs some night for some imagined grievance. The girl Swan spoke of had been but a young thing spitting curses. She’d given him a sharp kick—but he’d not meant to break her ribs when he’d crushed her to him angrily and thrown her young body to the ground beneath him. That she had died of it—well, that was the luck of the road, wasn’t it? They’d got away clean, even though there’d been a great to-do about it, for the girl had turned out to be the daughter of the local magistrate. Now this bonny wench on the white horse, he’d be more careful with her, for she looked a rare piece, and it might be good for a wanted man to travel with a “wife” to draw suspicion away from him—at least for a while. Should he get in trouble, he might use her favors to get him out of it —and if he grew tried of her, he could always take her into London and sell her to a brothel. “Mother” Moseley or “Lady” Bennett could always use a pretty piece like her in their establishments, or any of the brothels in Southwark. Meanwhile he’d humor Swan. “Ye can have her first,” he shrugged in an offhand way, spitting in the dirt at the side of the road.

  Swan brightened. “Now, that’s more like it,” he beamed, bobbing his sandy head until his unkempt hair fell over his face. “And right handsome of ye!” He pushed back his hair with dirty fingers and slapped his huge friend on the back, noting again how ironlike were those great knotted muscles beneath the soiled jerkin. Idly he considered just where a dirk would best slip in—in case they had a falling out—for treachery came easily to him, and he’d a mind to have this hot-looking wench all to himself.

  Up ahead Michael had decided to try his luck. “ ’Twould be better if ye forgot Banbury and came to Coventry,” he insisted. “The baby’s so small—suppose it rains at the fair?”

  “Then I’ll find shelter,” sighed Lenore.

  “We have a big house just south of Coventry—you could stay in a spare bedroom. My mother would see there were clean rushes on the floor, and you’d like the view.”

  Lenore smiled at him. His next question was obvious; she hoped to forestall it. “Thank you, Michael, but I— I couldn’t. I must make my own way.”

  “If ye married me, there’d be no need to leave—ye could stay forever. ’Twill all be mine one day.”

  “Michael, you know your parents would never countenance your marrying me. What would your mother say?”

  “ ’Tis not what my mother would say that worries you,” he discerned shrewdly. “ ’Tis Geoffrey who stands in my way.”

  He was right about that, she thought wryly, and looked away that he might not see the answer so plain on her face. In her arms Lorena gave a little sleepy cry, and she busied herself with comforting the child.

  “Am I not as good a man as Geoffrey?” Michael shot at her in an aggrieved voice.

  How to answer that? “Michael,” she groaned, “please do not talk so much about Geoffrey. How can I forget him if I am constantly reminded of him?”

  Michael saw the sense of that, but for the moment it left him with nothing to say. He had been priming himself with arguments concerning Geoffrey, thinking up ways to disparage him, to convince Lenore how much better he could take care of her. It was slowly coming to him that she did not expect anyone to take care of her—that she meant to take care of herself. Now he bounced along with a frown on his pink-cheeked countenance—for he had never had a very good seat on a horse —and tried to think up new arguments to convince Lenore that she should marry him.

  Lenore was glad of the respite. She would need her wits about her when she got to Banbury, and she did not want to arrive tired out from arguing with Michael. But unbidden her thoughts slipped back to Geoffrey, and she found herself brooding as she rode, only half seeing the road which Snowfire danced along.

  Weighed down by her u
nhappy thoughts, it was some time before Lenore realized they were being followed. Michael, concentrating on what seemed to him the more important problem of pressing his suit, had become accustomed to the pair of riders whose horses jogged along behind them just too far for a good view of them to be had, but Lenore’s sense of danger—sharpened by her wild flight with Geoffrey through southwest England— had awakened.

  Now that the traffic had thinned out and the road had become lonelier, for the twentieth time Lenore looked back. “Think you that pair mean us harm?” she asked, squinting at them in the distance. She looked restively about her, wishing for a farm cart—even one that would block the road and make passing difficult. “ ’Tis unnatural that whether we speed up or slow down, they keep that same distance between us.”

  Michael frowned as he looked behind him. A vague unease plagued him. “We’ll lie the night at an inn—we won’t wait till dark, there’s one up ahead that we’ll reach well before sundown.” It occurred to him that the remark made him sound timid—he doubted that would have been Geoffrey’s reaction to the situation. “But ye’ve naught to fear,” he added hastily. “Can ye not see I’ve a large pistol to deal with knaves who might try to harm us?”

  “I see it, Michael, but—have ye ever fired it?”