A Bed of Spices (21 page)

“Solomon,” she said casually. “He is Helga’s student. Remember? We met him once before.”

“I dislike men who are so bold,” Etta said with a curl of her lip.

“Bold?” Rica echoed. “I have not seen that.”

With a sigh, Etta frowned. “That is not what I mean, exactly. I do not think I have words for it.”

Nostrils quivering with amusement, Rica said, “Please try.”

“He makes me think of a stallion. His teeth and something about how he does things—everything is so—passionate. Did you not see his mouth? And his hands?”

“I did not notice,” Rica said, swallowing her giggle.

Etta straightened her shoulders. “I like men who are pious.”

With a strangled snort, Rica’s laugh emerged. To cover it up, she coughed, as if choking.

“Are you all right?”

Rica looked up. “It was a bug. It flew in my throat.” But at the absurdity of this lie, she could no longer hold back the welling laughter. It wasn’t a reaction to anything Etta had said, exactly, but a wave of giddiness that bloomed in her veins whenever

Solomon was near, and the clear silliness of preferring a man who would spend his life on his knees like a priest, rather than tangling with a woman, as men should.

She restrained her giggles. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Etta was rigid with rage. Her hands shook at her sides, and her mouth was drawn tight over her teeth. “You make sport of me, because you think me simple and ignorant, but I will turn the tables on you one day, sister.”

“Etta! I am only a little silly—do not be so serious.”

But Etta whirled and stormed away. Leo trotted along behind her but looked over his shoulder in concern when Rica did not follow. Grabbing her skirts, she hurried to catch up.

But as she made up the lost space, she heard the muttering grumble of her sister as she stomped up the road—a wild singsong spill of words that struck Rica with a strange chill.

Perhaps Minna had not been so wrong, after all. Perhaps Etta truly was mad.

Jacob watched his
son Solomon more warily with each passing day. The young man was flushed with healthy color since his night with the midwife, and he returned from her cottage with bemused smiles and sparkling eyes. In the evenings, he hid away translating profane poetry into Latin, or sat staring into the fire like a lost dreamer.

Solomon was in love.

For a week the knowledge had weighed in Jacob’s chest like a rock, a rock that grew thicker and more solid with each passing hour. Little clues fell into place: it was not a woman he could claim openly; it was a woman who could read and think, the only kind of woman Solomon said he would wed.

There were no women Jacob knew who could read. Girls were not given such instruction, although boys, even poor ones, went very early to study in the temple school.

So this woman was a Gentile and no peasant.

Each time he thought this, Jacob’s bowels turned to water. His prayers these past days had been for this willful, passionate man who was his son, who had always been his favorite, though Jacob tried never to show it.

It was with heavy heart that Jacob set out after Solomon one afternoon. He followed at a discreet distance, through the narrow streets of Strassburg and the west gate, into the forest. As they made their way through the woods, twice Solomon stopped and glanced around. Jacob was forced to lag farther behind.

At the road that led to the midwife’s cottage, Jacob crept forward to see what direction Solomon would take.

But as he gained the road, he found Solomon had vanished. Although he peered hard in all directions, there was no sign of the dark blue jupon Solomon wore, not anywhere.

For long moments Jacob stood there, frustrated and at a loss. With a defeated sigh, he turned back up the road, choosing it instead of the back paths he had followed in pursuit of Solomon. Little more than a horse path here, it joined the road toward Strassburg nearby the river.

As he neared the castle, movement caught his eye. There, dancing down the hill with a monstrous dog behind her, was a woman. Even from some distance, he could see she was richly dressed in a yellow tunic with a deep green surcoat, cut away to show her lush form. Hair the color of light tumbled over her shoulders and back, and there was about her a leaping joy. She held her skirts in her hands to run through the trees.

To an assignation? Was she running to meet her lover? The rock in Jacob’s chest grew to the size of a boulder as he watched the girl disappear into the forest.

Shaken, he stepped forward with one foot, thinking to follow her to see if it was Solomon to whom she ran so joyously. But one step was all he managed.

All at once, he was afraid of the truth. As he turned toward the city, his mouth was grim. Der Esslingen’s daughter! The very thought made him cold.

Henceforth, Solomon would have no leisure. Jacob would see to that. It was only a few weeks until he could return to his studies. Until then, Jacob would see that he had no chance—

Gotenyu
! Der Esslingen’s daughter.

Rica rushed to the place where she had agreed to meet Solomon. It was on a hill that had a copse of trees, like a crown, at its crest. From between the trees, the whole of the Rhine valley could be seen, shimmering in blue and gold.

She ran in exuberance, her feet fleet and light in their soft boots. She danced over small branches and tree roots in her path, feeling the wind of hurry in her hair and on her ankles.

And when she arrived on the hill, there was Solomon already, looking toward the path eagerly, his smile broad and welcoming. As if he could not wait, he rushed forward to snatch her—nearly mid-step—into his arms. His mouth was hot and sweet on her own. She laughed against his mouth. “Did you miss me?”

“Yes,” he growled, and pulled her hard against him. “As do I each day.” His kiss was forceful, deep, overwhelming. “I am a madman, Rica—I can think of nothing but you.”

There was about him today a peculiar intensity, as if he were only thinly tethered to reason. A little alarmed, Rica eased free of him to go stand by the water.

He followed her. “Are you afraid of me, Rica?” His voice, low and strong, purred over her muscles. He bent close to press a kiss to her shoulder. Needles of sensation shot through her muscles from the spot, and she shuddered.

She didn’t look at him. Squatting down next to the spring, she dabbled her fingers in the water. It was cold and silvery, and she could see leaves in many layers pressed to the bottom. And even with her attention so carefully trained on the pool, she felt Solomon all through her. His scent filled her nose, and his heat brushed her arms, and there were deep, quivering feelings in places she didn’t want to name.

Abruptly, she knelt and splashed water on her face, taking perverse satisfaction in the gasping shock of it.

Solomon, standing beside her, said, “It won’t help, my love.”

Sluicing water from her cheeks, she stood up, facing him with a tangle of emotions rising in her breast. “Nor will anything else!” She shook droplets of water from her fingers. “I do my chores, and talk to the servants and to my father, and below it all, I feel like an overripe plum about to burst!”

His eyes glittered, and he stepped forward with the same heat and purpose she had felt a few moments before. “You must trust me,” he said, and gave her his rich smile, his red lips and white teeth like the flesh and skin of an apple—an apple she most achingly wished to devour. But when he took her arm, she yanked away.

“Do not!” she said, and the frustration was like a wild beast in her belly and her thighs. She whirled and ducked under a low-hanging branch, trying desperately to reclaim her sanity.

Solomon snagged her from behind, moving so quietly she didn’t know he was there until his arm looped around her waist. He dragged her against him. “Be still,” he said.

Her thighs grew rigid at the feel of him against her back. “Solomon!” she said, half protesting, half distraught.

His mouth fell again on her bare shoulder, a touch as sweet and pale as the first light of morning. It grew thicker, wetter, until his lips and teeth and tongue settled below her ear, and there stayed, suckling with exquisite pressure at that tender place.

Against her ear, he murmured, “I know what ails you, my love. It tortures me in the night and upon waking. It nearly shreds my soul when I am with you.”

His hand moved on her belly below her surcoat, spreading heat with spiraling movements. Higher and lower he went with each sweeping circle, until he brushed her breasts slowly on the top swirl, and the soft aching place between her thighs on the lower.

“I wish to please you,” he said, and his voice, too, was like a touch, like the thick honey flavor of mead. She trembled and leaned back into him, resting her head backward on his shoulder as his hand swept again over her breasts.

He shifted a little, and touched her nipples with his fingers, caressing them with both hands through the thin linen of her tunic as his mouth trailed heat over her cheek and the corner of her lips and along the curve of her jaw.

There was no protest left in her, only a rising urgency. Her palms itched with the need to feel his skin.

She turned and caught his face in her hands and lifted on her toes to kiss him. Over these past golden months, she had learned about kissing. She tasted each lip in turn, each edge and corner, every tiny portion; she urged him to open his mouth and thus explored the heat and lingering salty taste of her neck on his tongue.

His reaction was violent. He grabbed her close and dipped her nearly backward to kiss her with all the passion she now realized he’d held in check. His hands moved with power over her body, over her buttocks and thighs and sides.

He pushed the loose surcoat from her body and Rica felt the weight pool around her feet; she kicked it away as she worked the buttons of his jupon free, still kissing him—his hard jaw and rough chin and sensual mouth.

But when he reached for the laces on her tunic, tugging them loose with a single, practiced gesture, she froze, catching the tunic close in sudden, unaccountable terror. In the warm day, she wore no kittle and would be naked if the tunic followed her surcoat to the ground. The thought made her pause in embarrassment. He had known many women. Would he find her pleasing?

He lifted his head. A haze of sensual longing softened his forbidding black eyes, and his cheeks were ruddy with arousal, his hair tousled around his face with the restless combing of her fingers.

Inclining his head, he lifted an eyebrow and shed his jupon, tossing it carelessly toward Rica’s surcoat, then unlaced his white shirt. A gentle, teasing smile spread over his lips as he took the edges of tunic from Rica’s clutching fingers. “You will be glad,” he said, and gently pulled the fabric away, his hands skimming over her.

Rica closed her eyes tight as the linen slid down, freeing her skin to the kiss of sunlight and a playful breeze.

And Solomon’s eyes.

He didn’t speak, and Rica stood there in an agony of waiting, her eyes closed, naked in the grove.

“Oh, God,” he whispered raggedly, and Rica felt him kneeling before her, his curls brushing her breasts as he planted kisses on her belly, his hands lightly stroking her sides and back and legs. “I have dreamed of touching you this way from the first day I saw you in Helga’s garden.”

He took her hands and tugged her down to kneel with him. Staring with penetrating hunger into her eyes, he cupped her bare breasts with his hands. “Do you remember what I said I wanted to do?”

A quiver shook her. “Yes,” she whispered.

He bent his head and took her nipple into his mouth.

“Oh!” She sighed, stunned. She had imagined this, imagined what his beautiful, rich mouth would feel like upon her breasts—

His tongue flickered and Rica made a noise. Nothing had ever felt so luxurious as the plucking, swirling glide of his tongue against that sensitive peak. Another soft, surprised sound escaped her lips, and she grabbed his shoulders to steady herself.

He chuckled, but the sound thinned to a low rolling groan. His fingers dug hard into her sides. She sagged, feeling the fabric of his shirt against the front of her thighs.

He steadied her but did not stop. He seemed lost, his mouth leaping and teasing, his fingers curling and caressing. He supped as if all the time in the world was theirs to expend on this one thing, this wild and searing pleasure.

The rising heat in her loins seemed as if it would burn her to death. “Stop, Solomon!” she finally cried. “I will burst.”

He lifted his head, smiling a promise. “Yes.”

He kissed her. Rica tugged at his shirt, and he willingly lifted his arms so she could pull it off, and then he was as naked as she.

Soft, golden light poured over him, gilding his beauty. For a moment, Rica only looked at him in wonder. His flesh was elegant, with a sheen and texture like flowing amber silk. The angles of his shoulder and jaw meshed in perfect symmetry; his limbs and torso were straight and loosely jointed.

As if he might disappear, she stretched out her hands and placed her palms on his chest. The heat of him surprised her and she looked up.

He smiled, a sultry but somehow enveloping expression. She sketched the firm roundness of his shoulders and arms with her fingertips, and he allowed her exploration, lifting his hands to her body in return. She molded his chest, the neat, light triangle of black hair over walnut skin; he stroked the curve of her breasts. She touched the tiny nipples; he grazed hers with his thumbs. She brushed the flat, hard stretch of his belly; he smoothed his palm over her navel.

Then, boldly, Rica looked down to the proud flesh nudging her thigh, and she reached for it, thrilling at the leap it took toward her hand and the curiously velvet feel of it against her palm.

In surprise, she looked at him, and found his eyes upon her. Their hands and bodies were so tangled that the shock of looking at him—so close—was nearly overpowering, but she did not waver. It was raw and honest and somehow thrilling.

He touched her cheek. “With all that I am, Rica,” he said, “I know this is not wrong.”