Awaken My Fire (44 page)

*****

Chapter 12

Helpmesavemehelpmesavemehelpme, Roshelle was gone, Bryce was gone.

Dying torches lit the dark hall. Joan stepped quiet as a mouse to the lord's chambers. She knew never to wake people. She pressed the lever. The heavy wood door creaked as she gently pushed it open, but the pounding rain drowned out the sound. The lord's servant slept soundly on his pallet, his sleep undisturbed as she stepped through the outer room of the lord's chambers. She paused outside, listening, but she heard only the relentless pounding of the rain.

Savemehelpmesavemehelpme...

She pushed open the door and peered inside. Red embers from a dying fire cast the faintest light into the spacious chambers. No one slept in the bed. Roshelle was not there; she was not in her own rooms. Roshelle was gone, Bryce was gone, Roshelle was gone.

Savemehelpmesavemehelpme...

"Who goes there?"

The woman clutched the gold coin tightly in her hand, pulling the folds of the cloak about her person as she stepped back from the gates. She tried to look up to the castle wall where the guard called down from, but the driving rain hit her face. So cold and dark. "'Tis Melissa from Reales! The lady of the castle sent me for her servant Joan."

"Joan of Orleans? Called out in the middle of the night in this bloody weather?"

She shouted up, "'Tis a matter of life and death!"

The captain knew, of course, that Lady Roshelle tended the villagers' ills with medicine and potions. After all the trouble she had given him and the duke, the lady turned out to be an angel of mercy; she had given him a miraculous potion that cured him of his homesickness and its melancholia. Yet to call anyone out in this rain, even to save a life—

"Hurry! Please, all haste!"

"God's teeth, woman," he cursed, then again, this time he cursed his luck at having drawn the short straw that got him duty on this wretched night. "At least step out of the rain while you wait."

The captain of the guards knocked on the door.

"Joan! Joan, are you in there?"

Helpmesavemehelpmesaveme.

Joan clutched the blanket about her neck and backed up against the wooden boards of the wall. The guard opened the door. She knew John of Suffolk, the captain and Bryce's friend. Still he stood there swallowing up the space with his great width. "There ye be, Joan—" He noticed the wide fear in her pretty eyes. "Sweet saints, maid, why are ye afraid? Be it the storm?"

She did not answer.

"Ah, lassie." John smiled fondly; they were all fond of the girl, her sweetness like no other. "Tis just a passing bit o' weather." The wind howled suddenly, a haunting sound that belied the spoken words.

"Are ye missin' Bryce already?" He had not been the only knight who had attended the afternoon mass at the army chapel today, a mass normally empty of participants. Seemed the whole camp wanted to send prayers with Bryce and the lucky men picked to accompany him. "By God's will, he will return soon."

She shook her head. Bryce was gone.

He looked about the empty room, the premonition of evildoing pricked at his mind and he paused. "Ah." He waved his hand, dismissing the feeling with the rationale of his purpose. "Lady Roshelle be waiting for you in the village."

Joan's relief was immediate and heartfelt. "Mercy, Roshelle! She awaits me!"

"Come. Grab a cloak—"

She shook her head, already on her feet and heading out the door and so happy. Roshelle awaited her! "No cloak. Please, Roshelle—"

"Ye can borrow mine," he said as he swung his off his shoulders. "Cannot very well send ye out in cotton rags, can I, now?" He imagined Bryce's bountiful lust cooled by the maid's head cold and he chuckled. "Bryce himself would make me answer to that!''

John led Joan down the stairs and out into the courtyard, where two guards, roused by wooden lances, stood in the still dark and rain-washed night. John chided them for their obvious anger. "Do ye imagine your duty will always wait for a sunny morning? Ah, I've a mind to tell his Grace we got some fair-weather loyalty in the ranks. Step alive, men!" The men straightened and he called out the order. "Raise the gates."

From high atop the battlement, John watched the two men lead the two women through the darkness that was night. The rain fell unceasingly. He looked up at the dark clouds. Cold rain splashed on his face. He turned east to where the sun should be rising any time now.

Yet he saw only the dark hills beneath a darker sky.

The thought of Roshelle eased Joan's fear. Roshelle awaited her, the thought sang in her mind. She would be safe with Roshelle. Roshelle always saved her in the rain.

The woman suddenly stopped. One of the guards turned to see her kneeling in the dark. "Tis me boot. I've a pebble in me boot. Go on ahead. "Tis the cottage with the light in the window.''

The guard turned back, separated from Joan and the other guard now. A dark figure, like a demon in the night, moved on him. An aborted cry sounded. The other guard stopped, spinning around. "What the devil—"

A stampede of horses came at them. Emerging from all sides in the darkness, three mounted men raced toward him. He reached for his sword. Too late. The rush of two swords and a Spanish saber stopped his cry and dropped him where he stood.

"Helpmesavemehelpmesavemehelpme."

Six shadows moved toward her. Sounds of noise and laughter and rain echoed through her head. The shadows surrounded her. Smells of wet and mud and violence. Cold metal blades brushed over her clothes and skin. Neat lines of blood where her clothes fell from her skin.

"Helpmesavemehelpmesaveme."

Cold stings where rain touched her nakedness. A dark gloved hand reached to her long plait. There were words of marvel, a violent rip. A fist slammed into her stomach. She felt herself falling, falling, and then snatching hurting, hands...

Helpmesavemehelpmesaveme.

A blinding burst of light exploded. She felt his hand, gentle now, pulling her away. She was floating and it was a marvel. She started to look back, to see into the darkness and rain where the shadows knelt over a fallen form, but it looked so far, far away...

"Again, Roshelle. I will have you again."

The words pulled her up from a dark sleep. Her blue eyes opened to see his face, so close to hers. So terribly close. Warm, soft fur brushed the length of her skin. He had carried her back to his solar chambers. The gray light of dawn filtered into the room, diffuse and mysterious, shrouding him in a dark but warm light, but she did not smile.

Fate would let her smile no more.

They lay naked and entwined in each other's arms on a bearskin rug beneath a hot fire blazing in the hearth.

Rain still fell outside.

"Aye," she whispered huskily. "Love me again."

He kissed her tenderly and gently, ignoring the hard and hot ache in his loins. Each time he had her, he wanted her more. The violence and passion of the first time had sent him reeling into darkness, returning to feel a pounding ecstasy of no earthly cause. And the moment his senses collected and gathered, he felt the stirring heat in his loins; she was like an unquenchable thirst, and he wanted her again and again and again...

Still kissing her, he dropped his hands to the nape of her neck, sliding to caress her shoulders, lingering there. He broke the kiss and pulled away to let his gaze study the upturned face he could not stop kissing: the feminine velvet of her dark brows and lashes, her lips, the lightest flush staining her cheeks.

She held herself perfectly still, listening to the escalating thud of her heart, her quickening breath as his hands finally slid over her shoulders before traveling in a warm caress down her arms.

She flushed beneath the warmth of his gaze.

"Roshelle . . . Roshelle." He said her name as his hands came over hers. Only then did she realize she still clutched the two tiny rosebuds, the white one for her name and the red one for his love that blessed it. He gently pried her fingers from the stems and set them to the side by the firelight as his lips found her neck. Chills rushed to greet the tender play of his lips on her neck and ear and finally her mouth again as he came over her.

She felt the hard length of him, the shocking heat from every place their bodies touched. Yet he broke the kiss to caress her neck gently, the sensitive spot beneath her ear, and tell her he would take his time. She drew a shaky, uneven breath. The tension erupted in warmth, a sweet, pulsating warmth that made her arch her back, timidly seeking his mouth again...

As if to reward her, the kiss was hot and tantalizing. She wanted it to last forever. He stopped only to draw a deep breath and say her name over and over as if it were part of the incantation of the spell by which he claimed her. She closed her eyes, gasping as he teased the sensitive spot on her ear again, first with his fingers, then with his tongue.

He watched the rosy hue spread with the touch of his hand. A bright flush shone on her cheeks, her lips were moist and full, slightly swollen from his kisses, while her small, quick breaths tasted like honey when he caught them in his mouth.

"Roshelle," he said as his hand moved over the curve of her waist to lightly brush her breasts. The light touch washed her in sensations so tantalizing, they passed through her in feverish shudders. "Oh, Roshelle," he began again, after the pleasure of seeing this. "I want so badly to be gentle, to lead you softly to love's call . . . but each time . . . Help me, Roshelle—"

Yet she knew there was no help for it.

Her blue eyes filled with emotion as her arms curled around his neck, her fingers combing his dark hair. His words meant nothing to her, the emotions underlying them meant everything, emotions manifesting as he kissed her again. And while her emotions were strained and stretched, her senses heightened with a dramatic intensity. Her head swam with the sweet onslaught of sensations, all of them: the flat of his palms rested on the small of her back, where they lightly grazed back and forth over the curve of her buttocks, the warm, moist lips molding hers, the heady taste of his mouth and the lingering salty taste of her tears.

A tingling warmth followed the caress of his hands, the teasing play of his tongue. Those hands slid from her back to court her hip and, moving whisper-soft, he grazed the satin skin of her side before covering her breasts. Shivers, a thousand tiny spark like shivers, erupted where he touched her. She gasped with pleasure, the pounding of her heart dropping just below her abdomen as his palms circled the sensitive peaks. He caressed her in ever-deepening strokes as he watched with wonder and no small amount of pleasure the sensuous color drawn by the erotic pattern of his hands.

No thoughts existed as his seeking mouth found her breasts. His lips moved softly back and forth over her nipples, his tongue stroking the very beat and pulse of the wellspring of her desire. A warm onslaught of voluptuous sensations tumbled through her and she didn't know her fingers curled into his hair as if to keep him to her or that she cried softly until his mouth met hers again and the sound abruptly stopped.

The erotically probing kiss dissolved her will to breathe yet filled her with need; she needed to feel all of him. "Oh, no, my love," he whispered, biting her ear as his hands came over her form. "Let me carry you higher . . . farther ..."

She didn't know what was happening, only that it was; the way he began touching her, kissing her, brought her to a towering peak, leaving her wrapped in a heightened tension that suddenly burst in tiny ripples of pleasure. A journey he repeated over and over, each time carrying her to a new peak, until he had transformed her. She became a wild supple creature in his arms, and seeing this, watching her, he felt the full force of the potency of their blinding love.

He wanted to hold back a moment more. Slowing his pace, he lightly brushed her cheek with his lips before heating her own, kissing her with an erotic tenderness that felt both satiating, and driving until he broke the kiss.

His mouth hovered over hers and he gently bit her lips as he studied her. "Roshelle . . . Roshelle, look at me."

Her blue eyes opened.

"I see in thine eyes my love. I see it." The idea scared him. "A sadness I have seen so many times in my dreams."

She searched his face.

"I have a dream where I see you standing in a tall white tower. There is this sadness in your eyes. Just as I reach out to you, I fall away. It haunts my dreams, Roshelle . Where does it come from?"