Love Entwined (17 page)

Once they were away from France, he would speak with her father. The Comte would not take it well. It would mean going back on his word to the Marquess and the House of Alsborough, and the Comte was a very proud man. There was also some explaining to do for King George, but Jacqueline would not marry another.

If all went well,
The Raven
would be ready to return to England within the month with a cargo more precious than any other.

* * * *

Château de Vaujours, Asnières-Sur-Seine, France – June 14, 1789

Although Margaux was an accomplished player, tonight her rendition of Mozart’s
Piano Sonata in C
was not at all recognizable. Her fingers attacked the keys with a vengeance. Jacqueline, Roman and
Maman
sat on the edge of their seats as the notes twanged out in a most disagreeable manner.

Finally, the Marchese walked into the music room with Papa and
Maman
stood her eyes moist.

Margaux immediately stopped her assault on their ears and turned toward the door.

“
Ma chérie
, Marchese Falco would like to have a word with you. Perhaps Captain Cardiff and your sister would like to accompany you for a walk on this most pleasant evening,” Papa said.

Margaux was rooted to the spot with an inane smile on her face. She had a fearsome grip on the pianoforte.

The Marchese went to her, loosening her hold on the white, baby grand. “Mademoiselle?”

Margaux gazed at him. Now that the moment was upon her, she resembled one of the marionettes Roman had given Jacqueline as a gift from Madagascar. Margaux stood woodenly with the Marchese’s assistance.

Jacqueline exchanged an amused look with Roman and followed the couple from the room.

The affianced couple did not spare a glance at their escorts, but walked swift, deliberate steps across the green toward the Seine and the deepening purple sky.

She and Roman walked down to the first level of the garden and crossed the moat. She was delighted for her sister, but she had forgotten her own engagement, and now it stuck like a thorn in the side to mar her happiness.

“He never stops talking about her.” Roman took her hand and led her to the gazebo. They stood looking out over the dark waters of the Seine.

“They are a lovely couple, aren’t they?” She took his other hand.

He pulled her in his arms and took her lips in a searing kiss. “I have been waiting to do that all night.”

She sighed and wrapped her arms around his neck. When he ran his fingers through the auburn waves down her back, his touch was so sensually soothing that she was lightheaded.

“Will you come with me to England, my Beauty?” He played this game with her often, speaking as if she did not have a fiancé.

She looked up into his eyes, a mysterious blue in the dark, and pushed back his forelock. “Let us go now, on
The Raven
.”

“Anxious to leave your parents? Your home?”

She turned in his arms and faced the water. “There will have to be agreements made, appeasements to the house of Alsborough, Papa’s anger and
Maman
’s tears…This is such a happy time. I don’t want it to end.”

“It won’t, Beauty. It won’t.”

She held on to his arm wrapped around her. “You’re right, of course. I have never been on a ship. Do you think I will get seasick?”

He tightened his hold on her. “Not if you stay in my arms the entire voyage.”

They watched the swirling waters below in silence, her head resting against his chest. She closed her eyes and imagined they were on his ship, sailing to the exotic ports he frequented. It helped calm her anxiousness. Worry walked with her these days, a feeling of impending doom. Somehow, she must escape the marriage to Lord Alsborough.

She frowned as the dark waters lightened to blue, red and then fiery orange as another vision formed in her mind. The familiar ice of fear prickled over her skin.

This was wrong. She shouldn’t be seeing this now, safe in her
capitaine’s
arms. Her nightmare was out of place. She was awake, the vision could not be real but something in her acknowledged it as truth.

…White robed men walked to the platform. Flames licked at their feet. One by one, they stepped off, into the fire as those around them chanted the dreaded words of her nightmares, “Not worthy…”

She opened her eyes and the dark waters flowed by. Lifting the ruffles at her wrist, her fingers found the dragon bracelet and glided lovingly over ruby chunks in the dragon’s eyes. “Not Worthy,” she murmured.

* * * *

The pit of fire below reflected on the press of naked bodies so that their gyrations were cast in an orange glow. Fiery tentacles crawled out of the pit and over drums, the musician’s beat, reaching for the cavern’s ceiling.

From where they stood in front of the throne, she could see the darkness ooze across the ground, a black fog flowing over men’s ankles as they pounded into women lying prone on rock slabs. Cries of ecstasy mingled with the wails of the dying on this night of celebration.

“Isolde, it is almost time.” He nipped her neck as his thought slid into her mind, so open for him, her consort.

She waited until the last golden vessel was in place. There were scores of them, full of jewels and gleaming in nooks carved out of the rock walls all around the cavern. Everything was in place, ready for the master.

She turned in his arms for the kiss.

Yes, it would be soon.

Her deflowering would be the final ritual before the master’s arrival. He would come for her. She was an Artisan. Only her kind had the power to call him into the world again. She was born for this.

She clasped his hand in hers. Glancing behind him, she said, “Bring the final offering forward.”

The man screamed as the brown robes dragged him past the throne to the edge of the platform. He kicked one of the brown robes and that one doubled over in silent pain. The other brown robe was having trouble getting him under control. His will to live was too strong.

The man broke free of the brown robe’s grip and ran straight toward her.

She watched him and let him run, enjoying his fear and desperation. He was bound to look into her eyes as he searched for the alcove that led off the platform. She smiled as he spied the doorway in the shadows behind her, and then their eyes met.

He slowed to a walk and came to stand directly in front of her, arms at his side. He was breathing hard and she admired his will. He did not want to obey, but he turned slowly and walked back to the edge of the platform where both brown robes now stood with arms folded, waiting patiently for him. They parted, opening a space for him and the man stood between them.

His hands flexed as he wavered on the edge of the platform.

“Such a strong mind,” she smiled and without turning, directed the thought to her consort.

“Have done with this play. The master waits, Isolde,” her consort intimated.

He was impatient with desire. She leaned against him and he wrapped his arms around her. She focused on the man’s back and he catapulted forward as if an invisible hand pushed between his shoulder blades, sending him over the edge.

The fire roared up with the meal.

She closed her eyes, savoring the man’s screams. The ruby-encrusted crown swayed on her head as she gyrated her hips in time to the drumbeat. The dancing below grew more frantic. The man’s agonized howls slowly died.

She sighed and breathed deeply, inhaling the smell of burning flesh.

Behind her, he nipped her neck.

“Yes. Come, my love.” She opened her eyes and holding onto his hands, walked forward to the edge of the platform.

He stood just behind her. When she spread her arms wide, the colorful ceremonial robe parted. He unclasped the ruby dragon at her neck and removed the robe from her shoulders.

“The High Priestess.” The words swept through the crowd below. The drumbeats stopped as faces turned upward to the platform. The crackling fire was the only sound in the cavern.

She stretched, raising her arms high, reveling in the heat of the blaze that wrapped around her bare midriff. It warmed the gold cups encasing her breasts, and fed her soul.

His bare chest warmed her back as his hands moved across her belly, over the blood red ruby in her navel and down to the silken veils riding low on her hips.

They moved as one now, hip to hip. His erection nestled between her buttocks as their hips moved slowly around and around. The drumbeat began anew.

Rubies glittered in the firelight as her hands and fingers gracefully weaved the ceremonial signs above her head. His hands gripped her hips, anchoring her to him in the ancient dance.

She chanted the words to the ritual with tears streaming down her face, so proud was she to take her place in history beside all the Artisans that had come before her. The power of them all coursed through her veins now as they joined her in song. Her voice and their voices comingled, shaking the cavern as she spoke the final commands that would bring forth the master.

Her legs weakened and she moaned, leaning against her consort. She could feel his labored breathing against her back, and she raised a hand to his cheek.

They had waited so long for this. She was the Pure One in this generation, the one witch who had the power to design the master’s vessel. Now, in the master’s awakening ceremony, she would finally be taken by her consort.

The ground under their feet trembled with the dragon’s roar.

He parted the silk veils of her skirt as he rasped in her ear. “Now.”

She spread her legs wide, hot and aching for him.

The dragon’s fiery, red eyes surfaced above the platform.

Her consort’s engorged member pushed against her core. She felt a moment’s discomfort before he filled her and the fire dragon blasted them with cleansing, burning breath. With each thrust, he claimed her, she wanted more and more and he placed a palm on her belly to steady her as he rammed into her. The fire dragon roared its approval, spewing fiery blood that rained down upon them, filling the golden vessels, drenching the jewels so that they glistened from within…

* * * *

Jacqueline pushed the satin coverlet off and wiped the sheen of perspiration from her brow.

This nightmare was the clearest of them all. The ancient language she’d spoken on the platform was strange, guttural and yet in the dream she knew it so well. Now she knew all that she was in that life, more than she wanted to be. She had never known who was standing with her above the fiery pit until now. Until she took his hand as if she were his by right. As if she wanted him, wanted all of it to happen.

But she did not want Lord Alsborough.

As always, the nightmare brought on a yearning in her akin to a fever. This night she would not toss and turn Lord Alsborough out of her mind until sleep claimed her again.

Jacqueline brought her knees up to her chest and fingered the dragon anklet. She could not be the creator of its original design. The scenes in her nightmare pre-dated civilization, she knew this instinctively. She was not a high priestess of an ancient demon-worshipping cult.

She could not shake the feeling of dread that clung to her like the beautiful rubies from her fiancé. And yet, she could not say what it was she feared so. She did not believe in reincarnation. She was not a doorway to an ancient evil, a dreadful, heartless witch. She barely knew Lord Alsborough and now more than ever vowed to stay away from him.

Papa would dismiss this nightmare of past lives as pre-wedding nerves.
Maman
would send for the abrasive Dr. Gautille, and Margaux would laugh at her.

Little ruby eyes gleamed darkly when she tore the anklet away from her leg.

She left the bed and opened the balcony doors. Standing in the night air, she took deep breaths to calm the raging need inside of her. The cool breeze was refreshing, but it did not soothe the fire in her belly.

Her very soul called for the anecdote—Roman. She was beset by visions of Roman, with her, over her, in her.

Go to him
.

The thought wafted up to her consciousness from the depths of her desire.

Why not? She loved Roman. He would be the one to take her virginity, now or later, what did it matter? She belonged to him, not to Lord Alsborough.

She put a robe on over her nightgown and padded down the dark hall. She did not hesitate across the landing, but moved purposefully toward the guest wing.

The bedroom door was ajar. Placing her hand on it, she watched as it slowly revealed first his breeches, his muscled torso and finally his eyes.

Roman lay sprawled atop the bedclothes with his arms cradling his head as he stared at her.

She stood just outside the beam of moonlight falling across the floor. His broad chest rose and fell, and then lifted off the bed.

His dark hair, loose and touching his shoulders, swayed as he walked slowly toward her. She wanted to touch those locks but could not move her hand from the door. Instead, her gaze traveled to the black curls sprinkled lightly across his chest and further still to the loose breeches riding low on his waist. Peaking from the top of the breeches were more curls above an erection straining against fabric.

When she raised her eyes, he reached behind her and closed the door.

He pulled her closer, studying her white robe in all seriousness. “I thought I conjured you in a vision. But you are a lamb come willingly to the sacrificial altar.”

She cleared her throat, blinking away a vision of the fiery pit. She opened her mouth to tell him of her dream but said only, “I—I could not sleep.”

“And I have tried to go slow with you. It has been torture.” He pulled the sash holding her robe together and it fell to her feet in a whisper of silk. His jaw worked in control as it had that dawn at her private pool in the Seine.

She followed his eyes to the thin chemise she wore, and flushed. Her dark nipples pressed against the material, clearly visible in the pale light of the moon. Her legs were bare from mid-thigh.