Return to Paradise (Torres Family Saga) (16 page)

      
“Tis Satan himself!” a kitchen maid screeched, falling in a dead faint.

      
When one of the stablemen raised his pitchfork, Rigo kicked it from his hand and then slashed at a knife-wielding peasant, leaving his arm flapping limply at his side as he screamed and sank to the ground. The mob quickly scattered as Rigo wheeled the big black around. His blade flashed in all directions as he kept his eyes partially on Miriam, who was still struggling with a filthy, hulking stableman.

      
“Let me free, you madman, else he will sever your head from your body,” she gasped. Jean tried to keep her as a shield between him and the advancing horseman. As soon as she saw his ploy to drag her inside the villa where Rigo would have to dismount to reach her, she reacted.

      
Jean suddenly felt the hellion in his arms go limp in a faint. The sudden dead weight threw him off balance. The moment he loosed his hold, Miriam twisted free and Rigo struck, running his blade cleanly through the big brawny chest and quickly withdrawing it.

      
He stretched out one hand to her, scooping her up onto the black. No one tried to stop them as they raced down the road and vanished over the hill toward the cliff road.

      
Rigo could feel her tremble even though the black was pounding the earth in a hard gallop. After a few moments he slowed the horse. “No one is giving chase. We are safe now,” he said quietly.

      
She shuddered convulsively, then realized she was clinging to him, her arms about his waist and her face buried against his chest. He was dressed, as often took his fancy, in black. Releasing her death grip on him, she reached up and brushed her tangled, unplaited hair from her face. “I owe you my deepest gratitude, Don Rodrigo,” she said formally.

      
He scowled down at her, noting her pale yet composed expression. “Does nothing rattle you for more than a trice? You were nearly killed by that rabble. What by the twenty-four balls of the twelve apostles were you doing alone in the countryside?”

      
“I was not alone. I rode out with two grooms—to treat the mistress of the household. She was a patient of mine.”

      
“Did you leech her to death? Why were her people set to rip you limb from limb?”

      
Her face hardened and unreasoning fury welled up inside her. “I was set upon for the unpardonable sin of being a Jew—and a woman who dared to practice medicine. Madam Mirade was hurling invectives at me when I quit her chamber. As to that wretch Jean,” she closed her eyes and again saw the reddening stain on his shirt front, “he tried to attack me over a year ago. I but nicked him then. You completed my surgery.”

      
“Women should not ride outside the city walls without proper escort. Two cowardly grooms cannot provide such,” he replied, dismissing the men he had killed.

      
“Do you not understand anything? I have been set upon in the streets of Marseilles as well—and lest you say women should not walk about unescorted, my father and even your uncle have been attacked by rock-throwing mobs. We are Jews, Spaniard! That is why we are hounded. I will not cower inside my house and let lickspittles such as those rule the streets.”

      
He could feel the anger, bottomless and bitter, radiating from deep inside her and he understood it. He had lived with it all his life. A mirthless laugh escaped his lips. “And I am now joined to your defiant cause by a bond of blood, as if my dark Indian face did not already brand me enough!”

      
“You dress to fit your image of yourself—head to toe in black, astride this great ebony beast. Small wonder those ignorant peasants thought you to be the devil. You enjoy the part. You like the killing, do you not, Don Rodrigo?” Her voice had lost its edge of anger now. She sensed the brooding pain he hid.

      
“I chose the only life open to one of my kind and I have done well at it,” he replied defensively.

      
“You need no longer live by the sword, yet you return to Italy instead of going with Benjamin.” She had heard Isaac and Judah talking but a few nights ago and worried that the brothers had quarreled over her.

      
“I have no wish to meet my sire, nor will I become a rich man's lapdog,” he said harshly.

      
“Your father offers you your birthright as eldest son, not the position of curiosity as were Columbus' Indians at the Spanish court,” she replied, amazed at his stubbornness.

      
“So says my brother. I feel otherwise. Let it lie, Miriam.”

      
They rode for several moments in silence, each lost in thought, lonely and bitter. As they neared the city and could see its cannon-blasted walls rise up in the distance, Rigo turned the black off the road and headed toward a copse of pines on a slight rise. When he crested the hill and rode into the shallow, grassy meadow below it, she could see a small stream running by a shepherd's hovel, long deserted from the look of it.

      
“You will not want to return to your home looking as if that stableman had attacked you,” he said, sliding from the horse and then lifting her down.

      
She stiffened as he swung her effortlessly to the ground directly in front of him. His hands on her reminded her all too readily of that fateful night when the course of her life had changed forever.

      
Rigo sensed her wariness and cursed the surge of predatorial hunger that fired his blood. He had never answered Patrice's notes after that night. Now he wished he had done so. “I will not ravish you, my lady,” he said softly.

      
“I do not fear you, Don Rodrigo,” she said, knowing she lied and knowing he knew it as well. She turned on trembling legs and walked toward the stream to wash her face and straighten her hair as best she could.

      
He watched her retreat, her carriage straight and head held high. She wore another of her inelegant work dresses, this one high-necked and dark green. The soft cotton molded to her long legs as the wind whipped it and her glorious hair flew like a banner behind her. He wanted to bury his hands and face in it, to smell her fragrance, to touch the silk of her skin. Cursing his weakness, he followed her through the field of wildflowers and billowing grasses.

      
Miriam knelt by the stream and splashed her face with cold, clear water, then dried her hands and face on her skirts and began to unsnarl her hair, but the wind whipped it all the worse.

      
‘The hut will provide shelter from the wind,” he said. The voice of reasonableness.

      
The voice of madness.
A warning bell sounded in her mind but she stood up and followed him, daring him silently to touch her. Once inside the hut, he turned and reached for her hair. 'Tis caught. Let me untangle it,” he said softly.

      
Miriam felt like a rabbit in a snare as his strong dark fingers deftly worked the knotted hair free. To lead her mind from where it strayed she asked, “Why were you riding this far from the city? And how came you to know of this hut and the stream?”
Another trysting place for you and Patrice Farrier?

      
“I have been riding the Torres horses for the past week, deciding which to buy. As to this place,” he shrugged, “the other day I chanced upon it.”

      
“How soon will you depart for Italy?” she asked as he freed the last of her hair and combed his fingers through it, fanning it about her shoulders. “Please, Rigo, do not—”

      
“Again tis Rigo, not Don Rodrigo. Do you warm to me, Miriam?”

      
“No!”

      
He stood behind her and lay one lean bronzed hand on her shoulder. “Liar,” he whispered.

      
“Go tryst with your whore, Patrice Farrier. I will have none of you. You have done enough damage to my life already.”

      
“And what have you done to mine?” he asked savagely, turning her to face him and pulling her against his chest. “I have betrayed my own brother and yet I burn for you.”

      
“You need only a willing female, any will do. You do not want me,” she whispered brokenly.

      
“The hell I do not,” he swore as he grabbed her chin in his hand and jerked her downcast face up to his. He felt her palms against his chest, yet she did not push him away. “No token protest?” he asked softly. His mouth descended slowly to take hers.

      
Miriam stared at those beautifully sculpted lips, burning for their touch yet knowing the fire he ignited with his kiss would quickly flash out of control. “Soon you will be gone...” she whispered as she opened for the kiss. Her hands reached up and grabbed his shaggy black hair.

      
Rigo savaged her mouth, his tongue plunging in to duel with hers, to taste, to tantalize, to drive her wild and be driven wild himself. He pulled her closer, pressing her against him, feeling her breasts crushed against his chest. The cabin floor was packed earth, filthy and cold. He scooped her into his arms and returned to the warmth of the sun, glorying in the wind that whipped her hair about his face, covering them both like a bronze mantle. After but a few steps he knelt on the soft, warm grass, never breaking the bond of the kiss.

      
She clung to him, hungry for his vitality, his strength, the assurance his hard body offered after her brush with death. She hungered for life and he was the life-giver. When his hands unlaced the back of her gown and slid it from her shoulders, she began to tug at his doublet. With several swift, rough movements he shrugged it and his tunic off, all the while raining feverish kisses on her neck, then on her bared breasts. She buried her fingers in the thick pelt of his chest hair, feeling his heart thud as they knelt in the splendor of the windswept field.

      
When he pressed her backward onto the cushion of the sweet-smelling grass, she held on to him, pulling him atop her. Ebony hair shadowed his face as he raised his head from feasting on her aching breasts. Rigo looked down at her through a haze of passion. He was a man driven, desperate for this slim, imperious, sharp-tongued foreigner.
Madness, tis madness!
Her words,
Soon you will be gone
, echoed in his mind. “So this is our goodbye, Miriam, not the bitter recriminations of that first night. This time I will make it good for you,” he whispered as he cradled her face in his hands and kissed her deeply.

      
Moaning low, she wrapped her arms about his back, feeling the corded muscles bunch and flex as he moved over her, worshipping her flesh with his mouth, with the heat of his body, with all the inferno of his savage, restless spirit. When he pulled up her skirts she helped him, then brushed her lips across his chest and buried her face against the curve of his shoulder. He tore at the fastenings of his hose, then took one of her hands and slid it from his back, lower to help him in peeling down the tight garment.

      
He gasped as his straining staff touched her silky inner thigh. She opened for him and he found her, wet, eager, arching hungrily up to meet him. Her body, so aroused and unfulfilled at their first mating, craved relief with the blind willfulness of pure instinct. Rigo slowly entered the hot, tight interior, steeling himself not to spill his seed so quickly this time. His hands slowed her feverish bucking and set an even rhythm that at first robbed her of breath, then made her cry out and pant in anticipation of an ending she had never experienced.

      
Rigo's breath scorched his lungs as he stroked her. He swore softly and cried out her name as he felt her violent response. The sun sent down golden autumn blessings and the wind dried the perspiration from their sweat-slicked bodies as they labored, locked in an embrace as old as time.

      
Never in her wildest imaginings—and they had become most vivid in the past weeks—had Miriam dreamed of this wild glory. The sky overhead wheeled about at a dizzying speed, her ears rang and her heart was surely leaping from her breast with every stroke of his shaft, plunging in and out of her. She clawed at his back like a lioness, urging him deeper, swifter, harder. Suddenly a ragged cry tore from her as she was wracked with such convulsive shudders of ecstasy that everything went black before her eyes.

      
Rigo had watched and shared the pleasures of a hundred different women, but never had he experienced anything this shattering. Her tight, quivering sheath contracted again and again as she held him blindly, until he swelled and burst, filling her with his life. When he could breathe again he did not pull away from her but cradled her to him and rolled them over so she lay atop him.

      
Her hair whipped about them in a burnished cloud as he caressed the silky flesh of her back and felt her breathing slowly return to normal.

      
As sanity, the time and the place, gradually forced their way into her mind, she refused to relinquish her precious hold on the golden moment. Miriam buried her head against his chest and lay very still. His heart thudded in an even measured cadence now.
So this is our good-bye
. The words echoed in her mind.
This time I will make it good for you.
He had not lied. It had been wonderful, too wonderful. And now it was over. He had initiated her into the mysteries of the flesh, made her crave his touch with a blind, heedless passion that terrified her cool, rational mind. “We have nothing but this, do we, Rigo?” She had not realized she had spoken the words aloud until she felt him lift her off him and set her aside.

      
“A moment ago,
this,
” he emphasized the word, “was quite enough.” His expression was unreadable as he rolled over and pulled up his hose, mechanically refastening them.