Seacliff (44 page)

There were other groups of outlaws or rebels in the hills, but too many of them had their own axes to grind, and they simply weren’t interested in joining Griffin and his force. Some were maimed or crippled and wanted only death as revenge; others couldn’t understand dying for a valley most of them had never heard of, not comprehending that if Flint was left unpunished, his madness would increase, and he would attempt to subdue other places. Chaos would reign, and London’s wrath would fall heavily on all of them, so swiftly and so mercilessly that Wales would never recover.

It was just Griffin then, and a handful of men who were fighting Flint, fighting the weather—fighting with the knowledge that they were outnumbered and doomed to failure. Their only saving grace was the valley spread out before them, acting as a kind of beacon to light the way, to remind them they had a crusade, a mission, a reason to go on.

News from the valley and from Seacliff had been coming in through Davy and Orin, but recently it had become scarce— since Flint’s men had finished sealing off the valley from the outside world. Randall and the Daniels brothers risked their lives trying to get supplies through—food, bits of clothing, a pauper’s share of ammunition—but heroic though the effort was, the supplies weren’t nearly sufficient.

They had reluctantly decided then to flee for the winter. If the blizzards didn’t get them, their lack of vital supplies would render them helpless in their battle against Flint. Their first thought was Scotland, but that was quickly ruled out when they realized they’d have to trek through a portion of England itself. They would also find themselves first in the Lowlands, where royalists wouldn’t hesitate to turn them in for gold. Ireland, then, was finally their only hope of survival.

“We lived like dogs,” he said, his voice soft with fury as he remembered the humiliations. “We weren’t of the church, and we weren’t there to deliver our souls, so most of them ignored us. Hatred of the English was common, but the villages were too afraid of the English guns and swords to shelter us. We hunted as best we could, lived in barns, in sheds… Once I spent a week on a fishing boat. It had been docked for the season, I suppose, and I discovered it quite by accident. A week smelling like cod!”

He nearly spat in a comer, and Caitlin laughed.

The vagrant Welsh had scattered at Griffin’s insistence. The two score men then in the band were too great in number to pass unnoticed. But even then, when they scattered, they met disaster. A few were lost to the harsh winter, several to irate Irishmen who saw death in Welsh shadows, and two—Griff winced and shuddered—fell in love and stayed behind to become farmers.

“Is falling in love so terrible, then?” she asked in feigned reaction to an insult.

“Well,” he said, “it would be if it were with the women I saw over there.”

“Those men were frightened, Griff, and they saw beauty where you have no eyes.” She waited for a retort. There was none, and she leaned forward to kiss his cheek. “You heard about Falconrest.”

“I did.”

“I saw it burning, Griff. Flint made me watch it bum to the ground. And he laughed.”

“At our best we were fifty,” he said as if he hadn’t heard. When she frowned he told her by way of explanation that they had tried to ferret out Flint’s weak points once they’d returned to Wales and the snow had thawed. There were, however, far more of the enemy in the valley than when they had left. And they were more deadly. One man did get through— Terry Wyndym—and his report of the villagers’ fear and isolation had disheartened them.

“Even you?” she said, disbelieving.

“Cat, a wise man knows when not to bell the cat—when the cat has fangs that outreach a man’s arm.”

“He’s not a cat!” she snapped, sitting up and slapping his shoulder, hard. “He’s a man. A foul, disgusting, evil man, to be sure, but he’s a man nonetheless. And he made one mistake after another throughout the winter. His last was in not sending his whole army after me.”

“Why should he? He knows where you were going. And he knows that he’s no reason to fear a woman being added to this motley group we have here.”

She scowled. “Pardon me, Mr. Radnor, but I believe I did rather well on my own account.”

“You did that,” he admitted. “But what does it get you, Cat? Seacliff is still his, and I wouldn’t be surprised if by now he has false papers to prove it’s his, all pretty and ribboned and signed and legal. We still can’t get in without losing too many men. We have food now that the game is back, but what does that gain us, eh? A roll of fat around the belly and precious little more.”

“Well, for one thing,” she said, “it gets me you, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, does it, now?” he challenged, raising his clefted chin to her. She nodded once.

“And what makes you say that, Caitlin Morgan?”

“Evans,” she said. “Oliver is dead, and I am Caitlin Evans again.”

“All right. Evans. So?”

She squirmed until she was leaning over him, her breasts brushing his chest, one leg entwined with his. “Griff,” she said solemnly, “I have been after you for half a decade, and I was too blind-sided to know it. And when I did know it, you left me. Not deliberately, and for reasons I didn’t know until now. But when you came to me that night—”

“You saved my life then, Cat.”

“—I understood a great deal more than I ever had. I’m not one with words, but I know. I know.”

She kissed him then. Gently, long, as the shadows of the low fire rippled across them. As the soft summer night wind shook the door’s covering. As a night thrush trilled in the forest around them. She kissed him—his lips, his forehead, the heat of his copper hair, the lids of his closed eyes, his cheeks, his chin, the side and hollow of his neck. She touched each of the scars he had received in his fighting, unable to stop a tear from being shed for each one. It was a crude bed they were in, a rude hut with a dying fire, but for all the jewels she saw glinting in his eyes, the perfume of his love, the elegance of his desire, it could have been Windsor Castle, and she could have been the queen.

He touched her—cheeks, back, breasts, thighs—and she was lying in a shallow, swift-running stream whose movement was like that of quicksilver, her skin straining to receive every caress, every movement. It was cool and it was warm; it was cold and it was hot.

He kissed her and slipped his hands into her hair, and she was moving with the stream now, the foliage glittering overhead like a flock of emerald birds, the ground beneath her back a bed of down and silk, cloud and sun. Lying atop him she was floating; on her side, and she was dreaming; on her back, and she gripped the bunched muscles of his shoulders and wedded her lips to his.

When he groaned, she answered; when he smiled, she was radiant; when he paused and mouthed “I love you, Cat,” she felt a release of tears and made no attempt to wipe them away.

And when he joined with her in a gentle coupling that brought a soft cry to her throat, the scars of his flesh and the scars of her soul faded in a flash of heat that made her gasp, made her laugh, made her sink her teeth gently into his shoulder to keep from screaming her release to the others. It was not embarrassment, however, nor was it shame. This moment, more than their first and more than in her dreams, was shared only by Griffin and herself. Intense. Private. As different from her liaison with James Flint as clear water is from pond water.

The fire, the hut, and the forest were gone; what remained was a carpet of stars and a moon for a lantern and the smoldering look in his eyes as he leaned down, caressing her breasts almost reverently before kissing her lips, softly, hotly, whispering “Caitlin” before the final moment.

They moved, and neither guided; they raced, and neither pushed; they expanded and they climbed, and when they fell it was together.

She wept, and dried her cheeks.

He held her to him and caressed her languidly, filled her ears with promises of caverns of gold; she held him, and she caressed him, and she accepted the promises with a lazy satisfied grin. And when they slept, her head was in the crook of his arm, her leg over his knees, and her heart so filled with laughter that she kept smiling in her sleep.

When they awoke, he wondered aloud after a kiss what they might do with their day.

“Well,” she said, “this is rather pleasant, I must say, but the others will get jealous.”

“Not as jealous as I if you so much as look at them, my dear.”

Regretfully, she leaned away from his embrace. “Do you really want to know what’s going to happen?”

A wary look narrowed his eyes. “Caitlin Evans, dammit, have you seduced me?”

A playful look touched her face. “And haven’t you ever been seduced, Mr. Radnor?”

“Never as thoroughly as this.”

“Then you’ll want to know what I think.”

The wary expression grew bemused. “I think… well, sooner shot for a sheep as a lamb. All right. Cat, what am I going to do?”

“You,” she said, “are going to help take back Seacliff.” He waited, thinking, then sighed with melancholy. “Cat, I’ve told you—”

“No.” She hushed him, closing her lips with a finger. “I heard very well, thank you, what you told me last night. But you didn’t hear what I had to say.”

“As I recall, lass, you didn’t give me much of a chance to.”

“Then listen now, and I’ll tell you how we’ll do it.”

And he did. First grinning, then laughing, then jumping from the pallet and wrapping a cloak over his nakedness to pace the floor and consider. Caitlin watched him with eyes brightly excited, admiring, waiting. She knew the idea would intrigue him, knew too it would lure him because he would be using Flint’s own plans against him. It was an irony, and a fitting reward. He’d be unable to refuse.

When his thinking was done, he knelt on the floor and took her hands tightly in his. “Cat, you have thought on this, haven’t you? I mean, rather, this isn’t something you’ve decided at the same time you were telling me.”

“Are you asking if I thought before I spoke?” Reluctantly, and somewhat shamefacedly, he nodded.

She laughed, grabbed his face and kissed him soundly, then leaned back out of the way when he reached for her boldly. “Sir!” she said.

“Oh, Caitlin, please!”

“All right, then,” she said, composing herself and nodding. “I spent days wandering around these damned hills. I’ve spent months as a prisoner in my own house. And the more I heard about Flint’s sealing off the valley and the patrols he boldly sent even to the marketplace, the more I knew beyond doubt this was the only way I was going to get back my home.” Griffin scratched at his jaw. “The others’ll take some convincing.”

“I’ll convince them.”

He rose and walked away, rubbing nervously at the back of his neck. “You seem sure, Cat.”

“I have to. It’s the only way.”

“Some may die.”

“Men have died before, for their homes. Lam Johns, for one.”

He turned and looked at her significantly. “And women, Cat? Do women die, too?”

She straightened. “I will say this once, Griff, and I will not say it again: I could have chosen death at least twice over this past year. Twice! I chose to live, not because I was afraid of dying, but because my death would have meant little to this valley or to Seacliff. Certainly it would not have delivered my domain free of that bastard’s hands. I do not intend to die now, either. I intend to leave this place as soon as I am able, and go home. You and your men may come with me or not, as you choose. But before this month is over, Griffin Radnor, I will be in Seacliff. And I will be there as its mistress once again.”

She waited patiently, watching doubt, then admiration sweep across his features. Then he reached out his hand. She took it without hesitation and allowed him to pull her gently from the bed, not into his arms but into a handclasp of allegiance.

“You’re not the same, are you?” he said quietly. “You’re not the woman I talked to at the ringstones at all.”

“No, I’m not.” And it was neither an apology nor a confession; it was a bold declaration.

“Good,” he said with a forceful nod of his head. “In that case, Cat, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

33

G
wen winced as she lifted the bucket from the well’s rim and placed it on the ground. Twinges from lacerations on her back still bothered her from time to time, but she endured them gratefully. A small price to pay, she thought, for the pleasure of seeing Cat flee Seacliff that night. She looked up. The sky was a perfect blue, as deep as the bay’s low swelling water, as vast as all the earth. Then she glanced toward the house, toward the stables, toward the cottages, most of which were still deserted. Everything seemed normal. Chickens were in the yard, scratching for the meal; dogs were sniffing about the trees and carriage yard, one of them lying in the shade of a lightning-scarred hickory feeding her litter of mud-yellow pups; Davy was walking the horses; Orin was working at his forge; and Mary was near the cliff wall with a large washtub, scrubbing linen clean.

All so normal, and yet not normal at all.

After Cat had fled into the storm, Birwyn and a dozen men had galloped after her. They were gone for two days, returning only the evening before, bedraggled, disgruntled, and bringing with them Caitlin’s roan. Gwen had fainted when she heard the news, but Orin had assured her that since the animal’s mistress had not been found there was still hope she was alive, somewhere, perhaps even with Griffin.

Gwen chose to believe this version. To consider the alternative would have been too much for her to bear.

Davy waved when he saw her looking on, patted one of the grays fondly on its haunch, and. trotted over to help her carry the water buckets into the cottage.

“Your back?” he said, kicking open the door with his foot. “A bother,” she replied, “but not a loss.”

After Gwen had thrown herself atop Birwyn during the melee in the front room, he’d finally managed to extricate himself by tossing her against the paneled wall. At the same time someone had thrown a cushion from one of the chairs, striking a sconce above her and shattering the chimney. When she hit the wall she scraped several shards of glass against her back, and they’d made some minor but painful cuts along her spine. Davy himself, and Orin, were still sporting bruises and a black eye each as a result of the staged brawl, and both carried them as badges of honor, refusing even the simplest of medications to ease the stiffness or the occasional lancing pain.