Shana Abe (30 page)

He smiled at her look. “One of my ancestors had a penchant for backup systems, apparently.”

The stairs were steep and narrow, she had to place each foot carefully for fear of a misstep leading her to fall into her husband, below her. When they had both reached a sort of plateau he stopped, turning to aid her down the last few steps, then pushed a knob on the wall beside them.

The opening above slid shut on ancient runners, plunging them into complete darkness.

Roland moved, she sensed him somewhere lower than she was, perhaps kneeling. There was a scraping noise, then the sharp sound of stone hitting stone. It came again, this time with a small spark that showed him for an instant, an arrested image against the blackness: hair loose, a look of intense concentration directed at the ground. The spark came again and this time caught, creating a small flame that grew as it fed off the oil in the brazier at his feet.

“You wished to see the tunnels,” he said.

He put the flint away in the small crevice in the wall
where, she assumed, he had found it along with the lamp, giving her a conspiratorial smile. “Follow me, Countess.”

The weak light from the lamp showed her only more steps leading down.

“I thought we were going to look at the stars.” A feeble protest.

“We are.”

With that cryptic comment he moved on, leaving her to follow.

Although the walls became a little higher, the stairs remained as narrow, causing her to almost take them in half-steps, her skirts held up immodestly high, one hand on the wall for balance. Occasionally Roland would look back at her, still with that mischievous look, another aspect to the man she had married. Another completely different side to him.

It was becoming decidedly cooler now as they went lower and lower, the rush of salty air on her arms and face. Finally the descent became more normal but she found that by then her legs were growing tired from the strain. When the stairs ended at a level, stretching corridor she was silently thankful.

There was a moistness that clung to the stones, that tightened her hair into those unavoidable curls about her face, even when it was put up and away, as it was now. She was listening to the sounds before she realized what she was hearing: the boom of the surf, crashing to shore.

Faint purple light ahead indicated the end of their journey. Roland became an outline against it, warm yellow glow against the coolness of night.

When the end came she was still unprepared for it. One moment they were surrounded by the rough stone cavern that the tunnel had turned into, the next they were at the mouth of a cave, looking out into the liquid silver ocean, the vast blue night.

She joined him as he pulled her closer, both of them stepping onto the smooth-packed sand of the beach. Roland tilted his head up to the sky and she followed suit. An endless stretch of stars, pinpoints of shimmering light, a milky band
striping the middle of the sky, all of it dissolving and blending into the edge of the sea before them.

The breeze was surprisingly pleasant, not too cool, a welcome complement to the water, the night.

It came to her that out there on that sheltered beach they could have been anyone, anywhere, not two people joined together under the most tenuous of circumstances, not two people who seemed to be always at odds with each other despite their best intentions.

They might be happily married, for example, Kyla thought. They might be an ordinary couple, a farmer and his wife, who married for love and were sharing their hardships together. They might be anyone.…

But looking at his face, the hard, clean lines of his features, the purity of the honey hair, the mystery in his eyes, she knew this was a fantasy that she could never sustain. He would always and only be Roland, Earl of Lorlreau. Who she was, however, was more of a quandary.

Was she Kyla of Rosemead, sworn enemy of the Hound of Hell? Was she the woman who had vowed to hunt down her nemesis and make him suffer for the pain he had brought her?

Or was she really the Countess of Lorlreau now, his wife, the woman consigned to support him, to be obedient to him, and perhaps, someday, to care for him beyond a mere ordinary feeling, to reach that plane that she almost didn’t dare to name.

Was she supposed to love him?

The stars had no answers for her right now. It seemed to Kyla that she remained a painful blend of these two women, caught between two worlds that could not agree. It was a hardship, one that she suddenly grew tired of, here on the water-smoothed beach, watching the lip of the ocean come again and again to shore in sugar-white waves.

So that when he carefully set the brazier down in the sand and reached for her she didn’t resist. She didn’t think about her conflict, she didn’t want to hear the two sides of her heart argue her fate.

When he cupped both hands to her cheeks she faded into him; when he scorched her with his kiss she reveled in it, she returned it to him ten times over. When he moaned and let his hands slide down her body, her breasts, her stomach, her bottom, her thighs, she held on to him, let him guide her, allowed him whatever he wanted, because that meant that she wanted it, too.

Somehow it didn’t matter that the sand was cool against her skin, it only heightened the sensation of him touching her. It was a potent contrast to his hands, his body pressing her down into the softness of it. They were both lying down; she didn’t remember it happening, it seemed as natural as the moment itself, inevitable that he would be on top of her, that her gown would come loose, that his tunic was off, he was bare-chested against her. It felt strange and wonderful at once, the hard planes of him rubbing against her breasts, her stomach.

He was all muscles and masculine scent, warm and pleasing in every way, supple and strong above her. His mouth was stroking her, his hands were exploring her, and she was wild for his touch, she was holding him closer, knowing that despite everything he would always have the power to make her feel like this—make her care about nothing except his touch.

She knew where they were going and braced herself for the pain of his entry, but to her surprise there was none, only a faint, stinging stretch as he slid into her, his expression closed in concentration, eyes shut.

He was immobile for longer than she could count, both of them breathing hard, both of them lost in the completion of the movement. After a long, long while he began to move, slowly at first, a rhythm that came back to her as if she had always known it, building heat and something else, something she had no name for.…

He whispered her name into her ear, a blended pulse with the ocean’s ballad. She turned her head to his, their lips met and clung, her hands found his shoulders and held on, she was going somewhere else, he was taking her to a place she hadn’t thought of, could not have dreamed of.

There was an almost-pleasure wrapped around her, blooming
from the joining with him, spreading to every inch of her, an urgency. She was reaching for it, she wanted more and more and more of him and he knew it, he was showing her how to find it.

The explosion was a sudden starburst that shimmered and fell in long, glinting trails of light, streaking through her, leaving her gasping.

He said her name again and shuddered above her, finding his own release, tucking his face into her neck, holding her tight.

Kyla, my love …

And then they really were just another couple out in the apex of the night, discovering the cadence of life that had always existed around them, simply another small part of the greatness of the universe.

Chapter Thirteen

T
he herb garden was already showing every indication of a healthy summer, with tender new plants reaching for the sun everywhere Kyla looked: in patterned beds, around wooden stakes and terraces, even creeping down in graceful fronds from special pockets of dirt in the garden wall.

Cook had appeared extremely pleased with herself as she had opened the waist-high gate to allow Kyla into the enclosure. The gate, it was explained, was to keep the deer out.

Kyla had not really desired a guided tour but felt obliged to at least meet the woman who kept sending her gruel for every meal, to attempt to explain as diplomatically as possible that she now felt ready for something a little heartier. She really couldn’t find that many dogs who would eat gruel.

Cook—who, unlike what Kyla had been expecting, was not at all jolly or plump, but rather a tall, thin woman with a serious mien—had listened gravely to Kyla’s request as they sat across from each other beside a chopping block. Then she scowled.

“Did Marla approve this?”

“Yes,” Kyla lied. It wasn’t really a lie, since Marla had not exactly disapproved of it, either.

“Well, then,” said Cook.

That had left the two of them to look at each other, both itching to escape the other’s company but with no polite way to do so. In the background a flurry of women moved back and forth, stirring kettles, kneading dough, dicing vegetables
and meat. One of the women called out for a pinch of basil, allowing Cook to gratefully leap to her feet.

“Seen our garden, milady?”

And since she had not, Kyla was seeing it now. Cook had gathered her leaves of sweet basil, curtsied, and then rushed off. She reminded Kyla to shut the gate behind her when she left.

Kyla walked past the dark, curled leaves of the basil nodding in the breeze, past chamomile and thyme and rosemary, mint and mugwort, yellow bedstraw and a small bush of bay-berry. The garden was crowded but not too much so, filled with plants and trees that Kyla mostly had no names for. The sky became a blue thread knitted through the leaves and branches above her as she walked deeper into the grove. She stopped beneath an arbor supporting a vine with white flowers. There was a stone bench there, a perfect hideaway.

She sat and rested, inhaling the scent of spices and new growth, closing her eyes, leaning back on her hands in the secret alcove. This was the first time in days, it seemed, that she had been alone at Lorlmar. No matter where she went she had a shadow, a soldier or a maid, all of them apologetically deferential as they dogged her steps. She had given up trying to fight it, but this morning the soldier with her had some urgent something to attend to, and Kyla had said she would wait for the maid to come.

She
had
waited, in fact. She had waited a good three minutes, enough time for her to be certain the soldier would be out of sight of her door, before leaving for the kitchens to have a word with Cook.

How delightful to find herself here, amid solitary peace again, surrounded only by plants and birds. Kyla leaned back farther, resting against the leafy green behind her, stretching out her legs.

Roland was avoiding her again.

It was astonishing, the swings of his moods, how he could be loving and tender one moment and a caustic stranger the next. For the past week or so she had been trying to convince herself that this truth lived mostly in her mind, that he was
merely very busy, or tired, or distracted by his duties. And although all those things were most likely true, as well, they were not at the heart of her perception.

She barely saw him at all, except during the morning and evening meals, and sometimes not even then. The only thing she could count on was that he would eventually come to her at night, share the bed with her, and—twice now—make love to her again. Passionate, forceful lovemaking, laying waste to all of her defenses, making her crave him more and more as time wound on.

Kyla didn’t want to care about any of it. She didn’t want to nurse hurt feelings over the fact that her husband seemed to care more for fields and fishing than he did for her. She didn’t want to wake up each morning feeling disappointed that he had already gone, knowing it would be another long day without him. She didn’t want any of it! What she did want was to harden her heart until nothing could penetrate it, not his turquoise looks, not his charming smiles, not his hands on her body, mastering her, showing her how sweet it could be between them.

Why wasn’t it working?

She sighed, kicking her feet through the small pebbled stones that made up the garden path. A red squirrel darted up a tree in front of the arbor and began to scold her.

A small sound came then from off to her left, a voice? Kyla sat up, suddenly alert, and it was there again: a wisp of song carried over the green tops of the herbs, a child’s voice.

She found Elysia alone in the middle of the path, just past an old well caked with ivy. The child sat in the shade, a princess presiding over a court of dolls, all of them arranged with apparent care in front of her.

“Hullo, Auntie,” she said without turning around. “Will you play with me?”

“Are you here by yourself?” Kyla was surprised.

“Oh, yes,” Elysia replied. “I come here all the time. It’s quite nice, isn’t it?”

It seemed the squirrel had followed her; it leapt from
branch to branch until it was just above her again, still muttering.

Kyla sat down gingerly on the small stones, settling her skirts until she could sit cross-legged, as Elysia did, in the dappled shade. Elysia smiled, looking through her, and picked up the doll nearest her.