State of Grace (Resurrection) (10 page)

He glided over to a chest and lifted the lid, drawing out a large piece of material
. A cloak, I saw, without surprise. What was it with this man and cloaks? He held it out to me, forcing me to walk towards him. I was acutely aware of the sway of my hips and the jiggle of my breasts with each step. So was he.

I wished he would stop staring at my crotch. It was as if he had never seen one before. I
stopped as an idea struck me: perhaps he had never seen a de-haired one before? The thought was erotic and I took a steadying breath.

He was still patiently holding
the cloak out to me, his gaze focused on the ‘v’ at the top of my thighs. Said ‘v’ was becoming a little warm in response to the stare, and a little damp, too. He inhaled sharply, seeming to sniff the air, and his eyes rose, oh so slowly, to meet mine. I blushed a deeper red, hoping he couldn’t tell how aroused I was. His face was carefully blank, only his eyes showed any emotion, blazing a deep, unfathomable black. I was drowning in their depths, the undercurrent in them pulling me down.

‘Mon Dieu,’ he muttered thickly, and tore his eyes away from mine. Connection severed, I mentally shook my head in a vain attempt to clear my thoughts. I had been on the verge of letting him do whatever he wanted to me, but not in the ‘hello big fella, come and get me’ sort of way: it was more like I had been hypnotised or slipped a drug.

Wonderful! I was having an hallucination within an hallucination. Bleakly I thought of a hall of mirrors, my reflection forever diminishing as it bounced from one sheet of glass to the next. Maybe this was happening to me; I was being sucked so far down into my own subconscious I would never find my way back to the surface again.

I let out a small cry of dismay
at the thought that this is what insanity must feel like from the inside looking out, and instantly the cloak was wrapped around my body and strong arms held it tightly against my chilled skin. He scooped me up as easily as a father lifts his baby daughter, took a couple of strides to the hearth and lowered me gently to the floor. The warmth from the fire was delicious, but nothing could chase the chill away from my mind.

He knelt beside me to throw more logs onto the flames and I
could see the muscles bunching underneath his shirt. This was as good a distraction as any and I followed the contours of his back down to his bottom. He had an extremely nice backside, I thought mournfully, still reeling from his effect on me and my own imminent madness.

‘Better?’ he asked. It sounded more like ‘bitterrr’ but I got the gist of it.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

He stiffened and stilled, then looked at me.

‘Good,’ he replied, his tone neutral.

He had obviously understood me. That was
a start, at least. It helps when you and your dream lover can communicate in more than smouldering looks and a nip or two. My mind was still shot, and I had a horrible feeling I was starting to come apart at the seams.

Roman sat quiet
ly next to me, unnaturally motionless. I glanced out of the corner of my eye to check he was still there, still real, even though every nerve in my body screamed out my awareness of him. I slowly began to relax as the minutes ticked by. He was apparently content not to touch or talk to me, and he kept his hypnotic eyes to himself. I was bone-deep weary, the lateness of the hour and the warmth of the fire seeping into me but although my body was tired my mind was very much awake. I stared into the flames, watching them dance over the logs, and listened to the crackle of the fire as it fed, and tried to make sense of my thoughts. Roman appeared to be deep in thoughts of his own.

All of a sudden he
was on his feet, alert. The menace and suppressed violence emanating from him was palpable, and my fear of him returned in a rush sending adrenalin spiking through me so my legs tingled with the urge to flee. His face was porcelain pale and totally devoid of any expression, but his eyes burned dark and alien. I sensed the tension in him: he was almost vibrating with it, yet he remained statue still. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. How could I have forgotten how dangerous he was? I had seen him kill three men in less than a heartbeat, without breaking into a sweat. His attention was focused on the door, and I could feel nothing but relief that it wasn’t focused on me. He terrified me.

Finally I heard the fain
t sounds that had alerted Roman: the soft creak of a door, the muted laughter of a woman and the low answering rumble of a male voice. In an instant Roman was before the door to our bedroom, a flicker of concern on his face. A clatter of footsteps and a woman’s scream came from outside, harsh voices were raised in anger and I could hear the unmistakable noise of fighting. The woman sounded as if she was pleading, but her words were unintelligible. A tortured scream rent the air, and cries of agony filled the night. They abruptly ceased and I flinched. She screamed again, a terrible keening sound that broke down into heart-rending sobs. A man was yelling, anger and hatred clear in his voice, and the noise of other people shouting was getting closer.

I jumped to my feet, clutching the cloak to my chest. Something horrible had happened
in the next room and I had an urgent need to get out of here. Heart beating so fast I thought it in danger of leaping out of my chest, I moved towards the door. Roman stopped me with one hand, palm held up and I was too scared of him to disobey. He put a finger to his lips and I nodded my understanding. Looks like he didn’t want to be discovered any more than I did. I would save that piece of information for later and tamped down my fear of him as best I could; we appeared to be in this together for the time being, and he hadn’t hurt me: yet. I deliberately pushed the thought of sharp teeth and my bitten neck to the back of my mind. Anyway, I was fairly sure that he would stop me if I tried to get past him so I really had no option other than to stay quiet and remain in the room.

Roman had braced his body against the door
, but as the noises ceased, he relaxed slightly. That terrible tension left him, though he remained alert. He waited several minutes then cautiously cracked the door open a few inches and risked a quick look outside, checking the passageway.

‘Wait,’ he commanded and slipped noiselessly outside, closing
the door behind him. I waited and waited and eventually he returned, calling softly before he came in the room, letting me know it was him. Lucky he did, considering I had been hiding behind the door with a large log from the stack next to the fireplace in my hand, ready to brain the first person who walked in the door.

‘We need to leave. Now,’ h
e said. ‘Come.’

I didn’t move. I wasn’t going to leave the warmth and safety of this room without an explanation at least. 

‘Why?’

The danger I had f
elt coming off him like a force-field had diminished, although it was still there, and, as much as I need to get away from him, the corridor and stairs beyond the room contained their own dangers, many of them unknown. Roman considered whether to answer and eventually decided to humour me though I had no doubt that he could force me to leave with him if he so wished.

‘Sir William is dead,’ he replied. ‘In my lady’s bed chamber.’

‘Oh.’ I was uncertain how he expected me to react to the news. I knew it wasn’t good, but at the moment I had no idea how bad it could be. I did feel an odd twinge at the ‘my lady’ bit. His wife, I wondered, then chastised myself for feeling anything. He was an illusion: why should I care? My thoughts must have been written on my face because his mouth turned slightly up at the corners in a small smile.

‘My lady is not
my
lady,’ he explained. ‘Lady Nest is Lord Brychan’s wife. He will not be pleased,’ he added.

‘And Sir William is…?’

‘One of Bernard de Neufmarche’s knights.’

I was in danger of becoming seriously confused. ‘Bernard de whathisnam
e is who?’

‘De Neufmarche is Lord Brychan.’

‘Let me get this straight: Bernard de Neufmarche, aka Lord Brychan, is married to Lady Bird –’

A lip twitched. ‘Nest.’

‘Ok, Lady Nest, and Sir William has been found dead in her room? Did I get that right?’

‘I believe so.’ He appeared to be puzzled. It was difficult to tell. Any emotions or thoughts he had were not readily displayed, like most people. He was hard to read
, his facial expressions were swift and muted, ghosting over his features, barely there, and, I had noticed, often absent entirely. Botox, maybe? That would explain a lot.

‘You do not speak like other women.’ He regarded me thoughtfully.

‘You don’t speak like anyone I know, either,’ I retorted, indignantly. Then something occurred to me, something I really should have thought of sooner. ‘Dead. You said dead.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘I have seen many bodies,’ he said, his voice without any inflection
.

‘No, I mean, how did she die, not how do you know.’

‘His throat has been cut and his male parts had been removed.’

‘Oh. Ew!’

We were still standing by the door, and faint sounds of shouting percolated through the thick wood, but the noise seemed to be coming from further away than the passageway outside.

‘There was a great deal of blood,’ he added, looking directly at me.
His voice made me uneasy. ‘Come.’ He beckoned me with a finger, expecting me to obey. ‘We have no time for this. We must leave now.’

I gestured pointedly at the cloak that covered my otherwise bare body. ‘Some clothes would be nice.’

‘You want nice clothes?’ I could hear his disbelief.

‘I don’t care if they ar
e nice or not, so long as they’re clothes.’

‘Ah. Wait,’ he sai
d, and retraced his steps out of the room. I spend the time wondering how I could understand him perfectly now, when at the last hallucination we had hardly got past the pointing and gesturing that two people who spoke different languages used. I guessed in dreams anything was possible.

He was back in a few short seconds,
cutting my thinking process short. He was carrying an armful of dress, which he dumped on the bed. He pointed at it. ‘You can wear this,’ he said.

‘Whose is it?’

‘Lady Sibyl’s.’

A suspicion popped into my head.’ Won’t she mind?’

‘Mind?’

‘Care,’ I amended, the
n added, for clarification, ‘will she be bothered I have borrowed her clothes?’

Roman’s brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to unravel the meaning in my words
. Finally he got it. Obviously English wasn’t his first language. Strange as it seemed, I didn’t think he was actually speaking English at all, but who cared so long as we could understand each other, even if it did take some working out.

‘Yes. She will ‘mind.’

‘Oh.’ I didn’t know what else to say.

He made a hurry up movement with his hand, so I showed him my back and dropped the cloak. Then I got into a tussle with the dress
: there was yards of it, and I really could have done with a zip or buttons.

Roman sighed impatiently behind me, took the dress out of my hands
and undid some ties at the back. I shrugged: I had thought they were simply decorative. After all, how on earth was anyone supposed to get in and out of the damned thing if you had to fiddle with a row of ribbons down your back? You wouldn’t be able to reach them for one thing! He pulled the cloth over my head and rather urgently poked my arms through the sleeves like a parent dressing a toddler. He adjusted the fabric on the shoulders then drew the ribbons tight. All the time I could smell his nearness and I reacted to his scent like a cat on heat. It took every ounce of will power to hold myself together and at each touch of his hands I almost came undone. I wanted to lie on the bed and beg him to take me. I was disgusted with myself.