Sweet Enchantress (6 page)

This particular one spoke of a particular practice of Hinduism, called
Tantrism, where enlightenment was sought through profound experience of sensual love "in which each was both.”

Even more than the concept, she had been intrigued by the Hindu goddess depicted not as a holy virgin but in a sensual embrace of stunning beaut
y. A remarkable contrast to the cult of the Virgin Mary, which the famed Abelard had claimed despised that part of a woman from which sons of men were born.

With a ha
rshly indrawn breath, she admitted to her reflected image her deepest fear that she possessed a perilous connection with this English soldier who venerated such a cult. It was no accident that he, out of the dozens of the English king's military leaders, was ordered to take Montlimoux.

A large hand clamped on Iolande's stooped shoulder, and she cried out.

"
’Tis only I, old woman,” Baldwyn said.

"Don
’t sneak upon me like that, leper!” The contemptuous form of address was her longstanding way of keeping the Knight Templar at a distance.

Ah, but he had been such a handsome gallant when first he had ridden into Montlimoux's courtyard. And she had never been a beauty. Her hooded eyes appraised his ravaged face, mercifully shadowed because of the high, narrow windows in this part o
f the chateau. Here, outside the buttery, he was once again young and magnificent and handsome.

But da
ydreams had never been her weakness. Had she even been a beauty, Baldwyn de Rainbaut, best lance of the Templars, had foresworn marriage, at least, if not
par armours
. And had he even been interested in only an affair of the heart, she would never had been considered, as he was a gentile and she a Jewess.

Despite his
disfigurement, he was still supremely male. Not for him the sexless leper’s castanets, gloves, and breadbasket. She turned her attention back to her ring of keys, discarding the pantry key for the right one. "What mischief do you seek now?” she asked rudely of him.

“
I fear for my Lady Dominique.”

She straightened, her keys clink
ing back together on their ring, and frowned. "I know. I fret, also.”

"
’Tis not just her way of life that’s in danger. Tis her very life, I fear."

“
Has the English lieutenant said as such?”

The Templar shook his shaggy gray head. "No, but
her missive to Denys was intercepted. I listen and watch. The Englishman, I am told, is ruthless, thorough, and unforgiving. I fear his reprisal is yet to come after she has formally yielded her title and county to him.”

"What can he do to her?”
Unconsciously, she rubbed her age-knotted fingers that ached with the cold. "And on what pretext?”

"The missive to Denys was pretext enough, but the Englishman burnt it. Nevertheless, he could find a reason of one kind or another.”

"You come to me now because you finally need my help, do you not, leper?”

"You know what it is I seek.”
It wasn’t a question but a statement.

She lowered her head. Even now this stag of a man had the power to make her foolishly yearn for all that could never be. "I have thought of it, also. But I cannot.”

"This is different, old woman. Tis our Dominique, she needs our help.”

Miserable, she shook her head. "I cannot, I tell you. My knowledge of herbs .
. . I can only use it for good. To poison him . . . No, we must trust. We must trust.”

He stretched out his
hands and flexed his sausage-sized fingers. "I have thought of strangling him at an unguarded moment I would not mind forfeiting the few years left me to keep our Lady Dominique safe. But if it were not Paxton of Wychchester seeking to claim her county and her life, it would be another like him.”

Her words were anguished with the future she feared. "There is no other like him.”

CHAPTER IV

Paxton felt as irritable as a dog chained for too long. Outside, a spring rain performed a mad dance, an
d the wind howled like demons.

From Dominique de Bar's library came the brass rattle of the abacus. He found her at her escritoire, calculating numbers from a ledger. At the same time she dictated to a secretary, a
pipe-stem of a man in his forties.

Paxton
's mailed step must have given him away because at once she glanced up from the Chinese counting instrument. Her gaze turned cold and empty, like that of a marble statue. “You desired me – my Lord Lieutenant?”

Desired her? Did he?

He really looked at her. An intriguing damosel, her features arresting. But her intelligence, her willfulness, her remoteness—they put off a man. No wonder the virago had not been taken to wife, despite the county’s potential wealth. A man wanted in a woman the softness and gentleness that was his complement, a compassion that did not condemn weakness.

Weakness? If any female would suspect it, surely this virago would. All his weaknesses. Remorse, ye
arnings, cynicism . . . aye, hatred, even, though the Church condemned that as the most foul of sins.

"The tourn
ey draws near," he said brusquely. "You should be apprised of your part in the ceremony.”

"Can you not just send one of your lackeys with the instructions?"

So that she would not have to endure his presence. That was what she implied. Her condescending attitude infuriated him. He wanted to throttle her, but such an act would give her an advantage, confirming her opinion of him as a brutish lout.

With an effort, he stifled his peppery temperament, br
ought on by the confining weather he told himself. Nudging aside a gold-and- rock crystal chess set, he settled one hip on the edge of her escritoire. The affronted look on her face was worth the delay in his schedule.

From her secretary's quivering hands,
he plucked the wax tablet that with a second draft would be transferred to parchment. "I and my beloved are one,” he read aloud, his tone insulting.

A blush deepened the rose of her cheeks. "Those are not my words.”

"Oh, mayhap, they belong to this bird you talk to.”

H
is scathing mockery elicited a flash of fiery sparks from eyes as green as English meadows. She dismissed her secretary with a wave of her hand. "A Sufi mystic who lived long ago made that statement.”

He scanned
the rest of the script. "It appears to me to be nothing more than a love song.”

“
Your derision marks you as a man without a heart.”

He tossed the tablet on the escritoire. "I am a trenchant realist. This courtly love, 'tis only frank eroticis
m that encourages courtly dalliance and idealizes extramarital love.”

"A realist? You are a savage, sire.”

"’Tis woman who is
sauvage
. She is ruthless in asking her lover to risk death.”

She spread her hands, capable-looking ones for her fragile build. "She merely requires he prove his
love is more than mere passion.”

His finger traced the chess set
’s rock-crystal castle then tipped it over. "Tis a frustrated love, the pleasure of suffering, that you would glorify.”

She reached out and, with a saucy smile, flicked the gold king, toppling
it. "The greater the love, the greater the pain. The pain of being truly alive.”

"Such love is irreligious.”
He toppled the rock-crystal bishop.

Her slender, graceful hand fingered the gold queen. Watching those fingers with their cylindrical strokes, he
shifted uncomfortably.

At last, sh
e knocked over the gold queen. “’Tis a higher spiritual experience than that of a socially organized marriage by the Church.” With that, she raised a challenging brow and thumped her queen of rock crystal squarely in the chess board’s center. "Such love is a refining, sublimating force. 'Tis the burning point of life.”

“
Or death? I do not agree with Sir Tristan’s tragic intrigue, ‘By my death, do you mean this pain of love?”' He plucked the knight from its square and nudged her queen from the board’s center. “Spare me that, mistress, and I shall live a contented man.”

She tilted her chin, surveying him from beneath lash-veiled eyes. "Contented? I doubt that you shall ever know the peace that comes with that word.”

He came to his feet and stared down at her with a glib curl to his mouth. "No man would in your embrace.”

Her indrawn breath was reward enough. He turned to leave, then added over his shoulder, "Oh
, yes, mistress, after the tourney, there will be a gala feast. I advise you to be prepared at that time to make your homage and take your oath of fealty to me.”

“I do not trust this back-country countess.”

Following Paxton, John Bedford stepped around scaffolding
-balancing carpenters, who had already erected the tiltyard’s palisades. Behind John scampered Hugh, whom Paxton had newly created as page, and ahead the ever-present cat, Arthur, stalked some prey, a field mouse most likely. April’s sunlight was brilliant but the breeze unduly chill.

“
The young woman is helpless, Paxton.”

“
Helpless? John, my friend, you are besotted by that curly-haired Provencal wench, Beatrix. Never believe that of any woman, much less this woman, the chatelaine.”

"I tell ye there is no ally to whom she can turn, Paxton. The rest of La
nguedoc’s counts and princes do not wish to attract King Edward's attention, and our spies tell us that King Philip certainly is not ready t' declare war over the questionable rights of a rather insignificant county. Not yet, at least.”

Paxton halted befor
e a pit where two sturdy yeomen wielded a big two-handed saw on a heavy beam that would help timber the temporary galleries, one on either side of the circular tiltyard. The Round Table work of the tourney was coming along rapidly.

The tiltyard was being c
reated on the edge of a wood that approached to within a league of the village. The field was still dormant from the late winter, although sprouts of grain were shooting up where rainwater pooled. The field was bordered on one side by the river and on the other by the forest, which was fringed with enormous oaks that had to be as old as Methuselah himself and yews that would make the finest bows.

John, witnessing his disquiet, said, “
If there is any doubt as to ye power and authority here, the Round Table should satisfy that. When the countess foreswears her allegiance to ye before all her formerly loyal—”

Paxton
’s attention was diverted. His eye was on the falcon that circled overhead, sprinting through flight, her wings taking on a pointed, drawn back appearance. "Tis neither her allies nor her loyal vassals that disturb me. Tis the woman herself.”

He glanced at John. The man
’s short red beard was split by his grin. His friend cuffed his arm with a fist. "So, at last, a woman has attracted your—"

Paxton
’s gaze moved back to the spiraling falcon. She maneuvered through the air with spectacular, but reckless, abandon. “No, not that way, John. The needs of my loins can be easily slaked.”

“
Ah, then, Paxton, ye will admit she does stir your desires.”

"Nay, not even that.”
He began walking again, dodging a cart drawn by a yoke of slow-gaited oxen. He strode purposefully into the field. He considered the headstrong woman. Her indomitable pride, her damnable resolution, and her impetuousness in choosing to sit at the lower table irritated him. But it was something more that irritated him. "I do not trust her because—”

The falcon ceased her soaring, hovered, then begin her dive for her prey. "Bec
ause there is something”—he could have said impenetrable or incomprehensible, but he was not even sure himself if that was what he meant—"something strange about her,” he finished with dissatisfaction at his inadequate way with words.

John peered at him wi
th dismay. "Paxton, ye have never been one to be obsessed by mythological tales of sorcery and demons and—”

He raised a silencing palm. At the meadow
’s far edge, Dominique de Bar’s page held the reins of three riderless horses. "I gave you orders to see that she was constantly watched, John. Why is she falconing today?”

"Why . . . she asked permission, Paxton. Except for the one night she appeared for dinner, she has been confined to her suite of rooms.”

His mouth compressed, expressing his checked displeasure.

"Riding with her is the guard I posted on her,”
John added. "And, of course, the Templar and her cadger.”

"And her domestic steward, the Jewess?
She is still at the chateau then?”

"Iolande? Aye. I doubt me that the countess would make an escape withou
t the old sibyl.”

"The countess can run to the ends of the earth for all I care but not before she does homage to me as a vassal, and her authority is properly and legally transferred to me.”

He set out for the forest edge with a purposeful stride. Carried on the air, he heard her musical laugh, the sound of witchery, by the body of Christ!