The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (20 page)

His legs cradled her ankle, which felt far better than when they’d left Wydehaw. He idly checked Moira’s work, his hands no less gentle than the woman’s, but ’twas strength she felt coming from his fingertips, not warmth.

The warmth came from inside herself. He’d done naught but press and probe and dose her for a fortnight, but like last evening when he’d caressed her mouth with his thumb, this touch was different, gratuitous, done purely for the deed itself. No one had touched her for the mere sake of touching in a long, long while, and no man ever.

“’Tis uncommonly strong cloth and especially suited to the binding of broken bones,” he said, his fingers smoothing a fold across her instep. “Did you notice?”

“Aye.” She’d noticed the give and take of it, the way it clung, the silky flow of it when the Quicken-tree moved.

She noticed, too, the slow gliding pressure of Dain’s thumb and fingers down the sole of her foot, and had to stifle a sigh. The sensation was wonderful and unsettling. Normally, she was sure she would have pulled her foot away, but she’d been sated with decadence all day and her body would have more. He worked his way up to her toes, the skilled intimacy of his touch putting Edmee’s efforts to shame. ’Twas as if he knew every muscle and fiber in her foot and how to make each of them melt into his hand, a magic all in its own.

“They make the cloth themselves,” he said, “like everything else they use. They are not traders, you see, except in religious matters.”

“Hmm,” was all she could manage, despite her aroused curiosity. If she opened her mouth, she’d release the sigh lodged in her throat.

He glanced up at the muffled noise she made, and a wide grin split his face. “Breathe, Ceri,” he said.
Kaurry
, her name sounded in his far north accent.

Damn, she swore on a soft expulsion. He’d caught her again, being addle-brained.

“I would bargain with you, Lavrans,” she said, retrieving her dignity and her foot with an alacrity fueled by embarrassment.

He let her go easily, though his smile was still broad. “Unlike Rhuddlan, I trade in all manner of things,” he assured her, reaching for another leaf to lay across the salve. “What do you want, and what do you have to offer?”

“What I have is a promise,” she began, and was surprised to see him wince and shake his head.

“A not so auspicious start,
chérie
.” He slipped the small clay pot into a pouch hanging from his belt.

“’Tis a good promise,” she exclaimed, put off by his quickness to doubt.

“Oh, aye,” he said, but his smile was calling her a liar before he’d even heard her out.

“Could make you rich.”

“Rich?” His interest changed, becoming less skeptical. “How rich?”

“How much ransom did you ask of Caradoc for my return?”

He hesitated a moment before answering. “’Tis not exactly a ransom, Ceri. Caradoc knows I won’t hurt you. I think of it more as recompense for care.”

“How much?” she repeated.

His reply was not so quick this time, as if he debated whether to tell her the truth.

“Two hundred marks,” he finally said, much to her astonishment.

She didn’t believe him, not for an instant. ’Twas an outrageous sum, absurd. He’d proven so clever thus far, she would have expected better of him.

“Caradoc is no fool,” she told him, though it would take less than a fool to pay that dearly for a bride, even one of her supposed uniqueness.

“Neither am I.” His answer was accompanied by an arrogant rise in his right eyebrow.

“If you are no fool, then what will you do with me when he doesn’t pay? For he won’t, you know.”

His smile came back. “Why, keep you for myself,
chérie
. What else?”

“Now there’s a fool’s bargain,” she said with a small snort, piqued that he found humor in her situation, and that he was so sure of himself. “Unlike Caradoc, you could have no possible use for me.”

Dain had to keep himself from laughing out loud. Ah, sweet innocence. Sweet sweet innocence. ’Twas only great effort that kept the satyr’s expression from his face, for he had use of her, a carnal, needy use. Riding with her through the forest had been both heaven and hell, the gentle back-and-forth rocking of her firm buttocks against his groin. He wouldn’t have missed a one of the Cypriot’s delicate steps, and if Llynya had not fallen from the sky, they would have gotten little farther than the glade where the sprite had found them.

He knew of a place in Wroneu where the grass was softer than goosedown, where water bubbled warm from the ground, and the trees made a bower dappled by sunlight during the day and graced by slivers of the moon at night. He had reached the point of deciding to take her there, and to
take
her there, easing himself upon her. A challenge to be sure, one requiring any innocence he had left, artlessness working so much better with virgins than any amount of cunning.

Seduction would have taken time. Surrender would have needed kisses, slow, sucking kisses on her mouth, the kind that made breathing labored and blood rush. He wondered if she had any idea how sensitive her lips were, how much of a touch they could feel, so much more than fingertips. He wanted to teach her about kissing and her mouth, if she didn’t already know.

Some nun or novice may have kissed her. Such things were wont to happen within cloistered environs, and even without. But he doubted if the unavoidable furtiveness, not to mention the guilt inevitably associated with such unions, could have allowed for the kind of kissing he had in mind.

Sweet thing, he had use of her, all right, to a pleasurable end and beyond and back again.

“And if I did have a use for you?” he asked, utterly guileless, his eyes clear and his smile straight on his face. “What would your bargain be then?”

“Not to escape you in return for your teachings of magic.”

“Magic?” As he recalled, he had disclaimed any knowledge of magic. But if the maid wanted to learn how to make water burn, he was willing enough.

“Aye. One trick in particular has come to my attention.”

A trick, good, he thought. He had a hundred tricks and could conjure a hundred more, whereas magic—what he knew of true magic, anyway—took more patience and skill than he could have conjured in a lifetime. And therein lay the key, according to Jalal. Immortality. True magicians didn’t merely control objects or natural acts. They controlled time. Otherwise, like him, they ended up dead long before they’d figured out the secrets of true magic.

Nemeton must have had the knowledge, but Caradoc was unlikely to have mastered time in the four years since they’d last met—a brief reunion in Cardiff organized by Morgan—which accounted for much of Dain’s discounting of the maid’s fear. She might have to struggle with superstition, and Caradoc might turn out to be cruel, but ’twas unlikely she was in danger from the dragons and magic written in her red book—the one being nonexistent and the other being rarer than snow in Egypt.

“What trick would that be?” he asked.

“To dance with lightning.”

“Ah,” he murmured for lack of anything more pertinent coming to mind.

“Well? What say you?”

He waited a moment, as if there were really some conditions to be weighed, some restrictions mulled over, some cautions revealed, when in actuality there were none.

He didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about. “Well?”

He looked her over carefully, very carefully, letting his gaze wander and linger at his leisure, especially noting the curve of her breasts and how the folds of her gown creased at the juncture of her thighs. Those were magical places, and if Caradoc had turned cruel, Dain would think more than twice about granting him access there. Tender maids needed tender care.

“Aye,” he said, dragging his gaze up to meet hers. “After you’ve regained your strength, and your ankle is healed, I think you could do it without frying yourself to a crisp. ’Tis not an easy thing, you know.”

“I didn’t expect it would be,” she said in an affronted tone.

“So you understand the risks?”

“The risks matter not. My life is forfeit if I cannot protect myself.” Her voice was calm, her gaze steady. She was so utterly sure of herself and her fate.

God, but he was a black heart to be thinking of seduction while she dealt with death, whether her fears were imagined or not.

There was only one way to know for sure.

“Come,” he said, rising to his feet and reaching down a hand to help her. “Let us go to Madron.”

Unbidden by intent, he looked toward Rhuddlan as she took his hand. The Quicken-tree leader slowly nodded, giving permission when Dain had not realized it was needed. He had always come and gone in Deri depending on his own wishes. Then the truth struck him, sending an odd unease down his spine: Rhuddlan didn’t care whether he left or not, the permission was for taking Ceridwen back out with him.

A softly voiced command brought the Cypriot to his side. He lifted Ceridwen onto the mare and took the reins to lead them through the water track. At the edge of the falls, he glanced over his shoulder to where Rhuddlan sat by the giant oak. The Quicken-tree leader was still watching them, his eyes gleaming brightly within the broad stripe of paint.

Another nod was not forthcoming, and Dain felt the lack was more of a warning than an oversight, a strange caution from a friend. The Cypriot nudged him, and he stepped into the mist, letting the silver-sheened cascade arc over their heads before Rhuddlan could change his mind and decide to keep the maid despite her shortcomings. By all accounts, the Quicken-tree had more claim to her than Dain did, to take her north or to wherever it was they kept their winter camp. But claim or no claim, he would not have left her.

A
s soon as they were free of the river, Dain swung up on the Cypriot and kicked her into a canter, heading them across a grassy stretch of meadow to the safety of the trees. He needed permission from no man to do what he wished —except, it seemed, when it came to the maid.

Look at him now, taking her to Madron, after being waylaid by Rhuddlan, while he was holding her for Caradoc. No wonder she thought of nothing beyond escape. Every move she made was met with checkmate and capture. She was as well trapped as he had been in the desert.

A quick jerk of the reins stopped the mare dead in her tracks.

“Sweet Jesus,” he swore, his arm tightening around the maid like a vise, his anger at Rhuddlan flowing over into anger at her.

She squirmed within his grasp, but he would have none of it and pulled her even tighter.

“Who are you?” he growled in her ear.

Her answer was a jab of her elbow to his ribs.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

“Loose me, you fool!” She tried to jab him again, but he’d lifted her off the horse and into his arms before she could connect, his feet hitting the ground as her elbow skimmed his shoulder.

He swung her around to face him, keeping her arms pinned behind her back, the reins still gripped in his fist. “There will be no more talk of fools, Ceri,” he said through gritted teeth. “Now tell me who you are.”

She seethed in his embrace, knee-deep in sweet woodruff with her face tilted into the moonlight. “You know who I am. Ceridwen ab Arawn, cousin to Morgan, sister to Mychael, daughter of Rhiannon, betrothed of Caradoc, and a damned prisoner to you! And each time I try to be more, someone is there to stop me!” She tried to kick him in the shins, but he hooked her ankle with his foot, his instincts faster than his common sense.

All would still have been aright, if the Cypriot hadn’t chosen that moment to shy away. The struggling woman and the lunging horse proved too much for him, sending him tumbling with the maid in his arms. They fell together, with him twisting his body to take the brunt of it, another brilliant flash of instinct he couldn’t have controlled for naught. He lay on the ground, the breath knocked out of him, hardly believing what he’d done.

“Are you hurt?” he asked when he could. Stupid bugger, he called himself, a thousand times worse than any fool if he’d caused her harm. He lightened his grip only a bare fraction, so if he had hurt her she wouldn’t lose his support all at once.