The Flesh and the Devil (35 page)

         
Night, and the castillo was quiet. Even those who searched
for the missing Duque had given up and gone to their rest. Three o‘clock was
struck and past, and Juana‘s eyelids were beginning to droop. She stiffened,
goading herself to wakefulness: she dared no sleep, not yet. Tomorrow night,
safely away from the castillo, with Jaime‘s protection to call upon, she could
sleep her fill – he would never allow a servant, even a Duque‘s servant, to
approach her too nearly on the journey back to Zuccaro.

         
She had locked and bolted herself inside her bedchamber
like on in expectation of a siege, she thought ironically, yet she dared not
fall asleep. Perhaps some superstitious corner of her mind still saw Tristan as
a demon, not to be kept out by bolts and bars. For the hundredth time, her
shadowed eyes scanned the black shapes that lined the room; her boxes, already
packed in readiness for the next morning. She had ordered them to be piled
against the walls, solid barricades against any secret doors. If she reached
out, a hand she could trace her father‘s crest on the largest of them, embossed
on the worn leather: a reminder of her old life, of the gentle simplicity of
her childhood. At Zuccaro everyone had believed that she was what she had
pretended, a dovelike creature like her sisters, and she had been able to
believe it herself – perhaps once she returned there, cossetted and protected,
the dark, frightening self would sleep again and leave her in peace. If she
were once rid of Felipe Tristan…

         
‗It was thoughtful of you to lock the doors,‘ his
voice said from behind her.

         
‗I would not have us disturbed.‘

         
‗No‘

         
She was shaking her head disbelievingly as he stepped in
casually from the balcony and pulled the grille to behind him, and her voice
was only a breath. For a moment his great height blocked the starlight and then
he moved forward soundlessly, and her heart began to beat with hurting
violence.

         
‗While you were ordering your safety you should have
set a few guards below in the courtyard, and steel cuts Moorish silver like
butter.‘ His dagger glinted as sheathed it. ‗So you thought to leave here
with an unpaid debt? I heard how you rejoiced at the chance to cheat me.‘

         
‗Who told you –‗

         
‗Dona Luisa. And I have written orders from Torres
that make me your convoy tomorrow; the Spanish can work swiftly, when they
choose.‘ Harshness edged the cool voice for an instant and was gone. ‗It
was foolish to try to deny me my wages, Juana.‘

         
‗Did you think I would give myselft to you
willingly?‘

         
‗It was our bargain.‘

         
She was retreating as he approached her and found herself
at bay against the piled trunks, the long billowing sleeves of her cream silk
robe outspread like an angel‘s wings. The starlight showed the feverish glint
of fear in her dark eyes and a frantic pulse beating at the base of her throat.
As his shadow fell across her, she was suddenly still; all she could see of him
was a dark, looming shape towering above her, motionless but somehow
indescribably threatening, the arrogant head bowed as if to catch her words.

         
Juana said rapidly, her breathing uneven, ‗I will
give you all I have in the world if you will spare me this. Jewels, money,
everything I possess.‘

         
The silence raced. At first she thought he was inwardly
debating her offer; it was only when she spoke that she recognized her danger.
He was angry, she thought incredulously, and felt insanely glad that she could
not see his face.

         
‗Mercy is not so cheap as killing,‘ he said in an
odd, tight voice, and then his body crushed hers against the unyielding trunk,
the hardness of flesh and bone beneath the black cloth as implacably bruising
as the wood and metal at her back. She writhed, trying to twist away from the
weight upon her, to escape the pitiless pressure; then his hand encircles her
neck, forcing her head back with a thumb pressed to her jaw, so far that the
muscles of her throat were strained. She tried to shake her head but could not,
and as her lips parted in a gasp of pain his mouth came down on hers.

         
Her taut body was rigid against his, her outspread arms
like the wings of a trapped moth as she strained, quivering, in his hold. Then,
as he explored her mouth with sheer sensual cruelty, a sense of nightmarish
hopelessness crept over her. He was too strong; she had never known another man
whose strength was like a rock, like mountains, rendering all other strengths
petty and useless.

         
It was then that she felt his free hand at her breast, the
touch warm through the silk, and her breath caught in her throat. A confusion
of sensation seared her whole body – even while her brain warned her of the
pure agony of his first possession of her, she found herself wanting to yield.
She tore her mouth from his and fought him, teeth clenched and eyes shut,
trembling as though with ague.

        
Tristan‘s caresses were terrifyingly expert; his anger was
leashed now, and he was subduing her taut resistance into involuntary response.
In spite of herself, Juana felt her rigid muscles slacken, yielding to his
indestructibly patient insistence, and suddenly her senses jolted her into an
awareness of new sensations, anguished yet unexpectedly sweet, aroused by his
touch.

         
‗No…‘

         
She hardly knew that she had spoken: the word was a mere
breath.

         
‗That word has no power between us.‘

         
He gripped her waist, spanning it between his hands and
dragging her so closely against him that she could feel the sudden demand of
every muscle. She gasped then, a little animal sound that she did not
recognize, and all at once, incredibly, he set her free.

         
‗Will you offer me money now?‘

         
The question made no sense. Juana had to force her brain to
work, to remember what she had said to him before, and the silence was seconds
old before she managed to shake her head mutely.

         
‗Then pay me.‘

         
The words reverberated harshly through the darkened room,
and Juana found that she was holding her breath. She wondered what he expected
her to say or do, and then realized that he was simply waiting; not to be
allowed to take, but to receive.

         
Her held breath left her lungs in a long, sobbing sigh. She
could not… but there was no other way. Since she could not cancel it nor buy
her release from its bond, she must pay her debt of dishonour on the terms that
were demanded.

         
He was watching her without a trace of emotion,
scientifically, and as she met the coldly derisive glimmer beneath his
half-closed lids, the courage of despair came to her aid. Breathing deeply as
though she were running a race, then hesitated with a look of frantic appeal in
her eyes. Her hands trembled, then came to rest side by side, almost in
supplication, on his broad chest. He had lowered his eyes as she touched him,
studying her slight fingers, and then lifted his lids to meet her gaze.

         
There was no expression in the strange eyes set in their
shadow-dark hollows, and she felt a queer thrill run through her. Her hands
slid higher to rest on his broad shoulders, shrinkingly reluctant, and it was
to mask the taunt that she knew was in his eyes that she suddenly thrust her
fingers, like claws, into the fire of his hair and wrenched to bring his face
down to hers.

         
She heard the swift intake of his breath as he stopped
perforce, and then she stretched up to kiss him. At first he was passive,
unyielding, until the memory of the way he had kissed her told her what to do.
Her lips became coaxing, wooing him purely animal impulse flared into delight.
She did not notice the moment when his arms closed round her, and when his
mouth abruptly responded she felt only triumph. The pressure across her back
was bruising in its force, but her fingers only loosened themselves from his
hair so that she could hang round his neck.

         
It was only when he raised his head that memory returned,
and she knew that he still awaited her final surrender. For an instant she
almost recoiled in panic; his harsh-shadowed face might have been carved from
granite, and only his slightly-quickened breathing betrayed that he had had any
part in that blind, hurting embrace. Her hands relaxed, sliding down his lean
body, her skin newly sensitive to the touch of wool, of buckram, of linen: to
the steel-muscled hardness under the hampering clothes that was so unexpectedly
warm. She would have expected his flesh to have the chill of ice, she thought
bemusedly, but each touch seemed to burn her.

         
Inexpertly and almost blindly – for she dared not lift her
lids in case he should read what she was afraid was in her eyes – she tugged
off his clothes, her fingers fumbling. Tristan made no move to help her, but
she sensed him watching her every move and longed to tell him to turn away from
her; knowing that he watched her helped to sap all her courage. She was trembling,
as much with anger as with apprehension, when the job was done at last, and
before she could guess his intention he had stretched out a hand to touch the
tear that had fallen from her lashes on to her check.

         
‗Defeated, Juana?‘ His voice was cold. ‗Women‘s
tears no longer move me, you waste these.‘

         
‗They are not for you.‘

         
Her head moved instinctively, jerking away from his hand,
and without looking at him she undid the fastenings of her creamy robe and let
it slide to the floor, shaking back her loosened hair as she did so; then,
almost defiantly, she lifted her eyes to his face. She did not know whether she
moved then or whether he caught her to him – only that she was in his arms, and
why she was there no longer mattered in the urgency that blazed between them
like a fork of lightning. It was Tristan‘s strength that held her upright while
his hands searched her body with unhindered intimacy; she could only cling to
him while her limbs turned to water and refused to obey her, and she felt
herself lifted and laid across the crimson altar of the Duquesa‘s bed.

         
In the last instant before her sight blurred into the
blindness of passion, she looked up and saw him above her: the bare breadth of
shoulder like arch spanning her world, the planes glistening faintly in the
light, the skin unexpectedly, flawlessly smooth; her fingers reached out
instinctively to stroke it. Then her eyes fluttered languorously shut and her
sight was lost in feeling, the warmth of a bare flank against hers, the sinews
of knee and thigh and the bony thrust of a hip pressed jealously close as if
its flesh were meant to grow to hers…

         
Her eyes flew open in pure surprise when she felt him move
against her, and then she was lost in a world of sensation in which the earth
moved, the skies spun and flame poured out of the heavens in torrents to engulf
her whole body.
CHAPTER 9

         
Juana felt safe and drowsy, in that strange state between
sleeping and waking where instinct overbears thought. It was a long time since
she had lain feeling so much at peace; as if some monstrous thing that
threatened her had miraculously ceased to exist. Not the threat of her
marriage, but something else . . . something that she was too lazy to remember.

         
The feel of hair-roughened skin beneath her cheek excited
no other emotion than vague curiosity, and she rubbed her face against it idly,
like an exploring kitten; it tasted salt on her lips. She seemed to remember
someone telling her not to fight, to obey her senses, and let her fingers rove
to trace the contours of a deep chest roped with muscle. Abruptly, her hand was
caught and imprisoned, and the feel of a mouth suddenly hungry against her own
jolted her, with shocking instantaneousness, broad awake. She tried to thrust
herself back, but one of Tristan's arms lay across her, holding her close to
him with infuriating ease.

         
Ì think I prefer you half-asleep to waking. You learn
quickly.'

         
The dry note in his voice made her turn away her head,
covering her eyes in a flood of shame.

         
Ì did not know — I did not —'

         
`What?'

         
He was daring to mock her, she thought furiously. There was
an undercurrent of amusement in his tone, and she tensed to hit back at that
lazy complacency. Ì did not know who you were. I believed when I woke that you
were Jaime.'

         
She felt his stillness the whole length of her body; the
slanting eyes looked lazy and impassive, but his body was alert, like a couching
lion's. Then

         
he

         
said placidly, 'De Nueva? Why?'

         
'I wanted to wed him.' She had not meant to use the past
tense, but it slipped from her tongue. 'He is the one I have always loved —'

         
'But he has not possessed you. Will he still want you, after
tonight? Or will he find it too much to stomach that his pure white love is
sleeping with another man?'

         
'He will not blame me for this! He —' she hesitated,— 'he
loves me enough to forgive me.'

         
'Oh, come!' Tristan‘s tone was pure acid. 'That idiotic
young Pelleas with his head full of dreams? He thinks all women must be angels
still, and if you told him a quarter of it he would shun you like the plague. A
woman who pays for murder by whoring?' His fingers brushed her brow, mockingly
tender. 'If your love had as much brain as he has beauty, he would have tumbled
you the moment he heard that he had a rival for your bed, and got your father's
consent that way.'

         
'I would not —' She bit off the words.

         
'You would not? And he would take your
no?
 
By the saints!'

         
He was laughing, a full, rich sound of pure amusement, and
the sound of it stunned Juana. She had not know that such a graven image of a
man could laugh, she thought, but then she had not known that he could. . . .

         
The thought died. After the brief flash of white teeth in
the dusk she saw his face masked again, the impassivity that hid his thoughts
and feelings back in place. Sense flooded shamingly back to her bemused brain,
and all at once she was fully aware of her own nakedness and his; she had not
known that he held her so, arched shamelessly to him, limbs twined about him.
Humiliation rose in a sudden scalding tide, her head moving in feverish denial
as his fingers caressed her, running over her small copper-tipped breasts as though
they were jewels he had purchased. Panting, she flared, 'Let me be now. I have
paid you.'

         
'You have not begun.' He had a serpent's eyes, she thought
with a pulse of dread — soulless, predatory, filmed with ice — the laughter in
them could only have been an illusion, and now they raked her with a look of
pure scorn. 'Death is a costly thing nowadays, and I meant to have you from the
moment I saw you climbing out of your coach and listened to Bartolome slavering
over his bride's beauty. Be still —'

         
The pressure of his hands was suddenly brutal as she tried
to free herself. Pain lanced through her, and she snatched a ragged breath
before his touch soothed again, skilful, possessive.

         
'I swore then that here was one prey he would lose, and I
flatter myself that you hate my touch less than you hated his.'

         
The long hands moved, sliding adroitly to cup her breasts,
and the intimacy made her shiver — rhythmically, insistently, he caressed her
until her breathing was harsh and laboured, his hands moving smoothly downwards
as her body responded. His lips took possession of hers, then began to rove her
smooth skin.