Time to Love Again (18 page)

“There’s no need to test it,” said Theu from
behind her. “The heat is always the same.” He caught her hand,
spinning her around like a dancer and wrapping their locked arms
across her back to draw her against him. He had removed his
clothing before coming to the pool, so her bare wet skin was
pressed against his dry warmth. Desire for him, never far from her
consciousness, blossomed at the contact, but she kept her voice
under control.

“Have you also come to take your last bath
before we leave?”

“I have neglected you these past two days,”
he said, acknowledging her attempt at coolness. “I’ll remedy that
tonight. Perhaps you’d be willing to help me clean away the day’s
dirt and sweat.”

“I might be.” Leaving his arms, she moved
toward the spot where she had left the bowl of soap and the bucket.
He followed her.

“There will be a reward for your assistance,”
he promised, drawing aside her wet hair to kiss the back of her
neck.

“A good deed is its own reward, needing no
other recompense,” she murmured, relishing his appreciative
chuckle.

“In that case, dearest lady, I will not delay
your act of charity. Begin whenever you wish.”

She answered him by pushing him down onto the
low wooden stool that sat next to the spring and then pouring a
bucket of hot water over his head. The soap in the bowl was not
quite solid. She scooped a little of the gelatinous substance into
one hand and began to wash his hair.

“Be careful,” he warned. “If it gets into my
eyes and stings, I will be angry.”

“It seems to me,” she told him, “that you
ought to be grateful for my help instead of sounding like Sister
Gertrude.”

At that, he seized her right hand and began
kissing her wrist and fingers in spite of the unpleasant taste of
the soapsuds adorning her skin.

“Let me go,” she whispered, all her senses
stirred by the touch of his mouth on the pulse point at her wrist,
“or I won’t be able to wash your back.”

When he released her hand, she gathered up
more soap and began to massage his back while he leaned forward on
the stool.

“Now your chest,” she told him, moving around
to kneel facing him.

“No.” He caught her hands. “I’ll do the rest
myself. If you touch me once more, I won’t be able to wait. I want
this night to be a feast of love for both of us, not just for
me.”

He rose, pulling her up with him. They stood
in hazy moonlight, wanting each other yet delaying what they knew
would soon happen, drawing out the desire and the fulfillment they
would find in each other.

“Our idyll here is coming to a close.” He was
still holding her hands, lacing his fingers through hers. “Once we
are traveling again, there will be few occasions to make love as
freely as we do in this private place. But whether you sleep in my
arms or not, never doubt my longing for you. Never imagine I have
ceased to want you, though I may not show my desire as your woman’s
heart might hope. And when at last our journey ends, then you and
I—” He stopped, dropping her hands and moving toward the pool. When
he spoke again, she had the impression that he was fighting against
an almost unbearable grief.

“I sometimes forget,” he said in a choked
whisper, “that you may not always be with me. I begin to plan a
long and happy time together, and then I remember, and it is as
though you are already gone from me.”

“The truth is,” she told him, “that we can’t
be certain Hank will ever be able to remove me from this time. I
have been here for eleven days now, and he has been able to make
just one unsuccessful attempt. It is entirely possible that I will
be stranded here for the rest of my life.”

“I wish it were so,” he said.

The thought of never going back to her own
time ought to have made her unhappy, but Theu’s quietly spoken
words filled her with a joy that blotted out regret for whatever
she might have lost in the twentieth century. Though he had not
mentioned love, he had made clear how much he wanted her.
Considering how uncertain the future was for both of them, perhaps
it was better if they never spoke of love.

“I begin to think you are in more danger of
leaving me than I am of leaving you,” she said. ‘Theu, I am afraid
of what will happen in Spain.”

“Do you know something about the Spanish
campaign?” he asked. “You have mentioned it before, and I have seen
your face when Hugo or Marcion speak of it.”

“It will end in disaster,” she began, but he
raised his hand in a gesture that stopped the words she dreaded to
say but had to speak if he was to be warned.

“Not now,” he said. “Don’t spoil this
beautiful evening with what you know of the future. For this one
brief night, I want to think of nothing but you. Tell me later what
you think I ought to hear. And if there is no later for us, if you
are taken from me before you can speak what I believe will be sad
words, then I will do what I would have done before ever you came
to this time. I will obey my king and lead my men into battle, and
try to bring as many of them home again as I can. The only
difference will be that if you are not waiting for me, it won’t
matter to me whether I live or die.

“And now, we have talked so long that the
fever that was in my blood has cooled enough to let you finish
washing me after all.”

She moved toward him, lifting soap-filled
hands which she laid on his chest. But it was soon evident that the
fever he had spoken of had not abated. He reached for the soap bowl
himself, just as her hands slid downward along his flanks and
around to his groin. He froze in mid-motion.

“Get into the pool,” he said. “Unhand me now
or this lovemaking will end too soon.”

“I’m not sure I want to unhand you,” she
replied, stroking the inside of his thighs.

“Take your hands away or I’ll throw you into
the water.”

“You always threaten violence,” she murmured,
still touching him.

“I may threaten, but I could never hurt you.”
Since she would not do as he ordered, he pulled her hands from his
lower body and held them against his chest. She took full advantage
of the opportunity thus offered to her, moving close to his soapy,
glistening strength. Stretching upward, she kissed him full on the
mouth. He pulled back, turned her around, and pushed her toward the
water.

“While I may never hurt you,” he said
sweetly, “I
will
teach you to obey me.”

It seemed the gentlest of touches between her
shoulder blades, but she was by then standing at the very edge of
the pool. She fell into the water, sinking to the bottom before she
was able to overcome her shock at this treatment. With a hard kick
against the mosaic tiles she turned herself right side up and rose
to the top again, sputtering and coughing when she finally reached
the air. Theu stood watching her in the pose so typical of him,
with his legs apart, fists on hips. Something in the bold
self-assurance of his stance brought out an unexpected wildness in
her.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me!” she cried,
grabbing at his ankle and pulling hard. It was entirely satisfying
to see him do a slow cartwheel out over the water before he landed
with an awful
whack
that must have knocked the air right out
of his lungs.

“Why, Theu,” she said, displaying not the
least bit of sympathy when he finally surfaced, “you forgot to
rinse first.”

“I’ll have my revenge for your foul deed,” he
told her, flashing a wicked grin before he vanished into the
steam.

For the next few minutes it was like being in
the pool with a playful sea creature. Theu dove again and again to
touch her beneath the water, stroking and patting her legs and
breasts and buttocks, tickling her feet and the backs of her knees,
once even pulling her under to kiss her until her ears began to
ring from loss of air. After that she hung by one hand from the
stones at the side of the pool, wiping her streaming hair out of
her eyes and wondering where he would strike next. Suddenly he was
in front of her, pinning her against the stone with a hand beside
each of her shoulders and his full length pressing on her.

“Do you know now who is your master?” he
asked, kissing her throat.

“I’ll never surrender,” she gasped.

“Oh, but you will, in just a moment or two.”
With no apparent effort at all he lifted her out of the water,
sitting her on the stone edging. She tried to get to her feet,
intending to run away from him, but he was too fast for her. He
knelt beside her, the moonlight shining on him, and she knew she
did not want to run away after all. With laughter and a deep, sweet
yearning, she opened her arms to him.

He was wet and cold and warm, all at the same
time. He was a shaft of ice inside her that melted and boiled and
nearly destroyed her with his furious heat. He was a gentle spring
rain that nourished and renewed her when the first madness of his
passion was spent.

They did not sleep at all that night. They
loved again by the pool, then bathed once more before they retired
to his house to latch the door against the world. In the intervals
between the loving, they talked. He told her of his boyhood spent
learning to be a warrior, of the father he adored and wished to
emulate, who had been killed while fighting in Aquitaine for
Charles’s father. King Pepin. He spoke of Charles and his deep
affection for that finest of kings, and talked with gentle love
about his wife who had died too young, and of the infant son she
had left him, his great hope for the continuation of his family
line. In return, she told him about her parents’ death by accident,
of her husband’s long illness, and then described her years of
friendship with Willi. As morning came, they loved one last time, a
sweet, slow, and ultimately tearful passion on her part, permeated
by the belief that this could be their final coming together.

When the sun rose, they left Aachen, India
riding beside him in her twentieth-century tunic and trousers, with
her eighth-century brown cloak thrown over her shoulders, love and
worry filling her heart and the weight of future events pressing
upon her. It was evident to her that if she wanted to protect Theu
from almost certain harm, she would have to tell him what she knew
about the Spanish campaign. After what he had said during the
night, from the kind of man she knew him to be, she had an awful
feeling that when he was aware of the terrible dangers to him and
all of the Frankish army, the knowledge would not change his
determination to follow his king into Spain, or even to die for
Charles if it were necessary.

Sister Gertrude surprised them all. Once they
were on their way, she seemed to accept the change in plans that
had been imposed upon her and her charge. She did not lessen her
fierce protectiveness of Danise, keeping the girl separate from
Theu’s men as much as she could, but she stopped scolding Theu, and
she proved to be a resilient traveler. While India and the
still-recovering Eudon walked about slowly each morning, bending
and stretching and rubbing at aching muscles, trying to ease the
previous day’s saddle stiffness before they had to mount once more,
Sister Gertrude was always ready on time, prepared to ride and
showing no sign of physical distress, though she was the oldest
member of their party. She also began to moderate her disapproval
of India. On the day after they left Aachen, she took advantage of
a time when Theu was riding with Hugo and Marcion and was so well
occupied in talking to them that he would be unlikely to overhear
her comments.

“You are a foolish young woman,” the nun
said, urging her horse closer to India’s. “Do you imagine that
wearing men’s clothing and riding like a man will endear you to
Count Theuderic?”

“In my country,” India replied, “women often
wear this kind of clothing. And they decide for themselves how they
will ride.” She half expected a sour retort to her attempt at
self-defense, but Sister Gertrude fell silent, apparently thinking
about what India had said.

“I met a Byzantine woman once,” Sister
Gertrude remarked a little later, “who told me that in a place far
to the east of Byzantium, the women wear such garments as yours,
made of silk. If that is the case, and if that distant land is your
home, then I will not criticize you for following your own customs.
But you must realize that in Francia we do things differently. You
cannot attend court in such attire.”

“I will remember your sensible advice,” India
responded, surprised yet again by the adaptability of a woman who
had supposedly spent her life sheltered from the world. She began
to look at the nun with a new respect.

From then on, Sister Gertrude became more
friendly toward India, often asking penetrating questions about her
life that India found difficult to answer as truthfully as she
would have liked. However, sister Gertrude never missed an
opportunity to comment unfavorably upon the actions of the men,
until India came to the conclusion that the nun heartily disliked
all those who belonged to the male gender.

India found this new journey much different
from the earlier trek through Saxony. Their route once more wound
through dense woodlands, but Theu’s band no longer camped in the
forest, rolling themselves into their cloaks at night. Instead,
they slept in abbey guesthouses or in the houses of nobles, their
often crowded accommodations allowing little opportunity for either
lovemaking or serious conversations.

At first, believing they would pause for a
day or so in Noyon to allow people and horses to rest, India
planned to speak to Theu there about the horrors awaiting the
Frankish army in Spain. But at Noyon, where they stayed in the
royal residence, Theu spent the better part of the night in talk
with the noble who headed the household in Charles’s absence, and
they rode forth again at first light. Two days after that, they
crossed the River Seine in a drenching downpour. Sister Gertrude
sent a long look and a sigh in the general direction of Chelles,
but she said nothing, and they continued on without pausing.