A Flame Run Wild (4 page)

Her thoughts left the wedding. If I leave Jean in the rain, he is bound to get sick. And he has no one to look after him. She stared at the shutters shaking with the pounding rain. Jean is silver-tongued and handsome. Though he must have women about the countryside, he lives alone in the forest like an animal . . . like a magpie appropriating another bird's nest. He has as few qualms about usurping the bird's mate, as well.

After what seemed an interminable stretch, Liliane estimated that two hours had passed. Jean must be bitterly cold, yet after she had slammed shut the shutters, he had made no attempt to gain admittance. He might have sheltered in the leaky lean-to near the main entrance, where they had tethered her mare.

Why not let the miserable wretch inside? He had probably suffered enough. She had her poignard and javelin; also, the bedroom door had a hefty inside bolt beam.

As the driving rain raked the night's sullen sky, Liliane furtively opened the door.

Her javelin poised, she called, "Jean, come in and warm yourself! You may be a villain, but I shall not murder you by inches." The only sound that reached her was the cpld slap of the rain on the forest floor. "Jean?" she called hesitantly as she stepped into the murk. The deepening mud was stiff and cold. By the time she had taken half a dozen steps, her shirt stuck to her skin. "Jean!" she yelled. "Answer me before I lose patience and leave you out here to drown like a cat!"

He must have been on the roof, for his weight neatly bore her to the mud. She had learned much of hand-to-hand fighting from Diego's castellans, but nothing of aerial assaults. With humiliating quickness, Jean had pinioned her arms to her sides with her javelin; it dug into her ribs as he hauled her, struggling, back into the lodge. Abruptly, he wrenched the javelin from her grip and shoved her away.

Whipping the poignard from her belt, she faced him with fury in her eyes. "Manhandle me again, you lawless churl, and you will be using your guts for braielaces!"

"I would not touch you again for pay!" Jean snarled. His narrow face was startlingly white with cold and anger; his quivering lips were purple. "You are entirely safe, mistress. Had I intended rape, my interest has long since withered, I promise you." As she began to retort, he put up his hand and snapped, "I only ask two things of you: be silent and da not block the fire!"

Warily, Liliane gave him a wide berth as he stiffly edged to the fireplace. Dripping puddles and leaving muddy footprints, Jean moved like an old man. Without looking at her, he hunkered down and stretched his shaking hands to the warmth. A violent bout of trembling seized him and he wrapped his arms about his chest. Liliane backed away silently. In an instant, the pointed javelin was aimed at her. "Where are you going?" he hissed.

"Something dry may be left in the bedroom chest," she retorted, "unless you wish to stay sodden."

"Ha! My only wish it to wring your neck, and yours is to bar that door between us." His arms tightened about his ribs. "For once we are in some agreement—in wanting to see the last of each other. Begone and cower in peace. Your chastity can shrivel like your heart."

Disgusted, Liliane thrust the poignard in her belt. "Were I heartless, you would yet be rotting in the rain. And as for chastity, look to your own tattered virtue before you preach at me." She stalked to the bedroom and rifled through the chest. Only a ragged pair of braies were left. She pondered what to do. She should just toss Jean the braies and bolt the door, but the wood supply for the fire was scant. To keep warm, he would soon be driven outside to replenish the wood, thus getting wet again. After their adventure in the rain, she was chilled herself. Finally, she went out to the main room and handed him the braies. He looked more miserable than ever, and she could see his shoulder blades jutting sharply beneath the wet chainse. "These are the last of the dry clothes. You said there was brandy wine. Has this place a wine cellar?"

Alexandre laughed shortly. "You must think that this Alexandre de Brueil wallows in luxury. His cellar hold rotten potatoes and one jug of sour brandy wine."

Lilian explored the cellar and found that he was right; however, after searching the dusty shelves, she discovered a few strips of venison remaining in a lidded crock. After lugging the jug to the fireside, she gave Jean the lion's share of the venison. "Chew that to ease the bile in your belly."

He regarded the salted strips with distaste, then began to gnaw one, a resigned expression on his face. Liliane unplugged the brandywine and took a swallow. Making a face, she handed him the jug. "It's nearly vinegar, but it will fight the cold."

Alexandre took a swig, and gasped, his eyes watering. "That's fit for imps!" Quickly, he stripped off his chainse and rubbed his arms and shoulders. Knowing that he would proceed to pull off his wet braies, Liliane hurried to fetch the bed's woolen blanket. He had pulled on the dry braies by the time she returned. Sagging well below his narrow middle, they seemed to be in danger of falling off him entirely. She threw the blanket over his bare shoulders. He muttered, "Solicitous wench," as he caught the blanket close about him and took another gulp of the brandywine. He choked and began to cough.

Consolingly, she patted his back. "Drink slowly. The devil will have you soon enough."

Alexandre shoved the jug at her. "See to yourself. You are as wet as I am."

Without argument, Liliane shared his brandywine. She had dry domes in her saddlebag, but she couldn't risk getting them dirtied; she was to be married in them on the morrow.

Before long, both the woodpile and the wine were much depleted. Somewhat mistily, Liliane gazed at Jean. "Well, I am warm, but I am tipsy. In the firelight, you are beginning to turn a pretty lilac."

Solemnly, Alexandre inspected his hand. "I must be thawing." His blue eyes glinted with mild irony. "You have thawed a trifle yourself."

"Because I am not presently shoving a knife at your nose?" She laughed. "Do not entertain any ideas, sirrah. Just go on thinking of me as a lad and we shall get on well."

Lad. He had long lost that ability, thought Alexandre. The wet tunic caressed Pilar's breasts as his hands longed to do. Still angry, he had tried to forget his earlier desire for her, but the imps lurking in his heart were against him. He had sometimes been lonely in his youth and often in Palestine. With Pilar, he felt at peace, as if she were a companion with whom he had no need to be clever or prove himself. What he was seemed sufficient to her for the moment, as if she were an unquestioning child. Her eyes were gentle now, almost tender as she watched him, but she was no child. Although she was slender, her breasts swelled full, and their tips pressed hard against the thin cloth. Where the tunic wrapped, the cleft of her breasts was shadowed in a soft mystery that made his loins ache. Some moments ago, he had shifted the blanket across the swell in his braies. He was fairly certain that she did not mean to tease him; she. was merely unaware of her body's ripe display. He was tempted to make her aware, both of her body's riches and of his aching desire to plunder them; yet plunder it would be, if she were unwilling. The question was: how could he persuade her to melt into his arms, when thus far his forthright approach had roused nothing but her ire?

Feigning preoccupation with his venison, he studied her beneath the fringe of his lashes. Her beauty had all the subtleties of fine breeding, with none of the flamboyance one might have expected from a female who was masquerading as a male. She had the radiance of youth and expectation, yet he also sensed sadness in her and a certain cynicism that roused his sympathy. Who had hurt her? What had been her life—what marvelous fate had lured her to him in the forest? Was allurement the way to win her? Could he perhaps play upon the fancy that had drawn her to his flute? With some alacrity, he dispatched the last morsel of venison, then casually picked up his flute and began to play. Unbeknown to Liliane, the melody Alexandre delicately fingered upon the slender flute echoed playfully, seductively in his mind as he drank in her softness. She seemed to sense has passion as she leaned back to rest upon her hands. Trilling low, then fluting with a nightingale's breathless freedom, Alexandre played as he never had before. He tantalized them both with the haunting music—an ancient Persian court poem of seduction. At length, he saw her half-closed eyes grow dark, and he glimpsed her stirred yet tempered passion. For now, that passion encompassed all men, all that was sensuous. . . . Somehow, with his exotic melody, he must bring her close to him.

Liliane watched Jean's fingers on the flute. They were now quick and teasing, now slow and caressing. The music was ms exquisite as the sensual stroke of a cat, his fingertips teasing, their precise grace strangely enticing. She recognized the piece he played, having heard it more than once upon visiting the harem of Almansor. His audacity in choosing such erotic music first amazed her, then touched her sense of mischief. Why not let him go on with his pretty foolishness? After all, he was a much more entertaining player than the blind harem flutist, and vastly more handsome. How the Moorish ladies would giggle and flash their eyes at such a virile substitute for their wizened eunuch!

Indeed, Jean's dark, mobile fingers led her to entertain very unseemly imaginings. She remembered her fleeting glimpse of whiteness against his darkly tanned, finely shaped limbs. Of compact buttocks and, as he turned, darkness at his groin, and from that darkness rising, like a young stallion . . . Ah, Jean, her mind whispered, you are richly made . . . and no virgin. You summon me now as boldly as any animal ever called its mate, and the call is more potent to me—alone, untried and bereft of all love—than you can know.

Then, somewhere in her revery, she seemed to feel his hands upon her and her mind cried out, Jean, Jean, touch me so. . . .

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she shunned it. To take this man as her lover would be sheer folly. As Alexandre de Brueil's brother, he must inevitably learn her identity. And yet. . . had he not said that he was bound to fight as a mercenary in northern lands with no intention of returning? After this night, he would be gone from her life.' The thought both quickened her pulse and saddened her. After tonight, she would never again see him, with his, beautiful, brown body and the smoldering sapphire eyes that watched her with a feline, deceptive carelessness. She knew what was in his mind; his song of seduction left no doubt as to his desire for her.

Liliane had known love in her life, but she'd never experienced passion. Once married, she would not betray her vow of honor by taking a casual lover from her husband's retinue. Before that vow, however, she owed the Signes and her enforced bridegroom nothing. To share a single night of love with a stranger of her own choice seemed to her less immoral than to marry perforce a stranger she might have to endure the rest of her fife. None could expect her to still be a virgin after so many years with

Diego. Tonight she might find the secret part of herself that had always eluded her. In deserting the Signe party, she had embarked on some part of a quest and, in following the flute, found Jean. Jean, with his quick wit and fiery temper, the boyish vulnerability hidden beneath his cynical shell. Jean, who, but for her memories and those of women like her, might die unmounted in the north.

At some point, Liliane stopped fighting the flute, closed her eyes and became one with the music, surrendered to Jean's delicate play of hands and mouth. ...

The flute's silence was brief, but the very real warmth of Jean's tips against her own seemed to last forever, causing the slow beat of her heart to quicken against his bare chest. His mouth was velvet, his hand caressing the sensitive nape of her neck, twisting the silken fall of her shining hair. His tongue teased the corners of her mouth, gently probing her underlip. Uncertain of what he wanted, Liliane caught her breath, only to have him claim the inner softness of her mouth, touching her tongue in a subtle, intimate caress. Hesitantly, she returned the tiny flick until his mouth melted to hers, his kiss deepening until he dizzied her. As her head fell back, her hands ceased to press against his shoulders, moving to the shaggy curls at his temples. His eyes burned with a smoldering passion, his breath was uneven.

"Pilar, I am on fire," he said huskily. "If you want me not, tell me now, else I shall carry you to bed and take what is promised to another man." His hand tightened slightly in her hair. "I am hard put not to claim you now in these scattered ashes."

"I confess I have not noticed the ashes," she whispered, "but when this night has passed, I wish only to be one among them. Touch me with your fire; make me know one single spark of its light before I return alone to the terrible cold. ..."

Alexandre did not wait to carry her to the bed, but covered her with his body, arching over her as his lips found her throat. Quick with the impatience of growing desire, his hands slipped free the lacings of her tunic to bare her shoulders. As if only then realizing what treasure he had found, he cast aside his haste. With tantalizing languor, he began to cover her soft skin with slow kisses, lifting his head at each one to watch a rosy flush tinge the alabaster flesh his lips had touched. With those kisses alone, he eased open her tunic until it slipped from the peaks of her breasts. His lips parted with the swift intake of his breath.

"By all the angels, thou art fair as the delight of Solomon. . . ."As he slowly undressed her, Liliane shivered slightly and gently pressed her breasts high to fill his hands. His dark head bending, his lips grazed against their sensitive points until she gasped with delight. Warm as the rising sun, his mouth sought the buds of her nipples.