A Kiss in the Night (18 page)

"Aye," he said, laughter lighting his eyes. "Despite all the evidence to the contrary, even the explorer Columbus's famous journeys, the man still believes the earth is a flat rock, and that the sun circles around and around the earth, that it is populated in parts by horned, dark-skinned pygmies, and that Eden actually exists in the Far East surrounded by a great wall of fire."

She shook her head at Morgan's obstinately closed mind. "Father Gayly used to argue with him until he was breathless and blue in the face. He finally decided Morgan's mind was as unreachable—"She laughed. "—as a cloistered virgin locked by the chastity belt."

Their laughter quieted before he stopped again and, in a whisper that conveyed the wealth of his sympathy, he said, "The sadness is in your eyes still. You loved him very much."

"Aye," she said, and as they walked he prodded her to tell him about this man she had come to love. In a voice heavily laden with grief, she told him about the sharpness of his intellect, the complexities of his mind, and the thing that drew them together more than anything, the ambiguities of his faith. "Our friendship was a blessing in my life. I will always miss him."

"Did he ever suspect what had happened to you?"

A sad smile changed her face as she remembered his incredulousness and laughter when she told her fantastic tale. "Aye, he had always, or almost always, been in my confidence." In a whisper she added, "John, too, you know."

"John knows?"

"Not about you, but all the rest. He discovered the secret by accident. He overheard Clair and me talking once, but up until about two years ago, he had never revealed to me that he knew."

He was contemplating this when, to his surprise, they left the main road for a worn path through the vineyards. The path took them into the forest. She realized the mistake as soon as they entered the darkness brought by the entwined branches of the trees overhead. She stopped and turned to face him as if he, too, understood they were truly alone with no eyes upon them and no ears listening. She saw at once he did.

He stared down at her, his eyes soft and dark and so beautiful. A hand reached to caress her hot cheek. She closed her eyes and said his name in a whisper of yearning, confusion, and fear.

"The night he died I came into your room. I had to see that you were all right." Her silver eyes reflected the sympathy in his. "I wanted to comfort you desperately. Yet as I stood over your bed, I knew I could not touch you and leave again.”

Fear won out. 'Twas madness to speak freely even if they were alone. Shaking her head in negation, she hurried forward along the path, terrified of what might be said now. The path wound through the forest, coming out on her private spot at the river's edge. It was completely isolated. A small bank surrounded by trees, set before the roar of the river.

She leaned against a trunk and closed her eyes, willing her heart to a slower pace. She heard him approach her. For several long moments he was silent as he stared. He understood her anxiety all too well. His gaze traveled over her closed eyes, the high, flushed cheeks, the wine-dark lips slightly parted. Her bosom, tightly bound, pushed up the creamy softness of her breasts where his ring always sat. A maddening tease; his fingers ached to free this treasure, to take her in his arms and bury his hot flesh in the sweet mercy of hers.

"When I was a boy we used to play a game called 'truth.' A simple game where one person asks four questions of the other. And the only rule is that truth must suffuse every spoken word of the answer." His hand reached for the band on her head and he withdrew the sheer cloth to see her long hair wrapped around either side of her head in loose braids. "Will you play with me, Linness?"

Her silver eyes pleaded with him, but it was too late. It had always been too late. He asked the first question. "Why do you deny Morgan your bed?'

She hesitated, coloring sharply, and to his shock, he saw the question shamed her.

She dropped her gaze to the large booted feet beneath her, pausing with uncertainty. Morgan did not view her as a man views his wife. Despite Morgan's possessiveness, he thought of her only as his son's mother, though this was a lofty elevation indeed. He treated her with the utmost deference and respect always. Over the years, this, taken with her sight, had a queer effect on the way other people thought of her: untouchable, saintlike, a Madonna.

Morgan never bothered to hide his numerous liaisons and affairs; he gave no consideration to her feelings or shame, no consideration to decency. This made them the favorite subject of everyone's gossip as the sheer number of his liaisons boggled the mind almost as much as the unchivalrous manner with which he conducted these affairs. He could have any woman he wanted and yet he always seemed to pick those whose morals had sunk so low, they lay with any man who showed the slightest interest, then he discarded them and his children as easily as if they were worn hose.

She shook her head, first slowly, then more certainly. "Truth. There could be no more dangerous game between us. We cannot afford truth; 'tis a luxury fate has kept from us. Paxton," she pleaded "truth will hurt us."

"Us," he questioned softly, a bitter edge to his voice, "or me?"

"How can you even ask that? ‘Twould hurt us both, me, I think, even more than you. If you don't believe me, then I will prove it. I will answer your questions."

Their gazes locked. "Why do you deny Morgan your bed?"

With no hesitation she stated the fact. "I do not deny him my bed."

Paxton could not hide his shock. He was stunned into silence and felt as if he had just been sliced with a hot blade.

She had warned him.

"Does he ever insist on his marital rights?"

"Paxton, you are tormenting me—"

"Answer me...."

"Nay," she whispered. "Not since the beginning. 'Twas but two weeks, less, before I had the morning sickness. Never afterwards."

"Do not tease me, Linness," he said as he seized her arms, pulling her up. "I could not bear it now.”

" 'Tis true," she cried. "You wanted the truth and I said it."

The memory of those few awful times emerged in her mind. Lying with Morgan had been nothing like lying with Paxton. Morgan's bed had been like stepping into a whirlwind made of wet lips and hot breath, grunts, and harsh hands. Her only mercy had been his quickness with the couplings. He never used a toothcomb, and his breath was most foul, and while that might seem a slight fault indeed, 'twas so bad, she had stuffed tiny drops of bees wax up her nostrils and piled the bed with sachets of fresh scents in order to endure the ordeal.

As soon as he knew she was with child, he had stopped bedding her. Then, once, two years after Jean Luc was born, she had tried to share Morgan’ s bed again. She closed her eyes as she remembered his groping hands and lips, his mounting desperation and frenzy, the embarrassing unwillingness of his flesh. With as much tenderness as she could muster, she had tried to help, but it was no use. Nothing worked. His last words were, "Like the Madonna herself, you are. I will not subject you to this indecency again, milady.”

As Linness finished her story, Paxton slowly released her, the stinging words giving way to a far greater relief. He felt a sudden profound surge of joy, as if a burden he had been weighed down with had suddenly lifted from his shoulders.

Yet he didn't understand. Why didn't Morgan want her?

Paxton's gaze found her in the instant. She was not just beautiful but more desirable than the next thousand women, and she was Morgan's wife. His wife. Morgan had always had a lusty appetite, hardly discriminating between women at all. He used to tease Morgan that he'd bed the four-legged creatures if he didn't have so many two-legged ones from which to choose.

Suddenly he understood. "Amber..."

In a pained whisper she told him, "She is one of his women. 'Tis Morgan's child she carries. She flaunts her belly. She tells everyone how pleased Morgan is with her and the child she carries, that though it is a bastard, Morgan will spoil him and his mother with riches. She tells everyone how sad it is that I am barren and can bear him no more children, that it is the very reason he came to her. Morgan tells all his women these things, and then as soon as they get with child, he abandons them…"

"His dependents? He leaves them nothing?"

She shook her head. Truth, he wanted the truth, and she would give it. "You don't know what it has been like all these years without you. With only the memory of our one night to feed the longing in my soul. The terrible longing. I could not have lived if it were not for Jean Luc. Paxton, after you were gone, Jean Luc was all I had of you. As he grew and thrived and I realized he would be taken from me soon to be squire to some distant lord, I began to dream of another child. I prayed every night to Mary to give me another child, a girl this time. I...I tried to approach him and—"

"Nay, Linness." His voice was firm, threatening, as he took her by the arms again, silencing her with a gentle finger. "Nay. Please to God, do not put visions in my head of you trying to coax my brother to your bed. Not after I have just learned the nightmare I have lived with since I first heard him introduce you as his wife has just been miraculously lifted."

He studied her lovely face and saw, unbelievably, that she was still tormented. "Dear God, I cannot believe it. You think Morgan's rejection is, rather than the bizarre expression of my brother's perversity, somehow your fault; a failing of some kind. That you have a figure not luring enough, or a face not pleasing enough." The silver eyes shot to his face as he chuckled bitterly. "Aye, Linness. For there is no other man I know who, if married to you, would trade the treasure of his marital bed for another. The idea is laughable, and yet, yet it pricks at me like a jagged piece of ice and makes me ask my next question. Do you love him?"

The question surprised her more than any other. "Never."

"Never?"

"My heart was stolen before I met him; you know this."

Fat drops of rain began to fall around them and yet neither moved, neither dared to breathe, as she stared up at him, and he, down at her, "Say it, Linness. Let me hear you say the words."

"I love you." And then in a whispered rush of utter agony, "I have loved you always. I will love you always. My curse is a lifetime made of longing and unanswered desire—"

"Nay," he said, "not as I draw breath!"

He lowered his mouth to hers as his arms circled her small waist and drew her tight against his body. Not a gentle kiss. Beneath the falling rain the wild ravishment of his kiss made her pounding heart explode in one fiery burst that sent her swooning and helpless in his arms.

Her surrender allowed him deeper access in the succulent recesses of her mouth. He answered her yearning and, fanned by its flames, he pressed her slender hips against the very heat of his passion.

Fire curled in her belly, and yet with it came the image of death. Their desire was death; its unleashing, the slow march to the executioner's scaffold. She tore her mouth from his and slipped from his arms. "Nay, Paxton! We are held hostage by our fate!"

Rain fell unnoticed all around them. Passion shined in his eyes as he stared at the girl who just stepped out of his grasp. "Your fate changed the moment you spoke those words to me. I will have you, Linness. In secret or no, I will have you."

"Nay." She shook her head, desperate to make him understand. “'Tis madness to court our love! 'Twill bring our deaths!"

Paxton was a seasoned warrior, a man who had faced death too many times to still fear its threat. "Death," he scoffed huskily. "I have lived through years of facing death every day, many times a day; it no longer has the power to move me. Every moment I still breathe is extra and to be celebrated now, today," he said with feeling. "So that denying my desire becomes the monster I cannot, will not, fight."

She backed away as if he might advance, "Nay. I'll fight! I will! I must—"

He reached her in two steps, his arms wrapping around hers as she stared up into his fierce eyes. "Fight me?" The whispered question hinted at his amusement as he leaned over, his lips brushing against her forehead. "You don't have armor enough to fight me." His lips lowered to the nape of her neck where her pulse beat wildly. He heard her sweet gasp. "I shall prove it to you, love— "

"Paxton…"

Terrified, she tried to shake him off. Images of Morgan's rage swam dizzily through her mind. Surrender meant death, and while that dark threat might no longer move him, she felt its full power. Perhaps they could escape the threat the first time or even the second, but 'twas a path that would eventually lead her soul to hell. For, even if Morgan spared her own life, it would only be to punish her more by allowing her to live in a world where Paxton did not.

As she backed away, she vowed with a fierce conviction, "I must fight you...I must—to save us!" She stepped back, stumbled, and turned to flee down the river path.

He watched her disappear before lifting his face to the darkened skies. He let her run. For now. Until she understood they had no more choice of path than the moon chose to circle the earth or the earth circle the sun. Until she knew every merciful step of the journey would be worth the price they paid in hell.

This was a battle he looked forward to.