A Kiss in the Night (26 page)

A harrowing scream sounded from the corridor, echoing through the hall. Michaels shouted a warning. The hall went silent as everyone turned to see the commotion.

Amber made a mad dash through the doors.

She burst upon the hall and stopped, breathing heavily, her terrified eyes flying about the grandeur before her, unable to suppress her awe. The woman held a bundle in her arms, and with dread, Linness knew it was her newborn child. A tingling of fear shot along her spine again. She felt rather than saw Mary's worried presence, hovering over the child. Her alarm increased.

Michaels and Clifford rushed in behind Amber, and when their hands came to her person, she cried, twisting from them as she sought and finally saw Morgan at the head of the main table. She rushed to him.

Morgan rose as well, but it was too late to stop the woman. She fell on the steps leading up to the dais, her plain green skirts fanned out behind her. "Milord! Milord!" she shrieked in a maddened voice. The crowd murmured its shock and outrage, but quieted when she spoke again. "Ye would not come to see ye babe. So I brought him to ye."

Through clenched teeth, Morgan spoke, his voice like a low growl of a bear. "You stupid simple whore—how dare you!"

For a moment she looked as if his reaction surprised her. "Ye are ashamed of me! Of ye own Amber!" She cast a glance to the people behind her. A trembling hand went to her flaxen hair, smoothing it as if it were her disheveled hair that brought Morgan shame. "All ye mighty and pretty lords and ladies here. Ye think I am not good enough, do ye?" She looked back at Morgan with fury. "I was good enough to warm ye bed and ease the ache in ye loins! I was good enough to bear the product of ye seed!" She rushed on, "And here he be, milord. Ye must see him, ye must—" Trembling hands removed the cloth from the child and she held him up as an offering. All those who could see drew back in horror.

The baby was hideously deformed.

The tiny head was swollen, his eyes white slits that could see nothing of the world. There was a mangled stub of flesh where an arm should be. It was a miracle that he still breathed.

Morgan's lip curled in revulsion; he stared in shock.

Linness was seeing beyond. Mary's light was bathing the child, and her own wealth of sympathy and compassion washed over her, so powerful, it nearly dropped her to her knees.

"For the love of Mary…" Linness pleaded.

Save the child,
Mary cried to her, the words echoing so loudly in her mind, she thought everyone heard them....

The bishop saw the stamp of Satan and felt the righteous indignation. The child had been condemned by the Almighty God. For the sins of his parents.

Amber's eyes narrowed. "Ye looked so surprised, milord. Surely ye knew what curse ye hateful wife would put upon our babe!" The mad eyes suddenly turned to Linness and with viciousness she cried, "Ye and all ye witchery! Ye did this! 'Tis ye own evil mark upon my poor doomed babe! To feed ye never-ending jealousies. Ye poisoned our love and turned him away from me. Ye made sure he wouldn't come back to me! Ye did . . this!"

A collective gasp sounded.

Linness's vision went white, then red with blood

Paxton shouted to Michaels and Clifford, "Get the woman out of here now!"

The command suddenly snapped Michaels out of his daze and he stepped forward. She swung around to him, a knife manifesting in her hand, which she had retrieved from the folds of her skirts. A number of women screamed. "Don't touch me or I'll kill it!"

"Amber, I beg you," Linness cried. "I beg you don't do that. For love of Mary! For mercy's sake—"

The words enraged Amber; she swung toward Linness. "Ye! Ye did this to me!" Tears fell down her face; she was gasping each breath. 'Ye stole his love, with all ye fine ways and pretty clothes and silvered tongue." Her eyes turned vicious. "With all ye witchery! And then did this to my babe."

Amber's startled gaze turned to the child, as if seeing him for the first time. The child lay unnaturally silent before her. Her eyes blazed in bewilderment, fury—a fathomless pit called madness.

Linness knew what was to come next. "No, no, Linness cried, moving towards her "Someone stop her!"

Michaels ran toward them, and Paxton leaped over the table, but too late.

Amber stared into the baby's face, and blinded by tears, she raised the knife and thrust it down with all her strength. And then blood, blood covered Amber's face and her hands and spurted over her dress as she lifted the dead child and crushed it against her heart, her anguished cry echoing loud and long through the hall...

Chapter Eight

Paxton found her at last. He stopped short, breathing hard and fast, staring at her. Waiting for him, she lay in a meadow bursting with a profusion of bluebells. Laughter, made of anticipation, joy, and love, sang in the stilled morning air. Sunlight fell upon her naked beauty, bathing her white skin. One arm was raised over her head, shielding her eyes. Careful to keep his weight from her, he came over her and stopped her laughter with a kiss.

Dear Lord, he wanted her, more as he found her hot skin, slick with desire. "Dear Lord, Linness…" He would die—

"Aye," she said with strange urgency, her eyes feverish with worry and fear. "Aye, you will die. You will die and I with you. "

He bolted up in bed and stared at the still dark room. The gray light of dawn filtered through the silence. He fell against the bed and sighed, sighed because it would be some time before his body made the necessary distinction between a dream and reality.

I want you, Linness, with each breath I take, I want you…

It had been two weeks since that night of blood and murder, and Linness had retreated, receiving no one, not even Jean Luc. He did not trespass upon this solitude. He understood, better than any other, the depth of Linness's devotion and reverence for life and all that was holy; he would not intrude upon her period of healing prayer and silence.

Meanwhile, Morgan walked around like a belly-up dog, sheepishly stealing glances into faces as if to assess their condemnation. Everyone pretended not to notice this; everyone happily pretended nothing had happened that night. Except, of course Bishop Luce, who had demanded an outrageous price to have the madwoman, Amber, cloistered in a nunnery where the nuns might care for the deranged creature. Morgan made the payment without hesitation. Paxton had viewed this change in Morgan with contempt and occasionally pity, until recently.

The other day as they were returning to the chateau from the fields, they came across a well-made cart heading into Gaillard. It was Alberri and his sons, moneylenders who were setting up shop in Gaillard. The man was very pleased to meet Lord Morgan Chamberlain, but his young sister more so.

The eighteen-year-old woman, Arianne, flirted and pranced, rugged on her dress to present an offer Morgan somehow would not refuse. The girl's morals were brazenly displayed in her manner.

Somehow nothing excited Morgan more. That was all it took. Morgan's mood rebounded as he arranged a private tryst. The situation with Amber had taught him nothing.

Not that he wanted Morgan to learn anything. He didn't. For the last thing he wanted his brother to discover was the treasure he had in his wife, and even less, the virtues of marital fidelity.

The heat in his loins seemed to increase with deprivation; he had reached his limit. He bounded out of bed and moved to a table where he splashed chilled water from a bowl over his face and chest before pulling on breeches and a runic. He grabbed a dagger and slipped out his window.

'Twas still dark...

He reached her window and found it open Thinking she still slept, that he might wake her, he slipped inside quietly. He stood up in the alcove and stared.

She was kneeling at the candlelit altar. Her gold robe was spread in a neat half circle around her. With eyes closed, her face looked pale and angelic, otherworldly somehow. The long hair was gathered tightly in the back of her head, accenting the delicate lines of her face. She was changed, he saw, and it scared him, this transformation. As if she were slipping away from the world where mortals lived.

As if she had slipped away from him.

He stepped forward. Not wanting to startle her, he kept his voice whisper-soft, "Linness..."

She opened her eyes. "Paxton." She said his name in an echo of longing. In the still gray light of dawn, he appeared as a shadow brushed with faint color. His beautiful eyes appeared like shining pools of black. She now knew the blue color of his eyes shone only in the bright light of the sun. 'Twas her sad fate to rarely see him beneath the bright and sharp colors of day. Forbidden lovers faced a lifetime of whispers, stolen glances, and longing, the terrible longing that had awoken her as she slept and brought her to the altar in a desperate attempt to find peace.

"'Tis been too long," he whispered. "Tell me, Linness. Tell me what has happened to you."

Her heart surged forward, and her senses flooded with the play of light and shadow on his face and the faint trace of his masculine scent of musky oil and hard-worked leather. Her arms ached to reach around his neck and bring his strength against her skin, his lips on her mouth, the caress of his hands...

Forbidden desire. Did it grow because it was forbidden? She had asked herself that question a thousand times, and always the answer was the same Nay. It grew as the physical manifestation of love, not an easy or gentle love but a dark and passionate disease that would steal the life from them. .

She had to end it now. Once and for all in this lifetime she had to stop it, to turn back the tides sweeping them away, back. She prayed she had the strength to do so. For him, for Paxton.

He took her hands and she stood up, tilting her head to meet his concerned eyes. ‘Tis easing, the ache in my soul. Mary's love is easing it bit by bit.” She turned her head away as she struggled to find words to explain all she had passed through.

"At first I felt ripped apart. That night, Mary was there, in the hall, calling to me to save the child I tried...I—" She shook her head. "I felt I had failed her. For many days my thoughts ran as mad as that poor woman's. Morgan's pathetic looks, like a misbehaving child, begging me for forgiveness, and the hateful bishop probing and pricking at everyone in his senseless search for a truth that shall always elude him. Anger and bitterness tore at me until I suddenly understood its source. 'Twas my own guilt for having failed Mary that was ripping me apart."

With feeling he swore, "You could not have saved that child!"

"I know that now. For as I prayed I felt it. Mary's sorrow, Paxton." Her voice was changing in wonder at her mystical sight. "It is an awesome thing that dropped me to my knees and washed over me in wave after wave. Mary's sorrow is as boundless and deep as the ocean waters. It is not for mortal contemplation and I could not have borne it if it did not carry with it the revelation of her love. And in this blessing of her love is forgiveness."

He stared into her eyes a long moment. "Linness, love, what do you need forgiveness for?"

"How can you ask me thus? I came to Gaillard and married Morgan in deception. I bore you a son and gave him to Morgan in deception. And now, now I deceive him more every day that I live. Paxton," she cried, "I am in love with you, his brother!"

The words did not stun him, but her anguish did, and before he knew how to answer that, his gaze came to rest on her neck. There was no necklace. He reached for the place where his ring had sat over her heart. Fingertips brushed the cool skin She drew back. His gaze blazed intensely and he swallowed his fear as, at last, he understood what she was telling him.

Goodbye.

Something dark and dangerous came into his eyes. "Linness—"

She shook her head. "Please, Paxton, please. Let me go...just let me go before 'tis too late."

Tension and anger seized him, like a great lion before a fatal strike. She felt it threatening her with its quiet restraint and unholy control. In a soft vow of feeling he answered, "Never."

All she knew was that she had to make him go. She had to convince him the path they walked on led to hell, a vicious hell where death would be no mercy, but the start of the torment. Mary was warning her; it was all she knew.

"You must, you must. It is like being forced to march to an execution; I cannot bear it. The lost child was the first wave of a dark future spreading across our sky, like an ink blotch over parchment. It will destroy us—"

"Enough," he said sharply as a hand came to her mouth and another to her thin arm, drawing her close. "Enough." The black pools of his eyes stared down at her. "I can feel your fear, Linness. Again I can taste it, and a bitter taste it is. Again. Have you learned nothing?"

"Paxton, please, 'tis not death I fear, but life; living in a world where you do not!"

"This fear will increase until you understand the true meaning of this death that so terrifies you. Beginning now, I vow not to come to you again."

Surprise changed her eyes as she frantically searched his face.

"You will come to me. Aye, love," he whispered, "You will come to me when you are weak from the relentless pounding of your heart, the breathlessness no air can ease, when your body is soaked in nothing but longing and the sweetened scent of your desire." Softly he told her, "I will wait until you realize that this same desire is coursing through my veins even now..."