Authors: Jennifer Horsman
Slowly, with mounting alarm, "What are you doing here?"
Vincent had even more trouble comprehending the question, simple and reasonable though it was, as he noticed the inadequacy of her arms to provide complete coverage. "I had come to speak with you. At least originally." A lie, and one he knew the moment he uttered it, and he smiled.
Her blue eyes narrowed with suspicion. "In the middle of the night? Unannounced?"
"I saw the light in your window as I returned from the stables. There were no servants about to make the announcement."
Unmasked suspicion marked her lovely features. She glanced at her saber, resting in the corner of the room.
His gaze followed and he laughed. "No, not that. Anything, but that! Besides, I am unarmed—"
"That is your second mistake!" She started toward the weapon. His next two steps placed him in her path. The mistake belonged to her. The sudden silence in the room rang like an alarm in her ears.
They were alone.
The silence stretched and lingered, and seemed to magically magnify each small movement. He could quicken the pace of her heart from across a crowded room; standing so terribly close only heightened his effect on her. Her heart pounded as if she were running.
"Look at me," he commanded huskily.
Slowly she raised her blue eyes to his face. This was her second mistake. His eyes darkened as she watched, but he seemed strangely preoccupied, as if his thoughts had flown many leagues from the room. A gentle hand reached to her long hair, the intimacy of the gesture expanding her fear like a cloud brushed by wind. She blurted, rather breathlessly, "Do not think that because I have no guards, I am incapable of defending myself!"
The statement drew him back for a moment. Warm humor filled his gaze, replacing the darkening light there. "I'd never think that." Gently he brushed the stray wisps from her face as he considered her. He loved her hair, impossibly long, thick, and as smooth as silk. He lifted the bulk of it to his face, drinking in the scent of rose water.
Yet there was a mystery in her hair and he asked: "This white streak that marks your hair, if not your life—you were not born with it, were you?"
The question sounded as if they now chatted amicably from across a supper table. No one had ever asked that question. People assumed the white streak marked her fate like the curse, separating her from a common life. Yet it had been only an accident.
He seemed to sense this. He separated it from the rest of her hair, his fingers streaming over the long streak of white. "I would know how it happened."
"A childhood mishap," she answered softly. "Twas just after Papillion took me to live in the forest house. I was always underfoot and he spilled a drop of scalding liquid there. Forevermore the strip of hair came in white."
Yet, in truth, Papillion never had accidents...
Vincent nodded, though he had hardly heard, distracted as he was by the rounded fullness of her bosom, the rosy pink tip peeking through her arms and the weight of her hair in his hands.
She swallowed, wanting to pull away. She did not; she forced herself to remain perfectly still, afraid beyond reason that he would restrain her.
Which he noticed. "Roshelle," he said with a hint of humor as he slipped the backs of his fingers over her breast, where he felt the wild race of her heart.
The tingling sensation made her gasp.
"I am scaring you. Why, I wonder?"
Slowly she shook her head, desperate to break the spell, but his unerring gaze held her still. She could not for her life respond. A hand lifted to her face, where his fingertips brushed along her hairline before he traced a line, light as a feather, over her mouth. "Does the curse make you afraid?"
She started to shake her head. "Tis you who should be afraid!"
The exclamation held urgency, and a hint of sadness. He studied her lovely blue eyes, searching for an answer. "What are you frightened of more: that I will be struck down dead or . . . that I won't?"
The answer would be both, but she barely heard the words. The lure of his voice, the touch of his hand, the compelling warmth of his body all neatly dissolved her will, which he understood. "Shall we find out, Roshelle?" The question sounded whisper-soft. "Let me put it to the test."
She could not imagine a worse idea.
Her heart pounded in sudden panic and she started to shake her head and back away, but before the message reached her unsteady feet, his strong arms encircled her and crossed over her back. A quick, sharp breath came in a gasp as her rounded fists felt the warm, hard muscle beneath the rich velvet of his tunic. His hands slid lower, cupping her buttocks. Her flimsy chemise fell to the floor.
She was naked.
The hot warmth of his hands penetrated her terrified nerves. A hot lick of fire shot through her, and she gasped, another shudder passing through her, one that made her cry out in alarm, "Oh, no, no—"
"Yes and yes," he whispered as he lowered his mouth to hers. Her blue eyes widened dramatically, only to quickly close. She felt his firm warm mouth on hers. Any last thought of fighting him vanished the instant she felt the shining pleasure of his kiss.
The sheer wonder of it seized the whole of her. He dared, she couldn't believe he dared! No one had ever kissed her before. Not even Millicent de la Nevers during the heady days of his courtship, when he swore to her the curse would not matter. Edward had tried, but had been killed for trying. No one else had ever dared.
Fear blended with the warm sensations washing over her, a potent mix. Yet she was still unable to overcome the terrible certainty that any second he would be struck dead where he stood—
Sensing her fear, he broke off the kiss, and with amusement and curiosity, he stared into her lovely upturned face. His arms still crossed over her back, keeping her mercilessly close. "Roshelle," he said as he reached his thumb to her mouth, gently coaxing her lips into parting. "You kiss as if it's your first time? Don't tell me no man has yet taken you through even the preliminary paces?"
Confusion drew her brows together, and, lost in a heady mixture of sensations, she traced her tongue over her lips to soothe the strange tingling sensations there. The blue eyes shot to his face. "Have you no fear at all?"
"My only fear is that you might pass from my life without my having tasted your lips…" The words were whispered as he kissed the corner of her mouth where her lip trembled once, before gently kneading her bottom lip apart. She gasped with surprise as he gently brought her head back further to accommodate him.
It was a kiss that was her undoing. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think to breathe and she wondered wildly why she wasn't fainting as her mouth, her mind, her every sense and fear melted beneath the sensuous press of his lips. The kiss deepened as he added more pressure, slipping his tongue into her mouth and exploring it to full measure. He tasted like the sweetest potion. A great burst of heat from deep within herself came with a frantic rush of chills and she felt herself sinking slowly into his arms, which were suddenly holding her up.
His entire being greeted the soft pliancy of her slender curves. He broke the kiss to let his lips graze over her the satin arch of her sensitive neck. "Roshelle, Roshelle, you taste like a sweet summer nectar." Chills erupted from every place his lips touched her. His hands slid along the slender curves of her waist, over and over. "Put your arms around my neck… Better, much better," he said as he gazed at her nakedness. "My God, you are beautiful, sweet and beautiful and sweet again ..."
His thumbs gently teased the sides of her breasts. She gasped with another hot rush of chills. The peaks of her breasts tightened like tiny flower buds fed by warm spring rain. He caught a small, delicious little pant in his mouth before he was kissing her again.
The next kiss frightened her to the depth of her soul. She had never been carried so far, not even in the secret place of her dreams. She imagined the sudden strike from the heavens, the rush of guards into the room, frantic explanations that would bring the feel of the guillotine's blade.
She twisted her mouth from his, and drawing a gasping breath, she cried, "Oh, no . . . please!"
He kept his mouth dangerously close. "Please what, Roshelle?" The question was asked as he took her clenched fists and gently brought them behind her back. His lips lightly caressed the place on her neck where he knew to find the flutter of her pulse, which was escalating along with his. He also discovered an incredible sweetness there. "What is this?"
Trying to guess what he meant, too weak, confused and frightened to even begin thinking how to fight him, she arched her back dramatically, unintentionally offered herself to his mouth. She felt his warm laughter against her skin as he said, "Oh, dear Lord, save me . . ."
Her exact thought.
Her blue eyes closed with a pained gasp of pleasure and a queer kind of embarrassment as his lips circled the rosy pink tip of one of her breasts, circling, then gently sucking, her small gasps telling him when he had found the right movement.
Chills shot through her like hot dashes of fire. The sensation was feverish and tantalizing, and far too much for her untrained senses. Just as she felt certain of swooning, sinking into thick warm depths from which she'd never emerge, his lips returned to her mouth. The heat spread to a mounting vexation between her thighs. She barely understood what was happening to her. Without realizing what she was doing, she pressed her supple form against his length, as if this might bring her to ease.
That did it. He knew he traveled too fast for her untutored senses. He tempered his response, easing the pounding pressure of his lips from hers. He was, if anything, an experienced lover; he knew as many ways of kissing a woman as the sun had of shining, and the kiss changed, slowing, becoming mercilessly unhurried.
This did nothing to ease the race of her blood or cool the hot serums heating her blood. "Roshelle, Roshelle." He said her name over and over as he caught her small, quick gasps in his mouth before, just that quickly, he lost any semblance of control and was kissing her again.
He tilted her head back even farther and widened his lips as his tongue swept into the incredibly sweet moistness. He groaned deep in his throat, the sound lost in their joined mouths. His hands slipped up and down the slender curves of her back as he was teased to distraction by the press of her breasts on his chest, wanting to see, feel, taste her naked flesh beneath him—
"Kissing is very nice. Very, very nice..."
For a long moment, Roshelle thought the voice was her own, confessing what amounted to the understatement of the century. Then she knew. It was Joan's! She tore her mouth from the duke's and pushed with all the force of her being.
The sudden violence took him by surprise, and he could not catch her in time.
Roshelle stumbled back, landing on her bottom. Naked as the day she was born. Greyman squawked noisily, his wings flapping wildly as if with applause. The hearty sound of his lordship's amusement was far, far less humiliating than the single terrible thought that gripped her: she had let him kiss her. Not only that, but after one stolen kiss, she had welcomed the next with the stupid idiocy of a flower welcoming the sun.
All she needed was two dead lords of Suffolk!
Joan hurriedly rushed to Roshelle's aid. Roshelle came to her feet and, in the rush of emotions, failed to notice the pretty blush on Joan's cheeks, the tousled long ropes of her hair or the disarray of her dress, alarming things when placed beside what she had just said about kissing. All she noticed was the maddening light of laughter in the duke's eyes.
She grabbed the discarded heap of her nightdress and covered herself.
Vincent said a disarmingly casual, "Good evening," to Joan, glancing at her with some small interest. He wondered at the peculiarity of her interruption until he heard from Roshelle, "If you ever, ever kiss me again, I won't wait for the curse to strike you dead. I'll do it-"
"I know. You will do it yourself." He turned to leave, laughing. "Roshelle, I look forward to it. And who knows? Perhaps the next time I kiss you, we will find the, ah, exact point of my danger."
"You mean demise. And I don't believe you will be forewarned!"
Yet it was too late, far too late. The sound of his amusement echoed all the way down the hall. Roshelle quickly slammed the door on it, only to discover, in the room's sudden silence and emptiness, how much harder it was to rid herself of the lingering memory of his kisses.
A trembling hand went to her lips as she paled at the thought. She was shaking like doomed leaves in the autumn wind. Her nerves felt stretched and taut, and a terrible restlessness and disquiet seized her.
She whispered with frightening certainty, "Joan, dear Joan." Her hand went to her head in distress. "I am in trouble . . ."
"Bless the lord who saved you."
The Archbishop of Flanders nervously shifted in his seat alongside the Duke of Burgundy, casting furtive looks at a group of near naked men who played dice upon the high altar in the Cathedral of Flanders before glancing at the Abbot of Fools. Wearing the priestly vestments turned inside out, and newly bald for the festivities, the Abbot of Fools stood on a makeshift pulpit singing a mass made of equal parts ribald song and gibberish as the people gathered around, laughing and eating blackened soup and sausages. The noise rose to deafening levels; the archbishop could hardly make out the man's comedic presentation because twelve scantily clad maids danced lewdly in a circle around the Abbot of Fools.
Best not to watch that, he realized too late.
The archbishop drained the goblet and held it out for more, trying to tell himself the Feast of Fools celebration unfolded no differently in Burgundy than anywhere else in Christendom, that all was as it should be. The people needed this one day to mock and ridicule all that was holy; they needed this one day set aside during the high holidays at Passover to celebrate in burlesque the old and familiar rituals of the church; they needed this one day to release the natural brutishness that often hid beneath the veneer of obedience to God and church.
The good man drew a deep, even breath, trying to slow the pounding of his heart. Then why did his heart pound so? Why did he feel so ... so anxious?
This pervading sense of unease no doubt owed itself to the Pope's dispensation that let the Duke of Burgundy hold the Feast of Fools inside the cathedral rather than in the great hall. No doubt. Unfortunately, the duke's workmen still labored to finish minor repairs in the great hall, and were unable to complete their work by the time of the feast. He wiped his perspiring brow, cast his gaze down and desperately sought the humor in the Abbot of Fools charade.
No relic or article of the church was too sacred for the ridicule of this Feast of Fools day: presently the elected Abbot of Fools—a commoner, Jean de Berry, a baker-bowed as the audience burst into drunken applause at the end of his gibberish mass. Someone threw his blackened soup at the Abbot of Fools, then another and another. A thick mess struck the statue of the Virgin by accident, causing the archbishop a small, pain-filled gasp—
Mon Dieu! The bishops and priests at his side stared with shock or looked away, murmuring miseries, and strangely, all appeared as uncomfortable as he was. Priests usually found as much fun and humor in the Abbot of Fools as the people. Yet not so today, not here in Burgundy. He looked at the Duke of Burgundy, waiting to see if he would speak out against the defamation of the Virgin's statute.
He did not. The Duke of Burgundy sat calmly and regally on his throne. The grand duke wore robes of a shocking red and gold, the costume of the Pope of Fools, and watched the turmoil of his court from behind a mask. The whitened side of his mask revealed a grotesque caricature of Pope Benedict, and on the reverse side, a startlingly sinister horned god, this used only to express extreme pleasure at the burlesque show before him. A wreath of black roses crowned the elaborate mask.