Daughter of Fire (5 page)

Those cold gray eyes narrowed, his lips thinned making him seem as Vachel had cursed him—like Lucifer himself. She shivered at the resemblance to such evil.

“I understand very well, demoiselle,” he informed her. “Leave him where he lies, or you may be assured of his imminent death.”

“You would not kill an injured man!”

Rorke FitzWarren’s sword hissed from its sheath. “As I explained, demoiselle, the choice is yours.”

Just as the choice for the lives of the villagers hung in the balance, so too did Conal’s life hang in the balance.

“Forgive me,” she whispered, stroking his face with a gentle hand. “Meg will see to your wounds.”

His hand closed over hers with surprising strength. “I will find you,” he whispered.  “And they will pay with their blood for what they have done here.”

“Say no more,” she pleaded. “I could not bear your death.”

Conal had wanted desperately to go with the other men to Hastings, but an injury from childhood that left him partially crippled had prevented it. Instead, he remained at Amesbury to tend the sheep and watch over the village. Now, her heart ached at the wounds he had suffered, for they were childhood friends and she cared for him deeply. She eased her arm from beneath his shoulders as Meg found her way near and crouched beside him.

“We leave now!” Rorke ordered her, steeling himself against the wounded look in her eyes. He understood her pain and anger, and experienced a self-loathing for what these people had suffered, but there was a much more urgent need elsewhere.

“I will see to his wounds,” Met reassured her.  “Go now, my child, and remember what I have said.”

Vivian slowly stood, hatred burning in her eyes as she felt the reassuring shape of the knife at the bottom of her pocket that he had unwisely returned to her. 

“Hate me if you will, mistress,” Rorke FitzWarren told her, “but we delay no longer.”

He reached down, his arm encircling her as he leaned from the saddle. His gloved hand moved across her belly, wrapping with surprising gentleness around her waist. She was easily lifted and settled in the saddle in front of him, her legs hanging over one side, the leather pouch handed off to one of his men. Then he called out to his men and the abbey yard churned into a sea of mud beneath the hooves of the warhorses.

Vivian left the abbey, perhaps never to return again, for it was part of the future she could not yet see, and her eyes filled with tears for those she loved as plaintive cries sounded in the chill air above, and her gaze was drawn skyward. High overhead, the small falcon soared on the winds of the gathering storm, calling mournfully as it followed.

Three

T
he light rain that had begun to fall as they left Amesbury became a downpour and made everyone miserable. It stung at her skin and eyes. Riders became hardly more than dark, huddled shapes in the gathering gloom as water soaked through layers of heavy chain mail armor and thick leather under padding. The horses’ heads hung low in misery.  They were forced to slow their pace as the old Roman road became treacherous underfoot, the horses slipping dangerously in the mud.

Rorke FitzWarren’s captive sat before him with hands clamped over the pommel of the saddle, chin lifted, spine rigid, holding herself as far away from him as possible. She was not what he had expected to find at the abbey. Healers were either wrinkled old crones or stout midwives who had acquired some knowledge of healing ways. The very notion that she lived in an abbey suggested a cloistered life of humility, obedience, and subservience. But the girl who sat before Rorke was neither old, wrinkled, nor stout. Nor was she humble or subservient.

Beneath her threadbare garments, she was slender and fine-boned. In spite of the bruises of Vachel’s abuse, her skin was like the finest satin. Her hair beneath the shawl drawn against the driving rain was like a brilliant fire fall, and her eyes... They burned with a fierce, angry fire as she had defied Vachel, then darkened with sadness at leaving those she loved. Now, they were like a resting blue flame as she stared y ahead, revealing nothing of her true emotions, a combination of vulnerability and strength, innocence and beguiling beauty, like a fine, rare flame that drew the hand to its fiery heat, but so easily burned that hand.

The thin wool of Vivian’s shawl and the gown beneath were soaked and lay plastered against her skin. The leather saddle had become slippery and added to her misery as she shivered violently from the cold and practically became unseated. She immediately felt that hand at her hip, steadying her. Unaccustomed to a man’s hand, she was stunned by that simple warm touch, felt through layers of cold, wet garments. She stiffened and would have pulled away, but his hand prevented it.

“Be still!” he said gruffly, his arm angling across her breasts and anchoring her firmly against him.

“You will unseat us both, and I have no desire to find myself in the mud.”

She quit squirming, but she could not quit shivering.

“You are cold.”

“I have been cold before,” she informed him and attempted to move away from him. He settled her more firmly against him, the weight of his arm intimate possession that made her suddenly go completely still. She felt the sudden shift of his weight in the saddle behind her, the clenching of powerful legs at either side of her, and wide, powerful shoulders as he settled his heavy mantle about them, enclosing them in a fur-lined cocoon.

A wild, new fear settled inside Vivian at this sudden closeness. It created a terrifying intimacy in the shared heat of their bodies, and made her feel trapped and vulnerable in ways she’d never experienced before.

There were dangers far more hazardous than finding himself suddenly unseated from his horse, Rorke discovered, in the slender thighs that pressed against his and the soft curve of her bottom snugged against him.  Wrapped in the thick folds of his mantle, her fragrance washed over him. She smelled of wind, rain, and the sweet promise of spring as her warmth began to mingle with his. Her hair was like heavy satin at her shoulder, and her pale skin begged a man’s hand. Desire knifed through him and his flesh hardened, pressing painfully against the constraints of battle armor.

He cursed. He could not remember hardening so easily or painfully with a maid since his first time at the age of fourteen. And certainly not with one so unwilling, who was also his enemy. Nor was he ruled by his flesh as some soldiers were, seeking conquest of any soft, warm flesh, willing or not. He took his pleasure with women as he chose, but only those who came willing and asked nothing of him but a few coins. He preferred to take more challenging conquests on the battlefield, for only there might he slay the demons that raged as strong as any physical desire.

Still, the Saxon healer with eyes like the heart of a flame and hair like the molten fire of a sunset, made him feel what others could not, and were it not for the layers of chain mail and leather, his reaction to her would have made itself known, and he could well imagine her frantic efforts to flee then from the sword pressing at her back.

“ ’Tis not necessary to share your mantle with me, milord,” she said, pushing at the heavy fabric enfolding them.

“You are wet and cold,” he said gruffly, refusing to loosen his hold. For even though it was torture to have her softness pressed against him, he discovered that it was a sweet torture in the other imaginings it conjured up.

“I have been wet and cold before,” she persisted, pinned against him, her head tucked  beneath his chin. “I do not mind it.”

“
I
mind it!”

His breath tingled at her ear and down the side of her neck, causing her to shiver anew with a far different sensation that spiraled through her to settle somewhere beneath the weight of his arm at her breast.

“And if you persist, mistress,” he warned, his voice harsh with a gruffness she didn’t understand, “then I shall have you bound and trussed before me,” he assured her. “And you will still be wrapped in this mantle. The choice is yours.”

There was no surrender in her slender body but she didn’t struggle again, and as the hours passed with bone-aching weariness, he felt her sway against him as fatigue overcame her. She startled awake and stiffened, then stubbornly held herself rigid in the saddle before him. But exhaustion eventually won out and her slender chin drooped. She eased against him and did not pull away again.

Night began to fall and even their slow pace became impossible in the darkness that closed around them. At the edge of a wood, Rorke ordered his men to make camp for the night. As they stopped his captive jerked awake in sudden alarm. He had experienced it many times in the aftermath of battle, when he suddenly awakened, all senses alert but with no awareness of where he was, only the certainty of danger.

Her slender hands clutched at his arm, her body retreating further into his. His arms closed protectively about her, and he allowed himself the luxury of the feel of her hair, like warm satin, against his lips as he assured her.

“Sa se bien, demoiselle. All is well.”

His warm breath stirred gently against her cheek. Exhaustion slowly cleared from her senses. She pushed away from him, her eyes wary and bright in the fading light.

“What is this place? Where are we?”

“It’s too dangerous to continue. We’ll make camp here for the night and continue in the morning.”

He removed the mantle from about them and dismounted. Relieved of his weight the large warhorse stood trembling, its glossy black coat caked with mud, sweat, and lather. Steam rose from the animal’s back, misting the night air. Long powerful legs that had borne two riders over a long distance quivered, the large head sagging with exhaustion.

The rain had stopped yet Vivian shivered at the sudden loss of his warmth. Her back ached and her legs cramped from sitting at the saddle for so many hours. She slipped to the ground and would have sprawled in the mud had he not caught her. He pulled her against him, supporting her weight on his arm as the feeling slowly returned to her legs and feet. At first there was only a faint tingling sensation, then heat burned down through her legs and spread to her toes. She pushed away from him.

No squire appeared to relieve him of his armor or tend his horse. Instead, he unsaddled the stallion himself.

He glanced toward the forest. “If we are to eat, and keep from freezing tonight, we will need wood for a fire.”

She looked at him with more than a little surprise. She had fully expected to be bound. It intrigued her that he did not intend it.

“Aren’t you afraid that I might escape?”

“You’re afoot and it is a very long walk back to the abbey,” he pointed out. “You are not foolish.”

“I might choose to hide out in the woods,” she suggested. “You would not know, then, which way I had gone.”

“Aye, but eventually you would be found. However, I could not guarantee that it would be my men who would find you.”

That intriguing combination of vulnerability and strength, that he’d first seen at the abbey, flashed in her eyes.  His meaning was not lost on her.

“I am not afraid of Vachel.”

“No, but the villagers of Amesbury have reason to fear him, and it is the first place he will send his men if you should disappear.” He assured her, “If you are found, he will burn the village. If you are
not
found, he will still burn the village.

“Vachel is like an animal,” he warned. “He is best at hunting, but even better at the kill. You would do well to remember that.  As much as you hate me at this moment, you are safe with me.”

She shivered. This time it wasn’t from the cold, but from the memory of her vision in the heart of the stone. Of a creature born in fire and blood that would sweep across the land, and the growing sense that she was being drawn toward something she could not yet understand, nor prevent.

“I will not try to escape,” she said softly as she turned toward the trees. “You have my promise.”

“Do not go far,” Rorke warned.

She found no answers in the solitude of the forest, only a vague awareness that slipped across her senses, like the warning whisper of the wind as it moved through the trees overhead. When she returned with wood for the fire she discovered that Rorke had made their camp near the horses. His mantle was laid across the trunk of a massive fallen oak. An area had been cleared away in front of the tree trunk. Rolls of thick furs lay before it.

The campfires of his men rimmed the clearing. Vachel’s men made their camp under the canopy of trees a distance apart. They had laid fires, striking metal against stone while others went into the woods to hunt what might be found.

She scooped dry leaves from inside of the downed tree and layered the pieces of bark with small twigs. Smoke spiraled tentatively, then a small flame burst to life. It fed hungrily at the pieces of bark and twigs, quickly consuming them. She added more pieces, building the fire until it danced about larger pieces of wood.

Seized by a sudden chill, she extended her hands toward the fire. But not even the heat could drive away the cold ache that now moved through her at the danger she sensed. She stood abruptly and whirled around, knowing who she would find standing behind her. So quietly had Vachel come upon her that she hadn’t heard him, but instead sensed his presence.

Surprise leapt into his eyes at losing the advantage of surprise. Firelight played across his broad, flat features and the ribbon of dried blood at the wound at his cheek. He had removed the cumbersome battle armor, his barreled body moving easily as he crossed the clearing. He had thought to take her by surprise, but that hope was now gone.

“You are indeed skilled, mistress. You have a warm fire while others struggle to strike the first spark.” Watchful eyes gleamed in the flat planes of his face, reminding her of a weasel and she remembered Rorke’s warning.

“It requires no great skill,” she answered carefully. “I was fortunate to find dry wood.” She put more wood on the fire.

He crouched before the fire with an agile movement that belied the thickness of his body. A blade gleamed at his hand—one that had not been there before. He probed the tip of it into the embers that had begun to form at the fire, then turned to look up at her, his lips pulling back over stained teeth. He passed a hand over the slash at his cheek. But her gaze was fixed on the blade at his hand. He was playing with her, much the way an animal plays with its prey before striking.