Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams (45 page)

“Geneva?”

“I've found a rowboat downstream. Can you swim out to it?”

“I'll manage.” Gabriel followed her into the water, amazed at her resourcefulness and quiet courage. He watched her skirts drift up against the dark waters. She'd come storming into his life, overturning all his peace, but now he couldn't imagine what life would be like without her.

“What happened to Devere?”

“I shot him,” she said grimly. “He was holding his arm when the others brought him his horse.”

Moments later they reached the rowboat and Geneva climbed in, her hair tumbling in a wild cloud down her back, her satin dress molded to every curve.

Gabriel swallowed, fighting a desperate urge to take her right there, rocking in the fog.

He told himself this was just the ache of a man who had gone too long without the comfort of a woman's body.

But he knew it was something far deeper.

“I'll tend to the oars,” he said, his voice harsher than he intended.

The slap of the water was the only sound as they drifted through mist and darkness, following the bends of the river. Eventually, Gabriel knew, it would lead them toward the abbey.

When his shoulders finally began to ache with strain, he pulled beneath an overhanging tree. Beyond was an old mill that looked long deserted. “We'll rest here and push on later.”

Geneva gathered her sodden skirts and stepped onto the muddy bank. As she did, the boat lurched and she tumbled backward. Gabriel caught her clumsily, dropping an oar to keep both of them from being tossed overboard.

Her young body covered his. He felt the thrust of her breasts through the wet silk of her gown. She looked at him, a dark emotion in her eyes, her hair gusting black and rich around her shoulders.

Gabriel felt himself falling, falling into an ocean without any bottom, his heart spread high and wide like the sails of the swift ships that had carried him so often to France.

He wished he were a hero then, the kind of man she thought that he was. But he was no hero. A hero would have turned her away, and he could not. There was too much sweetness in her face, too much yearning in her eyes. Her hair blew about his face and all Gabriel could think of was the sweet smell of lilacs that filled his mouth, his lungs, his whole being.

He knew then that he had to have her, that all his honor could not save her, because it had gone far beyond heated thighs and rasping breath.

Now it was a thing of rushing spirit, of deepest yearning dreams, the sort of hunger that could not be denied because it went past bone and muscle to the very soul.

“I'll hurt you, damn it. I'll take you, my love, again and again, until you forget where you start and I begin. Once there's a
starting, there won't be an end, I warn you. Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe not ever.”

He had hoped to scare her away, but he might have known he could not succeed. Her hands whispered over his arrogant mouth. “I pray so, my lord.”

“Fool.” There was anger in his voice along with an infinite tenderness. “You don't know anything about me.”

“Except what counts. That you are a hero and…I love you.”

“I can give you nothing but pain, Geneva. Through my whole life, that's all I've done to those I love most.”

Then her body blocked out the night, the river, the fog, and she kindled a joy he had thought long dead.

When she touched him, he was lost. Gabriel fought for sanity, for strength to deny her, but found neither. “Geneva, are you sure?” His voice was harsh as his fingers moved through her hair.

“Yes, now. There, in the mill beside this dark river.” And if the words had not been clear enough, then the soft pressure of her body was.

“It's wrong. Wrong and I know it.” His fingers tightened, locked deep in her hair.

“Maybe, my lord,” she murmured, her hands achingly gentle on his face, “it's your knowing that's wrong.”

 

T
HE MILL WAS FULL OF DUST,
but Gabriel mounded clean straw and made a bed in the moonlight. When Geneva turned, her eyes were full of love.

Her fichu, gown and stays slid free. Beneath she wore only a chemise of finest cambric, now damp from the river and nearly translucent.

Gabriel feasted on the sight of her, on the full, rich sweep of her soft shadows beneath the moon. His throat constricted. “So fine. So bloody beautiful…”

She smiled a little sadly. “I am too tall for fashion and my
mouth is too wide. I have no graces and I squint.” She spoke with utter candor.

Gabriel would have laughed, could he have summoned up a single sound. He would have bellowed with laughter, for she was all that he'd ever hungered for—all that any man could ever hunger for.

“None of the graces?” he managed.

“Not a single one,” she said defiantly.

“And surely not a squint.”

“Just so.” She demonstrated.

He thought to himself that it made her look enchanting, lending a lovely intensity to her fine, regular features. But he did not tell her so. He could not speak with any safety.

“Now you'll not want me.”

It was all beyond his taking in, standing in the moonlight and talking calmly, as if she wasn't half-naked, straw at her feet.

“Besides, I smell.”

“Smell?”

“I carried a bottle of perfume in my gown. It was my mother's. The bottle broke in the river.” She sniffed. “I'm certain you must have smelled it.”

Lilacs. Oh, yes, he'd smelled them. Like her they were fresh and full and everything young. They were spring come to the dark earth and joy to a hardened heart. They would help him remember this moment forever.

“Come closer and let me see.”

She moved through a bar of moonlight, all whisper and heat, her shoulder extended. “Will this do?” Her voice was husky.

Did it do any better, he would die of her!

Gabriel nodded gravely. Bending slightly, he inhaled while the tantalizing sweep of one breast, barely veiled beneath white cambric, lay inches from his fingers.

So close. So sweet.

He found lilacs and more—courage and honesty and fierce loyalty. Lilacs would mean that to him from now on, Gabriel thought. “I can smell it now.”

She nodded gravely. “You've wanted none of me, not from the start. And why should you? You're far too grand. You can have your pick of fine, grand women without a squint and with every sort of grace.”

He swept her against him, his hands lost in her hair, his mouth raining hot kisses over her face.

Geneva gave a shaky laugh. “I am too tall.”

“Which means I can see your face when I do this.” He caught her lip gently between his teeth.

She swallowed, her hands at his shoulders. “But my mouth—”

“Is just perfect.”

He filled himself with her, and his fingers were not quite steady as he slid her chemise from her shoulders, following the fine fabric with his mouth, kisses like a storm.

She sighed as he slid the cambric away and found the impudent coral thrust of her breast.

Lilac filled his senses. Geneva filled him, heart and soul. He'd take away her pain, and with it all her doubts.

“But you are dressed and I am not. Besides, I want to touch you too. If…that is allowed.”

He laughed, could not help himself. “Most certainly it is allowed.”

She frowned for a moment. “I've lost your stickpin. I had it to remind me of the night I betrayed you. It must have fallen.”

He brushed her cheek. “I'll put a curse on whoever finds it.”

“Do not jest, my lord.” She sank onto the snug little bed of mounded straw. “Come here.”

He did. Wondering.

She tugged away his cravat, shoved at his buttons, and freed his jacket, two buttons bursting in the process.

Gabriel knew a fierce urge to give her all her heart desired, to sweep down the very stars and give them to her on a platter of beaten gold.

But he had no gold nor stars. All he had was his touch and his joy in her.

“You—are beautiful,” she said, her voice low with wonder. “I'm far too ordinary for you.” Her fingers touched his muscled arms, brushed the fine hair across his chest.

“Geneva,” he said warningly, heat climbing.

She traced the silver trail of an old scar, earned on his first foray to France. “You've been hurt too often,” she said gravely. Her lips covered the skin, bringing a pleasure more fierce than any pain Gabriel had felt when the French cavalry saber had sliced through him.

Her tongue was magic, blinding as she came slowly upward. And then she met his mouth. Inexpert. Eager. Maddeningly fine.

Too soon. He had her body yet to taste.

But she pulled him down against her, suddenly demanding, cambric fallen aside and only burnished skin before him.

“Now,” she whispered, her eyes grave. “Before I can remember, I pray you.” Her thigh moved along his. “Unless you have changed your mind?”

He caught her, pulled her down atop him in a sprawl. “Never,” he said grimly. He palmed her thigh and moved to higher glories. “Satin. Sweet.” And wet, he saw, with sharp delight. Not that she yet understood the significance of that.

“But you—”

“Hush.” Sliding to part her, pushing deeper. Ignoring her startled breath, he remained intent on his goal.

Which was
her
pleasure.

“Gabriel—”

No words. Nothing but the joy he could show her.

Nearly there, all clinging skin. All heat that welcomed.

“Gabriel.”
This time her voice came in a rush of awareness. Her skin flushed warmest pink.

“Yes, my stubborn love?”

“I feel—so strange. And I don't at all understand—”

“You will.”

He taught her then, his hard hands carefully gentle against petals lush. She flowered in the heat of his care and love and opened her glorious amber eyes, shock warring with a final instant of fear.

But he swept her beyond both, into a dark storm of feeling, in a place where all memories stopped and all wounds were healed. He felt her arch against him, a single word on her lips.

And the word was his name.

It coiled around his heart, held him speechless, made him feel a thousand times young.

And truly the man she loved.

There was no more fighting then, not for either of them.

 

W
ITH A SOFT MOAN
C
ATHLIN
turned, shoving blindly at her pillow.