It seemed to be a memory recalled, a feeling that they’d come together before in laughter and ecstasy. A dream of those moments surged into this one. A recollection of what had been a thousand years ago. A promise of what could be, if circumstance were different and fate did not have greedy claws.
She raised herself, pressing up on her knees so that the ache of his possession was eased. His hands gripped her hips, restrained her. But she was in throes of something more powerful than his wishes or her desires. She closed her eyes to savor the sensation of him sliding out of her slowly. It maddened her. She sank down again as deliberately.
He made a sound something like a startled laugh as she did it again. Her head fell back as she concentrated on the feeling, the exquisite torture of it, the slow, languorous delight of feeling him deep within her.
It speared her heart.
Her fingers trailed along his stomach, her nails scraped against his skin gently. She felt his muscles contract. His hips rose even as he pulled her to him.
She shook her head, the sensations unbearable. Her hands tingled, her tongue felt cold, her breasts heated and flushed. She was sensuous and womanly and feral.
He surged within her; at the same time he pressed his hand on her hips and forced her down. A look of intense pleasure crossed his face. Again he raised his hips, demand inherent in the gesture.
She’d thought the act one of physical joining, never realizing that it could involve her soul. That she might splinter into a thousand pieces and all of them chained each to the other. A bit of moonlight attached to a string of stars. But more than that. A breath of joy, so pure and sweet that it chilled her with its perfection.
Her breath caught and then expanded. A gasp turned into an inarticulate plea. A moan, a sigh. A prayer.
“Remember me,” he whispered even as she soared.
He was chided by the sound of God. The mutterings of the Almighty, who was not pleased with his actions. He frowned at the voice, then retreated willfully into recollections of Anne. The curve of her waist and the line of her hip. The soft, surprised moan when he’d loved her the second time. She’d beaten her fists against him in time to her release. He smiled in his sleep.
God, however, was continuing to complain. He uttered a stern warning in a voice that growled with the sound of poetry. Stephen turned in his bed, the ropes creaking beneath him as God spoke. Was he doomed to some celestial punishment, then, for the joy he’d felt last night?
He reached out for Anne, then remembered she had left him a few hours ago. Draped in candlelight and kisses, she had slipped through the hallway to her chamber.
The rumble of angel voices chastised him. God was not content to deliver him a silent rebuke, evidently. He had summoned the seraphim to quote poetry to him. Male angels?
Sleep vanished in an instant. He blinked open his eyes, listening to the drone of voices. Thousands of voices. He’d faced that sound too many times. Parliamentary soldiers had a penchant for marching into battle chanting psalms. A ploy, he’d long suspected, not only to demonstrate that God was on the side of the Parliamentarians but to give the poor foot soldiers something to think about other than the cannon bearing down on them.
He rolled from his bed and rushed to the window. This side of the house faced Langlinais. It was not until he reached the other side of his suite that he saw what he’d feared. There before him were thousands of soldiers marching on Harrington Court. He recognized the banner immediately. General Thomas Penroth.
He had not been fast enough in returning to battle, it seemed. The war had come to him.
S
tephen turned as William entered the room.
“Have you assembled the men?”
“Yes, my lord,” William said.
“Then let’s begin,” he said. William followed him down the hallway to the ballroom.
He’d never played host in this room, but his youthful memories supplied him with details of stuffy air and the overpowering fragrance of thousands of beeswax candles, the pungent aroma of ladies’ perfume, and the odor from velvet, lace, and silk needing a good airing. He’d been six the last time he’d been required to attend one of his father’s parties. On that occasion he’d been paraded about with much fanfare, his attire a duplication of his father’s favorite suit of clothes, his hair styled in the same fashion. The night had not ended well, he remembered. He’d been feted as only an heir might be in a sea of indolent and hedonistic nobles. He’d been fed so many sweetmeats and wine that he’d been sick over a dowager duchess’s new yellow kid shoes.
At least his father had never summoned him here again.
He looked at the sixty men who comprised the Langlinais regiment. He knew these men well, had grown up with most of them, had come to depend on all of them.
The plan to ride for Oxford could not have been worse timed. The Parliamentarians had trapped them here as ably as the other inhabitants of Harrington Court.
“I need a volunteer,” he said without preamble. “Someone to ride for Colonel Blagge.”
“I will go, my lord.” James stood. He’d originally come from Kent and was one of the best cavalry officers.
“I’ve a brother with Penroth, my lord,” Samuel said, standing and joining James. In another war that news might have brought on some reaction. At the very least, angry muttering. But there was only silence at his announcement. Families had been torn apart over this conflict, even as the ideas and causes once deemed worth fighting for became dross as the war lingered on.
“It might be easier if you choose me, my lord. That is, if I’m caught.”
“I can only spare one of you,” Stephen said. He nodded at Samuel, the decision made. “Let’s just hope you don’t see your brother any time soon,” he said and proceeded to outline the fastest way to reach Blagge’s troops.
He left them then, intent on only one thing, to determine for how many days they could withstand Penroth.
Instead, he was lured by the sound of laughter. He followed the sound to the kitchen, a labyrinthine journey that wound through storage hallways where barrels of their sand were stored. It was used for cleaning, but would be moved to the hallways soon to help put out fires if Penroth began to bombard them.
He pushed the door ajar. Betty, Ned, and what looked to be the majority of the staff stood watching Anne. She sat at the head of the long table, intent upon her drawing. Her fingers flew over the page.
A burst of laughter accompanied each successive viewing of a drawing being passed from one to the other. It was not difficult to deduce that the subject of the amusement was one of young maids, whose cheeks were a lively red. But she looked as if she enjoyed the attention. He stepped forward, held out his hand, and the drawing was placed in it by one of the younger downstairs maids. She giggled without turning, passing on a bit of fun, unknowing that she did so to her employer.
It was only then that he realized the room had grown quiet. The one person who was patently ignoring his presence was Anne, and she was intent upon her drawing. When one of the maids would have slipped away, he shook his head, a gesture to induce her to stay.
Anne finished the drawing with a flourish and held it out to Betty. Betty covered her mouth with her hand as if to stifle her laughter, but it rolled forth anyway. She handed it to Ned, who took one look at it and began to laugh. But what surprised Stephen the most is that his taciturn servant reached over and grabbed Anne’s hand and raised it to his mouth for a smacking kiss.
Stephen smiled, which seemed to release them from their silence. He was absurdly grateful to her at that moment for bringing laughter to them at a time that was neither amusing nor lighthearted.
She glanced over at him then, and they shared a look. Too intimate for strangers, too warm for friends. He moved aside, motioned to Betty.
He gave her the instructions he’d meant to impart, left word for Ned, and slipped out of the room.
Stephen called out to her knock, and Anne pushed open the door. He looked up and smiled as she entered. He had not lit a candle, and the soft light from the windows cast the room in a pewter glow. An almost intimate setting.
She did not speak when she entered, merely turned and closed the door behind her. It shut with a small click.
Propriety was shut outside the room with her action. They both knew it. Codes of behavior were passed down equally well to Scottish as well as English women. They were each aware that she should not have closed the door, just as neither remarked that it was too late to worry about proprieties. She had sobbed in his arms, and he had lured her to taste passion.
Of all the numerous rooms at Harrington Court, she thought, this one would always be the most special. She had knelt at his side in this room, marveled at his courage, and whispered her secret to him in Gaelic. Here she’d felt delight, wonder, envy, and jealousy. They’d begun their discovery of Juliana’s chronicle in this room and begun an idyll of another sort.
“You didn’t stay,” she said. Her hand reached out and cupped his cheek.
“I find it difficult to be in the same room with you,” he said.
She felt a spike of hurt at his words. But then his hand gripped her wrist, but not to pull her hand away. If anything, he anchored it there. The bristle of his cheek abraded her palm, her thumb brushed against his lip.
“I harden when I look at you, Anne Sinclair.”
“Do you?” She felt her cheeks warm even as the words blazed a trail of fire within her.
His eyes darkened as she watched him. She pulled away, finally.
She sat at his side, not looking at him. Instead, she concentrated upon the pattern of the intricate carving of the desk.
“What can I do to help you?” It was no secret he had spent the day preparing for the siege.
“Do what you’re doing,” he said. “Keep people’s spirits up.”
“It does not seem such a valuable task,” she said. “Not like firing a musket or cleaning a gun.”
He smiled. “Can you do either?”
“I can fire a musket, but I cannot hit anything,” she confessed. “And I know enough to tell a barrel from a priming pan. But that’s about all.”
“Then you should occupy yourself with tasks that suit you.”
“What about you? Is your task only that of commander?”
“There is little enough I can do until I receive word back from the king.” There was a look on his face as if he wished to add something, but he remained silent.
Was the situation as bleak as she suspected? Every member of the household was subdued as if bent beneath the weight of fear. Their voices were reduced to whispers, their smiles coming less often.
And in the midst of it, this perfect island. This man.
She should not have been so content.
“Even the commander must separate from the man occasionally,” he said, smiling. “A moment for himself from time to time.” It seemed to her to be a wicked smile, one deliciously so.
He pulled the codex to him. “Shall we read?” he said, and raised one eyebrow. If he knew that she had been entertaining thoughts of a more carnal nature, he didn’t show it.
He opened the book and began to read.
“‘Sebastian agreed to give the Templars what they wanted, but to do so he had to travel to the fortress of the Cathars. He was determined to leave me behind, just as I was determined to travel with him. I was his, in heart and soul, even if I could never touch him.’”
Words that rang with a curious similarity to her own thoughts.
I have seen you all my life, Stephen. I have slept on a pillow and breathed your name as I fell asleep. I have drawn your picture over and over and over again until I had your face just so. That one crease of dimple on the left side of your face, the small lines at the corners of your eyes
. If she were truly filled with Sinclair courage, she would turn to him, press her fingers against his lips. She would tell him what she was. A visionary, a seeker, and perhaps a witch, after all. Because what she felt for him was some type of sorcery.
“‘I had never seen him attired in anything but his monk’s robe. But the man who stood before me in the sunlit bailey was the warrior I’d heard so much about, Sebastian of Langlinais. His armor gleamed in the sun, his tunic matched the shade of the ruby mounted in the hilt of his sword. The journey to Montvichet was one of sadness. Every step I felt as if Sebastian was growing further and further from me. I felt as if time was my enemy.’”
Another point of kinship. Too close to be comfortable.
“‘The fortress of Montvichet was a sad place, one of whispering shadows and haunting voices. The women of the fortress had been besieged, and although their suffering had been terrible, they had withstood the privations for six months. Their fate was one of great sorrow. Once at Montvichet, Sebastian showed me what he would surrender to the Templars. It was a chalice he’d been given in the Holy Land, one of gold and crimson glass. He would lead the Templars to believe that it was the Holy Grail and thereby save Langlinais.’”
Anne glanced up. There was an expression of disbelief on Stephen’s face that must mirror hers.
The cup Christ used at the Last Supper, the Holy Grail, was an object of veneration and unbelievable reverence. The Earl of Langlinais perpetrated a hoax. Not on just any group, but on the powerful Knights Templar.
Anne felt as if the breath had been stolen from her.
“Could that be true?”
“If it is, I can understand her reason for burying the codex,” Stephen said.
“But why write it at all? To put it down on paper seems a dangerous thing to do.”
He turned to the front of the codex and reread Juliana’s words. “‘My task is to impart the truth of these matters to all who come after us who would know of the true story of Langlinais Castle and the threat that stands between us and lasting peace. Would it be that such words were never read, then all that is Langlinais will remain fast and without peril.’ She and Sebastian must have known that the Templars would try to use the legend of the Grail to enforce their power.”