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The restrained tenderness and gentle warmth of his touch melted the ice encasing Lianna. Thawed by his kindness, a single tear emerged, dangled on the points of her lashes, then coursed down her cheek. He traced its path with his thumb, caught the second with his lips, and then the broad wall of his chest absorbed the hot floodtide that followed.
Four (#u7d520697-4991-57ed-b557-ff347843aa77)
Stricken by her grief without understanding it, Rand wrapped the small, shuddering girl against him. Whatever he’d expected—a shy smile, a tentative greeting—was swept away by the depth of her naked emotions. For long moments he stood holding her, stroking her tense back, her rounded shoulders, bending to touch his lips to the wind-cooled silk of her hair. “Hush, pucelle,” he whispered. “Please don’t cry anymore.”
He’d felt guilty coming here, giving in to an impulse he knew he should not indulge. Now her need drove away the guilt and filled him with a powerful sense of rightness. Although pledged to Lianna’s mistress and bound to style himself the girl’s overlord, he could not withhold his comfort.
He tightened his throat against speaking further, for to speak now would be to admit to emotions he had no right to feel. Instead he cradled her small, quaking body against him.
At length her weeping subsided. She clung to him, kept her face buried in his tunic. When Rand curved his fingers under her chin and lifted her face to his, she stiffened and resisted. But the gentle force of his will won out, and he found himself staring into the battered silver of her eyes.
The pain there was so deep, so vivid, that he felt as if a fist had reached down inside him and squeezed his heart.
“Tell me, pucelle,” he whispered.
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
His finger caught the sparkling drop of a tear from her cheek and brought it to his own lips; he tasted the faint, bitter salt of her grief. “I’d break a hundred lances if the deed could drive the sadness from your eyes.”
That brought a tiny smile. “I am no damsel in a chanson de geste. I need no dragons slain for me.”
“What do you need, Lianna?”
“A friend.” Her voice sounded faint, as if she were reluctant to confess such a human necessity.
He touched his lips to her hairline, breathed in the light scent of her fragrance. Soon enough he would be forced to betray the childlike trust that softened her features. “I’ll be your friend, pucelle,” he said.
She unwrapped herself from his embrace. Long, loose strands of her hair clung to his arm, linking them. Gesturing at his harp, she said, “Sing me a song.”
He smiled. “I was prepared to break lances for you.” He brought her to sit by the cross and took the harp in his lap.
Fascinated, Lianna watched his strong hands close around the frame of ashwood worn smooth by years of handling. Long masculine fingers caressed the gut-spun strings, bringing forth a sweet shiver of sound. The tones lifted to mate with the spring breeze, and Lianna felt an odd sense of intimacy, as if the notes were whispered in her ear. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms about them.
He sang an old troubadour’s lay of unrequited love. He had a voice like none other she had heard—vibrant, clean as rain, powerful as the wind singing through the crags.
Only when a breeze cooled her cheeks did she realize she was crying again. But the new tears came on a release of pain, as if Rand’s singing had drawn a thorn from her flesh.
He watched her expectantly. She swallowed. “How can you sing like that? As if—as if your soul were touched by God.”
Laughter rippled from him. “Not by God. By you.”
They weren’t touching, but Lianna felt as if she’d been caressed. I think I love you, he’d called to her, and she’d wondered about that for days, questioning his honesty and her own worthiness of it. No man had ever said those words to her, had those feelings for her. Did he still feel affection for her, or was the emotion only a passing fancy? She feared to ask, but what she saw in the pure, liquid green of his eyes made her hear the words in her heart over and over again.
He set down his harp and walked to her horse. “Let me guess,” he said, stroking the palfrey’s satiny neck. “You’ve stolen a horse and you’re running away.”
“I am allowed certain liberties,” she said quickly, leaping up to join him. His eyes were so clear, so all-seeing. Did he know she lied? She felt guilty deceiving him. Quickly she justified it. This knight-errant would never befriend the Demoiselle de Bois-Long; no one ever had.
He ran his hand over the palfrey’s withers and down her leg, pushing aside the grass to examine the iron curve of her shoe. “The horse is well tended.”
“Of course.” Lianna’s chin lifted. She tolerated no sloth in her stables. Catching Rand’s curious look, she added, “The marshal is most exacting.” Only, she thought, because he knew she’d put him out to the rye fields if he shirked his duties. She tugged at Rand’s hand. “Let’s walk.”
Gratified by her lightened mood, Rand followed. Her hair played in the breeze like threads of moonlight spun by fairies. As they fell in step together, the hem of her heather smock brushed against his leg, sending a sweet, forbidden thrill to the center of him. The browns and greens of the new season colored the landscape, and he forced his attention to the pollarded willows and stunted poplars that nodded in the wind.
“I’m convinced this was a pirate path of the Vikings,” she said, leading him over the hill that sheltered the glade. “I used to play Helquin the Huntsman when I was a child.”
He smiled. She spoke as if her childhood were long past, yet in his eyes she was a child still. “Who is Helquin?”
“Ah, you do not know the legend in Gascony.” Her arm sketched the sweep of the landscape. “All the way from the cold white country of the north Helquin came, bearing the shrieking souls of the damned on his shoulders.” She shivered and looked as though she enjoyed the sensation. The thought crossed his mind that Justine would never have savored such a gruesome tale.
“When the wild birds cry out over the marshes, the peasants say they echo Helquin’s long gallop through the centuries. I’d pretend to see him burst through the woods with all the battalions of hell at his heels.”
Rand grinned. “Would you run in terror from Helquin?”
“Certainly not. I would pretend to blow him all the way to the Zuyder Zee with a sixty-pound ball.”
He stopped walking, took her by the shoulders, and rolled his eyes. “I do not approve of your penchant for gunnery.”
Scowling, she struck him lightly on the chest. “Doubtless you would have me cloistered in a lady’s bower, carding wool.”
I would have you folded in my arms, he thought. Next to my heart. He gave her shoulders a squeeze. “I cannot dictate what you should or shouldn’t do. That’s not how it is between friends. But I would prefer you didn’t work with guns. I’ve seen the destruction they can wreak.”
“Very well, Rand the Gascon,” she said, her eyes glittering a challenge, “how would you defend a château?”
“With the might of men-at-arms and archers.”
“Knights.” She spat the word. “They indulge in looting and ransom.” Color rose to her cheeks, and Rand realized he’d discovered a topic she had often pondered, and not happily. She planted her hands on her hips. “Chivalry is but an empty spectacle, an excuse to plunder the weak.”
“Unscrupulous men, not the laws of chivalry, are to blame.”
“Chivalry is but a cloak to hide the excesses of their chevauchées.”
A sudden hideous thought struck him. “Have you been hurt by knights, Lianna? Is that why you disdain chivalry?”
She lowered her gaze. “Anyone who has smelled the smoke of a burning orchard, seen a baby spitted on a sword, heard the cries of a terrified woman, has been hurt by these men who call themselves knights.”
He swallowed hard. She was French; she’d seen these horrors, lived with them all her life. Still, she challenged everything he believed about knighthood. “Do you include me in your censure?”
She looked up. “Do you do those things?”
“No,” he said. “Never. Do you believe me?”
“I think you truly wish to protect the weak and uphold the faith. But I also think you are wrong to believe you can achieve this through chivalry.” She softened the blow by touching his cheek, adding, “You are that rare man, Rand, a man who cannot be touched by corruption.”
Her statement sent him into a spiral of self-reproach. Every lying word he told her would soon come back to haunt him. Unable to extricate himself from the dilemma, he started walking again, then surprised himself by asking, “What think you of archers?” Jesu, was he truly having such a conversation with a girl?
“Rabble,” she said. “Undisciplined rabble.”
“Can you dispute the success of the bowmen at Crécy and Poitiers?”
She glared. “A fine way for a Frenchman to speak, lauding English victories.”
Fool, he said to himself, she’ll find you out even sooner if you don’t guard your tongue. “I laud not the victories, only the way in which they were won. How many arrows could a master archer let fly in the time it takes to load and discharge a cannon?”
“A hundred arrows cannot bring down a stone wall. A single gun can.”
“What good is a firearm that hides the enemy in smoke?”
“What good is an arrow in a strong wind, a bowstring saturated by rain?”
Her vehemence delighted and disturbed him. Deliberately he sidestepped the challenge. “What good is arguing with a maid too precocious for her own welfare?”
She scowled, but he held her with a look of amused affection until the corners of her mouth tipped up in a smile. “You will never defeat my logic in this, sir knight,” she stated. “I am far too quick for you—in more ways than one.” She turned and ran down a grassy slope.
Laughing, he followed her lead past great elms, old yews, giant beeches, over half-buried stones and purplish mud, until he glimpsed the sea through rows of wind-torn hedges.
His caution swept away by her capriciousness and the lithe grace of her movements, he lunged forward and caught her around the waist. Her soft gasp tickled his ear as he swung her in the air. They tumbled together into the soft grass until, with gentle force, Rand pinned her beneath him. One hand bound her delicate wrists and held them above her head, while the other tiptoed in light caresses down her rib cage until she fairly shrieked for mercy.
“Who is the quicker now, pucelle?”
She clamped her mouth shut, refusing to yield. His fingers found and tickled each rib in turn, sending little shocks of awareness through him as her form and the warmth of her flesh came alive beneath her homespun smock.
Boldly he teased the flesh of her neck, his fingers rippling beneath the dense silk of her hair. Her skin was as smooth as ivory, as lustrous as a pearl. Wildly he wondered if she could feel the simmering heat of his desire, if she knew how close he was to letting his passion devour them both.
Sudden guilt flayed him. He was betrothed to another. Yet with Lianna his vows of chastity, of chivalry, flew on the wind, beyond the reach of reason.
As of its own accord, his touch changed to searching caresses, his fingers tracing her cheeks, her shoulders, the dainty line of her collarbone. He explored her form and texture, wanting to stamp her image on his soul. She stirred, and a small whimpering sound escaped her. “Who is the quicker now?” he asked again, forcing lightness into his tone. “Who?”
“You...oh, you,” she gasped.
Immediately Rand released her wrists, but he touched her still with languorous strokes. Bringing his face very close to hers, he studied the clouds of pink color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.
“There is naught so heady,” he whispered, “as a battle won.”
“You do not play fair,” she replied breathlessly.
“Where you are concerned,” he said, “I forswear fairness.” The wind stirred the hedges, and a shadow drifted over her face, deepening the color of her eyes to opaque silver. She shifted beneath him, the slight movement bringing his every nerve to a state of burning aliveness.
“Lianna, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the moment we met.” He touched his lips at random over her flushed and startled face. “You make me want to forget who I am, to forget there’s a world and a time beyond this moment.”
She took a deep, dreamy breath, and he caught it with his mouth, absorbing the warm sweet nectar of her lips. The times he’d held a woman in his arms were few, but had he kissed a thousand women, he knew not one of them could seize his soul as Lianna did.
She lay still, naive, accepting. Her lips felt like moist velvet as he brushed them with his own. She tasted of morning dew and mystery, as if her body held some secret just out of his reach. He burned for her, longed to unlock the person she was, to peel away the layers of her outward identity and cast them aside like petals plucked from a daisy.
Madness, he thought, feathering kisses over her brow, into her hair. Madness to indulge in this forbidden tryst. But oh, how he wanted to explore the insanity. His hand found the sweet curve of her breast. He lifted his head. She eyed him with soft inquiry. Her lips were moist, love-bruised.
“We’d best start back,” he said reluctantly.
Wistfulness darkened her eyes. “Why?”
“Because you are a funny little pucelle who enjoys guns and tries my convictions, and I am a knight-errant bound where my travels take me.” He forced himself to speak easily as he helped her up. “Did your maman never teach you better than to consort with strange men?”
“I am an orphan, and you don’t seem like a stranger to me.”
Although she spoke matter-of-factly, he recognized the glint of pain in the sea-silver depths of her eyes. He drew her against him, startled anew by her smallness, her sturdiness. He whispered, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She nuzzled her cheek against his chest. “You’d never hurt a woman. You told me so.”
Desire swelled in him; he choked it off with a fresh dose of guilt. Before long she would learn who he was, and he’d never have the gift of her trust again.
At a leisurely pace they started back toward their horses, easing into a relationship that Rand knew could flourish only for a few more days—even hours, perhaps. He showed her a bittern’s nest occupied by four brown-speckled eggs. She showed him a limestone deposit and a ruined Roman aqueduct. He wove a crown of wildflowers and placed it on her head. She fashioned a tiny catapult from a green ash bough and showed him how to fling a stone fifty paces.
Rand scowled at the makeshift weapon. Putting it into his belt, he caught her against him. “You are impossible.”
“I am practical.”
“You are beautiful.”
“Prate not about the way I look. I would rather have you admire my skill at weaponry.”
He grinned. “Are all at Bois-Long as bloodthirsty as you?”
“Some are worse,” she said simply, and turned away.
Some are worse. Could she be speaking of her mistress? As he watched her untether her horse, his throat went tight with apprehension. Taking her by the shoulders, he stared at her. “Will your mistress punish you for taking the horse?”
Confusion, then amusement, chased across her features. “Of course not,” she said, flushing.
Relieved, he dropped a kiss on her brow.
“Will you come back?” she asked softly.
He swallowed. “I don’t know....”
“Are you leaving, resuming your travels?”
“My plans...are uncertain.”
She nodded, as if aware that what they had was tenuous. “I’ll come when I can in the late afternoon,” she said solemnly, “at the hour of the woodcock’s flight.”
Wishing the world would fall away and leave them to themselves, Rand hauled her against him and crushed his mouth down on hers.
But by the time he reached Eu, he knew he’d not go to the place of St. Cuthbert’s cross again. The selfish joy of being with Lianna was not worth the pain she’d suffer when she learned his purpose.
He rode out to sit alone on the cliffs where the breakers leaped up in an endless assault on the rocks. He longed to yank his dreams out of his heart and cast them into the sea, to turn himself back into the hollow shell he’d been before he’d met Lianna. She made him too human, too sensitive, and those qualities would serve him ill when the time came to take Bois-Long and his new wife.
He went back to the village, walked into the taproom, and found Jack Cade, who had agreed to act as his herald. Cheeks ruddy from too much hard Breton cider, Jack raised a wooden mug. “My lord of Longwood.”
Rand nodded curtly. “Tomorrow.”
