A Flame Run Wild (29 page)

* * *

Saida started being a damned nuisance immediately. Predictably, the Saracens, hot for revenge, attacked just after dawn. While Liliane, hot, dirty and aching for sleep, wearily assumed her place in the defense line, she thought enviously of Saida taking a cool bath in the tent. She took small comfort in knowing that Saida probably enjoyed that bath as little as she enjoyed fending off angry Saracens. Probably the girl was squealing herself blue at every scrub of the soap and every clash of the battle. All that long, horrid morning Liliane saw no sign of Alexandre. Finally, when the Saracens had been beaten back, she ventured to Richard's tent, where an archer had claimed he had last seen Alexandre. In a little less than an hour, Alexandre and Philip appeared from Richard's end of the line.

Philip greeted her cordially. "I confess I was surprised to see you with Alexandre this morning. I hope you had good hunting again today."

Hunting. In that sense, Liliane thought grimly, Philip and Richard were alike; they thought of war as sport. "Aye, sire. Good hunting." She wiped heavy dust from her cheek, leaving a sweaty blotch.

"You will soon have more. Alexandre says he owes his skin again to you." Philip looked at her sharply. "What do think happened to his girth?"

"It could have snapped accidently, but given the hostler's experience and my lord Alexandre's attention to his equipment, I should imagine it was cut."

"By whom?"

"That is for Count Alexandre to guess. I saw no stranger near the tack."

"Do you suppose Louis de Signe could have ventured among the horses during the raid and tampered with my lord Alexandre's girth?"

"I might suppose it. I did not see it."

"Your Moor is an oyster, Alex," the king said dryly.

"An honest oyster, sire." Alexandre smiled crookedly at Liliane. "Sometimes more honest than I would like."

Philip squinted at the sun-beaten tent tops. "Now that you mention honesty, what have you done with that infidel trollop you caught, my lord Jefar? That one has the eyes of a true Jezebel."

"Dropped her into a bath, sire." Liliane grinned. "I doubt to find her cleaner than I left her. She will take a deal of perfume to be bearable."

Philip laughed. "In such conditions as this, even kings must be grateful for small favors. When you tire of her, send her to me. I shall have my servants drop her in sheep dip before I peck her.''

"I daresay the young lady will be flattered, sire," answered Liliane dryly. "I doubt even she has thought of collecting a king for her lengthy memoirs."

Philip looked taken aback for a split second before his green eyes took on an expectant gleam. "Then you would give her up?"

"Oh, readily, sire, if you will yield me a little time with her. Her past master, one Ibrahim, was old and a vile profligate. She is likely diseased. If so, I have among my medicines some possible remedies that would assure you pleasure without vile consequences."

Philip's gaze turned sleepy. "Oh, by all means, test her. A week or so should reveal the method of your medicine." He clapped Alexandre on the shoulder. "I will take my leave of you. Tomorrow", then?"

"Tomorrow, sire."

"What is happening tomorrow?" Liliane asked as soon as Philip had disappeared among the tents.

"The usual. We eat dust and slay Saracens. Philip just wants to make sure we are not going to miss another wonderful, flybitten day." He sounded more cheerful than bitter, a little preoccupied; his mood made her wonder.

"Philip will not give up on the wench," he said as they started for the tent. "You had best pack her off east."

"Yes, I think you are right. The sooner she is gone the better."

"That is a come about. What happened? Did she kick Kiki?"

"Nothing so blatant, but I am wary of her mouth. I can just imagine her cooing confidences into Philip's ear."

"A flirt, is she?"

"Let us say she has a certain understandable enthusiasm for single encounters in hope of evading numerous ones."

He stopped dead in his tracks. "You do not mean she tried to seduce you?"

"Ardently. It was very reassuring to be advised my pecker could be persuaded to stand up like a wooden stick.'' At Alexandre's stifled groan, Liliane cut him a sly glance. "She is bound to have a go at being equally grateful to you, even if you are a loathsome infidel. Just how do you plan to 'handle' her?"

"Oh, I would not touch her without sheep dip," he drawled, then sauntered off in the direction of the armorers, leaving her to stare after him.

Let Liliane wonder, Alexandre thought wickedly. She had been playing a man too long; she needed competition as a woman to remind her who wore the real cojones in the family. She also needed distraction; he had dangerous plans a few nights hence that did not include her. That fetching slave girl might prove a convenient catch after all.

* * *

That night, Alexandre was forced to admit that Saida was not altogether a windfall. Neither he nor Liliane was much pleased at the new sleeping arrangements. To be fair, he found that Saida was not at all the bold baggage Liliane had described, but rather shy and demurely grateful to him. He also found her exceedingly pretty with tolerable manners. Once he drew her out, she bloomed, only to grow uneasy again under Liliane's critical gaze.

Her curious peeps at him, alternating with nervous glances at Liliane, became amusingly appealing. That appeal wore off by dinner's end. Having another woman in the tent made him want Liliane more, and to have her made unavailable to him by acquisition of a tent mate was frustrating.

He tried to get around the problem by sending Saida early to bed. With growing impatience, he and Liliane lingered over their Turkish coffee. "Do you suppose she is asleep yet?" he wondered for the tenth time.

Liliane sighed. "If you were her, would you be?" She flopped against the pillows. "She probably has her ear to the canvas, wishing she knew at least three words of French."

"Are you sure she does not?"

"She knows one Saracen dialect besides Rifi and is illiterate in both." She grimaced. "The color of her language, however, is admirable. The wench has a rare turn with pornography."

"What exactly did she say to you?" he asked curiously.

With a sly smile, she whispered an embellished version in his ear, then delicately licked that orifice as a finale.

As if magnetized, his head-followed hers as she moved slightly away. "I do not believe it," he breathed. "She is debauched for sixteen."

"Not nearly as debauched as I am," Liliane said huskily. She whispered a few words in his other ear that made his eyes widen, then take on a seductive gleam.

"I also have a suggestion, my love." He whispered something in her ear.

Liliane stared at him, then laughed merrily. "You are not serious!"

"Quite."

They both left the tent, while Alexandre waited outside with the guards by the fire, Liliane fetched the sleeping Saida's scattered clothes from the rug in her darkened tent, and returned to Alexandre's tent where she changed into them. After heavily kohling her eyes and rouging her lips, she wrapped a hooded aba about herself. A brass filet dripping with tiny topaz and jade beads, crescent moons and stars concealed the blond hair about her face, yellow harem veils the rest of her hair and lower features so that only her sultry, mysterious eyes showed. Upon seeing her with head meekly bowed as she emerged from the tent, the guards took her for Saida.

Alexandre closed his arm about her and glanced at the guards. "We shall return before dawn. No one else may either leave or enter here."

The guards averted their eyes discreetly. Alexandre had been faithful to his wife since leaving France; that he now wearied of celibacy was not their affair.

As the couple stole through the camp with its drifting soldiers and beggars, Liliane tugged somewhat nervously at Alexandre's sleeve. "How far is this place? I am attracting stares."

Not answering, Alexandre relished Liliane's discomfiture. Her uneasiness made her seem more feminine, their adventure more daring. He enjoyed having other men see her as a woman and envy him. They must be wondering, Where are these two going tonight? What will the count do to this beauty? How will he pleasure her? He smiled to himself. Tonight, I shall make love to Liliane for each of you. For all those wives and sweethearts you left at home, or long ago when you were still young enough to dream of rare and impossibly beautiful maidens. Such a woman walks among you now, here among the ravages of war, and makes you dream again. This, not kings, is what we die for: our sweet mirages that make tomorrow an elusive, fickle enchantress.

In time they arrived at a heavy wooden door in the harbor quarter; above the door hung a crudely carved sign in the shape of a leopardess, emblazoned with the words the gilded leopard. "Here?" Liliane whispered in some horror. "Alexandre, this is the busiest brothel in camp!"

"Can you think of a better place to find privacy?"

"Alexandre, I cannot. . . surely, we can find another place!"

"Such as the beach, where we might have our throats slit by roaming Saracens?"

Unhappily, Liliane subsided. At Alexandre's knock, the door was opened by a monstrous black with a poised scimitar. Liliane edged behind Alexandre.

"We want a room." Alexandre jangled a few coins a discreet distance from the scimitar. "No wine, no food, no interruptions."

The black grinned mirthlessly. "You don't get monkey dung with that little silver. Try the alley."

"Try staying in business if this cesspit is declared a public nuisance," replied Alexandre coolly. "I can transfer your whole stinking trade to the alley."

The black's eyes narrowed. "And just who the hell are you?"

"
Le Comte de Brueil
, and he does not make idle threats, Ajax," murmured a husky female voice from the darkness of the arched hallway. "Get back to the public room. A fight's stewing over that new mulatto." After the black attended to that business, an impossibly fat, ugly woman lumbered with effort into the torchlight. "Do come in,
Monsieur le Comte
. I apologize for Ajax's rudeness, but you see, prices have gone up since you were last in Palestine." The woman's yellow-tinged eyes appraised them shrewdly. "I regard your patronage as an honor, milord. You shall have our best room and whatever luxuries you desire. If you are pleased, perhaps you will be kind enough to recommend us to your friends."

"I prefer to pay the going rate, Madame," Alexandre replied flatly. "Privacy and courtesy are the only luxuries I require, and as for recommendations, I do not pimp."

The woman shrugged, her purple silks heaving. "No matter. If our reputation was not already excellent, milord, you would not be here. Please"—she extended her mottled arm to the stairs down the hallway—"you will go up to the room at the far end of the first landing. No clients are now in that wing. You will not be seen." She cocked her head. "May I ask how long you will need the room?"

"The night."

She held out her hand. "Ten dirhams should be sufficient."

With reluctance, Alexandre counted out the money.

She bit the coins, then nodded, satisfied. "For another two dirhams, you may have the mulatto for, an hour. She's almost virgin, still wild—"

"Thank you, no," Alexandre replied firmly. "I already have an almost virgin, still wild." Ignoring Liliane's stifled gasp of indignation, he pulled her up the stairs.

Once inside the seedy little bedroom, Liliane exploded. The only "luxury" the room offered was reasonable cleanliness. "I am no prude, but this is too much, Alexandre! I will not be treated like a whore. That horrible woman thinks I am—"

"The most profitable piece of female she has seen in years." He grinned. "She would probably like to buy you."

With unexpected abruptness, her anger deflated. "That would solve a good many of your problems, would it not?"

He sighed. "I thought we satisfactorily ended that subject at the oasis."

"By making love?" She sat gingerly on the bed as if expecting it to leap with vermin. "That settled nothing. You do not want me here, and I doubt if you will ever completely forgive me for coming."

"You have presumed a good deal so far," he said quietly, taking her hands, "but do not presume to do my thinking for me. You chose to come here, Liliane, and must deal with that decision without expecting continual reassurance from me." He stroked her face. "This is the second time before our lovemaking that you have used this uncertainty as a shield, as if you fear that I want you more from lust than love. Do you believe I brought you here because I want to demean you, to force you to my uses because you have defied me?"

"No ... I am just tired, I think. In Spain, I heard the men talk of war. Diego hated war as much as you . . . but I never understood that hate until I came here and endured combat. I have seen men dead long before any arrow found them. Seen their eyes, pale and empty from numbing horror. Known that my own eyes were changing. Making love with you has become my most precious tie to life; so much hangs from that thread now that peril follows me even into your arms." She was silent a moment. "I am sorry. If I cannot be strong for you, my presence here becomes a burden that endangers us both. You're right; I must deal with my uncertainty alone."

Alexandre enfolded her in his arms. "Not alone, my love. Loneliness kills the spirit as much as fear. Because of you, for the first time in my life I have not been lonely, and I will not see you so. What we endure here, we endure together."

"How did I find you?" she whispered. "What deity smiled that day I rode into your castle? 'Twas a callow, vain girl you wedded. I have come so slow to wisdom, 'tis a wonder your patience has not long worn away."

He laughed softly. "I was no less a child than you when first we met. Perhaps we have taught each other maturity." He thoughtfully played with her hair veil across his fingers. "Speaking of being laggardly, have I told you tonight that you are particularly lovely in your Eastern folderols?"

"In a fashion," she murmured. "You intimated that I might fetch a pretty price.'

"Ah, yes." He kissed her lingeringly. "A very pretty price." The veil sifted to the floor. "Shall I pay a coin for each garment you yield me? A dirham of silver for this wisp"—another veil wafted down—"for that?"

"Not enough," she whispered. "I want your heart, as well, you miser."

Alexandre kissed her throat and the cleft of her breasts above the bangled yellow bodice. " Tis yours, with my soul for a trinket." With gentle teasing, he looked down at her. "If your heart be not of gold, as tradition would fondly have, I perceive I shall soon be in great difficulty."

Liliane wrapped her arms about his neck. "
Monsieur
, you shall be in a great deal more than difficulty. If you would keep me, be fierce. I am accustomed to a virile and violent lover. All the silver in the world will avail you nothing if you prove tepid."

"Tepid?" He cocked an eyebrow. "I shall give you tepid. Madame, when you leave this room, you shall walk with difficulty. Your loins will be as melted butter, your breasts as burst pomegranates." He frowned with mock fierceness. "Prepare. Your match is met."

Bit by diaphanous bit, he removed Liliane's veils to reveal a brief bodice that bared her slim midriff, and below that, a spangled kirtle with silk pantaloons. He grinned suddenly. "I have just realized Saida is a short baggage, insignificantly endowed. That you have not burst that bodice is no less than miraculous."

"I confess I am sorely confined," she murmured huskily, then deliberately arched her back. "If you were a gentleman, sir, you would help me breathe more freely."

"Madame, with my teeth." One by one, he worked at her buttons with his mouth, his awkwardness outweighed by his eagerness. Shortly, he peered with boyish satisfaction at her half-covered breasts. "I have always wanted to do that"—he sighed— "and Jesu, what reward!"

She giggled. "I shall afford you all the practice you require, sir. Only allow me to breathe a little better and I shall thank you properly for your determination."

He luxuriously bared her breasts and nibbled them until Liliane squirmed in eager anticipation. "Oh, what heaven lies in a bit of air! May I inquire as to your talent with kirtles? This one is so dreadfully tight!"

Directly, the kirtle went and even more directly Alexandre buried his face in the golden fluff between her thighs. Liliane let out a joyous sigh. Her sighs became ecstatic moans that carried beyond the room. Alexandre laughed. "Temperance, Madame; I have scarce begun."

When his head lowered again, she grabbed him by the hair. "I am impatient, as well, sir. Have on, I beg you, before I go mad!"

He grinned. "Have on, is it? Am I not too tepid, too tame for your fierce appetite?"

"You roused that appetite," she growled. "Do you now satisfy it or I shall leap upon you and rouse the house!"

"How now, you surly wench," he retorted. "What if I am not in the mood?"

Liliane flung herself at him, tumbling him to the floor. They rolled, wrestling and panting, her bareness exciting him wildly. With a flailing tug, she unfastened his braies and closed on him. "There, I'll put you in the mood! Liar! You are not wilted!"

"Impudent wench!" Risking a wrenching, he wrestled her onto her back. With a thrust of his hips, he buried deep, eliciting the surprised, elated cry he craved. "Here, have that for your greediness! That, and that!"

"And that!"

He laughed in elation as she answered him with equal fervor, stirring him to more heated passion. As her long, beautiful legs flew wide and high, he caught and clamped them over his shoulders. His head lowering like a fired stallion, he thrust until perspiration soaked him and Liliane was fairly screaming with unbridled pleasure. Then his barely controlled passion surged, spilling and leaping like a current of fire over them both. Spent, he clasped her close. "There," he whispered when he could finally catch his breath. "So much for lust. The next time will be for love."

A few hours later, Xenobia, the brothel madam, waddled along, the lower hall. The floor above thumped. She eyed Ajax. "Still at it, is he?"