Daughter of Fire (43 page)

“I could not bear to have our father know that I was a coward.”
Philip’s words echoed down through the years, death bubbling his own blood at his lips.
“I thought I could be like you. It’s all I ever wanted. Please, brother,  do not be angry with me.”

He died in Rorke’s arms. But the greater tragedy lay at the end of the long journey when Rorke took his brother’s body home to Anjou and his father’s cruel accusation that it was Rorke who had taken his brother’s life so that Anjou might be his. And Rorke, to hide the shame of his brother’s death, refused to tell the truth.

Vivian relived all the pain and emotion of Rorke’s painful reunion with the father he hated as if he was living it once more. The cruel words that could never be taken back, his father’s contempt and hatred that were like a battle sword hacking away at him, and finally banishment.

“Take yourself  from my presence!”
his father swore at him.
“What cursed fate is it that the bastard lives while my true son lies cold and dead? Leave Anjou and never return, for you are no son of mine!”

The pain was intense, greater than any blade thrust deep. Vivian felt the tears at her cheeks at the same time she experienced his pain and loss, all the hopes and dreams of a small boy shattered and frozen in the heart of a mighty warrior whose only fault had been to love his brother too well.

He had left Anjou, vowing that one day he would return and claim it for his own, even if the only means was to spill more blood. Everything that came after, came from the pain and loss at his brother’s death, and his hardened heart at his father’s accusations and final rejection. Any lingering childhood hope of one day winning his father’s love died as surely as his brother died at Antioch.

Vivian didn’t think that she could go on. And yet, she knew that to sever the connection between them now, would mean almost certain death for Rorke. She had to endure all of it, until she knew everything of the past and could then take the journey into the future of what was yet to be.

She learned everything that came after his brother’s death, returning once more to the events at Hastings, the journey to London, through the sensual experiences of their discovery of one another, the fiery passion of their lovemaking, and finally the wolf that was slain in the forest.

Tears streamed her face at the pain he had endured with so little joy. She had asked him to open his soul, and he had. His heart and soul were true. Now, she felt herself turning from the past of what had been, to the future of what was yet to be.

Visions appeared. Images filled her consciousness—a creature born in fire and blood, the phoenix rising from the flames; of great danger and strife, the rising Darkness, a cataclysmic battle met in which the future of the kingdom was at stake, the fall of ancient kingdoms, the crowning of an all-powerful king, fierce twin lions born on a soldier’s crest.

And, finally, the echoes of old truths that Rorke had never known and which she could see only now that she had learned all the things that had shaped his life. She cried out softly as the truth unfolded within her own thoughts.

She saw once more the battlefield at Antioch and Philip’s careless disregard for his own safety, the shield that he cast away, and his final thoughts during the battle willing to risk death rather than return to Anjou and the father he had learned to hate. Then Vivian saw a second and more profound truth.

Rorke had been born the rightful son and heir, to the Count de Anjou and his young countess. But it was a loveless marriage. The fiery, high-spirited young countess hated her husband. Upon her deathbed from childbed fever, she contrived her own son’s
death
rather than have him raised by a cold, despotic father.

The child was replaced with the body of the count’s own bastard child who had died that same night in childbirth. The Count de Anjou buried his wife and child, never knowing the truth until many years later after he had banished his firstborn son forever and lost the younger son born of his second marriage.

Rorke had given his heart and soul to her. Now, Vivian gave them back, melding her thoughts once more with his so that he saw what she had seen in her visions.

She sensed his pain in the powerful clenching of his jaw beneath her hand at his cheek and the wild beating of his heart beneath her other hand, then saw it in the tears that streamed his face. Gently, very gently, she released him, retreating from his memories and thoughts. His eyes slowly opened.

He stared back at her with such torment of old pain and new truths. She sensed his turmoil and anguish, as she had never been able to sense him before. Every emotion lay open to her like a newly opened wound that must be allowed to heal.

“I never knew!” he whispered, his body suddenly taut as though he tried physically to fight off the pain. “I never knew!”

And for a moment, Vivian sensed that she should not have entered his thoughts nor his past, that any lie he believed was better than the pain of this sad truth.

“Forgive me!” she said, eyes brimming with tears. “I should not have shared it with you. I did not wish to cause you pain.” He pressed a finger against her lips, gently silencing her.

“Nay,” he whispered. “The truth is the sweetest pain. At least now I know that I was not the cause of my brother’s death. He was the cause of it himself. And as for my father...” His gray gaze bore into hers, lit with a golden fire of its own.

“The truth would not have changed him. He was the man he was long before I was born. Even my mother chose the sweet release of death rather than go on living with him. Your powers have given me that solace, when all I had before was lies.

“Nay!” he repeated, both hands closing about her face to cradle it with a fierce strength.

“I would have only the truth.” His thumbs gently stroked down across her cheeks, feeling the wetness of tears that spilled from her eyes and slipped down her cheeks.

“Your sweet truth,” he whispered, his lips closing over hers in a kiss that spoke of all the fierce emotions they had just shared.

There was no gentleness in him. It was as if the torment he had just experienced through the joining with her power now ached for release. She felt it in the barely restrained power of his hands as he pulled her to him in the chair and pushed back the edges of her mantle.

She tasted it in the urgency of his mouth at hers, stealing her breath away as one kiss ended and another began. She sensed the physical need that raged through him, and saw the proof of it in the gleaming swollen flesh that thrust between their naked bodies as fur mantles fell away.

Her slender hand stroked low between them, nails tenderly raking down over his flesh as her other hand closed over him, stroking, coaxing the length of him until he was near to bursting.

A fierce sound came low in his throat. Rorke’s hand twisted in the heavy silk of her hair, holding her for his kiss. It was a sensual joining as his tongue thrust between her lips, gently stroked them apart, and then plunged deeper to mate with her tongue. She gasped as the kiss ended, then gasped again at the heat of his mouth at the base of her throat.

Vivian released her precious bounty as her hands stroked up across the hard ridges of muscle and scars patterned across his chest and the taut corded muscles at his neck, then buried in the thick mane of dark sable hair. On a soft moan, she brought him to her breast as the urgency flowed from one to the other. His teeth grazed a swollen nipple, until it stood hard, erect, tingling, and eager for his mouth. Then, before her fascinated gaze in the brightly lit chamber with a hundred candles casting their glow across their bodies, she watched as he drew her flesh into his mouth, the tingling spreading to become a sharp ache of need at the center of her, and creating a fiery wetness between her thighs.

She clasped him to her, and when her flesh ached from the fierce hunger of his mouth, she drew him to her other breast.

“Rorke,” she gasped. “I cannot bear this emptiness any longer.” Her voice ached to a whisper as his teeth closed over the taut, hard nipple.

“I must have you inside me.”

“Soon,” he whispered against her flesh, dark lashes lying against his cheeks as he savored her. He guided a slender knee along each hip so that she straddled him, naked, exposed, and vulnerable.

His fingers lovingly caressed down over the silken folds of flesh at the center of her, returning to deftly stroke them apart and flick over the taut button of flesh that was like a hidden jewel.

She shuddered at the intense pleasure he roused, the need raging out of control so that she thought she might burn to cinders and die if she wasn’t joined with him soon.

“Please,” she whispered urgently, her slender hands closing over his proud warrior’s flesh and guiding him to her. She felt the thrusting probe of his blunt flesh, then her own flesh parting, yielding, then gliding over his as the deep center of her ached for him.

His hands clamped over her hips as if he would stop her, gently bruising.

“Now,” she said, breathlessly, and realized that he but held her as he thrust inside her.

Her hands clasped his shoulders, eyes half-closed as she watched their bodies coming together, retreating, then coming together again with even more urgency, his dark, gleaming flesh heavily veined as it withdrew from her pale body, then glided deep once more in an increasingly powerful rhythm.

She held that image in her mind as with eyes closed, she arched her back to take him deeper.

His hands were no longer gentle, but stroked and caressed her with a longing of desperation.

“Give me your fire,” he whispered as his mouth closed once more over her breast with an aching need almost like that of a child that drew the fluid of life from her.

“Bathe me in your fire.”

Ripples of pure pleasure swept through her. The fire burned through her, igniting a thousand other fires that pulsed over him.

She turned her thoughts inward on a sensual journey and took him with her. The fire of their passion engulfed them. He was like the phoenix reborn in the flames of her body, the inferno burning about them until they lay spent in each other’s arms like dying embers at the hearth.

Vivian moved slowly, luxuriating in the wonder of his flesh still deep within her. Their bodies glowed. His was like liquid amber, hers pale and golden, like the different hues of a resting flame.

She felt complete, the ache of longing eased with the joining of their bodies, her soul complete with the truth of his past that he had let her see.

Rorke rose on a single powerful move that astonished her when she felt as if her arms and legs had turned to water. He took her with him as if she weighed no more than air, his flesh still nestled deep within her.

She stretched luxuriously like a contented cat, clasping him tight about the waist with her legs and with stunning results as with each movement as he carried her she felt him grow hard within her once more. Her head came up in surprise to find those wintry gray eyes that she had once thought so cold and forbidding watching her with something that could only be wicked pleasure.

“Is it possible so soon after?” she said with breathless wonder, for he had not seemed so quickly recovered the night before when they had first come together.

“ ’Tis possible,” he assured her, sinking on bended knee in the thick furs to lay her across the width of the bed, his body moving with hers to fill her even more deeply.

“Oh, aye,” she said on a note that was half surprise, half wonder, and all pleasure. “ ’Tis more than possible.”

They came together and the room glowed with the fire of a thousand flames.

So great was their need of one another that neither saw the flames bend and quiver. Nor did they see the shadow that lifted its dark head to gaze at the entwined lovers before receding into the far corners, where it lay watching and waiting.

Twenty-two

I
t was almost three weeks since the wolf’s attack in the forest. All who had seen Rorke carrying her into his private chamber knew of the deadly wounds she had received.

As far as anyone knew, her
recovery
was slow and measured as it should be after receiving such terrible wounds. Only Meg and Rorke knew that in truth the wounds had been healed that same night after the attack. When she eventually did emerge from Rorke’s chamber it was to walk about, with assistance. Only the bishop seemed unconvinced by the game they played, constantly watching her as though he knew the wounds no longer plagued her.

For several days after the attack, she had remained abed. Rorke insisted on taking care of her himself. Meg was only allowed in the chamber briefly and always returned with a progress report of her slight improvement until she finally emerged from her convalescence with Rorke complaining with a sly smile that he would much rather have her abed.

Now he stood beside the chair where she sat in William’s chamber, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. She wore the new mauve gown he had made for her. Mally had sewn it from the length of fine wool he’d purchased at market the day she encountered Conal.

He’d given it to her during her recovery though he had refused to let her wear it or any other clothes. As he explained, she could not be seen at William’s coronation wearing her old, much-mended gown.

“The coronation will take place on Christmas Day!” William insisted as he met with Rorke and his knights in his private chamber. “I will not delay longer, and it shall be done at the abbey!”

“ ’Tis dangerous,” Rorke replied with the caution of one who knew the temper and determination of the man who sat before him, and also knew the risks involved.

“It is beyond the fortress walls. The journey through the streets is long. It would be difficult to protect you. And God knows any of the Saxon archbishops would gladly see you run through and then proclaim your death the work of God.”

“What say you, monk?” William demanded of Poladouras. “You know the temperament of your brethren.”

“Aye,” Poladouras remarked with a deep sigh. “I know it well. They do not confide in me, milord. They consider me fallen away, and now a traitor. But my sense of it is the same for I know well their ambitions. They are capable of such as milord FitzWarren has said. They would name it a just cause.”