Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (101 page)

She bathed quickly in order to leave a little heat in the water for René, though it was a great temptation to sit there soaking, letting the distress of the evening seep from her body. She was washing her face, wincing as she ran the cloth over her cheek where she had been struck, when René came into the room.

He closed the door behind him, his gaze moving to where Cyrene sat in the hip bath, her skin shimmering with wet and the blue and orange gleam of the fire behind her, the perfect curves of her body outlined in its glow, the oval of her face …

The warm appreciation rising in his eyes turned abruptly to concern. He came forward with quick strides and went to one knee beside her. “You were hurt; I should have known. What an idiot I am not to have seen.”

She drew back as he reached out to touch her bruise. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Don’t be so brave,” he said shortly as he gripped her chin, tilting her cheek toward the light.

The bruise was livid, deep blue. It lay just under her cheekbone, however, in the concealing natural shadow. Though the skin was not broken, it would be some time before the discoloration faded. With gentle fingers, he probed the bone.

“Is your jaw sore?”

“A little.”

“But you can move it?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “I have no trouble talking.”

The look he gave her was unamused. “Are there any other injuries?”

She shook her head. He gave her a skeptical glance, then allowed his gaze to move slowly over her, inch by naked inch.

“All right, I bruised my arm on the door,” she admitted with color rising in her face, “but that’s all.”

He took her wrist and turned it over. On the underside was a long scrape with bluish purple color beneath it. He sat for long moments, his lashes lowered, concealing his expression as his gaze rested on her arm. At last he bent his head and pressed his lips gently to the marred skin. His voice was soft, hardly more than a whisper, when he spoke. “I’m sorry.”

His remorse, she thought, was for more than the events of the evening.

“Are you? For what?” she asked.

He lifted his head, meeting her gaze squarely. “For everything. I never meant — I didn’t intend that you should be hurt.”

She looked away, her voice quiet yet toneless as she spoke. “My bruises will heal. There has been no great harm done.”

“Hasn’t there? I would like to think so. For myself, I’m not so sure.”

He rose in a single fluid movement, stepping away from the bath. Cyrene turned her head to look at him, but he kept his back to her. There seemed no answer to be made to what he had said, no consolation she had any right, or was to be given any encouragement, to offer. When he began to remove his shirt, stripping it off over his head, she rinsed her face and splashed water over her shoulders and breasts one last time before getting out to make way for him.

He was quick with his ablutions. By the time she had dried herself and put on his nightshirt, then brushed out the wild mass of tangles from her hair that were caused by wearing it loose, he was done. He came to her where she stood before the fire. He took the brush from her and laid it aside on the mantel, then closed his fingers in the soft, fire-warmed curtain of her tresses, wrapping his hands in the silken strands to draw her to him.

“Bright, courageous Cyrene. You deserve better, and I am a fool twice-damned, but I can’t let you go.”

He cupped her face, framing it in her hair, studying it minutely before he brushed her bruised cheek with his lips. He kissed her brow and her eyelids, the point of her chin and the delicate corners of her mouth before settling his lips with care upon hers. His movements gentle, infinitely tender, he sought her sweet flavor.

She should resist him, Cyrene knew, should deny his possession, but it was far too late to try. He had not meant to hurt her, he said; that was also futile. Still, in some strange way, it seemed that she might be healed by the same means that had brought her the most harm, by the ravishing tenderness of his kiss and the enclosing hold of his arms. To try was not, perhaps, the sensible course, but it was the compelling one. She was forced to it not only by his touch, but by some dimly sensed change in what lay between them. He was different. She could feel it, even if she could not grasp its cause, even if he did not recognize it himself.

She lifted her arms, sliding her hands over the hard-muscled planes of his chest and around his neck, clasping her hands in the luxuriant thickness of his hair. Her lips were pliant against his, soft and giving, heated with the desire that gathered inside her. A soft sigh left her and she moved closer still, until the curves of her body were fitted to his in a primitive and perfect interlocking.

After a moment he raised his head on a deep sigh. His eyes were silver with his need as he met her wide gaze, and his voice vibrated deep in his chest as he spoke. “It isn’t fair that you should be so perfect, that everything good and fine should be so much a part of you.”

“I’m not,” she said with a troubled shake of her head. “It isn’t.”

A smile came and went across his lips. “No? Perhaps you’re right. There is a wayward witch in you, too; one who has smuggled her way into my blood, casting spells so that I think only of you, dream of you, long for you until I think I must be going mad. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

She searched his face, seeing in its firm lines desire and what seemed to be respect mingled undeniably with regret. Her voice tight, hardly more than a whisper, she said, “How should it be?”

“Who can say? Perhaps it was meant, after all, as this must… surely… be.”

He lowered his lips to hers once more and, releasing her hair, bent to lift her in his arms. Cyrene felt the swooping swing as he turned toward the bed. A part of her wanted to demand that he explain what he had said, but there was an equally fervid part that did not want to know, was afraid to know. With tightly closed eyes, she warded off the doubts and fears, losing herself, deliberately, in the racing pleasure of the moment.

In this, also, he was different. His touch was always caring, but there was greater tenderness in it, an exquisite lingering care for her that was only partly due to her bruises. It was beguiling, bemusing; she was grateful for it and sought as best she could to return it.

It became a part of them and of this night, feeding, enhancing the thing they still required, were desperately in need of, the ultimate surcease. They sought it with a thousand small kisses and caresses, straining together with pounding hearts and tightly closed eyes, luxuriating, drowning, in purest sensation.

She felt the clamor of blood in her veins, its quick hot passage that radiated heat to her skin so that she stripped off her nightshirt and let it drift from her fingers and over the edge of the bed to the floor. Beneath her the linen sheets were smooth and cool, smelling of starch and freshness. Overhead the rain pattered down, a soothing sound of infinite release that mingled with the quickness of her breathing. The fire crackled softly, spreading its leaping yellow and orange pattern on the walls, making the darkness in the corners of the room seem deeper, turning the single burning candle into a fiery star.

By degrees awareness receded. The hardness of his body was a delight and an enticement. She explored it in unselfconscious wonder, spreading her fingers through the fine mat of hair on his chest, raking her nails gently along the flat expanse of his belly, rubbing her palms over the hair-roughened ridges of his thighs, circling, testing with sensitive fingertips the incredibly smooth and springing length of him. He encouraged her, incited her with the wet and tantalizing track of his tongue, tracing the hollows and tender mounds of her body in his turn, bringing her with deft and consummate care to readiness.

She trailed her nails over the rigid muscles of his broad back. They rippled under her touch, sending a shudder through him that was an indication of the constraint he held on himself. The knowledge filled her with boundless loving joy that fueled her own molten and liquid release. She gasped, pressing against him, then cried out as he grasped her waist, sliding his hand down to her hip to draw her against the unyielding rigidity of his body. She parted her thighs, taking him inside, accommodating his deep, thrusting entry.

He spoke her name, she thought; a hoarse plea as he raised himself above her. She moved against him, urging him deeper, trembling in her need for the surge of his strength. He gave it to her, unleashing the plunging urgency of his body’s boundless, headlong drive toward fulfillment. She took him into her, encompassing, giving, rising to meet him, caught in the grace and power of life’s most elemental and uncontrollable joy. Bodies entwined, close, so close, they strove and reached together that convulsing instant of exploding, unbearable beatitude.

And yet they were each trapped within themselves in their ravishing pleasure, separate though joined. They had removed their masks at the end of the masquerade and cast them aside, but, hidden inside themselves, they wore them still.

17

WHEN CYRENE WOKE, the morning light was still dim outside, dulled by the gray cloud cover of the continuing rain. She lay for long moments, aware of René’s deep and even breathing beside her, of the firm warmth of his leg against her. There was no peace in her mind, however. The events of the night before had left a residue of disturbance. It was not just the fact that she and René had been attacked; there was something more hovering at the edges of her mind. It seemed to have come stealing out of her dreams as she slept, worrisome, haunting, a vision without substance.

Abruptly, she knew.

Gaston.

There was no one with so much reason to wish to destroy René, no one with more desire to take her from him, than the Bretons. Gaston’s arrival back in the town coincided so nicely with the attack that it was difficult to believe it could be an accident.

The man who had tried to kidnap her had worn a mask. For most of the time, he had been behind her, out of her sight. Could it have been Gaston? Was it possible? She did not like to think so, but she could not be sure.

The other two men she had seen as well as anyone could wish. They were certainly not Pierre and Jean.

She did not think that the two older Bretons would lend themselves to so base an attack, one that had been meant to end with bodily injury to René, if not death. Gaston, on the other hand, was young and hot-headed. He might accept René’s hospitality and be able to laugh and talk with every show of the magnanimity of those who have lost in a sporting contest, but she thought that he still held a grudge for the loss they had suffered due to René’s treachery and was resentful of the position in which Cyrene had been placed. It was not beyond him to have taken such means to be avenged, no matter how underhanded it might be. The possibility of securing her release would have been excuse enough.

And yet, could that be so? According to Gaston’s view, she was no longer bound. After the passage of so many long days, René could not go to the governor to change his tale without appearing a dupe or else an unscrupulous conniver. He might profess not to care about the first, but he would not be human if it did not give him pause. As for the second, the governor had shown such partiality- for Cyrene that he might well censure René without a hearing, taking her side for the sole purpose of setting her free. Particularly if she was allowed to talk to Vaudreuil, to explain.

The truth was, Cyrene had seen this weakness in René’s control of her long before. She should have pressed it. She should have demanded that he let her go instead of weakly letting their arrangement continue, enjoying the social round, the
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conferred upon her by his preference for her, delighting in her new finery even as she protested receiving it, reveling in his passion for her even as she scorned it. When had she become so supine? When had she become engrossed in the life he had made for her to the point that she had neglected to question who and what he was and what he had done to her?