Love Thine Enemy (22 page)

Just when she had wriggled into the perfect position,
several strands of her unbound hair slipped from beneath the back of her wimple
and teased at her back.  And the neckline of her bodice kept slipping off her
shoulders.  She hurriedly pulled up the fabric and stuffed her hair from out of
view, but she felt the weight of her tresses ease down her nape, ready to
tumble.  And the blasted bodice slipped over one shoulder again. 
Forget it.
 
Before her hair fell completely, she hurriedly sank against the damp moss and
thought,
pouty.

Becket remained in his wide-spread stance, eyes
narrowed, watching her every movement, an agitated wariness in his eyes, not even
a hint of being affected by her sensuality.

Ignoring the knot of fear in her stomach, she strove
for a throaty, come-hither tone, voluptuous, yet with enough strength to carry
over the cascading water.

"Come, Sire Becket.  Recuperate at the edge of the
stream.  You must be exhausted from all your . . ."   She swallowed the
word, treachery.  ". . . strain."  Equally as bad. 

He stiffened, obviously offended.

How could she bungle such a mundane part of the
lesson?  Surely she could succeed with the easiest part.  Rochelle smiled and
batted her lashes.

"You're such a fascinating man.  Tell me about
yourself." 

She pretended interest, but he wasn't saying anything. 
In truth, he appeared even more furious.  His mouth had tightened into an angry
line.  His nostrils flared.

Another failure loomed. 

No, he merely needed more encouragement.  She cleared
the ever-increasing nervousness from her throat.

"Sire, where did you go after you left
DuBois?" 

 Anger shifted to growing hatred in his eyes.

She bit her lower lip, frantic to ask him something
safe, but her mind refused to cooperate.  "I meant, how long have you been
a knight with King Jean?"  She winced.  Another disastrous question.  If
glares could burn, she'd be ashes by now.  

 "You're not good at this, Lady Rochelle.  And
methinks you purposely ignore your vow not to pry where 'tis none of your
affair merely to irritate me."  Rage simmered beneath his too-calm timbre.
"I must reconsider your punishment." 

Rochelle knew with heart-rending pain she had failed
yet again, perhaps with disastrous results.  She had bungled the easiest part
of attracting a male.  Perhaps her father and Marcel had been right about her
lack of femininity after all. 

Tears burned the back of her lids and she had the
unbelievable desire to weep.  How could she have been so dense?  She cared too
much, needed his acceptance too much, feared for Pierre and her future too
much, making her try too hard.  Well, no more.

Cursing herself for the worst kind of fool, she crammed
her fragile emotions behind her defense-wall, blinked away her tears, and
readied for his abuse.

Becket brushed cedar from his hands, then stole toward
her, the beast in him about to snap the unraveling thread.  "Did you
suppose that by pretending ineptness, I would think you charming and reveal all
I know like some pubescent lad?"

“Inept?”  In the time of one wet blink of her eyes,
pain shattered the defense-wall she had spent a lifetime constructing.  She
choked on a sob, hating him, wanting him, hating that she wanted him. 

He grasped her shoulders as if he wanted to kill her,
murder in his black depths.   "For whom do you spy, Lady Rochelle? 
Gaston?  The third conspirator?"

Fury dried her near-tears.  "I merely asked you to
talk about yourself."  She knocked his hands away.  "I don't know how
you earned the reputation for being simple, knight, for you're not.  You're as
complicated and indecipherable as . . . as---"  

"Simple?  First impotent, and now simple?"

"You don't do
anything
a man is supposed to
do."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

Rochelle crossed her arms over her knotted stomach and
paced to the edge of the stream, the mist icy against her hot flesh.  "Men
are supposed to like women to glide and sway and have glisteny lips and pout,
but you don't like any of that.  At least, not from me." 

"Lady Rochelle---"

She spun to face him, her temper spiraling out of
control.  "No matter what I wear, you claim 'tis unsuitable.  No matter
what I say, you accuse me of falsehood.  No matter what I do, you find fault. 
You laugh at me and then tell your knights about my obscene failures around
drunken campfires---"  

"Whatever are you talking about?"

She had no idea.  But the truth had to be in there
somewhere.  Then her accursed hair tumbled down her back in total disregard of
her desperation for perfection.

His breath hitched.   In disgust of her disreputable
appearance?

She swiped at her traitorous tears that blurred his
crimson and black image..  Irate with her weakness, she ripped the wimple from
her head and flung the useless fabric into the stream.  "You think my hips
are ridiculous and my breasts are too small and my legs are too short.  You
make me feel things and crave things I don't understand and . . .and I can't
breathe when you're around me---" 

With the quickness of a snapped leash, his hot mouth
scorched hers while he entrapped her between the mossy boulder and the
velvet-clad hardness of his body.  Somehow, her bodice and skirt had pooled at
her waist, for he cradled her bare buttocks in his hands and undulated against
her bared privacy, the movement rubbing his velvet-clad chest against her naked
breasts. 

Cursing the hose that protected his manhood, she
wrapped her legs around his flanks and pressed against his thrusts.  In reward,
he shifted his incredible hands, one kneaded her sensitive breast, the other
threaded through her hair.  And as he plunged the slick heat of his tongue in
rhythm with the primal cadence of his hips, her womanhood melted.

"Ahh . . . Becket."  Her tormented whisper
soughed into his mouth.

He groaned as if with savage urgency, then plunged his
tongue in harder, faster, sucked the strength from her body, drowned her in
molten passion. 

His kisses drifted downward, his breaths hot and fast
against her throat, her chest, her breast.  He bathed her nipple with his
tongue, burned, branded, then suckled.  Liquid lightning flashed through her
veins, shoving her soul from out of her body along with a cry of sweet
torment.  Rochelle placed her hands aside his face, pressed him tighter against
her now-swollen breast, then raised her head and pulled him toward her lips,
hungry again for the heat of his mouth.  She nipped his full lower lip, tasted
his spiciness, mimicked his wild kisses, thrust for thrust. 

More.  She needed more.  She needed the feel of him in
her hands.  Rochelle worked her fingers into his hose and palmed his
rigidness. 

He sucked in a breath.  As if frantic, he lifted her
from the rock, and with her legs still locked around him, he slid her down his
maleness, then up again, rubbing her womanhood against his firm arousal.

Frenzied, Rochelle clutched his shoulders in hopes to
somehow meld his body with hers, the silkiness of the velvet in contrast to the
steel of his muscles.   As their blended groans mingled with their labored
breaths, she moved her body with him, against him, matched his rhythm, her
softness needing his hardness.  

If only he would slip inside her!  She fumbled for the
top of his hose, then yanked.  Hard heat pressed against her moistness.

A primal growl rolled from his throat.  He shifted his
hold.  A hot pressure filled her opening. 

He would take her!  Her soul tugged against a tether,
wild, frantic. 

She felt him shudder as if beyond restraint.  He threw
back his head, then with a roar, he---

Icy water sheeted over her body!  She gasped a frozen
breath.  The waterfall!  With her wrapped around his body, he had lunged
through the cascade of melted snow and drenched her dreams.   Becket
practically dropped her onto the slippery rocks, then recoiling as if he
escaped a poisonous viper as he repositioned his hose. 

"When I am with you I forget my hatred.  I forget
why I shouldn't bury myself inside your heat.  I forget you're Reynaurd's
daughter and my enemy.  I never knew a woman so accomplished at innocence and
yet so devious.  Yes you're a virgin, but you have the soul of a seductress. 
Stay away from me."  He charged out of the waterfall.

Rochelle jerked up her bodice as she followed,
horrified.  "Sire Becket, heed me---"

He spun to face her.  "
You
heed
me
,
Lady Rochelle, and heed well.  Reynaurd's seed will be wiped from this earth
even if I have to lock you in the dungeon and destroy the key to keep me away
from you.  Do you understand?  His seed will die!"

A shout wrenched her attention.  She heard the crashing
of brush.

A sodden Banulf lunged into the clearing.  "'Tis
Pierre!  He jerked as if in a fit, then fell into the stream and went under.  I
can't find him."

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

"
P
ierre!"  Rochelle
shoved through tearing branches, then plunged past a frantic Sire Spitz into
the icy stream where she had last seen her brother. 

"
Non,
Lady Rochelle!  You'll drown!" 
Becket grasped her arm, impeding her from submerging into the frigid swiftness
that swirled around her thighs, tugged at her gown, fought to sweep her
downstream.

Panic welled as she twisted against his hold.  "He
can't swim!  Not when he's convulsing.  And the current is too strong." 

"You only delay me."  Becket forced her
toward the shore    "Banulf!  Hold her.  Have someone cover her with a
blanket." 

A persistent restraint prevented her from again
throwing herself into the water.  She scanned the roiling swiftness for
Pierre's small shape.  Slight awareness of weighted warmth on her shoulders
filtered around the edges of her terror.  Then the flashed image of red diving
into the water further downstream.

Becket.  How had he gone so far in so short a time? 

Her eyes burned from the glare on the fluid silver, and
yet she dare not glance away, so she watched, and waited, as her heart
splintered into shards of apprehension.

Becket emerged as if he resurfaced for air, then sank
beneath the shimmery liquid, this time even further away. 

Oh dear heaven.  Help them.

Words spoken in a deep tone said something about not
weeping, about Sire Becket finding the lad . . . something about begging
forgiveness, but she couldn't concentrate, not when her soul swept along the
iciness with Pierre.

Reynaurd's seed will die.

A prophetic judgment?

Becket unknowingly risked his life for the very one he
wished nonexistent.

Too long!  They were under too long.

"Demons possessed the boy, they did”, floated on a
woman’s tone from the gathered crowd. 

Rochelle heard several mumbles of agreement, people's
usual reaction to Pierre and his convulsions.  With no time for such ignorance,
Rochelle wrenched from restraining hands and, snatching up an anxious Sire
Spitz, clutched him to her breast and moved toward the knoll from where Becket
had dived.

“If only Lady Rochelle had allowed me to rid the boy of
his devil.” 
Père
Bertrand’s fear sounded within his berating scold. 
"I have tried for years to persuade..." 

The priest’s accusation vaporized into insignificance
as her pace quickened, distancing her from the unrighteous righteous.  Her gaze
locked onto the sun-bathed rim of the hill, the light a contrast to the
darkness of her spirits.

Too long.   

A desolation so cold and deep that she knew she would
never recover ripped a void in her heart.  No, not a void, for a void meant
nothingness, and she hurt with a pain she had not believed possible.  Worse
than with the panic of losing DuBois.

Too long.

Movement?  On the rim?  A red blur against the green,
small in the distance, coming toward her . . .  

Becket! 

Had he found her brother?  She couldn't tell.

Overwhelmed with twisted opposites of joy and terror,
she ran, stumbling over the rocks, over her hem, over the too-slow passage of
time.

He held . . .   Pierre! 

Her heart leapt against her fear with the same frenzy
as a wild animal to escape a cage.  Pierre's small figure dangled over Becket's
blood-red shoulder like a young deer slain in a hunt.  Becket would never carry
him in such a manner unless . . .  

"
Non!
  Oh, dear God. 
Non!"
  
Rochelle flew across the rocky ground, demanding a falcon's swiftness but held
earthbound by her leaden soul.  Her vision blurred hotter with each inadequate
stride until golds, reds, greens and blues swirled as the world melted within
her tears.

Sire Spitz mewled as if he sensed disaster.  She
reached for Pierre. 

"Is he . . . ?"  Her throat refused more. 
She hastened to where his dark-tousled head hung over Becket's shoulder.  Her
fingers trembled against Pierre's beautiful face.  Cold.  White.  So very
white.  His lips bluish.  Water dribbled from his precious mouth. 

"Oh, dear God, he's . . ."   A sob wrung from
her heart and buckled her knees.

Becket spun and caught her against his body.  "He
lives, Lady Rochelle.  He lives." 

 Afraid she merely heard the prayers of her soul, she
wedged her face in the angle between Becket's damp chest and Pierre's
motionless legs, legs that had carried her brother in an incessant run as if to
cram a full lifespan into too little time.  The same legs that had repeatedly
kicked the man who now stood as his rescuer.  Sire Spitz leapt onto Pierre’s
wet back, stretching his form along Pierre’s spine as if to transfer life to
the boy he loved with all his heart.

Fighting a resurgence of tears, she wrapped her arms
around Pierre and Becket, squeezing them to her in dread they would vanish like
some cruel nightmare.  "When I saw him draped over your shoulder, I feared
. . . I thought . . ."

"The position helps drain the swallowed
water."  He ran his hand up beneath the heavy drape of her hair as if to
comfort.  "I worked with him on the bank until he drew breath, but I fear
I didn't purge all.  His link to life is fragile.  We must warm him.  And you
as well."

"Carry him to my chamber." 

Unable to let go of her brother, Rochelle grasped
Pierre's limp hand and ran to keep pace with Becket's strides.  And with each
step, her heart swelled in gratitude for God---and for Becket.  No, more than
gratitude.  Deeper.  Something akin to . . . Love?  Surely not.  Not for her
enemy. 

And yet, against her will, the swell pressed against
her badly-patched defense-wall, loosening the cracked boulders until they
toppled, stone-by-stone, littering the ground at her feet, tripping her as she
hurried beside Pierre's savior.  Rochelle screamed in silence to cease the
destruction, but even so, the wall stood low and ragged, exposing most of her
heart for Becket to seize, one vulnerable piece at a time.

Once in the chamber, Rochelle tossed aside the
embroidered bedcover.  Becket laid Pierre on the linens.  Sire Spitz sniffed at
Pierre’s mouth as if to breathe vitality into his sodden lungs.  So motionless,
her brother.  He looked like life had drained from his body along with the
water.  She couldn't lose the only soul who loved her and gave her purpose. 
Rochelle stripped Pierre of his wet clothes while Becket brought the
hearth-fire to a bright glow.  The renewed flames gave her hope--from ashes, to
life.

A rap sounded at the door, then the creak of hinges. 
Griselda waited in the doorway, holding a tray laden with tankard and chalice. 

"Addelty, paddelty, here’s some
wine

To help you pass the waiting time.”

Startled by the servant's uncharacteristic
benevolence-in-rhyme, Rochelle gave a dubious nod of approval.

The containers clanked in time with the old woman's
shuffles across the floor toward the center table.  Rochelle moved to make room
atop the surface.

“Addelty, I’d not wish Pierre harm.

Even possessed he has some
charm."

Then Griselda leaned closer as if in conspiracy.  

"The silver goblet contains a
potion.

For love.  The violet lady’s
notion."

"What do you discuss in verses beyond my
hearing?"

Rochelle straightened at the sound of Becket's
almost-accusation, her emotions in a tumble from Griselda's disclosure.  A love
potion?  When Pierre lay ill?  But if such mysteries held magical powers, might
she fell the Fallen Angel?  If so, how to persuade the devil to drink from her
hand?

"Lady Rochelle, I demand an answer."

She jerked her gaze to his, uncertain how to give a
credible response. "Griselda brings a . . . a blessing . . . from Lady
Angelique.”

She returned her attention to the servant who had
treated Rochelle with contempt from the moment of her first memories.  If not
for her father's insistence, Rochelle would have re-situated Griselda, years
ago.

"Give praise to Sire Becket, Griselda, for because
of his bravery, Pierre has a chance at survival.   Now, have someone prepare a
warm bath for the Sire. As to his sustenance---"

"My steward will serve me, Lady Rochelle.  You may
go now, Griselda."

Rochelle drew in a breath.  A reminder of his
suspicious nature.  A reminder of why she must reconstruct the
all-but-decimated wall around her heart.  And yet, Pierre's rescue deserved her
eternal gratefulness.

The door swung closed.    

With Sire Spitz curled beside Pierre’s head, Rochelle
tucked the covers beneath her sibling's too-pale chin and prayed for his bright
smile once more, for the chance to revel in the beauty of his large dark eyes
so filled with the wonder of life.  If not for Becket . . .

Despite her warning to her wayward emotions, she moved
toward her enemy, ready to kneel at his feet in gratitude.  Yes, kneel.  But
for gratitude only, naught else. 

"Sire Becket, you saved him."  

He stood, warrior-like, in front of the hearth fire
that glowed red and gold behind his crimson-clad physique---like Satan borne
from Hades on writhing flames.  He watched her approach, his eyes enigmatic
pools of liquid jet, serious, wary.  She could almost feel his gaze burn her
flesh, feel his power draw her nearer.  Rochelle fought for her voice. 

"Sire Becket, you'll never know how thankful I am
you risked your life for Pierre."

"Thankful enough to reveal the secret?"

She stopped before him, her knees in a quandary whether
to bend, or lock.

"I thought not.  Nor would I press you at such a
time.  I, too, am grateful for his reprieve from death."

 Sighing to release her tension, she turned her back to
the fire and ran her trembling fingers through her hair to help dry the
strands, her attention mostly on the too-still figure beneath the linens,
partly on the man beside her.  "Mayhap you might name a safer matter for
discussion, Sire.  One more neutral."

"I begin to wonder if such a territory exists
between us."  He watched her movements as if torn between desire and
discipline.  "And the only subject that haunts me at the moment is far
from safe.  At least, for me."

She glanced at him in question. 

"Your hair, my lady.  As fair as mine is dark.  As
light as the palest flame.  And where still damp, stars glisten.  But only at
this moment, for when touched by the daystar, your tresses glow like a wintry
sun.  And at night, like silken strands from the moon."

He lifted his hands as if to caress her hair.  She
tensed in preparation for the flash of heat that always followed his touch and
melted her strength. 

Becket halted mid-reach, curled his fingers into his
palms, then turned and gripped the edge of the hood.

"Your wimple, Lady Rochelle.  Put on your wimple. 
Also, a gown with a more discreet bodice.  Your ugly black one that closes at
your throat."

She stared, stunned, oddly pleased by his displeasure. 
"'Tis damaged, Sire, if you recall."

"'Tis too short a hem, at any rate.  You reveal
the delicate turn of your ankle."

"Then mayhap my most faded gown.  The one when you
first arrived."

"Not that one.  The neckline scoops too low.  The
waist too tight.  The hem too high."

"Then the multi-colored gown that I pieced as I
grew.  I added a flounce at the bottom--"

"For certain not that.  The fan of fabrics
accentuates your womanly form, cups your rounded breasts that gleam like warm
iridescent pearls . . . "   He closed his eyes.  A muscle twitched along
his jawline.

"Then I shall have to go naked, Sire, for I have
no others."

Becket groaned, faint as if swallowed, but thick.  He
shoved from the hearth and stormed toward the door.  "Then I'll borrow
priests' robes for you to don."

Rochelle fought a laugh.  "And mayhap gloves from
the falconer and a veil from the beekeeper?"

"Excellent suggestions."  He continued his
escape.  "Inform me of Pierre's condition."

Coughs sputtered behind her.  With a wild leap of her
pulse, she raced to her brother, so small, so fragile-looking in her bed, a
mere wisp of goodness. 

Pierre shuddered with choking coughs.  Water seeped
from his mouth.  She grabbed a linen cloth and dabbed at his face.

Becket rolled Pierre onto his side and massaged his
back.  His hands moved in gentle strokes, but persistent, rhythmic. Sire Spitz
danced upon the linens as if frantic to help but not knowing how.

Rochelle leaned forward and brushed her brother's damp
locks from his face.  "'Tis well, now, love.  'Tis well."