Rexanne Becnel (23 page)
Authors: The Knight of Rosecliffe
He shifted and reached for a flint and steel beside the bed. With just a few strokes he lit a candle. The tiny flame made a soft golden pool of light near his shoulder, illuminating one side of his face, one side of his body. He was light and shadows, golden and ebony.
He was wicked and yet wonderful. He tortured her and yet brought her to utter joy. He was hers—but he could never be hers.
Suddenly her exploration took on a new urgency. This night would not last forever, yet for her it must. She sat across his hips, conscious of his fully aroused manhood pressing between her wide-spread legs. She was also aware of his eyes drinking in her nakedness.
Though her first instinct was to shyly cover herself, she fought it down. She’d come to seduce him and so she would.
She shook her head, letting her hair fall freely about her, then slowly leaned forward, cocooning them in the dark curtain. She kissed his mouth, thrusting her tongue deep, discovering what he liked best, slow and sinuous, fast and urgent. When he caught her shoulders, she pushed his hands away.
“Let me, Jasper. You must just lie here and let me please you.”
“You please me—”
“But I’m not finished. I’ve barely begun … .”
This time instead of her fingers, she explored him with her lips and tongue. She tasted his throat, and caught his nipples between his teeth. She nipped the skin of his belly and circled the indentation of his navel.
Then she moved lower and made a small, experimental stroke along his raging erection.
“God’s blood,” he groaned. “You’re killing me.”
She did it again, but slower. This time he thrust upward, nearly oversetting her.
“Enough,” he grated out. Then he dragged her up the sizzling length of him so that she straddled him on all fours. “I cannot wait.”
“Why not—”
He caught her hips and guided her down over him. This time they both groaned. His hands fastened about her waist, holding her impaled upon him, and she knew she would have it no other way.
“Rhonwen,” he whispered.
“Oh, Jasper …”
She began to move and he kept pace. Slowly, or as slow as she could stand. Then faster as the fire flared out of control.
How could this be happening again, so soon? But it was, and she leaped gladly into the flames. Hotter, faster. Harder, higher. When it came she cried out and collapsed. But he kept on until she had melted over him, burned to cinders, consumed by the fire. Then he spilled his precious seed into her, holding her so tight she could not breathe, and gasping her name over and over.
“Rhonwen … . Rhonwen …”
Jasper … Jasper …
His name plagued Rhonwen with every step that led her away from him. The candle had guttered as he slept, and when it did, she knew the time had come. Already a hint of the false dawn edged the castle walls.
She stood in the quiet bailey now, beating down her doubts. She’d had more than she should ever have hoped for, a magical night in the arms of the man she loved. She must content herself with that.
But still her fingers crept to her belly. Please let it be so, she prayed. Despite the obstacles a fatherless child would present for her, she wanted to carry Jasper’s babe, to bear it and care for it and flood it with all the love she would never be allowed to give him.
A cat yowled in the dark, startling her. Another answered. A dog barked lazy admonition to the cats, and Rhonwen forced herself to be practical. It was time to leave Rosecliffe Castle.
She peered carefully around the bailey, then, keeping to the shadows, made her way to the kitchen. Jasper had never made it to the postern gate. Unless someone else had a second key, only the bar would be up. No one from outside could enter,
but anyone could depart. Even a hostage, like her.
but anyone could depart. Even a hostage, like her.
She felt her way down the kitchen alley and into the cav-ernlike passageway. She raised the bar, wincing at the shriek of metal on metal. In the resounding silence that followed, she listened for some indication of alarm.
Nothing. Only the hard hammering of her heart.
She turned the ring latch. It was well oiled, but the heavy metal hinges creaked as she opened the door, then again as she closed it. But she’d made it outside. She flattened against the wall, holding her breath as she listened for the guards to raise a hue and cry.
Again, nothing.
A quick glance around revealed no one, only a few sparse shrubs and the pale pathway leading down the sheer face of the cliff. Below her the sea was nearly invisible. Only the rare reflection of starlight signaled from its moving surface.
Below her the surf crashed on the narrow beach. The wind pressed her into the north-facing wall. It was cold, as it should be. The winter yet wrestled for hold of the spring. But it was more than the wind and the sea and the remnants of winter that chilled her. She was cold and she would never be warm again. The fire that had heated her, that had burned her to the core, was no longer hers to enjoy. She left it behind as she fled into the cold unknown.
But she would never forget how it felt to be warm.
She picked her way down the path, careful in the dark, for one slip could send her hurtling to the rocky beach so far below. Grasping saplings and shrubs, she slowly descended. The sounds of the sea grew stronger. The wind was damp, heavy with the scent of salt and fish and oyster shells.
To the west a thin crescent of moon showed. To the east the first sheen of the sun’s ascent tinged the horizon. She must hurry.
The wind carried a man’s voice to her and she froze.
“ … cold as a witch’s …”
Someone mumbled an answer and she chanced a look behind her. From below, Rosecliffe Castle was a forbidding
sight. Its half-built crenellations were a jagged black slash across a nearly black sky.
sight. Its half-built crenellations were a jagged black slash across a nearly black sky.
Could Rhys truly mean to storm this fortress? Rhonwen shook her head. Could he not see how impossible a feat that was?
That’s why he asked for your aid
.
.
He’d asked for her aid and her answer was to flee.
She turned away, sick at the thought of how she’d betrayed him. Rhys. Jasper. Josselyn. On and on, the list grew of those she’d let down. Isolde. Gwen and Gavin. Nesta. Her own mother.
She swiped at a tear before it could fall. There was no other way, she told herself. She must escape while she could. Glancing up again, she could not see the guards who’d spoken, and she prayed they could not see her. She must hurry.
The cliff path proved even more arduous in the dark than she’d anticipated. But eventually she reached the beach. Three boats lay on their sides. Was there a guard? If so, she did not see him.
Staying near the cliff, she angled west to where the hills dropped down in sharp, rocky clefts. A tree clung here, a shrub scrabbled for sustenance there. The tide had begun to come in, and she had to wade part of the way in the ice-cold surf. But she trudged onward, fixed on her goal.
Her feet and legs grew numb. Her hands were scraped and sore. Finally she reached the little inlet she sought, and slogged out of the unforgiving sea. She sat down on a grassy bank, trembling with the cold and her exhaustion, trying to catch her breath, trying to think.
She had no food and her clothes were drenched. She needed to find a protected spot where she could dry her kirtle and stockings and rest for a while. She should press on, she knew. But she was so weary, and so cold.
By the time the sun raised above the horizon, she had moved inland and found a protected crevice near a rivulet that fed into the River Geffen. She filled the shallow cave with leaves and was preparing to remove her wet clothes when a voice hailed her.
“Rhonwen?”
She whirled, her heart in her throat, and grabbed a rock for a weapon. But it was not Jasper who came forward, nor any man-of-war. On silent feet the tiny bard Newlin appeared, dipping and swaying as he walked. His beribboned cloak drifted like wings around him. He smiled as he approached, and extended a bag out to her.
Normally he frightened her. She did not like things she could not understand. But today he was a welcome sight, neither friend nor foe. She had none of the former and too many of the latter, so his noncommittal presence came almost as a relief.
He stopped before her, still holding out the bag.
“Am I to take that?” she asked.
“You are hungry. I have food enough to share.”
“How did you—” She wrapped her arms around her waist and glanced warily about. “Are you alone?”
He smiled, and though his wrinkles belied it, his expression held the sweetness of an innocent child’s. “I am with you,” he answered. “Take this. There is bread and cheese and dried fish. Also, ten raisins.”
She took the old canvas bag, blinking back sudden tears. “Thank you. Thank you.”
As she ate he watched, not speaking but only swaying a very little. “’Twill be a day to remember,” he said when she returned the empty bag to him. “A day that will be recounted whenever people gather together of a long night.”
“Because I have escaped the English?” she asked, doubtfully. Then a new horror occurred to her and her heart stopped. “Is there to be a battle? Is this the day Jasper and Rhys cross swords? Please, Lord Newlin, do not let it be so.”
“I am no one’s lord,” he answered in his simple way. One of his wandering eyes fixed on her face, then drifted away. The other one caught and remained. “This world of ours is vast. It expands far beyond the tiny circles of our lives.”
Rhonwen struggled to follow the direction of his thoughts. Was there some mysterious meaning in his reply? Beyond the one occasion when he’d carried messages to Rosecliffe and
helped her return Isolde, she’d had few reasons to converse with Newlin. She had no experience deciphering the ancient bard’s words. But he was wise above all others in these hills. If he knew something of what was to come, she must try to understand.
helped her return Isolde, she’d had few reasons to converse with Newlin. She had no experience deciphering the ancient bard’s words. But he was wise above all others in these hills. If he knew something of what was to come, she must try to understand.
She hugged her arms closer around her. “What is going to happen today? Please, you must help me.”
“Help you to escape? You succeed already in that quest.”
“No. No. Help me …” She shook her head. “I don’t want them hurt. Either of them.”
“You speak of the young lord—”
“Jasper FitzHugh.”
“—and your friend—”
“Rhys ap Owain. Yes, and—” She broke off when both of his strange eyes focused on her at the same time.
“’Tis not an easy thing, to love your enemy.”
“I don’t—” But she could not bring herself to finish the lie. Besides, it was clear he knew the truth. Indeed, she felt a certain relief knowing she need not hide her true feelings from him.
He smiled again, another sweet smile that neither gloated nor mocked. Then he raised one arm, the shriveled one, and swept it softly through the air. “Listen. Look around you.”
Wrinkling her brow, Rhonwen did as he asked. A rabbit darted past him. A trio of wrens dove through the clearing, then disappeared into a stand of fir trees. A fox yipped from just beyond them; another answered from very nearby.
Then a doe sprang from a thicket, her tail raised in alarm. She and the tiny fawn that trailed her were gone in an instant.
That was odd. Even in her agitation, Rhonwen recognized that much. Concentrating now, she looked around her and knew at once that something was not right in the forest. The animals were too bold. The air was heavy with portent. Even the trees seemed to toss their branches and budding leaves, though there was little enough wind.
Her eyes glanced heavenward, but the clouds were of the wrong sort to presage a storm. Then she shivered with a new fear. The animals behaved oddly, and the trees … Her eyes
widened in alarm. The priests often spoke of the second coming, of the end of the world, when sinners were cast down into hell while the repentant rose up to heaven.
widened in alarm. The priests often spoke of the second coming, of the end of the world, when sinners were cast down into hell while the repentant rose up to heaven.
“Is it the end of the world?”
He did not smile and her heart sank.
“Some will say yes. The end of the world as they know it. But not in the way you fear.”
“But … the end of the world is … the end of the world.”
Newlin had turned his twisted face up to the heavens and began the same slight swayings he’d noticed before. “When stones shall grow and trees shall no’. When noon comes black as beetle’s back …”
Rhonwen gasped, relieved and yet horrified. She knew the rest of the chant. Every Welsh child did.
When winter’s heat shall snow defeat
.
We’ll see them, all, ere Cymru falls.
When winter’s heat shall snow defeat
.
We’ll see them, all, ere Cymru falls.
“Is this the day?” she pressed him. “The day Cymru falls to England?” When he did not answer, she grabbed him by the shoulders. “Jasper is going to defeat Rhys, isn’t he? Today. He’s going to defeat him—and kill him! Is that what you see? Is it?”
“I do not have the talent to foretell the future, Rhonwen.”
“You do! You already have. So tell me the rest!”
“I read the signs. The trees, the birds. The doe and her fawn. But people …” He shrugged his one good shoulder and stared at her with eyes so filled with compassion she could not bear it. She released him and backed away.
“People,” he continued, “are free to decide, to pick one course and follow it to its end, or change their direction and choose another path. I cannot foresee what Jasper FitzHugh will decide, nor Rhys ap Owain. Nor Rhonwen ap Tomas.”
A willow sapling gnashed its tender branches. An ancient hawthorn shivered and sighed above them. Despair settled heavily upon Rhonwen. Despair and desolation.
“What should I do?” she whispered. But she knew. “Where is Rhys? Do you know that much? Can you tell me?”
“He comes for you.”
She sighed heavily. “He thinks that on the dark of the moon I will open the castle’s postern gate to him.”
“But you cannot.” He said no more than that, but Rhonwen knew he understood her motives. He might not be able to predict how people would behave, but he had an uncanny ability to know what they already had done, and why.
“I could not help him in that way,” she admitted.
“So he will find the gate barred to him.” Again Newlin shrugged. “He will be forced to abandon his plan.”
“But what if Jasper comes out to meet him?” She swept her hand around them, at the expectant forest and its fearful creatures. “You said yourself that it is the end of the world.”
“As you know it. But not necessarily in the way that you fear.”
She pressed her fingers to her temples. She was dizzy trying to make sense of this. Her weariness was forgotten. Her cold but a memory. If she stayed here, doing nothing, she would surely go mad.
“Where is he? Where is Rhys? At the least you must tell me that.”
“He comes to Rosecliffe Castle along the coast path.”
“Then I must intercept him,” she said, less to him than to herself. “I must stop him before he can be the author of his own demise.”
She left without bidding Newlin farewell. Her mission was too vital to delay. She had to turn Rhys back. It was the only way to save him.
What if he refused to turn back from a fight? she fretted as she scrambled up a rugged slope. What if he accused her of being a traitor to their cause, of protecting the English from the wrath of the Welsh people they sought to rule?
She paused, winded by her climb. If she could not change his mind with her words, then she would resort to Newlin’s. She did not understand the chant or what part it played in the terrible possibilities this day held, but she would tell Rhys and if he was not frightened, his men would be. Without his men he could not hope to attack the English fortress.
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