By Design (16 page)

John's words echoed in her head. For a just cause. To bring an evil man down.

Maybe just a few more, near the top, just to be sure …

Steps sounded on the stairs. She knew who it was. Felt it. She looked to the window in panic. There was at least an hour of light left. He should not be back this soon.

She grabbed her broom and began sweeping.

He entered the chamber, darkly handsome in his sleeveless work tunic and leather leggings.

“You are back early today.” She reached the broom into a corner to catch a cobweb. Her heart pounded from the close call.

And from his presence. She always felt a bit on her guard, a tad too aware, when he was in the house. His behavior the other evening at their meal had only made it worse. No matter what they spoke of, another silent dialogue continued between them without stop. An intimate one.

“The fool who is in charge of the glass changed his design, so I must change the placement of the tracery.”

He kicked a bench over to the table and sat. He rummaged through the parchments until he found a fairly empty sheet. Opening a box, he pulled out a wooden instrument shaped like a V.

She swept closer to get a better look at it. “What is that?”

“One draws circles with it. Look.” He set one arm of the implement straight upright, and then moved the other around. A grey line appeared in a perfect circle. He moved the arms closer. “See, bigger or smaller. Try it.”

She set the broom aside, and took the tool and made a circle herself.

“A little image of infinity,” he said. “No beginning or end, and perfect in form, all points equally distant from the center.”

“That is a very poetic way to think of a circle.”

“If you work with geometry for long, it does seem like a type of poetry. My master used to say that God was in numbers. Sit here and I will show you something almost magical.”

She slid onto the bench and he handed her a measuring straightedge. “First you will make a perfect square.” Following his instructions she drew one with a burnt stick that he retrieved from the box.

“Now take the tool's point and place it right in the middle of the bottom line. Open it until the drawing stick is on one of the upper corners. Now draw the arch of a circle down outside the square, but stop when you get to the same spot as the bottom line should go. Continue the bottom line of the square out to that point, then finish out the rectangle.”

She had a bit of trouble making the point stay put while she turned the other arm. He covered her hand with his and reached around to guide her curve.

His touch and closeness made her heart rise. He flustered her enough that it took a while to get the drawing right. “It seems like a lot of trouble just to draw a rectangle.”

“It is a special one. It is called a golden rectangle. The addition on the side of the square is another rectangle of the same proportions as the big one. And that can be again broken into a square and yet another golden rectangle. And so on.”

She sensed a depth that caused a little chill, as if her mind had brushed against something profound. “It just keeps going, you mean? Another image of infinity. One cannot help but be awed by it.”

Rhys seemed pleased that she saw that. “Builders use the golden rectangle all the time. It gives pleasing proportions that the eye finds harmonious. It is often the basic measurement used to start cathedrals.”

“It is like magic. Perhaps your master was right, and God is in numbers.”

“Many apprentices hate learning the geometry it takes to be a mason, but I always thought it allowed me to see a small bit of how the Creator's mind worked.”

Most people turned to prayer to learn that, not numbers. He did not speak of learning God's will, though. He meant comprehending the mystery.

She had never before known someone who contemplated such things.

She sensed that this was not something that he explained with frequency. He was letting her see a small bit of how
his
mind worked.

“I sometimes think that I experience a bit of His mind when I work the clay,” she said, hoping it would not sound too earthbound in comparison. “When it is going very well, and my hands can not err, and the figure takes form just as my mind sees it. At such moments it is like a trance,
more spiritual than being in church. Wordless and pure, but not nearly so solid and absolute as these numbers.”

“Aye, but is very similar. Only it is not the Mind that we know when our craft moves us in that way. It is the Soul.”

He understood exactly. That astounded her. She had not realized that it was the same for everyone who made forms with their hands. Rhys had also known that special ecstasy.

Acknowledging that they shared this most private of experiences touched her more surely than any hand could. He might have invisibly caressed her soul.

The mood warmed her, and stirred a wistful yearning. They had much in common. They were both far from the place of their families, and they had tasted the power of creation. From the looks of this house, with its scant furnishings and lack of wife and children, he lived as though he also was on his way to somewhere else, to do something that needed to be done. She almost asked him if he had decided where and what it would be.

He gazed at her with intimate comprehension. This moment of special empathy did not need words. It wove a spell between them that she found impossible to deny or break.

Expectation pulled, trying to draw them together. It tightened with a palpable force the longer they looked. She thought that she would fall into him as surely as she had that day under the tree.

“Are you waiting for me to kiss you, Joan?”

She averted her gaze, embarrassed that she had let him think so.

His hand cupped her chin and turned her face back to him. His thumb gently stroked her lips, making a tiny tremor beat in them. He gently pressed that little pulse, letting her know he understood what it meant. “I think that you are.”

She pulled back and rose, sad that she had to deny the sweet closeness they had just shared. She turned and walked toward the door. It seemed very far away.

A movement behind her. An arm stretched, blocking her way. A hand, strong and bronzed and masculine, pressed to the wall, making the barrier complete.

“I cannot let you run this time, Joan. I am not so good as that.”

He warmed her side. Not touching, but she felt him anyway, and her heart started pounding. She kept her eyes on that hand and arm.

“Look at me, Joan.”

She dared not. She should duck beneath that arm and truly run. He did not really restrain her here. But her legs had no strength for it. Neither did her will.

Warmth on her hair, her temple. Not a kiss, just his breath. Still not touching, but closer somehow. All of her alert to him. Expectant. Twisting tightly.

His quiet voice, so close it could have been soundless and she would have heard. “Turn to me, pretty dove. I am not above seducing you, but it should not be like that.”

She turned her head to that voice. To explain that it should not be any way at all. That was why she did it.

His kiss silenced whatever words she might have spoken.

A wonderful kiss. Warm and promising. An invitation to explore the connections born in this chamber.

Her womanhood fluttered to life at once. It slipped out of the chains forged by the past and took to flight. Wings beat in her heart, her body, her blood. Its hopefulness made her want to weep.

Maybe … maybe …

He knew. He turned her to him, and his arm slid behind her in embrace. His hold supported her like a rock and bent her into him.

Palm against her cheek, he enlivened her face and neck with his mouth and breath and teeth. He began to control the wind beneath those fluttering wings.

Tempting. Luring. The mood of what they had shared here still surrounded them both. He offered more than mere pleasure with his touch. He always had.

But it was the pleasure that mesmerized her. It just built and built, filling her with a compelling anticipation. It cloaked thought and fear in the most wonderful way. It drenched her in glowing light and spring breezes.

He looked down at her. No triumph flickered in those kind, eyes. Confidence, aye, and strength, but none of the demeaning lights of a conqueror eyeing the vanquished.

“Don't you kiss back, Joan?”

The question from the garden. Memories flashed through her whole body. The glory of that journey. The devastation waiting at the end.

But Rhys had already lured her onto the path again, and the freedom felt so good, so right. Released from their bonds, the wings would not be still. They beat more frantically as he gazed into her eyes, and the disappointment seemed a small, impossible thing.

Maybe … maybe …

She embraced him, and kissed back.

He drew her closer, and his kisses became more fevered. He sought a spot below her ear and played at it until her senses began splitting. He kissed her again and this time entered her, obliterating what little hold she had on who she should be.

With permission granted, he did not ask for it again. A caress, firm and possessive, smoothed down her side, as claiming and intimate as if she were naked. The sensation took her breath away. She arched as that warm path pressed along her waist and hip and thigh.

Kisses on her neck. And lower. Careful, deliberate, hot
kisses. The solid strength of his arm arched her higher as he trailed those kisses down to her breasts. He tantalized her, moving his mouth around their swells.

Her mind blanked and she grew frantic. Nothing but an anxious need existed in her. A delicious need that was one with the pleasure.

It grew so intense that she begged. With her embrace and an offering thrust of her breasts and a guiding pressure on his head, she mindlessly asked for more. Almost with her voice, too, but the audible sighs that filtered into her dulled senses were eloquent enough.

He made her wait a little longer, making it worse. When his kiss returned to her mouth, she almost cried in protest. But his hand replaced his mouth on her breast, teasing her with gentle caresses.

The screaming need pushed her into shamelessness. She kissed back insistently, madly.

A touch. A subtle brushing against her nipples, first one, then the other. Two instants of exquisite relief, no more. Just enough to send her reeling into abandon. Just enough to remind her of the pleasure he would give her soon.

Not soon enough. He pressed her against the wall. It took forever for him to unlace the gown. An eternity passed while he slid its wool and her shift off her shoulders. The cloth sagged down to her hips.

He looked down at her nakedness and then in her eyes, while his hand smoothed over her bare breasts. Knowing warmth gazed at her. And maybe, this time, a few lights of triumph in response to her gasps.

“I told you, Joan. What is between us does not just come from me.”

His head lowered. His fingers flicked at one tip, and his tongue at the other. Pleasure streamed sharply and deeply into her stomach and loins. He sent her to an astonishing place. A different world, one of bliss.

For a while. But the pleasure quickly ached with need again, and with an impatient urge for something else. A different part of her began that begging demand. Despite her besotted state, she knew that he was indeed seducing her. He was using the pleasure to lure her step by step, until she would be hungry not for a touch but for all of him.

She didn't care. It should worry her, but there was no room for that. She had lost this game with that first kiss and that first “maybe.” The word seemed to echo all through her while those wings soared higher on their passion. The glory of their flight was all that she knew.

Nay, not all. Something else intruded. A distant sound, vague but familiar. A commotion of voices and steps. It rumbled lowly on the edges of their private world, then got louder. She tried to ignore it, but it shook the peace and entered the house.

It was halfway up the stairs before she clearly grasped its source. Mark and David. Coming up for the weapons, assuming that Rhys was not yet home.

Reality flashed starkly. She pushed, putting space between their bodies, and stared down. At her nakedness, and the strong hand holding her breast. At the intimacy she had sworn to avoid, and the evidence of her foolish weakness.

At the terrible mistake of a woman seduced by hope, grabbing at what she could not have.

Rhys released her. Without a word he strode into the solar. She heard him pace to the stairs. She heard the whirlwind halt in mid-bluster as the boys saw him. She heard the silent denial of entry to the upper chambers, and the feet retreating through the hall and out into the garden.

But she heard more than that as she frantically redressed herself. She also heard the past in her brother's voice, and the truth in his steps.

She relaced her gown. She glanced up to see Rhys leaning against the doorway's jamb, watching her. She could not look at him, and kept her attention on the knot that she tied.

She felt her face burning. She did not know what to say, only that she could not speak the words that he wanted to hear.

She looked down at the table, and the golden rectangle they had made. Her heart twisted. “I wonder about this magic that you showed me,” she said, tapping the parchment. “The rectangle keeps getting smaller and smaller, until it disappears. It stops then, doesn't it?”

“Nay, it continues invisibly.”

That seemed impossible to fathom.

“It works the other way, too. It can get bigger and bigger until it covers all of creation.”

That was even harder to imagine.

She went to the door, hoping he would let her walk away from what had just happened.

It was not to be. He pulled her into his arms. Not a restraining embrace, but a firm one. He kissed her, and a melancholy echo of what they had just shared whispered through her.

“I should not let you go,” he said.

Mark's voice, teasing his friend about some girl, rang from the garden through the solar's windows.

“I should not let you go. I should kiss you deeply and hold you to me and carry you to my bed. I should undress your lovely body until you are naked, as you were that first night, and as you have been in my dreams. I should lay you down and make love to you, because I think it is very clear to both of us what this might be.” He kissed her again. “Come to me tonight.”