By Design (25 page)

“Whatever time I have will have to be enough.”

The worry became a heavy fist pounding inside her chest. He would get himself killed. She could not bear losing him, too.

“You must swear to me that you will make no move until you have told me,” she said. “Prepare as you must, but do not let your temper lead you to recklessness. I will not tell Rhys, and we will stay, and you can practice. Will you swear this to me?”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “Aye, I will speak with you before I go to meet him.”

Maybe his hot determination would dim. Maybe it would be years before he felt himself ready, and she would have the time to earn the coin to have a trained knight, a champion, do it instead.

C
HAPTER
17

T
HE HORSE KEPT
giving her trouble. Even with Saint George standing beside it rather than riding astride, the weight of the animal's bulk proved too heavy for the clay legs.

She muttered her frustration. Rhys looked around the upright Saint Ursula.

“Stone is even heavier. Have him lean against his animal and form them as one, as masons do. Then he helps bear the weight.”

She studied the figures. It might work.

Rhys returned to his rippler, his face obscured again by the bulk of the saint. “And round his rump more. You are not accustomed to molding animals, and they can not be hidden with drapery. Go to the stable and see how a horse is formed. It will make yours better.”

He was right. While the horse appeared fine at first glance, the parts did not really seem natural with close examination.

Now that she thought about it, Saint George had
awkward legs. Since he wore armor, she could not hide those with drapery, either. She smiled to herself. She would have to make a closer study of Rhys's legs when they were naked.

She worked on some details that would not need such lessons. The light was fading, but she wanted the afternoon to go on forever. It had been so peaceful this Sunday, working together in the garden. Mark had gone to the river with some friends, and she and Rhys had spent the day thus, with him carving at one end of the bench, and her molding at the other. Working her craft beside someone who understood it, sharing advice and occasional conversation, added a deep richness to the act of creation.

It is not the mind that we know, it is the soul
. Aye, that was what kept building between them. Even in bed. The physical pleasure kept surprising her, but it was afterward, when he held her, that she felt the closest. Their bodies might never join, but they had begun molding together at a deeper level. Today, sharing this, forming realities out of base matter, they had known the soul together. A part of her spirit had adhered to him in these last days and hours, and would never be separate again.

The breeze carried a coolness that warned of summer's waning. The patch of flowers near the wall had grown to a riot of color in a last effort to make seed. Already the days shortened. There would not be many afternoons like this left.

She set the statue aside, and bent to lift more clay out of her pail. She plopped it on the board and began kneading.

Rhys set down his tools. He came over and straddled the bench behind her. With a reach that embraced her, he lent his strength to the task. His fingers squeezed through the oozing mass along with hers, sliding and gliding in wonderful, sensual touches. The strong bronze arms and
hands mesmerized her. His warmth behind her sent exquisite chills down her body.

“I have been thinking about using George's yard for the tiles,” he said while he bent to press a little kiss on her neck.

She twisted in surprise to look at him. “Do not be ridiculous. You know how bad those will be.”

“I think they will be good enough.”

“George is a besotted fool. He will pass off inferior goods if he can. One bad firing and the results will be snuck into every wagonload.”

“George is a fool, but you are not. I was thinking that perhaps you should manage the yard while these tiles are made.”

The happy contentment disappeared, like the illusion of a dream lost on waking. Her stomach hollowed out.

She returned her attention to the clay. “Have you returned my indenture to George so that I can make these tiles?”

“That is a stupid thing to ask.”

“Not so stupid, if you expect me to manage the yard.”

“I do not expect it, I only ask it. I bought the yard yesterday. It had failed with you gone, and George was glad to be free of it.”

“You bought the tile yard? You own it now?” She swung her leg over the bench and stood so she could look at him.

“Aye. The only problem is, I have neither the time nor the skill to make it pay. But you do.”

Her heartbeat quickened. If Rhys owned the yard, he owned the kiln.

Rhys concentrated on the clay, as if he did not realize that he had just offered her the answer to all her dreams and plans.

“Will you do it?”

“Of course I will do it. Can I fire my statues there, too?”

“You can fire them, and glaze them, and use what clay you need.”

She could barely contain her joy. “I will see that you bring the King tiles equal to any from Spain. I will paint the glaze on each one myself if I have to. I will wait until they are all finished before taking my own wares to market.”

“I think that you can steal a few days before that.”

She threw her arms around him. “I can not believe that you did this. A kiln! I can mold statues all winter, and fire them, and sell them. And I will make certain that the yard pays. The wares will be so fine that you can ask a high price, and you will see a good profit, I promise.”

He surrounded her with his arms. Pulling her into his lap, he moved her legs so that they embraced his hips and she faced him. “As will you. This is a partnership. The yard might be mine, but the skill will be yours. You will share whatever income it brings.”

She searched his face in astonishment. Did he understand what he was doing? She knew the income that the tile yard saw in good years, and half of that would be almost all she needed. Next summer her goal would be within reach.

And she would be leaving him.

An eddy of sadness rippled through her joy. She nestled closer, not wanting to think about that. She held him tightly and told herself that she should be grateful if he did not understand that he had just taken the first step toward their parting.

His lips pressed her hair. She tilted her head and looked in his eyes and saw that he did understand. He just did not believe that when the time came, she would really leave.

And in that instant she knew that she would not want to. It would mean abandoning the best friend she had ever
had, and walking away from the closest bond she had ever experienced. A part of her would be torn away. Even as she rewove the shredded fabric of her life, there would be new holes that could never be filled.

She tasted the anguish she would know that day. The claims of the past, of her family and her brother, would make leaving inevitable. She had sworn oaths to her father's memory that she could never forget. There was more at stake than her contentment, and the happiness that she had found in this garden and with this man.

His embrace tightened and he lifted her to a kiss. Not gentle, the way he usually started. Not careful, but fevered and deep. Passion blew through her, blending with the sadness until a heart-searing poignancy filled her. He kissed her as if he had seen the future in her eyes, and sought to argue his cause. Much of her, too much, wanted him to win the debate.

He stood, not moving her position, and carried her to the hawthorn tree and sat on the bench with her limbs still wrapped around him.

He pulled her shift off her shoulders and pushed it up her hips until it bunched thickly around her waist, covering almost nothing. His kisses stopped, but the fever did not cool. He eased her back until her shoulders rested on the table's edge and her naked body angled away from his, much like one of his statues on the inclining board.

His hands moved over her body. He might have been the molder and she the clay. He stroked and smoothed and circled, watching his hands with deep concentration. Her own hands could only reach his forearms, and she clung desperately while the sensations aroused by his determined caresses riveted her awareness.

“You always start out holding me as if you do not know if you want this, Joan, even though you do.” He palmed
her nipples until she arched with craving. “You cling as if you fear it even as you desire it.”

The urging pleasure left her too shaky to respond.

“The abandon still frightens you. What are you afraid that you will lose when you embrace it? A past world that does not await your return?”

He slid his hands down her arms and released her hold. He placed her palms on the table until her arms spread their length from her propped shoulders. “I do not want any restraint on your passion today, not even that of an embrace.”

His hot eyes examined the path of his hands down to her hips and thighs. He eased her up so he could mold her bottom in his palms. He frankly observed the rhythm of her body, as if he could see the hidden, itchy pulse causing it.

He looked to her eyes, and she knew what he was going to do. And so it did not shock her too much when he rose, and slid her back on the table until she lay there naked in the breeze, like a rustic, erotic feast. He stood over her, and his rough hands worked their wonderful magic, forming her passion into a mad delirium.

He raised her legs and bent her knees and set her feet on his shoulders. Cradling her bottom in his palms, he lifted her hips high like a sacred cup, and bent to her.

For one moment she feared the pleasure would die, but it did not. Trust helped her take a new step and accept a special freedom. The triumph produced an astonishing euphoria. Most of her senses left her. Nothing existed but the torment of pleasure and the blurred pattern of leaves and sky and sunlight above her head.

She climbed with frightening intensity until nothing mattered but her need. Her body begged and then, in the distance, her voice did, too. He lowered her hips and put
his hand to her, stroking where his kisses had created a throbbing sensitivity. She looked down her sprawled, open body to see him watching her face while he brought her to a violent, long release.

It left her drifting in a foggy madness of saturated senses. He brought her back on the bench again, straddling him as she had before. His masculine scent and the hardness of his arms and chest encompassed her as she sagged into his embrace.

His quiet voice flowed into her ear. “The next time it happens like that I want to be inside you.”

“Perhaps I can soon. I want to.”

He kissed her temple. “Perhaps it is not the past that interferes so much now, but the future. I want you to think about that. Maybe, in living for what you must do in the future to avenge what happened in the past, you are not allowing yourself any life in the present.”

She would think about it. She would. But not now. She did not want that confusion yet. She just needed to hold him in this serenity that he had given her.

So peaceful. If she stayed here forever, she might be happy. The day might come when she never thought about what had been lost, because she reveled in that which had been gained.

Perhaps she should repudiate the duty. She could accept what had happened. She could be the new Joan in a new life and a new world. The notion appealed to her more than she expected.

A slight sound broke her sated happiness. She turned her head and looked down the garden. Mark had entered through the portal, and now bent and slid something behind the high flowers along the wall.

The sword. Mark had not gone to the river at all. She had found another shilling missing, and guessed that he
had taken it to pay someone to teach him. That was how he had spent the Lord's day. Wielding a sword, and preparing himself for vengeance.

He passed them on his way to the house, but he did not notice them entwined in the shade of the tree.

She tried to immerse herself again in the contentment she had just known. She fought to reclaim the innocence of it, but she could not.

She turned her head to where she could see the bench, with its big stone statue near the center and its little clay one at the other end. Despite their different sizes, they balanced each other on that long plank, and created a pleasant harmony. A perfect design.

She branded her memory with their forms, and Rhys's feel, and the sound of his heartbeat. She wanted to remember the unity of this day forever.

C
HAPTER
18