Dark Maiden (13 page)

“Not you, you weigh not a morsel too much.” With one arm braced about her, he could feel her heart racing like his own.

She smelled of cinnamon, cloves, lavender and honey and he was lightheaded at her closeness. In the gloom of the winter night, her skin shone like a black pearl. He snapped his fingers and a ribbon nestled between her fingers like a snowdrop. She chuckled contentedly and he was encouraged.

He leaned closer. “Would you have a feast of tongues from me?”

Instantly the mood between them changed, a crackling of fire to frost. She stiffened slightly, looking puzzled then disapproving. “I stayed once at a convent where the Abbess ate a dish of larks’ tongues with a fork. I was sorry for the birds.”

“As would I be.” Cudgeling his scattered wits for another diversion, Geraint did not ask what a fork was. Again, in this strange courtship dance of theirs, she had wrong-footed him or had simply misunderstood.

Perhaps I should challenge her to a game of flip pebble, where the loser strips off tunic and leggings.
But the night was too still and crisp for that.

“I should make a fire.” Yolande had spoken his thought—and more, she began to slide off his knees to act.

“Let me,” he said urgently before she left him. After dipping into his tunic, he produced then juggled his fire flints in a flashing rush of stones.

Still perched on the very edge of his lap, she watched the sparkling flints. “Do you juggle tongues as well?”

“Evil tease! So you did understand my—”

“Shut up,” she said in Welsh and kissed him.

His mouth was honey and gold, all good things. She let him cradle her and kissed him slowly then swiftly, a girlish giggle rippling in her throat as their noses bumped briefly. She peeped under her lashes. Geraint’s eyes were tightly shut. His arms tightened about her and he muttered something in Welsh she did not catch.

“What?”

“’Better than a fire, my heart.’”

“We should be making one.”
But I do not want to move from here, nor for Geraint to stop.

“I thought we were.” He swept his fingers down her back, swirling and tickling from her shoulder to her hip. A tide of prickling sweetness enveloped her.

Her searching hands clutched his shoulders, tightened across the hard, wiry sinews of his back as he caressed her nether cheeks and down her thighs.

“Long and strong,
cariad
, long and supple.”

His arched back was as beautiful as a leaping salmon’s and his rump was firm and hard and round. He shifted on the log so her stretching fingers could squeeze one tightened cheek.

We cannot do this,
her conscience yammered but was no more than a bat squeak in her head against the rampant surge of her blood.

“Ah, Bathsheba mine, you are so tasty. I have waited so long for this.”

As have I.

He glowed hot and bright like a bar of molten iron. She was torn between touching him everywhere and rending off his clothes.

“Hurry,” she choked in a voice she hardly recognized as hers. She tugged at his motley, setting the bells jingling.

“Royalty first.” He flipped up her tunic, plunging his fingers deep into her braies.

The dizzying pulse of his flesh on her flesh made her buck and rear but he had her safe, he would not let her fall.

“Ride me, darling.” He kissed her, his lips salty and hot on hers, the tips of his fingers gentle and slow as he brushed her woman parts.

“So soft,” he whispered, stroking her black curls. “Moist and soft.”

She tried to answer but only a hiss of air escaped her throbbing mouth.
If this is carnal sin then give me more.

“Savor it with me,” he whispered and stroked his fingers lower.

Waves of shimmering heat tided over her from her scalp to her toes, lapping her nipples and between her thighs with a slow embrace, a kiss of sweet, rare sugarcane, rich and—

“Honey,” she breathed. “Honeyman.”

She was a wonder, his queen, a maid as lusty as a well-loved wife.
And what will she grow to in our marriage?
Embracing her as she floated back to herself, rejoicing in her fluttering eyelashes, her warm, languid body boneless and trusting in his arms, he felt victorious and honored together.

Almost satisfied—and that would do very well for him.

But she would have none of it. Before straightening her clothes, she rolled yet more snugly toward him. “What about you?”

She ran her fingers down his chest and across his belly to unlace him and he had to count to ten in Latin to stop himself from flinging her onto her back and hurling himself into her.

His manhood sprang and she took him firmly and gently in her hand, scooting off him onto the log so she might caress him more fully. She smiled at him, looking deeply and always into his eyes, and stroked and stroked.

Her eyes filled his world, that and her tender touch. She fondled a little slowly, fumbled a little, but it was delicious.

He heard himself roar and still she stroked, drawing every last drop of sweet pleasure from him, taking but also giving, giving…

Blissed and satisfied, sated at long last, for an instant he knew no more.

“Is it always as good?” Yolande asked an uncounted time later.

Geraint grinned at her. He looked like a disheveled god. She crossed herself quickly against the blasphemy. He was still grinning.

“Better?” she went on.

“Oh yes, indeed.”

She did not quite believe him but was too content to argue. “We should make a fire.” But it was comfortable, settled with their backs against the log, their clothes still undone.
I could stay here all night.

And then the howling started.

She dragged Geraint behind the log and scanned the clearing for her bow. It was a spear’s cast away, propped against an oak tree, and she dived for it but Geraint blocked her with an arm like an iron bar.

“Me faster,” he spat.

“Go!”

He was already sprinting, his undone tunic and leggings flapping like the most comic of jester’s costumes, but he could run like a hunting dog, in a flowing, easy stride Yolande envied. Still watching him and glancing about to check for threats, she scrambled into her tunic. Flinching at her tender, sensitive breasts, she yanked up the laces.

Geraint was back, panting. “What are you doing?”

“My flowers.” Yolande wanted them—they were hers and only on the end of the log. She stretched but Geraint was there before her again, scooping the blooms up.

“Honestly, woman.”

“Honestly what?” Yolande buried her face briefly in the cool flower heads and ignored Geraint’s Welsh mumblings. He had gotten them for her so whatever he grumbled did not really matter.

“Wolves or a troll?” he asked finally in English, still panting as he offered her the bow and the quiver of arrows.

“Neither.” She tucked the flowers into her belt. “Too high and short for a wolf pack, too high for a troll. Village dogs.” She took the bow, notched an arrow and launched herself over the log at a run. Geraint matched her, coming so close her long hair slapped against him.

“I do not need your protection,” she gasped, accelerating down the slope.

His grin shined out for a moment in the shadows. “Maybe I need yours.”

It was an old dispute between them. Yolande concentrated on rushing down the hillside, careening ’round the trees without smacking into a branch or missing her footing altogether. Keeping up without breaking sweat, his hair floating over his shoulder like Samson’s, Geraint leaped easily over an old wicker basket dropped some time ago in the woods by a villager and since forgotten.

“Dogs…follow…Father…William?” he panted out between paces.

“No.” She had no breath for more but she had her suspicions, oh yes.

In a swirl of disturbed leaves and frosted twigs, they gained the main track to Halme. Yolande could hear the dogs more clearly now and knew where this pack had gathered.

“Church?” Geraint also understood.

She jerked her head in agreement, the track hard beneath her boots as her feet struck the cobbles of the village. Down past the reeve’s house, down past the forge, a flying jump over a filthy, refuse-filled stream, they pounded toward the church.

Are my flowers still in my belt? Yes.

Geraint lengthened his stride and surged ahead.
Still determined to protect me, honeyman?

She could see the great wooden door of the church closed tight against the creatures of the night. Through a round window above the entrance came the flickering light of braziers and candles inside. Around the door, the dogs pranced and howled, their feet slipping and pattering on the trodden earth, their ears laid back, their teeth bared.

Beasts trying to reach their masters or are they after something else? Or escaping something else? And where is Father William?

Somewhere behind Yolande, a blackbird caroled an alarm, but her senses were already fully alert.

“Something comes,” whispered Geraint.

Darkness flicked along the edge of her sight and she blinked. A tall shadow oozed across the door of the church, silent and slow as an adder in winter. Blacker than any other shadow in Halme, it spread across the great timbers, steadily and completely.

As if it seeks a way in.

The dogs redoubled their yelping and their muzzles drooled as they flung themselves at the door, desperate to flee the shadow. The thud, thud, thud of the hounds striking the wood was like an off-key drum.

“Go!” Yolande shouted, loosening an arrow as the pack of dogs whimpered, turned tail and fled. “Get back to your master in hell and leave the good folk here in peace!”

Her arrow found its target, sinking into the heart of the shadow in a blinding flash of light. There was a final howl, perhaps from one of the dogs, and the shadow dropped away.

“What in God’s sight was that?” hissed Geraint.

“I have been asking the wrong questions,” Yolande answered. Furious at herself for being so slow in understanding, she did not care if the revenant reappeared or not. She strode up to the door, pulled her arrow free and hammered on the wood. “I have been wrong but now I will have answers.”

Someone in the church would know.

The scent of crushed Christmas roses swirled about her as the church door opened and she stepped through into the light.

* * * * *

“It is not a vampire,” Yolande said again. Geraint marveled at her patience but recognized the need for it. The womenfolk and few men huddled ’round the flaming braziers in the nave of the church were already frightened enough.

So far, her questions—
who has died here of late, which men? What are their names? Where are they buried?
—had created a tumult of chattering but no clear answers. Villagers jabbed each other in the ribs and rocked from foot to foot, clearly embarrassed but stubbornly silent.

“We know what happens to a vampire,” shouted a woman, her children gathered ’round her like warriors around a great lord, their faces turned to Yolande and taut with fear and loathing.

“Alive or dead, no one will be harmed,” Geraint said aloud, raising his hands as a priest raises the bread and wine before the altar. “No one will be mutilated.”

His words, or his gesture, calmed the tight little group for an instant before the grumbling began again.

“But they cut the heads off vampires and carve out their hearts.”

“Godith, I have said it already. This is no vampire,” Yolande repeated for the third time.

“How do you know that?”

“Because there is no plague, pestilence or disease here. There is a restless soul, a revenant, yes, but one drawn by love and desire, not by hate.” Her lips quivered slightly, the only sign of tension in her. “I will write a letter of absolution and the soul will find his rest.”

“Does that mean the dreams—”

“Another matter altogether. I will work on that when I have finished with the revenant.”

“Yet how can that be, and so simple? A
letter
?”

“Being a sacred scribe is not simple,” Geraint put in. He wanted to wag a finger at the noisy goodwife but confined himself to folding his arms across his chest. “Can you write, Mistress Reeve?”

Even in the dim orange flames, he could see Godith blush. “We heard his dogs outside,” she exclaimed, as indignant as a hen pushed off its nest and determined to have her say. “They come because they dread him and how is that good? How can he be good?”

“Whose dogs?” Yolande stepped forward into the heart of the nave and bore down on Godith. “Was he a huntsman, a forester? I promise I will harm nothing, do no injury to any of your kin, be they living or passed on.”

She stood tall and slim as a lily, a gentle dark Madonna. The drooping garland of Christmas roses hung from her belt like a perfumed cloud, the candle and brazier flames surrounded her like a halo. “Please, let me help you. Let me help this poor soul to his final, honored rest.”