Flame (37 page)

Although she had given herself to him many
times in these past days, her face still flushed with heat. But
looking at his surly expression, Joanna knew she had no choice. So
slowly, with a pleasure she knew approached wantonness, she opened
herself to him.

“I am twisting in pain,” he said hoarsely,
dipping his head and tasting her.

She almost came off the bed.

“Now, you will have to lie still if you want
me truly to suffer.”

She lay back against the sheets, struggling
to do as he’d ordered.

Gavin’s head dipped again, his tongue
stroking the sensitive spot. Joanna moaned with pleasure.

“Lift your hips,” he encouraged. “Tell me you
want more from me, my love.”

She arched her back and lifted her hips,
grinding her soft mound against his devouring mouth. Teetering on
the edge of the sheer madness of release, she whispered,
“More.”

He moved his hands beneath her, cupping her
buttocks and delving even more deeply with his tongue, and she felt
the physical world unravel.

Joanna cried out, and as violent shudders
rolled through her, she let the waves of pleasure carry her with
their power.

When she opened her eyes, he had moved up on
her body and was looking at her in a way she had never seen. There
was a pleased smile on his full lips, but there was also an
expression of tenderness and love in those black eyes.

“So I’m forgiven?” he asked with a note of
arrogance, placing slow, tantalizing kisses on her eyelids, her
cheeks, her throat.

Joanna didn’t answer, but instead lifted her
hand and framed the hard lines of his chiseled face. She was his,
and he was hers, forever. Finally, she could dare herself to dream.
Finally, all of her preparations of the past months undone, she
could set her mind to live and to let live.

Slowly raising her head off the bed, she
kissed his lips and placed her hands firmly against his shoulders
as he moved between her legs, readying himself to enter her.

“Not yet. I am not done punishing you.”

With a slow and devilish smile, he eyed her
breasts, but before he could do anything more, she forced him onto
his back.

“As a sinner, lass, I may be too far gone to
withstand any lengthy penance you have in mind,” he whispered.

She ignored his complaint and moved over him,
letting her breasts brush sensuously against the hair on his chest.
With excruciating slowness, she kissed his lips and explored his
mouth with her tongue. His body was tense, every muscle knotted and
taut. When his hands began to slide over her back and buttocks,
pulling her against his throbbing manhood, she pushed him away and
moved down his body.

“Nay, Joanna, this is...I...I cannot take
much more of this.”

She smiled and peeked up at him, letting her
tongue circle his navel before moving still lower. She felt his
whole body tense under her touch, and listened with pleasure as he
gasped when she ran her tongue slowly over the entire length of his
fully aroused shaft.

“Now spread your knees, my love,” she
whispered.

A deep rumble of laughter in his chest
brought a smile to her lips. Delighted, she dipped her head and
took him into her mouth.

“Joanna!”

She raised her head and glanced up at him.
“Now lift your hips!” she ordered, again bringing another surge of
laughter to his rigid body.

Taking him again into her mouth, she suckled
hard on his manhood.

He sat up so fast that she didn’t have a
chance to move. Taking her face and hair in his hands, Gavin drew
her to him and crushed his mouth to hers. Too consumed in the
demanding thrusts of his tongue, she could hardly complain as he
lay back down with her atop him, his engorged member pressing
against her so intimately.

“Wait!” he growled, tearing his mouth away.
“Am I forgiven?”

She lifted herself slightly and slowly took
him into her body. “You are, my
love
. But you have a
lifetime of penance ahead of you.”

Their eyes met and the humor dissolved into
the air, as something gentle and deep passed between them.

“I love you, Gavin.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“You never will. I am yours, forever.”

“But you should know, I have ghosts from my
past. They haunt me.”

“We’ll drive them away,” she whispered,
moving with deliberate slowness. “The same way that we’ve driven
out mine.”

He gripped her buttocks tightly, and she knew
he had to be pressing the limits of his control.

“Have we slain yours?” he growled through
clenched teeth.

“We have,” she answered. “You helped me to
open my eyes.”

“I want you, Joanna.”

“You have me. I am yours.”

“Forever.”

“I’ll always be with you.”

“But I am afraid,” he said huskily. “I am
afraid of losing you.”

“There is no need to fear,” she answered.
“Open your eyes, Gavin, and see me. Open you heart, and you will
keep me always.”

“I need you, Joanna.”

She tried to blink away the tears in her
eyes. “Say it again, Gavin.”

“I want you...” He started to thrust slowly
into her. “I need you.”

“Say it, Gavin,” she commanded, feeling him
deep within her.

“I love you.”

Curled in each other’s arms in Joanna’s bed,
Gavin had spoken first, telling her of the ancient priest, so close
to death, his flesh and his eyesight destroyed by leprosy, and yet
still so proud and disdainful of the Lowlanders. Gavin told her
that if Athol had not been present, he doubted the priest would
have deigned to relate the horrible origins of the Ironcross curse.
And when he was finished, Joanna told him what she’d learned from
Mater about the abbess’s terrifying experience with Duncan.

“Aye, the old priest knew of Duncan’s rape of
Mater. But I don’t think he knew that she’d been with child.” He
pushed a strand of hair off Joanna’s brow and thought back over the
old man’s words. “The first time that Mater disappeared, everyone
thought that she’d just decided to leave and join the women of the
abbey. But when she came back a while later, the whole castle
witnessed her misery. They all heard her cries of anguish when she
was raped and thrown into the courtyard.”

“Holy Mother,” she whispered, rolling onto
her back and staring at the canopy above them. “Cleanse this blood
that runs in my veins.”

“Stop it, Joanna,” he ordered, turning her to
face him. “Duncan took his foul nature with him into his grave. The
old priest swore that, for all their flaws, Duncan’s sons were
always kind to the people of Ironcross Castle.”

He tipped her chin up until he could meet her
gaze. “And there was something else that the priest said about
Mater. Something she apparently did not tell you.”

Joanna looked steadily into his eyes.

“When Mater came back to Ironcross the last
time, Margaret and Allan were with her in the kitchens.”

“You cannot mean those two witnessed their
sister’s rape?”

“Aye. They did,” he answered quietly. “Allan
was just a lad. Margaret, the youngest of the three, was barely
more than a bairn, perhaps three or four.”

“How could he do such a thing? How could he
be such a monster?”

Gavin gathered her tightly to him. “The
priest said that Margaret never spoke a word again after that
night.”

“You mean, she could speak before?”

“The priest says that she did, that she was
no different than any of the other children running about the
castle. But after that day, after they found her huddled and crying
against the wall in the kitchens, they never heard her speak
again.”

“This explains a great deal,” Joanna
murmured.

“What do you mean?”

“The day I overheard the two of them in the
vault, Mater asked Margaret why it was that she had been able to
walk away from her suffering, when Margaret must still be tormented
after so many years.” Joanna looked up into Gavin's eyes. “This was
what she meant. She was referring to Margaret’s witnessing of
Duncan’s cruelty!”

Gavin nodded. “Aye. That makes sense.”

“And what about Allan?” she asked. “How could
he grow up and become the steward to Duncan and to his sons? To see
such a crime must have crushed him!”

“The priest told us that the boy vanished the
very same night. Some thought that perhaps Mater had taken him with
her and left Margaret behind. But then, about a fortnight later the
lad came back, noticeably thinner but seemingly resigned to what
he’d witnessed.”

Joanna placed her chin on Gavin's chest and
looked thoughtfully in the direction of the panel. “Did the priest
mention where Allan had gone?”

“Nay. Why?”

“Down in the caverns, by the underground
loch.” Her eyes returned to his. “There are drawings on the walls.
They could have been done by a child. I just wondered...”

“And you think Allan took refuge in the
caverns?”

“He surely knew the way,” she argued. “If he
had escaped to the abbey and to Mater, she never would have allowed
him to return.”

Gavin nodded. “Would you take me there?”

“To the loch?”

“Aye.” He nodded, throwing off the covers and
climbing from the bed. He picked up his kilt and wrapped it around
him.

“Now? In the middle of the night?”

“Why not, love?” He turned and offered her a
hand out of bed. “You think I have forgotten? I
know
this is
your customary hour for prowling about and stealing things!”

***

The damp smell of the earth filled Gavin’s
senses as Joanna led him into the large cavern beside the
underground loch. He followed her gaze to a small pile of bedding
half hidden beneath a low overhang, and his brow immediately
furrowed.

“You lived like this? on this wet and cold
ground for so many months? You could have died, and no one would
have...”

“I did not die,” she interrupted, taking him
by the hand and drawing him toward the walls on the opposite side
of the cavern. “And for most of the time since the fire, I lived in
relative comfort high in the tower, in the south wing. If it hadn’t
been for you driving me out of there, and...”

“Hold, lass. Now you’re making me feel
guilty.”

“As you should,” she quipped, holding her
torch above her head as they reached the farthest wall. “Here are
the marks,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Raising his own torch high, Gavin stared at
the rough images. Judging from their simplicity and their height on
the wall, one could easily think they had been done by a child. And
they were exactly as Joanna had described them. A cross and,
beneath it, the prone stick-like figure of a woman. And not far
away, another stick figure clutching a head by the hair and, in the
other hand, a large knife or sword. Gavin brought the torch closer
and leaned down to take a better look. At the swordbearer’s feet
there was another image--something that seemed to be faded with the
passage of time.

“‘Tis a cup,” Joanna said quietly.

“It seems to be catching the blood,” he
responded.

Gavin noticed Joanna’s shiver as she moved
closer to his side. “From the severed head,” she finished. Suddenly
she pointed to the cup. “Look!”

Gavin turned. From the cup a thin line of
marks stretched along the wall of the cavern, as if someone had
struck the wall at intervals as he had walked. The marks
disappeared into the darkness at the very back of the cavern.
Taking Joanna by the hand, he began to move along the markings.

“I never noticed these before. But then, I
never looked this closely.”

“They had to be there all along,” he told her
over his shoulder. “They are as faded as the rest of the
marks.”

The cavern roof sloped downward quickly, and
in a moment Gavin was walking with his head ducked. A narrow
fissure in the side wall came into view, and as they stepped into
the tunnel, the laird turned to Joanna.

“Is this another way of getting back to the
keep?”

“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “Nay. We’re
going in the direction of the vault.”

The passage was higher here, and Gavin
straightened up. As they continued, he could feel the growing
reluctance in Joanna as he pulled her along by the hand.

They broke around another bend and she came
to a stop. “We cannot go on.”

“Why, Joanna? This is no different than any
other time you have roamed these caverns by yourself.”

“But ‘tis,” she pleaded. “You’re with me, and
I have a terrible feeling that something will go wrong.”

“I’ll take you up to...”

“Don’t!” she ordered. “‘Tis
your
life
that I am worrying about. ‘Tis
you
whom I want away from
that vault.”

“Joanna, we have come this far, and I am not
going to turn around and forget about this--unless you’re too
afraid to continue.” He knew he was baiting her. “If you would
prefer, I’ll take you back up to the keep. I am certain I can make
my way back down here and find where this tunnel leads.”

“You are not taking me back to the keep,” she
said stubbornly, her eyes flashing as she marched past him.

Loosening his dirk in its sheath, Gavin
smiled wryly and quickly caught up to her, once again taking hold
of her hand.

“I want you to know that I have already been
to the crypt.”

Her surprise was evident in the way she
pulled back and tried to stop. But he tugged on her hand and
continued. “I found my way back there.” He turned and smiled into
her face. “And nay, despite what everyone says, I did not vanish
nor die a horrible death the moment I stepped into that sacred
chamber.”

“You...” She cleared her throat. “Was
there...anything...”

“I discovered your work, Joanna. Or what I
thought must have been your doing. The rushes? The trenches on the
floor covered with straw? Do you think Mater would not have seen
that?”