Lucy Lane and the Lieutenant (16 page)

Suddenly, sensing she was not alone and feeling the hairs on the back of her neck bristle, she glanced ahead. From the darkness a shadow took form. It moved with the stealth of a wolf.

Uttering a cry of horror as she was about to head for the cave, her foot slipped and she was unable to save herself from tumbling into a whirlpool of water. The stream was scarcely a dozen paces across, but it was deep and the cold water tugged at her legs. The rocks underfoot were slick and uneven. She struggled to stand, but she was swept a few yards downstream.

* * *

When he opened his eyes and immediately saw Lucy missing, Nathan left the cave to look for her, seeing the shape of a wolf slip away into the trees. Hearing her cry, he rushed towards the stream. He saw what he thought was the branch of a tree drifting on the surface. Suddenly an arm flashed in the dim light and he realised it was a person—Lucy. There was a sputtering and thrashing as she struggled for a grip.

His concern and fear for her rampant on his face, quickly he glanced about him. Very shortly she would be moving well beyond his reach and there would be little he could do to save her. She swirled in an eddy and started to roll. Flinging her arm wide, she gave out a weak call before her head went under. The words were lost to him, but the sound of the voice set him to action.

Snatching off his heavy jacket, he ran along the side of the stream until he was ahead of her and splashed into the water. He swam out, fighting the strong current that sought to drag him under as it swept Lucy towards him. Taking a deep breath, he reached out and managed to grasp her arm. He channelled all the strength he could muster into pulling her towards him. His strength was nearly spent and it was all he could do to tug her on to the bank.

Lucy coughed and collapsed to her knees, breathing deeply, a haze in front of her eyes. With an effort she crawled up the bank and got to her feet and looked about her. Then the haze cleared and Nathan was before her. They stood staring at each other for a minute, then Lucy stumbled forwards and as she ran to him she dropped to her knees, aware of her pounding head and thudding heart. He dropped beside her and caught her to him and she felt his arms go about her in a desperate grip.

‘Thank God I reached you in time. I thought I’d lost you,’ he said, his voice catching in his throat.

Holding her head against him, he rocked her as though she were a child. Her hair clung to her head like a cap and he passed his fingers through it, whispering endearments that she did not hear, for she was shaking with terrible, grinding sobs that seemed to wrench her body to pieces. He could feel the heat of those tears on his neck and he held her tighter, straining her against him until at last they stopped. The racking shudders ceased, and presently she lifted her head and looked up into his face.

Lucy’s eyes in the fading light held an odd, beseeching look and Nathan’s arms lifted and pulled her down on to the grass. She felt his hands pulling at her clothes, wrenching her shirt away, and he hid his face between her soft breasts. Her skin was cool from the stream, and smooth and sweet, and he kissed it with an open mouth, moving his cheek and his head against it, holding her closer.

There was neither love nor tenderness in Nathan’s hands or his kisses. They were deeply and desperately physical. A strange frenzy seemed to have seized him. Wordlessly, roughly, he tore off her breeches, his hands searching greedily for the softness of her skin. With his lips close to her face he was murmuring passionate endearments, only stopping to cover her mouth with kisses. With her eyes closed Lucy allowed herself to be carried away, yielding herself to the slow, overwhelming crescendo of passion which surged through her like a tidal wave.

Half-wild with desire, she clung to him, returning kiss for kiss, and she knew that for the moment her cool body meant no more to him than a balm to his pain—a temporary forgetfulness and release from the intolerable strain and his fear that he might have lost her to the stream. But it was enough that she could give him that.

And then as the world seemed to dwindle to just the two of them, the miracle struck like a spark from two beings created for each other, and all the years they had been apart were swept away as though they had never been. Here in the soft wet grass, with the sound of the stream rushing past, there were only Lucy and Nathan—Nathan’s arms and his mouth and his need of her. Lucy gave herself as she never had before and knew a joy which effaced everything.

At long last they lay still. The sky darkened and the stars and the moon appeared above the trees. Far away a wolf howled—maybe the same wolf that had frightened her so much that she had tumbled into the stream—but Nathan slept the sleep of utter mental and physical exhaustion, and Lucy held him in her arms and watched the stars and was not afraid of the rushing stream or the wolves or anything else. They were encapsulated by this moment out of time, a blend of the past and the mystical attraction that still bound them together. She thought of Katherine and Charles sleeping in the cave. They would not know they were temporarily alone.

Nathan’s head was heavy on her breast and the weight of the arm that lay across her and pressed her down on the wet grass seemed to increase. But she did not move except to hold him closer. After a while, knowing they should return to the cave, reluctantly she shifted slowly, sliding her body from beneath him and standing up. Pulling on her breeches and her wet shirt, she gently shook his shoulder.

Lying face down, Nathan slowly came awake. He lay still and after a moment slowly opened his eyes, aware of the wet grass beneath him. Rolling on to his back, he looked up at Lucy. He said after a moment or two, ‘I’m sorry, Lucy.’

His voice did not express sorrow, or anything else —unless it was, perhaps, regret. Lucy’s heart contracted with the familiar ache of pain that she had felt so often when she looked at Nathan.
Are you
really sorry?
she thought.
Please don’t be, my
darling. Anything but that.

She wanted desperately for him to stand up and put his arms about her and to tell him that she loved him, and nothing in all the things that had happened to them mattered more than that. But she knew that she must not do so. He did not want to hear it and he would not understand it.

‘We should go back,’ she said, avoiding his eyes. ‘Katherine might wake and be afraid to find herself alone.’

Her words brought him to his feet. ‘You go. I’ll follow in a moment.’

She stared at him, hurt and resentful. How could he appear so cold, so dispassionate after what they had just done? Her dark green eyes were wide with an effort to hold back tears of angry despair. All that had been beautiful a moment ago now lay in a heap of ashes at her feet.

In a dark corner of the cave she removed her clothes and rubbed herself dry on a blanket before donning fresh clothes and curling up on her bed roll to go to sleep.

Nathan watched her go, finding it hard to come to terms with what had just happened. He had already suffered so much because of her that he could not even bring himself to contemplate the immensity of pain which this new tragedy would inflict upon him. Until now he had managed to convince himself that his memory of the passion that had erupted between them four years ago was faulty, exaggerated. But what he had just experienced surpassed even his imaginings. It surpassed anything he’d ever felt. He stared into the darkness, trying to ignore the way she had felt in his arms.

A slow realisation of what was happening, born on the moment he had taken her in his arms, was moving through him, moving its way from his wounded heart up to his slowly thawing mind. He had become aware that something awe-inspiring had happened to him in that moment it had taken for his heart to acknowledge it. He thanked God Lucy was safe, that he had been in time to save her from being washed away by the stream, but until this assignment was complete and Katherine and her son were delivered into the Newbold family fold, he would not allow himself to consider what the future held for them.

* * *

They awoke to find the rain had ceased and the cave was filled with sunlight.

Katherine had taken Charles outside and Nathan was turning away to make the horses ready, but Lucy stopped him, laying a gentle hand on his arm.

‘Nathan,’ she murmured, gazing at him with eyes shining with tenderness. ‘What happened last night... Does that mean you have changed your mind about us?’

His face became frozen, expressionless, as if he had disappeared from her once more. She was on edge with her cravings for things to go back to normal between them, but that was beginning to seem downright unlikely.

Bitter disappointment engulfed her, drowning out all the wonderful feelings of rediscovering something that had once been so sublime. He looked at her as though nothing important had happened between them.

Nathan turned his head away to escape the soft bewitchment of those lovely imploring eyes. Then gently he detached himself from her. ‘I don’t know how it happened, Lucy, how I allowed it to happen, how I let my desire for you carry me away.’ He sighed, shrugging slightly. ‘Perhaps it was old memories...’

She backed away, deeply hurt and disappointed by his casual remark. Old memories! Was that all he felt for her, all that was left? ‘Yes—I understand,’ she said, unable to conceal the bitterness she felt. ‘Old memories. But sometimes old memories are hard to let go of.’

‘It was also relief I felt. I was relieved you hadn’t been washed away by the current. You could so easily have drowned.’

‘But I didn’t. I don’t understand. Why did you do that if not to take up the thread of our old love again?’

His face hardened. ‘Leave it, Lucy. That’s enough for now.’

She turned away so he would not see the hurt in her eyes. What a fool she had been. She had thought she had drawn close to him, that they were as close as a man and woman could be, and yet it would seem that was not so. He had drawn away from her. Nathan was as elusive—perhaps more so—than he had ever been.

What had happened to her? Why had chance, destiny, whatever it was called, turned, so quickly, her supreme resolution not to succumb to this man again, to a painful love that was blurring her mind when she should be thinking not about herself or even Nathan, but about Katherine.

Leaving the cave to join Katherine, she glanced at Nathan. Her green eyes enormous in the paleness of her face, she saw only the small clouds of dust kicked up by his feet as he walked away. As the sun mounted the farthest ridge of hills, silvering the sky for a dazzling day, she felt scalding tears spring under her eyelids so that everything grew indistinct and misty.

Nathan was the last to mount. He wheeled his horse about in time to catch Lucy’s eye. There was a sudden duel of glances as his eyes invaded hers, drawing her to him, and she felt again the sudden heat of suppressed passion. They were yards apart, yet in some strange way they seemed joined together. Then his face darkened abruptly and he looked away.

* * *

They continued south, towards the Tagus. The rain had passed over and, despite the sun which flared in the bright sky, the entire region through which they rode, arid and wild, had an air of savage melancholy, enhanced by the distant tolling of a solitary church bell.

Lucy’s mind dwelt on the previous night and Nathan’s reaction to her earlier and her heart ached. No matter how much he tried to show otherwise, she knew he was deeply affected by what had happened between them. She guessed at the distress hidden beneath that inflexible manner of his. Even after they had made love, she was no closer to opening that locked heart. He was keeping tight rein on his emotions, trying to find every reason to hate her from fear of loving her.

They were each sunk in their own private thoughts. Lucy, however, was struggling against an imperious desire to fill the silence which had fallen between them. Her love raged all the fiercer at feeling him to be so near and so distant all at once.

* * *

They were on the outskirts of a small village where they were to rest for the night. A large group of men on horseback were gathered round the gnarled roots of a tall tree. Lucy had the odd impression that they weren’t in the least surprised to see them, that they had, in fact, been waiting for them to appear. One man detached himself from the rest and rode towards them. Taut with apprehension, Lucy watched him ride close. She saw he was not a young man, perhaps forty or more. His hair beneath the hat he wore was long and streaked with grey. His expression was sharp, his eyes intelligent. She glanced at Nathan. He didn’t appear to be worried.

‘Do you know him?’ she asked, keeping her voice low.

Nathan nodded. ‘His name is Arturo Garcia—the same man you saw me with at the convent.’

Garcia halted in front of them, his gaze resting on Katherine and the child Lucy held in front of her.

‘Señor Rochefort! You succeeded,’ he said in English.

‘We wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t.’

The man nodded. ‘I congratulate you. No one rides into Gameau’s camp and comes out alive. But that will end. We are ready. We go in in two days. But first I will listen to what you have to tell me. What are your ideas? Can the hostages be rescued?’

‘They can be, as long as you know where they are.’

‘Did you see all of Gameau’s men?’

‘Most of them. Some will have been on lookout in various places.’

‘What is your opinion? Can we take them?’

‘I won’t pretend it will be easy. They will be expecting something of the sort. There will be sentries. My advice would be for you to go in at night. Surprise them before they have time to take their vengeance on the hostages—all women, a dozen in total.’

‘With any luck the rebels will be flat on their backs with the drink. You are to stay here tonight?’ Nathan nodded. ‘Then we will talk at the inn and you can draw me a map of the fortress and the position of their weaponry.’

When they crossed the threshold of the inn, they were relieved to find they would have it to themselves. Leaving Nathan to talk to Garcia, Lucy went to the room she was to share with Katherine and Charles.