Prisoner of the Flames (Leisure Historical Romance) (10 page)

Glancing up, he searched the flaming pandemonium for Louis de Brach, having lost sight of him momentarily. Panicked by the blaze, the horse beneath him spun and reared, pawing the ground with its heavy forefeet. As the animal whirled in a mad frenzy, he caught sight of the hulking general setting his torch to a barn on the village fringes that skirted the forest to the north. A girl staggered through the wide-flung doors, slapping the rump of a crazed horse, then another, followed by several bellowing cows, and a flock of complaining chickens. The animals nearly unhorsed the general as they thundered past, but the girl seemed not to notice him in her path as she groped her way through the smoke, fiery straw, and thatch raining all around her. The haze parted just long enough for Robert to glimpse her frightened face. Violette! Her terrified shrieks joined the rest of the din as the general swooped down and seized her, dragging her alongside his mount until they were well out of sight behind the burning barn toward the forest’s edge.

Fear rose with the flavor of bile in Robert’s throat, and he dug his heels in, deeply driving his own mount toward their
direction, only to be detained by a fresh onslaught of Huguenots, who had shed the dregs of sleep sufficiently enough to arm themselves and round up horses to join in the conflict. Most of the others were occupied behind him, and he quickly saw that those who were not engaged weren’t overly eager to come to his aid. He took a deep wound in his left shoulder, and it was several minutes before he’d felled the man who had dealt the blow, and his comrades with him.

Cursing for the pain and the vertigo it caused, Robert set out again, and, rounding the corner of the barn, he saw the general’s horse vacant. On the ground below, Louis de Brach was struggling atop Violette, grinding his powerful body against her as she struggled underneath him. Robert drove his horse straight toward them at a gallop, leaped off the animal’s back, and wrenched the general off her.

Grappling with each other, they rolled down the hill away from the forest, which had also begun to blaze. Halfway down the steep grade, a sapling stopped their progress. They sprang to their feet, their drawn swords gleaming red in the glare of the flames springing up all around them. Despite the crippling wound, Robert had the advantages of height and strength over the general. Panting and cursing, Louis de Brach hacked wildly at the Scot, who was hard pressed to keep his footing on the steep incline, and their swords clashed, flinging sparks, as first one and then the other weapon sliced through the thick, smoke-filled air.

Behind them, the roar of the flames devouring the copse all but drowned out the distant sounds of battle, and the girl’s panic-stricken sobs grew steadily more distant, as Robert dodged a thrust that caught his sword and spun it out of his hand.

Blood was flowing down his arm, sapping his strength, but the general was advancing, and Robert tore the
sgian dubh
from his boot, ducked as the general swung his sword, then
surged up, and thrust the dirk. The general froze, then fell forward, the Scottish blade buried deep in his belly.

Through the swirling clouds of smoke, Robert caught sight of troops advancing. They were nearly upon him. With neither time nor thought wasted upon the fallen general, he spun facing the burning wood behind.

The silver helm grew unbearably hot so close to the inferno. Raising the visor, he called at the top of his voice: “Violette!” There was no answer, and, Louis de Brach forgotten, he recovered the sword the general had beaten from his hand, collected his mount, and swung himself clumsily upon the horse’s lathered back. Then with his body bent low in the saddle, he drove the animal toward the forest using the sooty curtain as a blind.

“Violette!”
he shouted, his eyes straining the smoke-filled air. “Speak out that I may find you! It is I, Robert Mack. I will help you, lass. Violette, in God’s name,
answer
me!”

Still no answer came. His greatest fear was that he would not be able to bear the heat much longer. He was all but cooked beneath the helmet. Finally desperate, he tore it off, calling out again and again, the battle behind forgotten in his fever to find her. He’d nearly given in to hopelessness when his sharp eyes spied the shape of a distant silhouette groping amid the trees that had just begun to catch fire farther north. He reached her in seconds, scooped her up in his good arm, and drove the half-crazed horse beneath him in a southerly direction, away from the hungry flames eating the wood all around.

He set her down, tethered his mount, and went to her side. His breath caught at close sight of her. She was hysterical still, her long hair matted with dead leaves and straw, loose about her shoulders. Her skin was streaked and smudged with soot over her face and arms and full, round breasts, scarcely covered by the gaping shift.

Kneeling down beside her, Robert gingerly struggled out
of the chain mail armor the general had provided for the occasion. Despite it all, the sight of her had aroused him, and his hard sex strained against his codpiece. Her shift, torn at the shoulder, had fallen down around her waist, exposing the soft, lush breasts trembling beneath to the fire glow, their tawny nipples, tall and perfect buds protruding through the gossamer veil of honey-brown hair.

His left arm was all but useless, and it took more time than was bearable, all the way around, for him to work his way out of his doublet beneath and cover her with it. Even out of his view, the sight of her perfect body, the feel of that satiny, petal soft skin as his roughened fingers grazed it remained, gripping his loins in an iron fist. What would it be like to feel those breasts skin to skin? He stifled a moan imagining it.

“Violette, it is Robert Mack,” he murmured, smoothing her hair back from her face with gentle hands. “I helped you by the bridge…drove off the rowdies. Do you know me, lass? Shhh, don’t cry, you are safe now.” But her shrieks only grew louder—into desperate, involuntary spasms, and he shook her. “Violette! Don’t you know me? I righted your cart, and saved your coins before the gendarmes set upon me. Don’t you remember? You tried to prevent them from taking me. You took my letter to seigneur de Montaigne. You saved my
life.
I’ve been trying to find you—to thank you.”

The gauze of madness parted then, and she reached out, groping toward him, clutching fast to his blood-soaked shirt with all her strength. Clumsily, he embraced her. Her closeness was excruciating ecstasy, flooding his loins with fire, while he soothed her with a gentle voice until she finally lay still against him.

“Did he…spoil you, lass? Was I too late?” he urged.

“N-no,” she moaned, “but if you had not come when you did…! He…he was so strong, my lord. He hurt me.”

Robert heaved a sigh of relief. “You are aright now,” he said. “He shan’t hurt you again. I have killed him. But why did you run from me? Surely you knew I wouldn’t harm you?”

“I did not know it was you,” she cried. “I am
blind
, my lord! Have you forgotten? I did not know what was happening. I was so frightened. I was asleep in the barn. The animals woke me in their fear when the fire started. I heard it…smelled it…felt the heat of it, and I set them free of their stalls. I was trying to flee myself, when the soldier grabbed me. When you came, I ran to get away from him. How was I to know that you were not his comrade? The soldiers were many…I heard them. They were taking the women down—fighting over them—
raping
them. I heard their screams! I ran to get away…I couldn’t tell where I was going, I…I…”

“There, there, don’t cry,” he soothed. “You are safe now, but what in God’s name were you doing in that barn? I have searched everywhere for you. You saved my life, child, and then you vanished. How have you come here? Is this your home, then? Are you one of these?”

“I have no home,” she despaired. “The Huguenots, they took me in…gave me food and lodging in the barn in exchange for milking, and gathering of the eggs. I was grateful for it. I couldn’t return to the city. The guards who seized you were dealt with severely. Several of the other vendors warned me that they sought me for vengeance as they promised they would if I spoke out against them. Those vendors helped me come here at night…in a cart filled with vegetables. I dared not show myself in the city.”

“I thought it odd that no one would tell me where to find you.”

“They were only trying to protect me. They trust no one here now.”

The wind had shifted again, and smoke rose afresh in
Robert’s nostrils. “We cannot stay here,” he said. “The fire, it spreads rapidly. It will soon be upon us. We must go now, before it blocks our escape.”

“You are wounded!” she cried, feeling the ooze from his gashed shoulder.

“It is nothing. Come,” he coaxed. Staggering to his feet, he drew her up beside him, took back the doublet he’d covered her with, and helped her into it properly. “That’s right, put it on,” he said. “I will take you to seigneur de Montaigne. He will know what’s to be done. He will give you shelter. You will be safe there. No one will harm you, I swear it.”

“But…I do not understand,” she said. “How did you come to the village? Why were you there?” Silence answered her, and she gasped. “Mon
Dieu!
You
were
his comrade. You were
with
them, the soldiers…you were one of them!”

“That is a lengthy tale, and there is no time for me to tell it here now,” he said. Unable to bear the stricken look of her, he turned away, busying himself in collecting his helm and mail. “Come,” he urged. “It is a very long way, and a storm is soon upon us.”

“But…
why?”
she sobbed.

“Why, right now, is not important,” he snapped. “Just thank God that I was among them, and be still. In my haste to come after you, I’ve left my Scottish blade behind in the belly of Louis de Brach. I cannot go back for it now, and there will be no question as to whom it belongs if he is found. These woods are very likely still alive with troops. We must be away quickly. If by some miracle we do elude the soldiers, we still must face the city. Quickly now, come!”

Despite the young Scot’s fears, the soldiers soon vanished from the weald, their victory won, and their leader fallen. Robert’s only regret was that the fire prevented him from going back for his
sgian dubh.
Fortune further smiled upon
them when they reached Paris, for the city slept unaware as he walked his weary gelding across the deserted bridge in the teeming rain. It pelted down on a brutal slant out of the southbound wind. Sheltered from the brunt of it riding behind, the depleted girl clung listlessly to him, her head resting heavily upon the clenched muscles in his back. That soft, sweet body rubbing against him had aroused him so severely that his codpiece, which still contained his coins, was causing physical pain with the motion of the horse, and he had to raise it.

Freeing his engorged sex, he soothed it in his palm. At least, that was how it began, but his pelvis jerked forward, and the traitorous member leaped in his hand, hot and hard, palpitating in a steady rhythm. Behind, Violette stirred. She’d begun to doze and nearly slipped from the horse’s back. As she seized him about the middle to steady herself, the soft, round orbs of her breasts pressed up against his broad back and his posture clenched. Even through their garments he could feel her heat, her supple roundness. Every curve of her body trembled against him, and he was undone. His breath caught in his throat. Waves of drenching fire exploded in his loins as the shuddering climax pumped him dry.

Release and blood loss had sapped his strength. His member, slow to return to a flaccid state, still throbbed a steady rhythm. And though he’d bound the wound tightly with a strip of homespun cloth Violette had bequeathed from the hem of her shift, he’d lost much blood beforehand. Vertigo caused his head to spin, and he fantasized laying upon the wool-stuffed mattresses between soft sheets. Rounding the bend in the road that led to the safe haven at last, he narrowed his eyes, scanning the needles of rain stabbing down for a glimpse of the familiar brick façade, only to rein in sharply and conceal his mount among the trees off the path at sight of the cardinal’s standard born by a mounted escort.
They flanked a sedan chair, likewise emblazoned with the cardinal’s device, and he didn’t have to wonder who was seated inside. Robert started, fascinated. He had never seen the like of that conveyance in Scotland, or England either, for that matter, and he made a mental note to bring the concept of such technology home, if he ever did reach his beloved Scottish shores again. He was beginning to doubt he would.

It was scarcely two hours before dawn, and the cardinal’s untimely presence at that hour could only mean one thing—Louis de Brach’s body had been found with his Scottish
sgian dubh
sunken in his belly to the hilt.

He quickly dismounted, lifted Violette down beside him, and gave the gelding’s rump a whack that sent the animal homeward along the road at a gallop, just as the admiral’s men approached bearing torches and flinging turf churned up from the muddy track in their haste.

“What do you do?” she cried, bewildered, as the horse’s hoofbeats grew distant.

“The cardinal and soldiers of Coligny are at the château. They are just now arriving. At least, I believe they are the admiral’s men. They carry the Huguenot standard. They could only have come for me. I deserted the battle, when Louis de Brach set upon you. I killed him. We cannot stay here. I cannot bring this upon seigneur de Montaigne. ‘Tis clear that both factions seek me now—the cardinal, because of Louis de Brach, and Coligny, because I took part in the slaughter of his flock at that village. Poor Michel. It is best that he think me dead—at least for the time being. It will protect him from accusation of complicity in my escape.”

“Dead?”
she breathed. “But…how? I do not understand.”

“Forgive me, lass,” said Robert. “You are so perceptive that I tend to forget that you are blind. When my riderless horse returns in full view of the cardinal and the rest, they will assume that I, too, have died in that battle. My blood is
on the beast, and on his trappings. Come with me quickly, while they are occupied. I know of a place where we will both be safe until I rest my wounds awhile and form another plan. Hurry! We must reach it by dawn, or we will surely be seen.”