Prisoner of the Flames (Leisure Historical Romance) (14 page)

“I will tend your wound, my lord,” she offered, groping for the provisions sack.

“Ohhh, no, lass,” he said, arresting the tiny hand with his own. “I will make the mold paste and tend it myself. Forgive me, but the way things stand with you here now, my own hand, awkward though it be, is bound to take my wound to task a good deal more kindly than yours.”

But sleep did naught that he could see to sweeten Violette’s disposition. She scarcely spoke two words while they broke their fast in the hazy predawn gloom, a phenomenon that, Robert surmised, had little to do with the climate. He wasn’t given to premonitions, but neither could he deny that something eerie attended, and had done since he’d first met Doctor Nostradamus, and the look he’d last seen in those sharp gray eyes did nothing to ease his dread.

They took their midday meal at an abandoned gristmill well beyond Orleans, on the banks of the Loire, and pressed quickly on again. There was a dense weald at the river’s edge, noted on the map Nostradamus had prepared, and Robert was anxious to reach it by nightfall, for that milestone would ensure that they would reach the convent by nightfall the following day.

Despite his apprehensions, all was going well. As the healer had predicted, no one paid them any mind in their habits, and they were free to drink in the breathtaking French countryside, so beautiful in autumn, despite the festering sky poised overhead that seemed to dog them. They passed by several farms as the cloud-banked sun sank low, giving way to the storm, and they reached the forest just as the cold, dreary rain began to fall. There, on a bed of plush green moss, well sheltered among the trees, they settled in to partake of a light evening meal. A brooding silence had come between them, and Robert made no attempt to spark conversation. Except to encourage that she sleep as soon as
she’d eaten, he held his peace. And though he got the distinct impression that she longed to probe the strain between them by the way her beautiful mouth kept opening and snapping shut, he did not encourage her. He was neither fit nor patient enough for sparring.

He would have rather had her nod off first, but his eyes would not stay open, and he soon succumbed to sleep, but it wasn’t long before the pressure of her body trembling against him snapped his dazed eyes open. He stiffened, and she scrambled backward.

“What is it, child?” he murmured.

“I…I thought you were sleeping,” she demurred. “I meant no harm. I’m cold…and I’m…I’m…”

“What, child?”

“Afraid…!” she cried.

“Of what, Violette? I am not Nostradamus. I cannot read your mind. Why won’t you tell me?”

“There is much that I fear,” she said, low-voiced, her angst palpable.

He pulled her close with his good arm. “Tell me, then,” he soothed. “There is nothing so grave that you cannot speak it to me. Are we not friends, you and I?”

She nodded against him.

“Well, then?”

“I fear the convent,” she began.

“Violette, you will be safe there—cared for.”

“The sisters will not welcome me once they discover that I do not wish to be one of them. I will be miserable. I will
die
shut up in such a place.”

“I’m sure you won’t be long in residence. They will find a suitable situation for you, child. I will plead your cause. I will stress it.”

“What suitable situation can there be for me—blind—penniless—alone? No! You dream. They will keep me—make a slave of me! My blindness…it has always been my
prison. It shackles my mind…and for a brief space of wonderful time, you unlocked those shackles and let me see through your eyes. Now, my body is to be imprisoned also, and you will not be there to help me see. I will not bear it. I cannot endure
both.”

“And I cannot put your mind at ease over that fear, lass, because—try as I might—you have painted a rigid picture in that sighted mind of yours that is false. I cannot erase it, but you will soon see that there is naught to fear, I promise you. Violette, I owe you my life. Do you honestly think I could be so cruel as to abandon you to such a fate as you imagine? My God, where is your perception? You always seemed to see more clearly than any man I’ve known. Where has your wisdom gone?”

“You would not…deliberately.”

“I would not
at all
,” he said, exasperated. “Rest assured that I will be well satisfied before I give you into
anyone’s
hands. Now! No more about that. What else, lass? There is more. I can feel it.”

She sighed deeply. “I do not know this place,” she pointed out on the verge of tears. “In Paris I knew every cobblestone, every tree—every path and turn in it. Here I am lost, and I will stay lost, for there is no one to find me.”

“Perhaps that is best for a while. You are wrong, child, there are many to find you if you aren’t careful. It is best that you stay out of the public eye awhile.”

Again she sighed.

“There is more?”

“The greatest fear,” she said.

“And that is?”

“That we shall never meet again,” she murmured, casting down sightless eyes.

He stared at her then, so desolate in his arms, and a curious breed of anger moved him suddenly.

“You do not know that,” he said.

“Oh, yes, I do,” she snapped. “You will have forgotten me before you ever reach the coast. You will be rid of me tomorrow, and glad of the lifted burden. I never meant to be a burden. I said the same to Doctor Nostradamus back at the ruins. I begged you both to trust in my ability to care for myself.”

“That was madness! How could you hope to?”

“I always have in the past.”

“I am not so sure that your account is accurate. You were in grave distress the day we met if you remember, and at that accursed Huguenot village.”

“I remember. But do you suppose it was the first time I have suffered such? I will have you know, sir, that I have always managed to deal on my own with all manner of roaring boys and gendarmes and randy soldiers, such as your Louis de Brach, and I am a virgin still!” Pride stiffened her spine. “I call that not inept, considering.”

“That is very commendable, but this is different here now.” He gave her a gentle squeeze. “Violette, it is different, because I am to blame for all that has come upon you since we met. Like it or not, I am responsible for all that has befallen you in my blundering pursuit of the impossible. You wrongly accuse me. I am not anxious to be rid of you. I am anxious to see you out of danger before I do you greater harm, and then make an attempt to flee this place if I am able, with my head intact—hideous though it be.”

“I like this not!” she cried. “I have no more control of my destiny. You would map it for me and then abandon me to it. No! I like this not!”

“Violette, we—none of us—have control of our destiny. God has chosen to cross our paths here to some purpose as yet unclear. He will make it known in time.”

“I think I know His plan,” she sobbed, tears rolling down the bright red cheeks that anger and embarrassment had painted, “but you would go against it.”

He studied her then, staring long into her lovely face so
fraught with sorrows, and something primal stirred in his loins that stilled all voices in him save that of longing. The scent of rain-drenched gillyflowers drifted toward him from her hair and skin. It was intoxicating, blended with the pungent forest smells of bark and fern that assailed his senses. She was so very beautiful in the misty green darkness diluted by the storm.

The nagging wound forgotten, his hand reached out, caressed the rosy cheek wet with tears, and followed her slender neck to her shoulder, and the warm, round breast straining against her habit. Her sobs became something else, something deep and throaty, as he leaned fully against her, every sinew in the long, corded length of him stretched to its limit. All at once those renegade fingers fastened in the silken stream of hair that spilled over her shoulders, free of the constricting headdress. Hypnotized, he drew her close and seized her in a smothering embrace, his trembling hand seeking the sweet flesh of her breast until he’d freed it from the coarse homespun and cupped its lush fullness in his palm. The rosebud nipple hardened against his rough, calloused skin, sending shock waves of anticipation to every nerve in his body. She let out a soft whimper, and Robert froze. What kind of beast was he, that he would let this innocent give herself to him?

All at once she strained against him, and when her pleasure moans became a frightened cry, he let her go.

“You see?” he groaned. “Oh, Christ, this is madness! Not even
you
can bear it, my embrace.”

“It is the anger I cannot bear,” she cried, adjusting her garment. “I do not need to see, or even hear the anger in you. I can
feel
it.”

“Can you not understand why?” he railed. “Can you not see that my selfish urges could well be the greatest danger of all? I am lonely, child—so lonely I would abuse you because of it, I am that selfish, and you would let me, you are
that innocent! No, Violette, do not fear my rage, thank God for it. It keeps you safe. I am not angry with you, I am angry with myself for what I would succumb to…to slake what is no more than libidinous animal lust. That is not God’s plan, lass, and but for the rage sprung from what little moral fiber still knits me together, I would be no less a savage than Louis de Brach—and spoil you for a fleeting moment of relief in that exquisite body, and destroy us both.”

Suddenly, her posture clenched, and she gripped his arm. “Shhh, someone comes!” she whispered, fumbling with the cumbersome headdress she had discarded.

“I hear nothing,” he snapped.

“You will, he is almost upon us,” she said in an undertone.

Though he still did not hear what her heightened sense had obviously revealed to her, he was wise enough to trust it, and he gripped the sword at his side while, together, they held their breath, and waited until the sound came again, more clearly now—a hasty shuffling of feet, making no attempt to affect a cautious approach. Pitiful sobs accompanied the racket of displaced twigs and fallen leaves, and Robert quickly vaulted to his feet, adjusting the cowl to hide his face and tightening his grip on the sword. The sound grew louder still, and he worked the hilt in a white-knuckled fist, staring from the shadowy recesses of his cowl toward an aging peasant come suddenly to his knees and genuflecting before them.

Astonished, he was scarcely aware of Violette, who had won her battle with the headdress, groping toward the protection of his comforting arm. He drew her close and closer still as her body tensed and trembled against him.

“Good father, come, I beg you,” the ragged man whined, his voice desperate. “My poor lady wife…she dies. I beseech you come and hear her last confession.”

“Surely, my good man, you must have access to a parish
priest?” said Robert, holding the sword out of the peasant’s view.

“No time!” he cried. “It is a half-day’s distance. She will not last. Please, good father, come. Come
now
, I beg you, while she lingers.”

“We are on a holy mission in most urgent haste,” said Robert. “We tarry here but briefly to refresh ourselves and that poor beast there before we press on.”

“You would
refuse
me?” the man breathed, slack-jawed. “—A holy man of God refuse the Sacrament of Extreme Unction to the dying?
Kyrie eleison?”
He was incredulous.

“Take ease, take ease,” Robert soothed. “I have not refused you. I simply ask if there is no other that might fulfill your needs. It is imperative that our mission not be delayed…many lives depend upon us.”

“I shan’t detain you long,” the man whined. “My dwelling is not far. You passed it by just now before you entered here. When I saw you, I knew that God had heard my prayers and sent you!” He took a pouch from the folds of his tunic. It dangled from a thong looped around his neck, and he jiggled the coins inside it. “It is a meager offering, I will allow,” he said, “but, please, I beg you, do not turn me away.”

“Take back your tribute, my son,” Robert charged, “I want none of it. If you have no alternative, of course the good sister and I will come. A moment, while I fetch the unction.”

“God bless you,” the little man groaned, genuflecting again. He staggered to his feet. “This way…follow me,” he charged, “and hurry, Father. Hurry, please!”

Following the little man, Robert hung back out of earshot and bent his cowled head low toward Violette. “Stay close beside me,” he whispered. “It shan’t take long, but we shall have to move on again immediately after. I am not at ease about this.”

“What will you do?” she cried.

“Shhh!
Be still,” he cautioned her. “I will do what I must…administer the sacrament.”

“But you
cannot.
You are not a priest!”

“I am a Catholic.”

“But—”

“Child, we cannot betray our identity. I cannot put us to the hazard. The soldiers will search these parts eventually, when they realize what has happened. If we give no cause for suspicion, we might just see this odyssey through safely. I found this stole and unction in the provisions sack last night. Doctor Nostradamus did not put them there for naught. I swear to you, I do believe he did it a-purpose, knowing we would have need of them. He has uncanny foresight, and I think I see now what he meant when he said I would likely despise him before it was done.”

“It is sacrilege!”

“It is
necessary.”

“…But Extreme Unction! To tamper with a soul departing…!”

“Violette, that woman will depart this life in peace for having made her last confession. Believe me, I will pray for that. She will not know that I am not a priest. If there is any sin in what I do it will fall upon me, not her. She
dies
, child. We are living still, but not for long if you do not heed what I say and keep silent. Now, stay close beside me. He slows his pace. He mustn’t overhear us. These are a cautious people, times being what they are, and if we are found out, he will tell the tale to any who will listen.”

Violette said no more. There was no use. They had left the copse, and the little man urged them on to a small cottage beyond the meadow eastward.