The Forbidden Rose

Thirty-seven

VOICES IN THE HALL BELOW BROKE THE SMALL quiet spell they had woven between them.

Guillaume stepped away from her. Marguerite did not catch what he said. She did not think she was meant to. He reached into the jacket slung across his arm, into the pocket that was sewed on the inside, and took out the long pipe he carried with him at all times and, upon rare occasion, smoked.

He took the bowl of the pipe in the flat of his hand. Suddenly, sharply, he knocked it against the wall. It shattered. Fragments of gray-white clay flew everywhere. Among the bits of broken clay in his hand lay thin, dark shafts of metal. He tapped off the last of the clay, peeled bits of white from the small steel rods, and scraped the bent ends clean with his thumbnail.

“And we have lock picks.” Adrian appeared behind them, sudden as a small djinn loose from its bottle. “All with no ingenuity from me.” He glanced at the lock on the door. “I don’t know why I’m risking my neck getting you out of here. You can walk out on your own.”

“Guard the stairs,” Guillaume grunted. “Neither of you should be here.” He scattered the mess of clay chips with his boot, skidding them from one end of the hall to the other. He crouched and poked the first of his metal sticks into the door lock. Then inserted another, exactly beside it.

“I am impressed with your cleverness,” she said.

“I’m just a keg and a half of clever.” He rotated the picks delicately, pulling and pushing them in the lock, large, rough hands doing the deft work so naturally.

“I could do that.” Adrian watched with polite interest.

“Watch the stairs.” Guillaume did not look up from twisting and jiggling picks. The tiny scrape of metal on metal emerged, like the sound of steel mice.

“I could do that faster.”

The lock snicked. Guillaume pushed the door open. He stepped through and pulled her in and closed Adrian’s interested face outside.

Guillaume stood looking at her, breathing heavily. “This is a linen closet,” she told him. Sometimes one babbles of the obvious when there are too many important things to say and one does not know where to begin.

“I know. I talked to one of the nuns. Three of them are locked up downstairs.”

This room was lit by a pair of small, barred windows, high above her head. They had not encouraged the nuns to gaze out upon the city, had they? A low, solid table ran down the center of the room. The shelves on both sides were stacked with neat supplies of sheets and pillowcases and towels. “This will go to the army, I suppose, when someone remembers it. That is why it has not been despoiled. It is surprising, really, the way in which—”

His hand fell upon her, no heavier than a shaft of sunlight. Like sunlight, falling suddenly in the eyes, it shocked her. Could anything be more loud than his plans for her? He turned her and his touch stayed on her, heavy and slow and full of intention.

He took up her fichu and pulled it away from her breasts. The knot she had made in it disappeared in a weak fashion, as if it had not been there at all. “Chipper as a squirrel, ain’t you?”

“I am generally cheerful in the mornings.”

He was vast and beautiful. He could have been one of the first men on earth, the men who lay with goddesses in the morning of the world.

If Greek goddesses could see him like this, they would want him. “It is part of one’s nature, whether one will be lively soon after awakening. The learned speak of the humors of the body. I do not know myself.” She met his eyes steadily. She wanted to be unclothed by him. Slowly. Wanted him to continue in this deliberate way he had begun.

“Humors. That’d be it.” With his fingertips, he enjoyed her hair. It fell into his hands, came loose, wrapped him where he held it. He would get to her clothes eventually. They had very little time, but he was going to make excellent use of it.

“I had a cat once,” she told him, “who was mad as Caligula. Each day at dawn it woke me, attacking my feet under the covers. It had much of the humor of Mercury . . .” Her fichu fell in a swirl to the floor. Her composure was lost with it. She was hot and unsettled inside and not sure what to do, except talk, which was not right either, but she could not seem to make herself stop. “I was speaking of Mercury. Much of the humor of Mercury in my cat. Did you know Mercury is the god of both thieves and travelers? That is why one is so often robbed when one travels.”

“Is that so?” He could have been one of the stone dolmens of the countryside, given life. He was as hard and solid as such stones. Adamant. Determined. In the light from those windows, golden dust motes swirled around his head, circling him as if they had volition and enjoyed him.

His palms lay on the top of her breasts, where her skin was bare. He was . . . not uncertain—nothing he had done since she had first seen him had ever held uncertainty—but holding himself in check. The tendons and bones of his hands spoke of a tension beyond description. He waited, as horses wait, quivering at the starting gate, plucked by anticipation, filled with controlled strength.

“I am here,” she said simply, “because I want you.”

“Say that. I need to hear that.” His fingers were at the buttons of her jacket. Buttons that opened as if they melted. He slid the jacket away. Her breasts, covered by her shifts, ached and anticipated. A single pull, and the bows of her stays came undone. The thin ribbon slipped from the holes. And her stays were gone, too.

“I want this. Want you.” Did I tie the lacing so loosely this morning because I hoped he would do this?

He skimmed the neckline of her shift down, uncovering her breasts. Setting her skin free so he could touch it.

She whispered, “Yes,” and he poured over her like night falling, smooth and powerful. Enclosing everything. Shutting out the world.

She was in a space filled only with him. His hair fell like a caress on her face. His mouth touched warm and soft on her forehead and her eyebrows. He worked his way in kisses across her eyes. Over her cheekbones. His breath was hot in the curve of her ear. The sound was like the sea on rocks.

The universe wheeled around her and she was the center of it all. She and Guillaume, at the still center. He lifted her from the floor and pressed her to him. Then down to the table.

However carefully he held her, his was the advance of a male animal upon the female. She was mate, she was pleasure, she was the woman he wanted. He desired her with all the single-minded determination that was Guillaume. All his huge, immediate physicality. All his strength.

But he worshipped also. He exhaled pleasure, deep in his throat, when he kissed the skin of her shoulder. He nudged her chin to the side so he could taste her ear. Pressed her face against his shirt so he could lift her hair and lean to tongue down the back of her neck, little bone by little bone. It was as if every inch of her body was his estate and he would know every furrow of it. Every hill. Every valley. As if no part of her was overlooked or unimportant.

It was magic, to be worshipped. Exciting beyond all experience to know how much he wanted her. Her body was ready for him, more than ready for him, when he loosened the band of his trousers and undid the buttons and lifted her to the edge of the table. He raised her close to him, guiding himself into her, until they fit. Until they were together and joined.

She gripped his shirt at the shoulders where it fell downward in a great sweep. Held on. She breathed deeply, deeply and fast. Fire within her. Guillaume within her.

They were both on the knife edge of pleasure. So close. He was making it last for her. Giving them minute after minute to be like this, locked as one. Every iota of their bodies prickled and hummed together.

“Good?” he whispered. They poised, so ready that even that brushing of his breath across her ear set off shocks.

“Very good.” Vibrations from her own voice buzzed and tugged at her. She was dizzy with wanting him. So filled with wanting it pushed at her skin.

His hands cupped her bottom, held her close to him, rocking slightly. It was not a gentle hold that cradled her. He had hands like the sinews of trees.

His shirt was open to the level of his heart. She set her mouth upon him, not licking or kissing, just putting her mouth to his skin and the hair of his chest, breathing him in, feeling the texture of him with the inside of her mouth. When she closed her teeth down on the tendons of his neck, holding on, he swelled and throbbed inside her. The power within him wound more tensely.

She wrapped her legs around him. Pushed herself even tighter to him. Crossed her ankles around him so she held him within her, deep in her. Her arms, too, she wrapped wholly around him to clasp together at his back. She held every inch of him as close as she could.

“Mon coeur. Mon âme.” She said words into his flesh, into his skin, against the great expanse of his chest, to his heart. Said them to the beating center of his life. “Je t’aime, Guillaume.”

He said, softly, “My name is William. Marry me.”

She was breathing shallowly, in fast, quick pants. Sharp peaks had begun inside her, hitting like drumbeats. He proposes at a time like this.

He stroked hair back from her face. “I’m English. Good English family. English, Irish, French, mongrel. But all good family. The scar’s not real. I can take it off. I—”

“Yes.” She bit him again, on his chest, and held on.

He rumbled something out. Some word. Some claim. Thrust into her triumphantly. Thrust into her again and again.

She held him with her legs through the long trembling moments of heat and surging power. It was like being part of an earthquake. She moved upon him. Stroked herself with him. Waves of pleasure flowed from him, into her.

He is mine.

He threw his head back. His whole body stiffened. He pulled her to him and he cried out and came within her.

And held her while she pulsed around him. Held her while dark red pleasure pulsed behind her eyelids. While she shuddered in every part of her body, he wrapped her to him, enclosed, safe, and warm.

It could not last forever. Slowly she let go of pleasure. Let it slip away from her.

Guillaume laid her back upon the table. He smoothed her skirt down, but didn’t do a thing about covering her breasts. He lay beside her on the broad table, leaning on his elbow, his hand on the curve of her breast. He looked, if she might put it so bluntly, pleased with himself.

He ran his thumb across her nipple and she jerked everywhere. She tightened and thrilled inside as if she had not just barely relaxed from passion. It was embarrassing.

“You are light in the darkness, Maggie. I’m holding you to what you said. We’re getting married.” He stood up, buttoning his trousers fast, then took her hands and pulled her to her feet.

She was not fully coherent. There were no words in her and very few thoughts.

“Let’s get you dressed some. Damn, but I hate covering you up.” He found her stays where he’d dropped them on the floor. Swift, skilled, matter-of-fact, he pulled them around her and began lacing up. “If it was anything less than keeping you alive, we’d do that again. Fact is, we’d do it half a dozen times, getting more and more inventive. No. You just stand there. I’ll do the finding clothing part.”

“I would like to make love again. Can we not?”

“No. Other arm now. Good.” He pulled the jacket up and began buttoning.

“This scrambling into clothing is very undignified. I am not in the mood to be active just at the moment. I would much prefer to lie back and stretch like a satisfied animal. Purring, perhaps. In fact, I would like to—”

“You have any objections to marrying me?”

“There is no need—”

“There is every damn need, woman. What we’re talking about is whether you’re going to do it.” He tied a fast, lop-sided bow in the drawstring at the neck of her shift. “There. Neat as a magpie.” He flipped the fichu around her neck and tucked the ends down her front with a grand impersonality. She had not been so efficiently or quickly dressed since she was a child. “Your cap’s run away somewhere.”

She didn’t remember losing it. And her mind . . . And her mind. “My cap is under the table. You have had a little practice in helping ladies dress. I find that attractive in a man. It argues a certain thoroughness.”

“Oh, I’m thorough. That’s what I’m scared of. I’ll get that for you. And that’s the last of it. Damn, but you’re fine.”

“I am what the cat drags in.” She combed her hair with her fingers, making it lie down neat. She was barely done when he fished out her cap and dropped it on her head.

“You are the most beautiful woman on earth. We’re going downstairs now and getting married. I think I can manage it.”

“Now? At this moment?”

“At this moment.” His face was sober, utterly. “I have money. Enough to keep you. I’m not just . . .” He gestured to his clothes. Himself. “I’m not just this. My family’s not the equal of the de Fleurignacs. But—”

“I know what you are. You are the son of some house of great respectability that has not the least idea what to do with you. The de Fleurignac who rode to the Crusades was exactly a man like you. He besieged any number of cities with great success and carried a sword as tall as I am. He also wrote poetry. I am not entirely an idiot, Guillaume.”

“I didn’t fool you for a minute, did I?”

“Not so many minutes. And we will speak of marriage at some time in the future when your life is in less danger.”

“We’re not going to talk about it. I want you gone from here before Victor arrives. What possessed you to put yourself right in his path?”

“I am not in his path. It will be a miracle, a black and unlikely miracle, if he locates you before this afternoon.”

“You shouldn’t have taken the chance.” Guillaume was not angry, precisely, but he was in a mood that did not lend itself to rational discussion. He stopped before opening the door. “Why did you come here, Maggie? You know better.”

“I am planning to rescue you. This will take some work on both our parts. The first—”

“God’s frogs.” He stomped out.

“I do not yet know how I will do it, but I am very good at such things. It has been my work for years, this rescuing of people.”

“You’re not rescuing anybody. You’re leaving Paris.” He got to where Adrian sat cross-legged at the top of the stairs. “He’ll take you to London.” Guillaume scowled as he pushed past and headed down. “Hawker, you get her out of here, you understand me? Out of this damned deathtrap of a city. Out of France. Put her in a sack and carry her if you have to.”

“Understood.” He scrambled nimbly to the side, just in case. He was a boy who had dodged many informative blows in his time. “Now?”

“In a minute. First I have to marry her.”

“Fine with me.” The boy followed them down the stairs.