His fingers played upon her and his flesh moved within her, deep, smooth thrusts that carried her upward onto some plane where the air crackled, and fire and flame swirled around them. And then she was consumed in a roaring conflagration in which her body no longer had form or limits, when she flowed into the body that possessed hers with such unfaltering, unerring completeness that the boundaries of her self no longer existed, and amid the blazing glory of this extinction was the terror of annihilation.
Julian came to his senses slowly, aware first of the warmth of the sun on his back, then the breathing, living softness beneath him. He gazed down into her face. Her eyes were closed, her skin flushed, lips slightly parted. He still held her wrists above her head; his other hand was braced beside her body. He gazed at her as if he could make sense of what had just happened… and then the warmth of the sun on his back became cold steel.
He couldn't see it, but he knew the feel of a sword against his skin, the press of the rapier tip along his backbone. He couldn't see the man behind him without turning his head, but he could feel the warmth of a stranger's flesh, the rustle of breath that brought the fine hairs upright on the nape of his neck.
“Say your prayers, man. You have thirty seconds to make your peace with your Maker.” The voice had the soft lilt of the Scottish Highlands, but it carried the chill of the grave. The rapier tip moved against his ribs, pressing into the taut skin, ready for the home thrust that would pierce his back and then his heart.
Julian experienced pure terror for the first time in his life. Facing death on a battlefield was nothing like this. That was a hot and hasty matter of luck and fate. This was execution, cold and slow. And for some reason he knew there was nothing he could say or do to alter the fact of this approaching death. Although he had no idea why it should have come out at him from the warm early morning on the heels of a glorious passion.
“No!” The girl beneath him spoke with sudden urgency, coming out of her trance, her eyes shooting open, awareness flooding back into their dark-purple depths.
“Gabriel. Gabriel, no!” She tugged at her still captive hands, and Julian released them. She pushed against him, struggling to sit up, but he couldn't make another move without the deadly tip of the rapier sliding into his body, so he stayed between her thighs, thinking amid his terror of how ludicrous he must look, of how it was the stuff of farce to face death in such a position.
“Gabriel, it's all right.” Tamsyn was speaking with desperate intensity, knowing the speed and the deadly fury of the giant standing over the colonel. He believed she'd been hurt, and it was his life's work to protect her and avenge her hurts. She owed the English colonel some grief for the way he'd treated her since he'd rescued her, but not for what had just happened between them. It was an act of insanity for which they were both responsible, and he didn't deserve the death Gabriel was waiting to hand out with the detachment of a man who'd lived all his adult life by the sword.
“Gabriel, nothing happened that I didn't wish for.”
She spoke now slowly and carefully, but the urgency of her message was still clearly to be heard.
Julian's blood ran cold, hearing it. She knew his executioner, and she was as afraid as he was of what the man would do. He remembered how she'd flung herself from his horse when he'd rescued her from Cornichet, saying she had to find Gabriel. It seemed that Gabriel, whoever he was, had found her.
“You were running mighty fast for someone who wanted to be caught, little girl,” the voice at the end of the sword said slowly and full of doubt. The cold steel tip remained pressed against Julian's bare back.
Tamsyn thought rapidly. How to explain something she didn't understand herself “It's very confusing, Gabriel.” She fixed the man's gaze with her own. “I can't explain it, but truly nothing happened that I didn't wish for.”
A silence that seemed to Julian to last an eternity was abruptly broken by a roar of laughter. The cold tip of steel left his back.
“Och, little girl! And what would El Baron say to see you rolling in the grass like a wanton milkmaid?”
“'Things happen, hija,'“ Tamsyn said, her voice slightly shaky as she tried to sound humorous. She thought the danger was over, but you could never be absolutely certain with Gabriel.
The colonel inched away from her, easing himself from between her thighs and away from the sword, whose tip now rested lightly on the ground beside his hip.
Tamsyn sat up. “You know that's what he would have said, Gabriel. He would have given one of his shrugs and smiled at Cecile as he said it.”
The laugh boomed again. “Och, aye, lassie. I reckon y'are right, at that.” He stared at Colonel, Lord St. Simon with a curiosity that was not exactly friendly, but neither was it threatening. “So who's your gallant, little girl?”
“Good question.” Tamsyn regarded the colonel quizzically. His immediate danger was over, but with Gabriel's arrival she herself now had the upper hand, and the thought of a little revenge was very tempting. “We haven't been formally introduced as yet. But he's a colonel in Wellington 's army.”
Julian said nothing until he'd managed to pull on his sodden undergarments, discarded somehow in that crazy conflagration. He felt a little less vulnerable with them on, but not much. The new arrival was a giant oak of a man with massive limbs, bulging muscles beneath his jerkin, graying hair caught in a queue at the nape of his neck. His complexion bore the blossoming veins of a man fond of his drink; his washed-out gray eyes were sharp, however. Crooked teeth gleamed in a wide, full lipped mouth, and he handled a two-bladed broadsword as easily as if it were a kitchen knife.
“If you wish a formal introduction, Violette, I'd prefer to make it in my clothes,” St. Simon said dryly.
“Make yourself decent, little girl,” the giant instructed, keeping his eyes on Julian. “The colonel and I will discuss a few matters while he dresses.” He gestured with his sword along the bank to where Julian's clothes lay.
Julian shrugged acceptingly. The ball was no longer in his court, but he had twenty men a quarter of a mile away, and the situation would change as soon as he was in a position to do something about it. With the appearance of nonchalance he strolled back to his clothes, La Violette's defender walking beside him, his great sword still unsheathed but his expression bland, his pale eyes mild.
Julian was not, however, disposed to relax. He had the unshakable conviction that the giant's mood could change in the beat of a bird's wing.
Tamsyn scrambled into her clothes, casting half an eye along the bank where the English colonel was dressing, Gabriel leaning against the rocks, idly tracing patterns in the grass with the tip of his sword as they talked.
It had been many months since she'd succumbed to such an impulsive fit of passion. She knew, because she'd been told often enough, that she shared her mother's devil-may-care impulses, and the passion that ran deep in the veins of both her parents had flowed undiluted into their only child. She had been taught to regard such bodily hungers without prudery. They were perfectly normal among adults and should be satisfied without guilt. But she didn't think El Baron or Cecile would have regarded that wild encounter with approval. One didn't fraternize with the enemy.
And soldiers were the enemy… a personal enemy.
The images flooded in again, the screams, the steaming reek of blood. Her father standing in the midst of a yelling circle of men in the tattered uniforms of many nations, their faces twisted with the rapacious viciousness of greed, their senses drunk with blood. His great sword slashed from side to side but they kept on coming; shot after shot pierced his body, and it seemed to the two powerless watchers on the heights that he couldn't still stand there alive with the blood spurting from the holes in his body-and yet still he stayed on his feet and bodies fell beneath his sword.