Faerie (38 page)

“No. This can’t be. Somehow, you must go away,” he said. “You must get as far away from me as you can.”

“What?” Leonie pushed him back, her passion suddenly turning cold. “Philippe, you are the most confusing man I’ve ever met. You love me, but you want to get rid of me?”

“It’s the only way, Leonie. The only way to keep you safe.”

She folded her arms when he tried to pull her back to an embrace. “Oh, do pardon my ignorance, my learned and worldly husband. I am only a lowly woman with no knowledge of the world, yet somehow I think it’s not the usual thing for a man who loves his wife to cast her off.”

Philippe chewed on his lip while he slowly shook his head. “I have to or you will die. He bowed his head. “Those creatures, the bone demons, whatever they are. They are not your greatest danger.”

“Aye, it’s Fulk.”

“Not even him.”

“Then who?”

“I am.”

“O
FT HAVE I
thought that,” she replied with rolled eyes and thinly drawn lips. But his anguished face told her this time he was not joking. Her heart began to melt again.

“Nay, hear me out, Leonie. I would rather die than tell you this, but I must say it. If it angers you, I understand. You should have been told sooner, but I thought I could save you another way.”

“Save me? I don’t understand.”

His hands slid up and down her arms, taking the warm water over her skin. “I know I have seemed angry with you, but I was really angry at myself. I have failed you in the worst possible way. There is a curse on me. It affects you.”

“I don’t believe you.” If anyone would have a problem with curses, it would be her, not him.

“It’s true. I can find no way to break it. I’ve looked for years and can find nothing, but it dooms you.”

“But why? Why you? Why me?”

Philippe turned away from her and leaned into the fountain, letting its cascade wash over his face. With a toss of his head, he turned and shook away the water, but the intense pain that clung to his eyes could not be washed away. “You know how Joceline died.”

“She was killed by a sorcerer.”

“She tried to save me from him, and she did. Clodomir meant to hold her hostage to force me to his will. But she broke free and leaped from the window to prevent me from giving in.”

“But you killed him. Everyone says you did.”

“I did. But he is not dead.”

“Philippe! You are making no sense.”

“I cut off his head. But the head rolled across the room and then it began to talk again. Dead though he must be, he laid a curse on me, that I will slay by my own hand any woman I love. Nothing in this world could be more horrible to me than to destroy the woman I love.”

Her jaw dropped open, and her heart began to race again, a new terror flooding her. “The dream. I saw it in your dream. You stabbed me but you could not stop the sword.”

As she slowly forced her gaping mouth to close, she finally grasped the torment that had driven his strangely volatile nature. “So you thought you could avoid the curse by avoiding a wife.”

He nodded and guiltily looked down at the water. “I meant never to marry, nor let any woman close to my heart.”

“But how could you love me? You have never even liked me. You have never wanted to be near me.”

“You do not know, sweet love. Fear for you drove me from you, whenever I could get away. And soon I realized I could not make myself stay away from you, no matter how desperate I was. I did not mean to ever care for you.” He sighed. “I was so angry with your accusation that I was sure I would never even come to like you again. I tried to hold on to the anger, but you kept chasing it away. When Rufus made his demand, I thought I could just send you away to one of your estates. You’d be safe and I would never see you again. But it was not to be. We were forced to be together.

“The hag told me what I must do, but I didn’t understand at the time,” he said, once again turning his anguished face away from her. “I sought a way to break the curse. She asked instead if there were something I had not told someone. I knew what she meant. I had not told Rufus the truth about Joceline’s death because then he would know I had betrayed his father. But I knew when he reached Bosewood I had to tell him. He was furious. So I will return with you and give you over to safety, and then Rufus will do with me whatever he has decided.”

“You betrayed him? I don’t see how.”

“I chose to submit to the sorcerer to save Joceline’s life. And I knew I would be used to destroy William. A king has no friends, Leonie. Rufus has told me that many times. A king has courtiers, vassals, allies, all as changeable as the wind. But Rufus broke his own rule and trusted me, a man who is too dangerous to keep at his back.”

“But you have served him faithfully. He forgave even Robert de Mowbray and gave him all of Northumbria as well.”

He shook his head. “Rufus has never trusted de Mowbray. Rufus needs him in Northumbria because no man can do what he can do. But I betrayed the Conqueror to save Joceline. And I fear I would betray Rufus to save you. I refused to say I would not.”

Taking a shaky breath, she reached through the water to him, but he backed away, his face still contorted with his anguish. She hoped he didn’t see the trembling in her hand, but knew her hope was in vain.

The one thing she had always wanted was his love. And it would cost either her life or his.

There must be another way. There must be.

“You are not a traitor,” she said. “You are a man caught in the jaws of Hell. Rufus will see that.”

“I don’t think so.”

Though he pulled away from her, though her hands were shaking, revealing the cowardice in her heart, Leonie forced herself to move in front of him, cutting off his retreat through the water. She had run from danger before, too many times, driven by the fears that had haunted her all her life. She begged God to give her strength. “I am frightened, aye, for you and for me. But there must be another way, and we will find it.”

“Leonie—”

She laid her hands on his chest, then slipped them round him to hold him close as she rested her head on his warm, bare skin. “I will run no more,” she said. “I am here, and alive, only because you have saved me so many times. And I have saved you as well. Alone, against powers we can’t understand, we are nothing. But together we can fight them. We have already won more than once, and for now, we are safe. This is the Summer Land.”

H
ER GREEN EYES
were so achingly beautiful, filled with anguish so like what he felt for her. She knew what a threat he was to her life, yet all her pain was for him. How could anyone be so forgiving? Never had he wanted a woman so much.

“We can’t fight together, my love. It will only make things worse,” he said. “I would have you safe.”

She leaned her head on his chest. “What do you want, really? Do you mean to punish yourself for loving me? Will it make a difference, Philippe? If you loved me less, would it undo the curse?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“If you love me more, will it be more likely to come true? If you hate me tomorrow, will the curse then be undone? For as long as I have known you, I have desired your love, so perhaps it is I who have made this terrible curse, not you.”

“It is not your doing.”

“Aye. For the same reason it is not yours. Always you have been honorable, but an evil being has taken your very honor and turned it against you. We’ll fight him together, for we have never been able to fight him alone. But for now, I beg you, give me what I have so long desired. There is no greater gift than love. We all must die, but I want only to live first. If it is to be, then we cannot stop it, so let us not let our hearts die before it is our time to go.”

Slowly his heart and mind settled on the truth he had so long denied. Now he understood the hag was right: his deception was
the very root of all their pain. He would never have encountered Leonie without it, nor been a risk to her, for the Conqueror would have beheaded him on the spot. And deservedly so. But now—

“Give me your love, Philippe. It is the one thing my life must have.”

Her words were as clear as if he had heard them spoken, just as she could know his words if he meant to send them to her. Yet she must not know his other thoughts, for if she did, one way or another she would stop him from what he knew he must do. So tonight he would, instead, share all his love with her, and take hers for himself. He had nothing else of value to give her.

Tomorrow they must find their way back. And a new deception must begin. She didn’t need to know what Rufus would be planning for him this very moment.

“Aye, love, share with me. Give me all your heart.”

As he pulled her into an embrace, the wish for a bed, the perfect bed to make love, flashed into his mind. They were in the water, and then they were not. They had not moved, yet everything around them was changing. The steamy water swirled and lifted around them like walls, and then became walls of mellow golden stone glowing in the soft light of candles. The bed he longed for stretched out, low to the floor, deep with pillows, smooth sheets and warm, russet colored blankets. Too much light, fewer candles, he thought, and then the candles winked out and vanished. Together they fell onto the bed, onto inviting, soft sheets that felt like the finest silk, and all thoughts beyond themselves vanished as their minds and bodies moved with one purpose.

He gasped as her hand slid to encompass his rampantly engorged shaft. She would be his love in truth, if only for one final night.

His beloved’s face was a mask of passion, eyes closed, lips open for a kiss. Here, in this strange Summer Land, he could
deny her nothing of himself, no matter what waited for him in that other world that suddenly seemed to be the one that was unreal. There he was her unwilling enemy, but here, her husband and lover, as they had been in truth only once before.

He would offer her all, share this one moment of need. Mayhap it would make all the rest worthwhile. He gave in to his lust and closed off his thoughts, letting the power of his love conquer him.

Her hand slid over his shaft once again, stroking the flared head in such a way as to bring forth a drop of his seed. He groaned without meaning to, bringing an answering response from her lips. Sensuality twanged between them like a bowstring, passing arrows of lust back and forth.

Her rosy mouth parted in desire and he imagined her taking his shaft between those lips. Sucking him, coating him with her hot warmth. Imagination became reality once again as she bent over him, her curly lion’s mane drifting over his nude legs. His flesh trembled as her soft hair danced over it, then as her lips closed around his erection, his blood boiled.

He felt her tongue flick against his heated, turgid flesh and nearly died a little death right then.

“Leonie,” he whispered. He shoved his hands through her hair, finding her scalp and massaging it in time with her licks.

She took him farther down now, swallowing him deep into her heat. He meant to give her the best of him, but she clearly wanted to return the favor.

“Leonie,” he said again. “Let me give you this pleasure, beloved wife.”

She lifted her face. Her skin glowed with exertion. “This is my pleasure, my husband. How I love to feel your hips move, your lusty moans.”

“I can deny you nothing.” He leaned back and watched her delight in the surrender of his body to her Fae-born prowess.
No woman had ever pleased him so much as this slim, wayward goddess.

She seemed to anticipate his every desire. When he wanted her to touch him more, she stroked his flanks with those long, wonderful fingers. When he wanted speed, her mouth moved up and down on his shaft, guided and enhanced by her slick fingers. When he wanted to watch her work upon his manly parts, she let him pull her hair back so he could see the way he moved in and out of her soft lips.

“My Leonie,” he said, his words coming out like strung-out moans. “You are all mine. You are everything to me, for eternity.” His shaft tingled, engorged even further, as he spoke the blessed truth. If only eternity would soon come for him, to save her from the curse’s power.