Rose of the Mists (28 page)

She had only a vague notion of what she wanted from him. She could not even recall why she had run away. As she neared him, she could feel his warmth. She stopped only a hand’s breadth away. “Do ye nae fear me?” she asked.

Revelin smiled slowly. “What I fear in you, lass, is nothing more or less than any man feels in the presence of mortal temptation.”

He did not expect her to understand that, but she did. “Ye have nae fear of charms and curses?”

Revelin wet his lips. He stood in an ancient forest whose inhabitants had once believed in rites that were old long before Christianity began. To deny them might be foolhardy. “I do not deny the ways of old, but I am not afraid of a beautiful
girl who believes, to her detriment, things which are not so.”

Meghan’s hand fell lightly on his shoulder, and the firm strength of his body emboldened her. “’Tis said that fairies have the power for good as well as ill.”

Her touch sent a quiver of desire through him. The hesitant exploration of her fingers against his nape was brief but powerful in its effect. The knot of desire tightened in his groin, roughening his voice. “Meghan, lass, when you think back to last night will you tell me that anything you’ve experienced was better than that?”

Now it was Meghan’s turn to shiver in delicious response. “In all me life, I…nothing—ever!” The moment of remembrance was too beautiful for words.

Her trembling fingers against his skin were cool as silk and Revelin could not resist reaching up to capture and hold them for an instant to his burning cheek. He felt hot, on fire, a raging inferno that she had stoked despite his resolve to the contrary. “It was a mortal woman I held in my arms last night, a mortal whose lips kissed mine. You are as real as I. I feel your pulse beneath my fingers. We are flesh and blood, Meghan, God help us both!”

When he released her hand it slipped from his neck but she did not pull away. Her fingers traced the path of his spine through his velvet doublet. It seemed to Revelin that all life, all nature, came to standstill. He did not believe in the black arts, was skeptical of most pious “miracles,” but Meghan’s touch had in it the power to persuade him to betray his most cherished beliefs about himself.

He was not a profligate seducer of innocents. All the women he had ever taken were willing, aware of what they offered, and asked for nothing more than carnal satisfaction and an amicable fondness for shared pleasures. They were for the most part married women, delivered of the obligatory heir and ripe for romance. They had taught him much of the art of love-making and he had been an eager pupil. But pure love had
never stirred him until he met Alison. But if that were true, then what was this glorious, frightening thrall in which Meghan held him?

The slender arms that came around him from behind seemed a miracle of grace and benediction to his harried thoughts. The world ceased to exist outside the circle of her arms. “My love, take pity,” he whispered hoarsely.

Meghan rested her brow in the valley between his shoulder blades, her hands splaying over the flat expanse of his abdomen.
My love!
He had called her his love. He loved her. She felt the rapid rise and fall of his breathing under her hands and it comforted her to know that he was as moved as she. One hand moved up over the wide contours of his chest while the other descended, reaching lower until she found him.

“Mercy’s Grace!” Revelin shut his eyes and arched his back, involuntarily pressing himself into her hand. Her second hand joined the first and she cradled him.

He felt alive, like a dove, warm and throbbing. “Did ye always feel so?” she questioned in a serious voice.

“Always feel…what?”

Meghan considered this as her fingers searched his clothing for the placket that would allow her entrance. “Ye’re like a bull. The sheathing does not tell the whole of it.”

Revelin felt the rumble of laughter first in his belly, the immoderate kind of guffaw that was part amusement and part guilty shame. When he loosed it, the explosion startled the night, set the stillness crackling with human warmth and reality. It broke the spell and he stepped away and out of her embrace.

“Ah, Meghan, ye’ve not a bone of modesty in ye!” he said, mimicking her accent. Yet she was not crude or base. She had no experience of holding her tongue or censoring her words. He must not make the mistake of judging her by his standards again. When he turned to her he thought he had command of himself. The command did not last.

She threw herself against him, twining her fingers in his
hair and pulling his mouth down hard on hers. Her lips burned their soft impression onto his. She was like a womanly vine, curling her small body about his. Her belly caressed his abdomen and her graceful thighs melted into his hard-muscled legs as her tongue, with one day’s tutelage, cleverly invaded his mouth.

He was drowning, going down into the depths of a sensation so strong that he feared he would not survive. He gripped her waist with his free hand, whether to hold her away or simply to keep from drowning he did not know, but he could not hold her still. Beneath the thin wool her warm fragrant body undulated in fluid softness as she rubbed herself against him. Her pelvis brushed his groin with ever stronger grazing, demanding and achieving his arousal.

Revelin threw back his head, breaking their kiss. He was drugged by her taste, her fragrance, her desire. From where had she learned this? Was it magic? Aye. And the magic was in the sweet places of her body.

Suddenly Meghan released him, bent to catch the hem of her gown, and lifted it over her head.

Revelin caught his breath at the perfection of her young body. Grateful for the torchlight, he could not tear his eyes away. The night before it had been too dark to fill his eyes with what his hands touched. The flame bathed her in its golden halo. It sought the narrow curve of her waist, rode the flare of each hip and the smooth-squared angles of her shoulders. Looking at her, he understood the reasons why women guarded their bodies with gowns and veils and shawls. Few of them could match Meghan’s perfection of form, and fewer still had the simple honesty to offer themselves with the joy with which Meghan now offered herself to him. She was not vain. He saw the need for assurance in her eyes. In her beauty there was a vulnerability that brought him to a conclusion nothing else could have. He would not take advantage of her a second time. He bent, picked up her gown, and offered it to her.

Confused, Meghan refused the gown but reached up self-consciously to cover her breasts. “Am I ugly to ye? Did ye prefer the dark?”

Each word embarrassed Revelin more. What could he answer? “You’re lovely, Meghan, more beautiful than any woman I’ve ever—” He bit off his statement too late. It was a blunder unworthy of a man of his experience. But her expression did not alter.

“Have ye known a great many women?” Meghan questioned in simple curiosity.

“Aye, thousands,” Revelin lied. Why not? It might make her angry enough to turn away from him.

Her hands fell to her side. “Do they all have great udders like me?”

Revelin’s jaw dropped.

“’Tis not many I’ve seen to compare,” she continued in a conversational tone. “Una’s were flat like griddle cakes with raisins in the centers.” She indicated the glorious globes that his hands itched to touch. “Tell me true, now, will they serve?”

Will they serve? Revelin raised a not-quite-steady hand to his brow and closed his eyes. Passion made him tremble, and the unreal quality of their conversation was not dampening it. If she asked him to count and examine her teeth he would run screaming from the spot.

“Meghan, put…on…your…gown.”

Meghan’s mouth quivered. “Ye do not like me. I’m ugly.”

It came as a distinct shock to find her mouth once more under his; stranger still was the fact that he knew he had initiated the crushing embrace. She was driving him mad. When he had thoroughly explored her mouth he set her away again, his stiff-armed grip on her shoulders a defense to hold her back.

“You’re a beautiful lass! You’re a seducer, a harlot in Madonna’s clothing! A charm, a potion, a danger to my sanity! So put on yer gown and keep it on, no matter what! Even if
one day I should beg ye to take it off! Keep it on! Do ye understand me, lass?”

He was shouting, he knew, raving like a lunatic, but he could not help himself. She drove him beyond self-control. She was so bedeviling that had she been a man he would have struck her. Lord! If she were a man he would not feel as he did now.

Meghan regarded him for a long moment. “Ye liked me the night before. Why do ye not want me now?”

“It isn’t a matter of wanting, Meghan.” He sighed, searching for words. “Ye’ve had so little experience of the world, of men.”

Meghan cocked her head to one side. “If I had more experience with men, would ye want me then?”

Revelin did not trust himself with a reply.

“Ye’re a fey man, Revelin Butler,” she said at last and pulled her gown over her head. Twisting this way and that, she struggled to work the clinging material over the flushed swells of her body.

Each flash of skin, a hip, a leg, made Revelin more uncomfortable. “Mercy!” he cried finally and turned his back. “When you’ve done, go back to Sila’s hut. I’ve things to see to before we leave. Stay there until I come for you in the morning!”

He hurled the words over his shoulder like pikes but they fell gently on Meghan’s ears.
We
ride tomorrow. He was taking her with him! “Will I like London, do ye think?”

Revelin sighed like an aged man. “We go to Dublin and then to Kilkenny.”

Meghan shook out the last wrinkle in her gown before answering. “I will try not to shame ye.”

Revelin sucked in a long breath. “Nothing you do shames me, Meghan.”

Meghan kept her skepticism to herself. “Do they make the beast with two backs in Dublin Town?”

Revelin groaned.

“’Tis Sila’s name for it,” Meghan explained. “I think I like honey-making better.”

Revelin walked away without a reply, but in the dim recesses of his mind he recalled a husky whisper during their love-making: “What are we doing, Revelin?”

“Making honey,” he had answered without hesitation.

Chapter Eleven

“I’ve decided I’m quite attached to my freedom,” Robin declared with a sigh of contentment as he rode beside Revelin. “No one will believe the tale we’ve to tell of Ulster. Captured by the barbaric O’Neills, brought as prisoners to Turlough himself, feted at the pagan feast of Beltane, and then set free by a fairy’s trick, ’tis deserving of a sonnet!”

“I would wait until we’ve crossed back into the pale before committing your doggerel to parchment.” Revelin winked at his friend. “You cannot tell when we may meet an O’Neill who might take exception to your verse.”

Robin nodded seriously despite Revelin’s bantering tone. A day and a half out of the O’Neills’ company had not been long enough for his fear of Ulstermen to fade completely.

He glanced down at the angry marks circling his wrists and then at the rolling green countryside where every rocky outcropping or stand of trees might hide a warrior. “I’ve had enough of blindfolds and manacles to last me a lifetime! Do
you suppose they thought we might be tempted to find them again?”

Revelin urged his mount ahead down a steep slope, leaving the question unanswered. Turlough was a seasoned warrior. He would suspect the motives of every Englishman sent to Ireland. If they had been able to state the exact location of the O’Neill camp, Turlough would not have set them free. He had vowed that the O’Neills would remain neutral, siding neither with the Irish nobles nor with the Crown if war came to the southland. But times were uncertain and the queen’s memory long. Any information she received would not go to waste if she perceived an advantage in a change of strategy.

Meghan’s arms tightened about Revelin’s waist as they began the climb down and he automatically reassured her by patting her clasped hands. “Are you comfortable, lass?”

“Aye.”

Revelin frowned at the simple, lackluster answer. She had scarcely spoken three words together since they’d begun the morning’s journey. Her moods were mercurial, flowing seamlessly from joy to moodiness to sadness. He had hoped that she would be happy to leave Ulster and the superstitious prattling of the O’Neills.

His expression lightened at the thought of the Scots
gallow-glass.
There, at least, the problem had solved itself: Colin had disappeared from the settlement the night of Meghan’s supposed vision.

Meghan moved again, adjusting her body for a more comfortable ride, and tucked her hands up under Revelin’s doublet. Her fingers moved across his middle, splaying out onto his chest as she leaned her head against his back. The cradling warmth of her body reminded him that beneath her mantle she was nearly naked. She had traded her Beltane gown for a new
leine,
and the straight-lined garment was ill suited for riding astride. Yet, she seemed unaware that the inviting softness of her naked thighs was a torment that he could scarcely ignore.

This was no better than the preceding day, when she had ridden up before him, he decided. Constantly assailed by her sweet scent and tempted with delightful glimpses of the upper curves of her breasts when her neckline gaped, to escape the torment he had finally slipped from his saddle on the pretense of checking his horse’s hoof for stones. After that, he had relegated her to a position behind him.