Beloved Enemy, page 39
Her breath seemed to catch in her throat as his meaning became clear. She opened her mouth to speak, but he placed two fingers over her lips, pressing firmly. “No, you will not speak, my own, and you will lie quite still.”
A flicker of apprehension crept up her spine. What would he do with her? He had just reminded her that she was his, had given herself to him in exchange for Edmund’s life; but this was not what she had meant. Yet, he had the right to interpret the bargain as he chose; it had been made with no conditions. Alex had pulled the covers from her while she slept, and for the first time in his presence, Ginny felt overpoweringly conscious of the vulnerability of her nakedness.
Alex removed his fingers, then very lightly brushed across her lips with the fine tip of a delicate sable brush. She knew then what she had felt in the half-trance between sleeping and waking. The brush flicked across the shell of her ear with a sweet and piercing pleasure that drew a gasp from between her parted lips, then moved to trace the curve of her cheek and down to her collarbone. His eyes remained locked with hers as the brush drifted down to the mound of her breast, touched and stroked until her nipples tightened and the slow languorous delight began to build deep in her belly. The delicate instrument of pleasure fluttered across her abdomen, painted in her navel, dipped lower over the rippling skin of her belly. His free hand parted her thighs with gentle, yet inexorable insistence, and her throat seemed to close in an anticipation so intense that it verged on pain.
The brush trailed upward over the tender satin of her inner thighs, and still he held her with his gaze, the fine mouth relaxed, yet unsmiling. He drew circles, smaller and smaller circles inside her thighs, moving ever upward. Hot tears of near-unbearable prescient delight scalded her cheeks as her body tensed, waiting as the brush hovered. The waiting seemed to stretch into infinity, and the deep secret recesses of her body filled and throbbed. In that moment, Ginny finally understood that this was for her, that this strange possession was to give her ultimate joy even as she was branded by the giver of that joy.
Then, when she had almost ceased to expect it, he touched her, a delicate, light caress of the brush that made her body thrum like the plucked string of a lute. He opened her with delicate fingers, parting her soft petaled center to paint with exquisite artistry until she slipped over the edge of reality, mindless and sensate, a body that existed only to be pleasured by the one man who knew how to give that pleasure–and so possessed her.
Only then did he smile in the old way, cover her mouth with his as he gathered her against him, sliding into the tender, opened body with the ease of temptation, with the pulsing throb of his need, and she held him tight within her as joy peaked again and again. He drew her knees up, pressing them against her body as he penetrated deeper into her very core, and the explosion ravaged them, tore them apart even as it renewed.
He did not leave her body once the tempest had expended itself, but instead slipped his hands beneath her buttocks, clasping her tightly so that she held him within. “Why would you leave me?” he asked. “I have not been able to understand what I had done that you would go with Edmund Verney.”
The tears that had never been long absent in the last hour trickled down her cheeks. “I thought that I had betrayed you, and you would not want me back. But I had to save Edmund. If you had killed him, then you and I would have been destroyed whether I stayed or no. But I did betray you. Not just fought for my own cause, which I have done many times since we came together, but I hurt you directly. I had thought you would see only disloyalty.”
He shook his head. “I was hurt that you would betray me to save another, but it was no mortal wound, little rebel. You did not think you could trust me enough to come back and face me afterward?”
“I am sorry,” she whispered. “But you are a man of strong principles, my love. Strong enough to overcome all ties of kinship, to accept total severance from those you must always have held most dear. How could I know it would not be the same with me?”
“Nothing could ever keep me from loving you,” he said with fierce insistence. “Not principle, not duty, not even the thought that you did not love me in the same way. It is that thought that has racked me these last days. But not for one minute have I loved you one iota less than before.”
“I understand that now.” She reached her hand to trace the chiseled mouth with her little finger. “I could not have borne to have left you either, love. I would sooner be with you, even though you loathed and despised me for my treachery, than live in passionless friendship with Edmund.”
Slowly, he moved out of her, drawing her head into the crook of his arm as he lay down beside her. “There will be no further mistrust between us, and, God willing, no further need for you to ply your trade against mine, my lady Cavalier. Only the one battle lies ahead now; then all will be over, and we will begin anew, you and I, as England begins anew.”
“God willing,” she said. “If your life is spared and Parliament’s force victorious... if ...” But there were too many “ifs.” Only the advent of tomorrow’s dawn was certain sure.
Chapter Twenty-two
“Courtney, you will range your troop of foot on the right wing, behind Peter’s horse.” The duke of Hamilton indicated the position with his knife point on the rough sketch map resting on a trestle table outside his tent.
Giles Courtney indicated understanding with a grunt and shifted his aching hip. “It’s the devil’s own luck that Cromwell decided to come round behind us,” he said.
“Aye,” Hamilton agreed, looking out across the countryside to where Parliament’s army was camped. “Had he attempted to bar our march south, we would have met him with full force and in good order. As it is–” He shrugged. “As it is, the damn sections are scattered all over the place, and it’ll be days before we can get a full muster and a coordinated plan of attack and defense.”
There was a reflective silence in the group of Royalist officers. Those necessary days were ones Cromwell would not allow them. Faced with the choice of meeting the Royalist army head on and attempting to prevent their deeper intrusion into England, or going behind them and placing himself between them and Scotland, he had taken the latter option. It was a decision that had paid off, since the Scottish army, caught unawares, was divided into sections near the town of Preston, each section unprotected by its fellows and thus particularly vulnerable to attack.
“They look in good-enough order,” Giles observed, articulating the gloomy thought in everyone’s minds. The rows of tents belonging to Parliament’s army seemed to stretch to the horizon, and there was something about the neat orderliness of their lines that struck at the struggling optimism of the Royalist force. By dawn tomorrow, they would be locked in final combat with the opposing army–an army of highly trained, highly disciplined veterans who had only memories of past victories to inform their courage.
The duke of Hamilton looked at Major Courtney with a degree of contempt. It was not necessary to speak aloud the knowledge that they all carried. “Our cause is just,” he said curtly. “God fights on our side, and with His aid we will be triumphant.”
Giles made no response although his spirit rose in resentment at the implied rebuke. What possible point was there in denying the truth? And if God was on their side, He had certainly taken His time about proving it. This army would go into pitched battle tomorrow with nothing but the memory of defeat to bolster their courage. He walked away from the group by the tent and climbed a low hill overlooking the next day’s battleground, at present merely an enormous tract of land lying between the two opposing armies. Tomorrow, it would ring with the bellow of cannons and muskets, the clash of steel, the shriek of wounded horses, and the cries of the injured. The soft green meadow would be trampled, churned beneath hooves and boots, reddened with the blood of the unlucky.
Would he again be one of the unlucky? He smiled without humor. Of course, general opinion would say that he had been one of the lucky at Oxford–not dead, not crippled. But this time, if faced with the choice of death or a repetition of those months of agony, Giles Courtney would choose death. He no longer cared who won or lost this war; king or Parliament, what did it matter who governed the land? It was high time Englishmen went back to their houses and their farms, picked up the even tenor of their lives, bedded their wives, raised their children, managed their affairs as they had always done. In the soft, green, seaside county of Dorset was his home, the stately Elizabethan manor house in rich parkland, and in the manor house was his wife, waiting for him, and he would return to her whole or not at all.
“Diccon, if you do not keep still, I cannot possibly do this!” Ginny admonished the lieutenant impatiently when her needle came unthreaded for the sixth time as Diccon leaned forward eagerly to join in the conversation around the table in the farmhouse kitchen that formed the headquarters for General Marshall’s division.
“I can manage without the button,” Diccon said, shaking out his sleeve. “I will have chain mail on top of my shirt.”
“And a loose sleeve will ride up beneath it and be most uncomfortable,” she retorted. “Take the shirt off, if you cannot be still.”
Alex grinned as the spat continued: Diccon was so excited at the prospect of tomorrow’s battle, Ginny so thoroughly determined to prick the bubble with her maternal concerns. “Give her the shirt, Diccon. It will be easier in the long run,” he advised. “Chicken, if you must ensure that we are all clean, pressed, and tidy for battle, could you do so quietly? What I have to say is important, and I do not wish anyone to be distracted.” It was said with a smile, and she could not possibly take offense.
“I will leave you to it,” she said, replacing her needle and thread in her workbasket. “I need a little air.” Outside, in the dusk, she walked slowly down the narrow street of the village of Preston where Cromwell’s officers were quartered. His own headquarters were in the tavern at the head of the street. With a rueful smile, Ginny acknowledged that her anxiety over Diccon’s missing button, her fussing over all of them in the last days was a displacement of her real fears. She could not say how afraid she was for their lives, how frighteningly lunatic she thought their eager, excited anticipation of the morrow’s bloodshed. Even the experienced campaigners evinced this excitement, although much more muted than that of the untried youngsters. Alex was as taut as the string of a fiddle, but Ginny knew that it was the controlled tension of the expert, the tension that would ensure maximum performance. If there was any of anxiety or fear in it, it was not visible, even to her who knew so well every twist and turn of his moods.
As she walked back to the farmhouse, acknowledging the saluted greeting of the sentries about the village, she saw Alex come out into the street, standing motionless for a moment as if he were sniffing the wind. Her heart lurched with love and the sense of loss as she recognized that the lover was now gone, the soldier paramount in that magnificent frame, so tall and broad and powerful. His hands were the hands of a swordsman, no longer of a lover, so gentle and tender as they drew the notes of perfection from her. The man was preparing himself for the killing time, and the time of loving was, for the moment, over.
She came up to him and stood beside him, saying nothing. He looked down at her and smiled. “I am going round the posts, would you like to accompany me?”
Ginny nodded. “I would bid farewell to those who will not return.”
“It is war,” he reminded her quietly, as he had done so often before.
“Do you think I do not know it?” she replied.
Nothing more was said as they walked out of the village and into the field where the main body of Cromwell’s army was drawn up, Alex’s division amongst them. An officer appeared, saluting with his sword at the sight of the general, but Alex told him softly that he wished to move around without ceremony and did not wish the troops to be alerted to his presence. They walked from company to company in the gathering dusk. Whenever the general was recognized, the men sprang to attention, standing tall and proud, bearing Alex’s insignia on their shoulders, his pennant flying from their tents. He talked with them, not as general to foot soldier, but as soldier to soldier, and Ginny saw the way they responded, the way their eyes lit up, and they stood, if possible, even taller.
The men of horse were quartered separately from their comrades of foot, but they offered the same impressive stance. The horses were being tended for the night, magnificent beasts for the most part, although none was Bucephalus’ rival. Ginny wondered, with that same desolate pang, how many of those majestic beasts would return to be watered and groomed tomorrow night.
Far away, across the expanse of land separating the two armies, she could discern the shadowy figures of the enemy sentries pacing in the dark, preparing themselves for the morrow, thinking much the same thoughts as the men on this side–thinking of their wives, their children, their homes, or of a time when Englishmen would again be at peace in a land unravaged by civil strife.
In the forward lines, the atmosphere was different, the nearness of the enemy palpable. Here, they were ready for battle, preparations already made, pikes sharpened to a fine edge. These were the men who would launch the first attack, and a grim silence hung over them. It was with relief that Ginny turned back when Alex was ready to leave, and they returned through the lines to the village.
“Will you come to bed?” she asked softly as they approached the farmhouse.
Alex shook his head. “Not tonight, sweetheart. I will take what rest I may with the others.”
“Indeed,” she said with a faint smile, “I would not be responsible for sapping your strength, General.”
“You would renew it, rather,” he replied. “But I cannot have comforts that are denied others, not on the eve of battle.”
“No, of course you cannot.” Ginny sighed. “May I then stay up with you? I do not have to fight tomorrow and may sleep all day if I so choose.” Her tone was ironic, meant to amuse, but it did not succeed.
Alex shook his head. “I would like you to go to your chamber, sweeting. I know the waiting will be hard for you, but I must think of my men first, and your presence tonight will be a distraction and a constraint that they do not need.”
Ginny accepted the rejection, accepted in silence the woman’s place in the background where she would not be a distraction or a constraint as men went about the all-important business of death-dealing. Accepted it only because she had no choice.
Throughout the night, she lay listening to the rumble of voices below, the occasional quick tones and step indicating a messenger from Cromwell’s headquarters. In the dark hours of early morning, there was silence. Were they sleeping? Or just preparing themselves in the meditative quiet for what lay ahead? In the hour before dawn, her door opened, and Alex trod softly to the bed, his body encased in armor, his helmet in his hand. He stood looking down at her, and Ginny said, “I am not asleep.” She sat up, lifting her arms to him.
“No, I did not think you would be.” Bending, he clasped her hands behind his neck, placing his lips on hers in a kiss of searing sweetness. “Farewell, my own.”
“You will not say, ‘until tomorrow’?” Ginny whispered, trying not to cling to him.
“No,” he replied gently, disengaging her arms. “I will not make promises I cannot be certain of keeping.”
“As you said once before, in a different context.” Ginny smiled, blinking back her tears. “A wise man does not issue threats or promises that he cannot keep.” She touched her fingers to her lips, then to his. “Farewell, my love. God go with you.”
The door closed softly behind him, sounds of movement came from downstairs, of voices whispering although there was no need for such quiet. Then came the silence of emptiness, and Ginny knew she was alone.
Within the hour, just as day broke, the sounds of cannon reached her and continued throughout the day. A heavy pall of smoke veiled the battlefield, and she could see little of the action, even from her position atop a hill at the back of the village. But as the day wore on, she saw the encampment below begin to seethe like an anthill, figures scurrying with burdens between the tents, carts moving between the camp and the pall of smoke. Slowly, Ginny went back down the hill. If they were bringing in the wounded, then there was work for her to do.
It was grim work, and she forced herself to stay where she was most needed, with the men waiting outside the field hospital, waiting for the attention of the hard-pressed surgeons within. There were some whom she could deal with herself, if it was only a matter of removing a bullet, dressing a wound, splinting a fracture, but Ginny was no surgeon, and for those who required amputation there was little she could do to ameliorate the knife and the bitten bullet. Throughout that interminable day, amid the roar of cannons and the heat and haste surrounding the broken bodies, she longed to go up to the farmhouse, to discover if there was news, to go to Cromwell’s headquarters and question the runners. Where was General Marshall in that inferno? Was he still astride Bucephalus, leading his men? He was not among the wounded, that much she knew, as she scrutinized every blood-soaked, twisted figure, her heart in her mouth as relief at not finding him warred with the dread of what could be happening to him out there amongst the guns and the swords.
At nightfall, the guns fell silent, and only the acrid stench of smoke remained, hanging heavy in the air. Ginny drew a blanket over the body she had been tending on the grass and straightened slowly. The man was dead, the hole in his gut the size of a man’s fist, and death had been a mercy. She wiped her hands on her blood-stained apron and for the first time allowed herself to feel the bone-weariness.
“Mistress, the general says you’re to come back to headquarters now.”
“Jed!” Ginny swung round, then flung her arms around the sturdy figure as if he embodied a whole world of solidity and comfort. “The general... he is well?”
