The Black Rose Read online

  But in the days since her blindness Tess had come to know a great deal about voices — and she heard the regret in the doctor's voice now, even though he spoke of the necessity for optimism.

  "— never too late —"

  "— impossible to say —"

  The words began to blur. A great black shape rose over Tess, sweeping its dark wings wide to cover her and crush her.

  After the doctor left, Tess did not move, still seated in the shadows of the now-chill garden. Her body tense, stretched taut as a bowstring beneath an archer's fingers, she looked up into the shadows that separated her from Andre.

  "Please," she rasped. As was their habit, she spoke in French. "Dear God, Andre — you must —" Her voice caught for a moment. "Take me to your bed this night. Take me to the light and make me burn. Oh, please, make me forget this nightmare!"

  She did not even realize her mistake.

  But Andre heard, and his face hardened at the word. Even now, he realized, this woman could not bring herself to use tu, the more intimate form of address, to him. A small slip, but telling nevertheless.

  Particularly in view of what she was asking of him.

  Tess's heart was pounding so furiously that she barely heard the rough growl that broke from his throat. The next moment his hard hands seized her wrists and jerked her stumbling to her feet.

  "Is this what you ask of me, Anglaise?" he snarled. "Then this is my answer. No! As God is my witness, no! This I will never do!"

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Tess shivered, ashen-faced, as she heard the flat fury in the Frenchman's voice.

  Gone, all gone, she thought, feeling her mind grow numb, as if all that had happened was no more than a dream.

  Or a nightmare. Suddenly it was exactly that, the same nightmare she always had, the one that had haunted her since those days and nights spent locked in the tunnels at Fairleigh.

  Already the darkness had wrapped her in its gleaming coils when she heard Andre's low curse.

  "Even now you cannot say it, can you? Tu — tu! Say it!" His fingers, where they bit into her wrists, began to shake. "Stubborn creature, you think you are safe — that these walls can protect you. But they only enslave you, Anglaise. Say it!"

  Tess whimpered, her thoughts awhirl as she struggled away from the cold shadows. "T-tu. Vraiment."

  You. Though it was madness itself.

  The trembling in his fingers ceased. With a low, savage growl Andre bent Tess back in his arms until her wine-dark hair spilled down her back and cascaded to the ground. "That way, gwellan-karet. That way I'll have you. Not to bed but to love. Diaoul, but I'll love you, Anglaise. Until you forget where you end and I begin. Until you shudder and whisper — my name. Not his." His fingers splayed apart over her ribs, dragging her into the hard cradle of his thighs, where even now the angry line of his arousal jutted boldly. "Starting now. Say the words, bihan. Tell me what you want, and how, and from whom."

  "Toi, Andre. Aime-moi." Somehow she could say them now, the words he wanted, needed even. "Love me — now."

  With those simple syllables everything changed. The fires in Andre's eyes burned brighter, fed not by rage but by desperation and a fierce, devouring need. Without another word he began to tear at the mocking row of buttons down her back.

  One. Two. Dimly Tess counted their muffled snaps, her blood pounding.

  Three. Four.

  With a low, feral growl, Andre hooked his fingers into the cloth and sheared off all the rest, then tugged the gown from Tess's shoulders until the perfect white sweep of her body was revealed to him.

  "But M-Marthe?" she whispered.

  "Is gone," Andre finished. "And we are alone, my beauty. My sweet sauvage." His big hands moved to cup her full breasts and circle the dusky crests, now pebbled and urgent. "My heart's own heart."

  "Take me, Andre," Tess heard someone whisper, wondering at the strange, hoarse sound of that female voice.

  Her voice?

  "Touch me — all of me. With all of you." With frantic fingers she pushed at his collar, tugging at the buttons that separated their skin so cruelly. Finally, with a little moan, she savaged the row of them just as he had done to hers.

  They fell with a muffled ping onto the green carpet at Tess's feet.

  Tess fell a moment later, gasping as Andre's hard, hot body strained against her. Her fingers tore at his breeches; his hands jerked the float of velvet from beneath her hips and tossed it in a crumpled heap at her side.

  She was beyond words now, beyond thought, driven by a fierce, nameless hunger for him. Her lips could only curve and pant, her tongue only slide, restless and hungry.

  When his mouth crushed down upon her, she whimpered and bit, fighting for more, always more, tongue hot against tongue just as his velvet shaft searched for her softness.

  When his hand found the warm tangle of curls at her thighs, Andre growled, low and dark, slipping his fingers deep.

  Pleasure burst through Tess in solid, jolting waves. Somehow he knew exactly where to tease and where to drive fiercely. How many women, she wondered dimly, had he touched this way? Only a vast experience could have taught him how to arouse her with such unerring certainty, as if her body were well-known terrain.

  Suddenly she stiffened, fighting him. "No, Andre, not that way. I — I want you with me this time. I want to feel you inside me, to wrap myself around you when the pleasure comes." She could have that much of him, at least. To know he was inside her, thinking of her and not one of those other women.

  "Good sweet God." With a ragged groan, the dark-bearded Frenchman pulled away to knee apart her thighs. Even then she could not bear to let him go, arching her back and straining upward until her lips found the salty line of his throat.

  Andre's whole body went rigid as he fought the urge to plunge home ruthlessly within her. "As God is my witness, bihan, any more of that and I'll not be able to wait. I'll take you here and now, without any preliminaries, with all the fanfare of a dockside whore."

  "Yes, now," Tess moaned, hearing nothing of what he said but that one word — needing him inside her, bathing her in molten quicksilver.

  Anything to find the fire, to still the cruel thought of the darkness that stretched before her always and forever, until the end of her days.

  "No," he raged hoarsely, struggling to ignore the sweet wild thrusting of her hips beneath him, the choked whimpers that drifted from her throat, the flush of passion that slicked her skin wherever their bodies met. "No," he gasped again, and knew he was losing.

  "An-dre," Tess pleaded, nipping his neck. "Please! Oh — now!" Her back arched like a bow, her taut nipples scraping his chest like small, sweet buds.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind Tess hated herself for responding so completely — and hated him for knowing how to touch her so perfectly.

  But it was as if those thoughts belonged to another — her body a stranger's, which she could no longer command.

  And then the Frenchman gave her what they both wanted. With a dark groan he reared above her and cupped her hips. "I can wait no more, bihan. Are you — ah, God — sure?" His voice was hoarse with his fierce effort at control.

  Her answer came without words, in the wild stirring of her hips and the restless arch of her back.

  "Take me then, sea gull," he cried, plunging Tess into paradise as his hot engorged shaft swept home deep inside her. "An Aotrou Doue! Take every hungry inch of me!"

  Tess did.

  Wildly. Fiercely. In sweet, mindless abandon. Always wanting more — searching and shifting, digging her fingers into his tensed shoulders and wrapping her long legs around his waist to draw him even closer.

  Then her Frenchman took her into the storm, just as he had promised, plunging fiercely and withdrawing in long strokes of endless, exquisite friction, every hard, rocking thrust wrapping her in ineffable, heart-stopping splendor.

  She shivered, cast upon a strange, restless sea, following each wave to its crest and then sliding down i
nto a dizzying pool of pleasure. Somehow Tess found light there, just as Andre had promised, a dancing phosphorescence that drifted up and wrapped about their slick, heated bodies.

  Dimly she heard someone groan. Herself? she wondered. Or him? Somehow Tess could not say — they were so close now, pore fixed to pore, nerve fused to nerve, inch against every straining, love-slick inch, locked in a oneness Tess had not believed possible.

  His heart hammered, its pitch deep, the same as hers. Their pulses throbbed, drumming in unison. And their bodies — oh, sweetly, perfectly in tune.

  Fire and shadow.

  Rhythm and counterpoint.

  And always the searing pleasure when Tess slid down the wave's dark face to rock in the trough, each climb higher than the last as she was driven gasping and panting toward the mountain of water that rose up from nowhere before her.

  Mindless, empty, wanting to be filled completely. By him. Now.

  "An-Andre?" she gasped, suddenly uncertain, feeling a wild convulsive tremor shake her where their bodies joined.

  "Yes, that way, bihan. Say — ahh — my name so always!"

  "Andr-ohhhhh."

  Suddenly, trivial things like names and countries and words were forgotten, as a great blinding wave of pleasure crashed through Tess, shocking her speechless, making her arch her back and dig her toes into the soft green grass and whimper.

  Hard hands dragged her close, savoring the wild tremors that shook her, drinking the little, breathless moans from her lips.

  She fell.

  And fell ...

  And found him waiting.

  "Aghhh! Tight — so sweet. Yes, again! Again, my wild sweet love. Hold me this way forever." His lips locked, his face taut with strain, the Frenchman began to move anew, balanced on his elbows, filling her with fire and wonder once more.

  My God, but she is beautiful, the Liberte's captain thought dimly through a haze of pleasure, feeling her ripple and contract in her ecstasy, each tremor burning through him with an exquisite torture.

  Yet, still he held himself back, his whole being focused on her pleasure, filling her fiercely until she arched and then fell back once more.

  Fighting his own release, he watched her, until the breathless pleasure sounds died away and she ran slow, questioning fingers up his chest to cup his taut shoulders.

  "Andre?" Tess whispered, swept with sadness that she had not had him with her when she fell away into the sun. Not once but twice.

  His only answer was a savage, half-choked grunt.

  Dear God, he must have found her unattractive, Tess thought wildly. Too gauche, too — everything! After all, he had known so many women. What if ...

  Tess's eyes widened, dark with embarrassment. White-faced, she tried to pull free, shoving blindly at his chest. A single tear worked its way from beneath her bandage.

  "L-let me go, damn you! It's all so easy for you, isn't it? Just another game — just another thing for you and Padrig to joke about during your leisure hours at sea!"

  More tears followed, spilling down her pale cheeks in a cold, angry rush.

  A ragged sound, half laugh and half roar, exploded from Andre's lips. "Easy, is it, halfling? Easy? To hold back when I'm on fire with wanting you? When all I can think of is that sweet burnished triangle, and how you sheathe every inch of me?"

  Tess froze, her features caught in lines of ludicrous surprise. "It isn't? You are?" Laughing raggedly, she brushed at her damp cheeks.

  "Yes, and yes again, my witless mer-creature. And now, as Heaven above is my witness —"

  Andre never finished. Not with words, that is, for somehow his taut body grew tired of waiting and interrupted, meaning to do the rest of the talking for him.

  His thighs tensed. His belly flattened.

  Liquid and hot, he slid home to the hilt in her sweet, trembling velvet — and almost died of the bliss she brought him when she began to convulse around him once more.

  Tess gasped. Somehow even then questions burned on her lips. "But you — have not, that is, you did not —"

  "The first time was for forgetting, sea gull. And the second — ahhh — was for burning. While the third —" The Frenchman groaned as her clever fingers dropped, discovering the aroused male nipples hidden in a dense tangle of wiry hair. With a low, feral growl, he swept them over as one, catching her above him, his hands cupping her bottom. Around them her hair glistened, falling like a dark curtain of flame. "This time is for loving, tu comprends? How could it not be so, me kalon, when you fill me with a thousand suns? I will never have an end to wanting you this way. Skin to skin against me — taken in love."

  But now it was Tess who did not listen, her heart on fire, her eyes wide with wonder, her full lips curved in a smile of aching beauty.

  Delighting in the unimpeded feel of him driving against the very heart of her, exulting in the dark growls of pleasure her slightest movement seemed to wrest from his lips.

  From somewhere came the harsh thunder of the surf, echoing in her ears and in her blood and in her heart itself, as wild and untamed as the man who moved against her so fiercely.

  This time when the wave began to lift her, she felt Andre rise with her, muttering dark Breton love words against her neck and breasts as they burst together into the storm's full fury.

  Darkness turned to light; for a moment emptiness found solid form. A strange, phosphorescent glow seemed to flow through them, visible even to Tess's blind eyes.

  And then they shattered, their molecules spread thin and then mingling, sown wide and together over the vast distance of cloud and water where love's fierce storm hurled them at last.

  * * * * *

  Sleep came almost immediately. They lay together, limbs entwined, dark hair tangled amid burnished auburn, white skin soft against bronze.

  Replete, they dreamed and drifted, while the warm winds whispered over the granite cliffs, stirring the gulf waters to restless silver in the moonlight.

  Even the nightingales did not sing that night, for fear of waking them.

  Something pricked him, deep in his mind. Some overlooked responsibility?

  The Frenchman shifted, mumbling.

  Half asleep, his quick mind darted through a hundred preparations awaiting his attention. There were the Liberte's stores to be refilled, and the coppered hull to be scoured free of barnacles and tiny marine borers; the topgallant sails would have to be resewn where the storm had left sections badly frayed.

  A soft hand touched his chest, combing through the dense fur.

  Andre's breath caught sharply, fire flooding through his groin. His eyes flashed open.

  Slowly his hard features relaxed in a smile full of primal male triumph, a smile as old as man himself.

  She was his now. Gwerhez Vari, but with what fire she took him! And how beautiful, Andre thought, mute with wonder. Every day she seemed to grow more so. His eyes were smoky with passion as he looked down at her auburn hair, flung out against the pillow like a dusky flame. One pale hand was tucked under her cheek as she slept, the faint, haunting scent of lavender surrounding her.

  As beautiful as the day he had first seen her.

  And he wanted her now just as badly as he had wanted her then. A vein pounded raggedly at his temple as his arousal reached painful proportions. Yes, right now he could think of nothing he'd like better than to bury his fingers in that fiery mane and kiss her lovely skin from neck to toe until she awoke beneath him, flushed and slick with desire.

  But he did not, knowing she needed at least a little rest after the exertions of the hours before. And his chivalry was killing him.

  Find some distraction, fool, he told himself sharply, slipping from the bed to pick up a small piece of pine and a narrow knife. Soon his fingers were flying over the wood, fashioning a miniature figure; as a boy, he had picked up the skill and never forgotten it.

  But as he whittled, Andre found he had to face questions that before he had always managed to avoid.

  Questions about what
he meant to do with the beautiful Englishwoman. Questions about what sort of a scoundrel he was to keep her here. What had he to offer her, after all? Only hardship and danger, punctuated by a few brief hours of pleasure.

  Only lies and more lies.

  Even now they were surrounded by danger, though she could not know that. His dark obsession made him take risks he should never have even considered.

  There were so many things he needed to ask her, so many things she deserved to know in turn. But it was far too soon for that, he knew. Not when her trust in him was still so tenuous.

  The captain's bearded face twisted in a bitter smile. Tenuous? Diaoul, it was nonexistent! She trusted no one and nothing, it seemed.

  How deeply, he wondered, were her thoughts still tied to her English lord?

  Suddenly he stiffened, smothering a curse. Looking down, he saw that his knife had slipped and blood was welling across his palm. Clumsy thing to do, my friend, the Frenchman thought, brushing away the crimson streaks with his other hand.

  Blood and more blood.

  Andre closed his eyes, remembering his past with painful clarity. Yes, he had spilled blood — not once but many times. It seemed that those angry ghosts lay in wait for him — now and always.

  His eyes opened, smoky slits. Perhaps he more than anyone could understand the Englishwoman's need to sleep with a lit candle.

  Would not this savage obsession of his lead to more spilling of blood?

  Suddenly he froze, all his seaman's instincts aroused. From outside the door there came a faint creaking of wood.

  Slipping from the chair, he threw open the door.

  "Sorry to disturb you, my friend." The rough whisper was Padrig's.

  "Diaoul, man! I nearly gulletted you!" Frowning, Andre dropped the knife he had been gripping at his side. "Have you ever been told that your sense of timing is execrable!" With a jerk of his head, Andre motioned the first mate into the hall and then followed him out, sublimely unconscious of his magnificent nakedness.