After the Storm (21 page)

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

She turned around to leave and slammed squarely into his chest. He blocked her exit. "There are rats in here."

"They'll get used to you."

She was not amused by his sarcasm. The darkness was worse than the rodent company. And being in such a confined space with Bastien brought home to her that he was a large and basically unpredictable male presence. She tried to get around him again, but any movement while standing was awkward. They were both tall, and neither could stand upright in the little building. Bastien went to his knees, and pulled her down with him. She landed hard and found herself in his embrace.

"I do not like this place," she told him. "I want out."

"Too late now, my lady," he said. His voice contained far more sensual promise than it did sarcasm. Before she could react, he snatched her belongings from between them and tossed the bundle aside. "Lady, I think we are going to spend a great deal of time here."

Libby was at a loss how to react. Her instincts were behaving in one fashion, eliciting a particularly female response to his actions. But her common sense shouted a warning that this was no time to let her mating instinct, or his, do anything stupid.

While she thought, and fought her own reactions, Bastien's hands began to roam in slow, sensual caresses over her back and buttocks and thighs. His lips found her throat, the top of her breast, then moved further down. She stopped thinking as his mouth found her cloth-covered nipple. In fact, the world, the tiny hut, all their problems went up in a blaze of heat. She could barely fight her way to sanity through the need that was building between them.

This was ridiculous. She had to stop. She couldn't keep acting on impulse with Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

this man. He pulled her hips closer to his, bringing her in contact with masculine heat and hardness that sent her senses spinning.

"Oh, dear."

It took her a long time to find her voice again. "This is all a power play on your part," she told him. She was breathless and aching, but she'd fought back from the edge of abandon. "It has nothing to do with how we feel about each other. As people." Her fingers were working at the lacing of his tunic of their own will.

Beneath his coarsely woven shirt she found he wore a softer shirt. A smooth layer of silk intruded between her skin and his. She forced her hands to stop what they were doing.

"I like how you feel." He rubbed his hands up and down her hips and the back of her thighs and cupped her rear in his hands. Then he tickled her ribs.

"Bas, no!" As she squirmed and giggled he laughed. There was something endearing about hearing the brooding outlaw laugh. He kept tickling her, mercilessly tormenting her until she lost control. "Stop! Please!" she begged.

"Bas, you know I hate this! You asked for it!"

It was as much desperation as anything else that caused her to fling all her weight against him and flip him down on his back. She landed hard on his chest.

Then she used the only distraction possible to keep his torturing fingers away from her ribs. She covered his mouth with hers.

Bastien knew he'd lost control of the situation when he realized she was kissing him again. It had been going on for some time. Their tongues were twined together with his enthusiastic cooperation when it finally occurred to him that his plans had gone all wrong. He was the one on his back and she was having her way with him. It didn't matter that he was enjoying it, this wasn't the way it was supposed to be.

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

He sat up and pushed her angrily away. He wiped his hand across his mouth, but he could still taste her. He could just make out her shadowed form sprawled at the back of the hut. "You're right," he told her, "This is about power."

Bastien's voice shook with emotion. Libby knew that beneath the anger was hard, controlled passion.

She appreciated his control, and fought for her own. There were far too many emotions flying around this tiny, enclosed space. Things could not be allowed to get out of hand again.

She got slowly to her feet though she had to bend over to move. She inched toward the doorway. His hand shot out to stop her.

"Where do you think you're going?"

She swore tiredly, realizing that she was his prisoner whether she'd volunteered for the job or not. There was nothing caressing about the hand holding her arm, it had more of the feel of a shackle. The problem was that her body was still aching with awareness of every spot he'd touched and tickled and suckled. She stood perfectly still and waited for whatever he would do next.

He released his hold and got up. "Time you earned your keep, Lady Isabeau."

He pushed her before him out of the hut. The moonlight was faded from its full glory of a few days before, but the faint light it shed was welcome after the hut's blackness. She turned her face gratefully up to it. Lord, but she was tired, and being here with this man was probably sheerest folly. He needed her, she reminded herself.
You don't need him to care for you
, she lectured herself.
And
he hasn't got any reason to trust you
. It was foolish to want anything from him.

She should just try to help him get back as many memories as she could and call things even between them. They had no future other than that, fust get on with it, she commanded herself.

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

"Fetch some firewood."

She could tell that he expected her to argue with him. He expected her to sulk and complain as though she was used to having servants anticipate her every wish. Libby smiled to herself. He was going to just hate it when he found out she had nothing against doing her share of the work. Oh, yes, Bastien of Bale was going to be quite a challenge on many levels.

"Sure," she answered agreeably. "What are we having for dinner, rat stew?"

He didn't say anything, just stood by the hut with his arms crossed and watched as she wandered around the clearing picking up dry sticks. She came back to him when she had an armful and he directed her back into the tiny building. She found a depression in the floor she guessed must be a firepit, so she dumped the wood into it. Bastien knelt and began working with flint and tinder. She sat down and pulled her bundle into her lap. By the time he had a small blaze going she'd found some dried fruit and a flat loaf of coarse bread.

"I didn't run away completely unprepared," she told him as she held out some of the food to him. "Here. Only owls go hunting at this time of night."

"You don't know much about poachers, then."

She chuckled. "I suppose that's true. Take the food, Bas. Please."

Bastien hesitated to take Lady Isabeau's offering for a moment. It made him feel beholden to her even though she presented it with gentle words. Since he was hungry and he'd too often gone to bed with an empty stomach since joining the outlaw band, he didn't hesitate long. He took her food. He settled back to look into the fire rather than at her while he ate his meal.

Libby scooted closer to the firepit. She liked the light even though she found the smoky heat uncomfortable. "Light without heat would be useful," she said.

"Doesn't work that way," he answered, with his gaze fixed on the dancing Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

flames. "One gives birth to the other."

Libby smiled, impressed by the man's observation of physical laws. "Remind me to introduce you to my father."

He glared, his green eyes catching the reflection of the flames. "The last thing I want is to meet your father."

This probably wasn't a good time to explain that her father was a physicist, and not the famed and ruthless warrior people in this period thought he was. Instead she said, "You're not the first man to tell me that." Getting dates as David Wolfe's daughter had never been easy. "Maybe he is a ruthless warrior after all.

My grandmother's meaner," she added.

"And how many men have you had?" he asked before she could launch into a description of her family tree.

"I don't know," she answered. "How about you? Women, I mean?"

Bastien sprang to his feet, hit his head on the roof and sat back down. "It's none of your business!"

"And my sex life is your business?"

"A woman should be chaste until she's wed."

"And a man shouldn't? I hate double standards. Besides," she added, "I'm not sure I've ever been with anyone."

Bastien touched fingers to his lips, as though he was recalling their last kiss.

"You've been with a man. Don't pretend otherwise."

"I'm not pretending," she admitted. "I lost part of my memory. There are a lot of things I do not know about my own past." She took a deep breath and held it for a heartbeat or two before finishing, "Just like you."

Suddenly he was across the fire and holding her shoulders. His expression was Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

one of wild fury. "You were at Lilydrake?"

She gulped. "Yes."

He shook her. "What happened to my wife?"

"I don't know."

"What happened to me?"

Her head began to hurt. She began to grow dizzy. She hadn't expected to fall prey to the physical symptoms of her memory loss just from talking about it to Bastien. She was tempted to use her combat training to break his hold on her, but getting into a fight with him just now wouldn't help him trust her. "The same thing that happened to me," she told him. "We have to try to remember together."

He shook her hard. It did not help her headache. "I can't remember her face. Do you know how that feels? To lose everything and not know what you've lost?"

He kept shaking her. "Damn it, woman, it hurts!"

She hurt. And she was getting dizzy. She shouldn't have told him. For the first time she was truly afraid of Bastien. "Don't," she said weakly. "Please." She squeezed her eyes shut against the firelight and his furious face. "The pain. In my head. It—" She couldn't speak anymore as a wave of nausea hit her.

Bastien gathered Isabeau into his arms when her eyes closed. He recognized her pain, knew it was real. "I'm sorry," he whispered. His own anger turned into an overwhelming need to comfort. "It's my fault. I didn't mean to hurt you." He held her head over his heart and rubbed her temple with his thumb. He knew too well what was happening to her. He didn't wish this punishment on his worst enemy.

He'd reacted to her words without thought, and that cruel thoughtlessness had brought this suffering on her. "I'm sorry," he murmured again. "I'm sorry."

He stretched out as best he could in the small space available and kept his arms around her. He used his body to shield her, knowing how lonely the night could Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

be with only the pain as company. "Rest," he whispered though he thought she was in a place where words made no sense. "It will be all right. Tonight I'll keep you company. Rest easy, Olivia, tomorrow we'll be enemies again."

"Her father is going to kill me."

"Her mother is going to skin me alive." Marj sat up slowly. Beside her, Reynard did the same. They looked at each other. If her eyes were half as bloodshot as his she looked terrible. Her head ached, her muscles were cramped from lying twisted on the ground, and she was aware of a deep sense of panic. She didn't know the details yet, but she was certain deep in her bones that Libby had done something terribly, terribly stupid.

"What?" she asked Reynard, "do you know about her father?"

Reynard ran his fingers through his graying hair, then across his thick mustache.

"Her father," he finally answered, "is one tough, bad-tempered, dangerous whoreson. Or so local legend says."

"You have no idea how accurate legend is." Libby's mother, on the other hand, was Marj's immediate superior and had given her the assignment to make sure her daughter did nothing to inadvertently interfere with history. She hadn't said anything about Libby's overtly interfering with history, but Marj knew that was worse.

Reynard helped her to her feet. Around them a crowd of servants looked nervously on while the drugged people at the high table stirred back to consciousness. The first hint of dawn was lighting up the morning sky. Reynard pulled her away from the pavilion so they could continue their conversation in private.

"There will be hell to pay if that Welsh warlord gets wind of what I think his daughter's done. He'll lay waste to the shire to get revenge on the outlaw. I can't Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

let that happen."

"Never mind Daffyd, Rolf will be hard enough to deal with."

"That's a fact, my dear." He shook his head, and looked like he wished he hadn't.

Marj cupped his cheek in her palm. "Just what do you think she's done?" Marj had her own theory but she wanted the shrewd sheriff's opinion of the situation.

"She ran off to be with the outlaw." He glanced toward the pavilion. "Better than Rolf, or so she's mad enough to think."

Marj nodded, but anything she might have said was drowned out by Rolf shouting, "Where is my woman?"

Marj hurried back to the pavilion, the sheriff right behind her. "Lord Rolf—" she began.

"I told her the recipe was wrong," Matilda interrupted. The girl spoke apologetically to Rolf. "Lady Isabeau was trying to please you, my lord, but she has little knowledge of simples."

Rolf ignored the girl. "Where is she?"

"I am sure she's somewhere—" Marj began.

"She would have woken in my arms if she was in the castle." Rolf seemed very sure of this fact. "She was hot for me and eager for bed."

"He seems rather sure of himself," the sheriff murmured, low enough that only she heard.

Rolf grabbed a servant by the front of his tunic. "Where's my woman, churl?"

"At the church," the man answered hastily. He pointed toward the gate. "She rode down to the church."

"To pray for your swift recovery," one of the other servants said. "But she didn't return."

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

Rolf flung the first man away and rounded on the other one. "Did you look for her?"

The man flinched at the harsh words. "No, my lord. She said —"