He looked up at his father's most trusted friend and saw that his face was as hard as Sir John's when a squire tarried overlong fulfilling an order. Neither knight was known to repeat an order a second time. Robin dropped the coin.

It plopped into the water and a Kennedy half-dollar disappeared into the silt of time.

"...le plus ill.u.s.tre chevalier du monde..."

BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN.

-3.

England, 1346 A damp, chilly wind struck her face. Bella kept her eyes shut tight against it, burrowing back inside the coc.o.o.n of soothing, comforting white light. She wanted no part of the vivid colors swirling round the softening edges of her haven. Inside the halo of white she was safe and unafraid. Beyond the white, there was mayhem, turmoil and pain.

Her shoulder sc.r.a.ped against something solid. She sensed many strange and unpleasant things--the smell of wet wool, the feel of slippery mud, the sour aroma of sewage, the absence of clothes and shoes, and the familiar-from-childhood motion of a galloping horse.

There was more, a man's strong, sure arm supporting her as she slumped against his chest, her head nodding with the steady gait of the horse, rubbing against the man's chin.

Bella opened her eyes cautiously, scared and unsure of what she was going to see. A rainbow flashed into her eyes. Reds, indigos, shimmering yellows, sparkling greens all danced before her unfocosed eyes. Her vision lacked clarity, depth and precision. Her eyes registered only blurred, shapeless colors. Weakly, she lifted her lids more and began the painstaking task of focusing upon the world beyond the void surrounding her.

Directly before her loomed a pair of black pointed ears and a flying mane. She had no trouble processing that. Lifting her chin, turning her head slightly, both eyes confronted thick leather reins gripped by black gloves. No, she blinked twice. Those were not gloves, they were iron studded gauntlets!

Bella swallowed. Was that chain mail sheathing the arms rising from the gauntlets? For some irrational reason she needed an immediate answer to that question. But the effort it took to move any part of her body was phenomenal.

She ached as if her bones had been crushed. Sore fingers tangled in the wool and merely turning her head sent agonizing pains rippling across her neck and shoulders. She had to settle for what judgments her eyes could make.

A chainmail hood encircled the rider's face and shoulders. The first glimpse Bella had of his dark, hard, and ruthless face caused her to cry out, "Good G.o.d Almighty, who the h.e.l.l are you?"

His left hand clamped onto her twisting shoulders, crushing her against his iron-clad chest. "Be still," he growled.

"Put me down this instant," Bella demanded.

"Madame." One corner of a black mustache that draped his mouth, lifted in a disdainful curl scant inches above her eyes. "Do you value your precious white hide, keep your tongue behind your teeth. Think you I care who witnesses my justice? Force my hand if you dare. Tu pense votre fils."

Think of her son. Bella jerked, instinctively looking for Iain beyond the knight's ma.s.sive shoulder.

Riders followed closely on a mud-bogged road battered by rain. The huge drops that pelted the linkage covering his shoulder splashed into her eyes, making her flinch. She remembered...Iain was dead.

What macabre joke was this rider playing? Where was Ari? Where were Lewes and the ruins? Why did she feel as if she had been beaten to death?

Sinking into the scarlet wool, Bella closed her eyes. She acutely felt the cold and chilly wet and her throbbing head couldn't fix on any solid, tangible thought.

The blast of a horn forced her to half raise her eyelids, looking for the car that tooted. There were no cars, only a continuation of a muddy trail leading to a gatehouse fronting a castle. Amazingly, a drawbridge was lowering before Bella's very eyes.

What is going on here? she thought numbly. Had she stumbled across a troop of actors filming a movie? How could she have done that if the last thing she remembered was a black hole in the ground at Lewes? If these people were actors, what was she doing with them?

That did not explain what had happened to her clothes or what she was doing in this man's arms. Nor what had him so p.i.s.sed off she could see muscles knotting in his jaw as he gnashed his teeth.

Thunder and lightning rolled across the forested hills beyond the castle. Bella thought, is this man crazy or what? Didn't he realize he could be struck by lightning riding about in a storm clad in so much metal? She wiggled in high discomfort against the harsh linkage of his chain mail. It poked and pinched her in places too numerous and personal to mention.

Bella swept the high walls for cameras and didn't see a one. The actor-knight slowed the horse to a jarring trot crossing the lowered drawbridge.

There was another wall of stone inside the first, higher, boasting towers at each corner. It all looked very real, not some Hollywood-created fantasy of painted plywood and scaffolding. Bella gulped and brought up one hand to tug a muddy clump of hair away from her cheek, but that hand stank worse than anything she'd ever smelled in her life.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the Saints, what has happened to me?

Bella looked fearfully past the wool and the knight's linkage encased arm at the crowd milling inside the gate. Not one of them so much as blinked at her.

What was going on here? Why did everyone look so grim? Why did not one single person look her in the eyes? They had enough people about to play the battle scenes of El Cid. If they were making a film, where were the cameras? The lights? The director and a.s.sistants? Make up and wardrobe people?

The knight set his horse to walking at a very measured pace through a second gatehouse. Bella swallowed and said, faintly, "This is not a movie set, is it?"

She watched as the whisker-shadowed hardness of his jaw set harder than concrete. There was a very ominous and dangerous feel to him. Bella clutched the edges of the wool tighter about her, intimidated by him more than by the sheer size and utilitarian scope of the inner castle ward.

Four cupola towers lorded over a bustling, busy estate where coopers, carters, blacksmiths, weavers, reevers, all went about their trades with concentrated industry. To the left, was a stone manor. Cathedral-like windows graced the manor's facade. It had all the appearances of a madrigal fair. The English, Bella had concluded thus far from her tour of the country, had a thing for period costumes and fairs. But this was carrying play acting to an infinite degree of realism.

Agog, Bella straightened considerably. Men and a number of women looked out every door and window, watching the knight make slow, stately progress through the ward. He halted the horse at an open, functioning well.

Men from the stables at the rear came running to meet him. But any man who happened to be outdoors or fully in sight of this forward rider, dropped whatever they were doing and put one knee firmly on the ground and their right hand across their breast in a salute as he had pa.s.sed--like the man was a king.

Bella didn't see a single tourist with a camera.

It was still raining, now just a steady continuous patter. The knight drew up the horse's reins. Two men in uniform black and tan livery took the horse's bridle and steadied it. A younger lad dressed in linen and knitted hose caught hold of the knight's stirrup so he could dismount, saying, "G.o.d be praised, Sir John, you found milady alive."

Sir John, not Your Majesty, Bella thought, watching the rest of the riders continued to the stable. A boy peeked out from underneath the drape of the second knight's cloak and stared at Bella with huge brown eyes, just like Iain's.

Bella jerked, startled enough by that child's face that she almost called out Iain's name before she remembered. Iain was dead. She sank weakly back against Sir John, hardly conscious of his arms supporting her. He pressed her forward, shifting his weight, dismounting.

Left seated on the horse, Bella forced herself to look toward the grinding noise made by the closing portcullis. She stared dumbly at it until the spiked iron teeth imbedded in the sand lining the floor of the gatehouse.

Her mind sluggishly grappled with a technicality--was she now a prisoner of this place? She gripped two things very tightly--the high pommel of the saddle and the wool that covered her body.

In time, she returned her focus to the black knight. The youth that had held his stirrup, now helped to divest him of his armor. While Bella had been completely caught up in the gatehouse, he had peeled away a mounting pile of chainmail, well used, sweat-stained leather, and quilted padding.

Stripped to a pair of tightly fitted black trousers and boots, Sir John turned to her. His hair was plastered to his head, black and shoulder length. He was tall, long boned, and solidly muscled, devoid of any softening layer of fat. Even shed of the armor, he retained a sense of absolute authority. A big man, yes, but more important was his aura of raw, unbridled power.

As Sir John reached up to take her down from the saddle, Bella finally looked at his face. His eyes were dark blue, unrelieved of any warming hints of green or gold flecks. Just blue, that betrayed no hint of emotion inside him.

Bella flinched as his hands tightened on her waist. She wasn't comfortable on the horse, but she knew she did not want to get down either. He wasn't giving her any choice, nor wasting words to explain what this was all about. His arms flexed, pulling her forward.

She clutched both hands into the wool, gasping as the pressure on her waist intensified. The slender column of his neck widened perceptively as he lifted her off the saddle. Set on her feet, Bella stared dumbly at his flat nipples, brown puckered islands in a light blanket of black hair.

Foggily, Bella tried to rectify earlier misconceptions. This man was not an actor playing at a part. He was living it. That made him dangerous. Very, very, very dangerous.

She had no curiosity about the fortress or the other people it contained or what purpose it served in this part of England. She was incapable of focussing her thoughts on anyone other than the knight.

Sir John dropped his hands from her waist as soon as her bare feet touched the ground. He looked at his own palms and fingers which were now coated with the same thick, stinking slime that Bella knew adhered to her body. The sensuous fullness of his mouth thinned. He returned his eyes to her and as they swept downward, the sneering curl of his lip intensified. That, only frightened her more.

He turned to the men gathering his armor onto a handcart and told them in French to fill buckets of water for him. Another he told to fetch a clean horse blanket.

Bella had no trouble following what he said as he accepted the first bucket and washed his hands. Her Alsatian grandparents back home in Texas still spoke the dialect indigenous to Alsac-Lorraine.

But when he turned back to her and told her to give the filthy cloak to a man named Thomas, Bella knew this insanity had gone on long enough. She turned and ran.

She got four steps away when the wool tightened so fiercely, Bella feared it would tear from her grip. She staggered around, confronting him. The cruel b.a.s.t.a.r.d had put his foot on the corner of the scarlet blanket. Trapped, her terror mounting, Bella dared to risk only one hand to tug the cloth out from beneath his boot.

He shifted more of his weight onto the captured corner beneath his boot, barking an order over his shoulder to a boy he called squire. Immediately, the well dressed youth stepped forward with Sir John's magnificent sword and scabbard attached to its heavy leather belt. As Bella frantically tugged upon the wool, the youth withdrew the scabbard from the leather.

"Bella!" Her name exploded from his lips with a whip-like crack. Bella jumped and looked at his dark face immediately. Her heart already thrummed a terrifying cadence. What he said next nearly brought the escalated racing of that organ to a chilling halt.

"My dearest lady wife," Sir John snarled. "Do you want to be beaten within an inch of your life, run from me. I swear by the Holy Rood, for every step I take to bring you back to this well, I will ply a strap across your back. Here, naked, before all our people. Do you understand me, Isabella de Saint Pierre?"

Bella stared at the black knight. Her mouth sagged open, wanting to scream at him that he was not her husband, wanting to ask how he could know her name...her maiden name...but no words came out of her constricted throat.

Her logical mind contradicted what her senses reported. This was not real, not a movie nor anything remotely like that. She was dreaming. This was a nightmare. What else could it be?

Sir John put out his hand to her and motioned with his fingers for her to come closer to him.

"Come to me, Bella." His voice dropped to a croon used on high-strung skittish animals. "Come to me. You cannot go inside our home with this stinking filth on you. The water will be cold, but I will douse you quickly, then wrap you warmly in a clean blanket. Clarise is already heating water for your bath. You do not want to spoil your pretty things with this terrible dirt, do you, Bella?"

His fingers touched the arm she had exposed to pull upon the cloak. His grip was firm, not hurtful. One little tug started her forward and she found the momentum to move to the line of buckets on the edge of the well. The squire he'd told to bring a blanket reverently placed the folded wool at the end of the line of buckets then bowed to her and turned his back to the well.

Humiliated and terrified, Bella swung her eyes toward the manor and back to the line of shops. All his people had disappeared from sight. The inner ward had gone as quiet as an empty church, disturbed only by the continuing patter of the rain. A woman at the weaver's stalls s.n.a.t.c.hed a playing toddler from the ground and ran inside the lean-to.

It's only a dream--a nightmare, Bella told herself. I'll wake up in a minute and none of this will be real.

She shut her eyes, seeking the oblivion of dreamless sleep as he grasped the cloth and swept it off her body. Bella felt the splatter of rain dance against her scalp.

She clutched her arms tightly across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and gasped when the first awful douse of ice cold water poured over her head. Her sticky, filthy hair loosened and spread across her back.

He raised the second bucket and after the shocking deluge of cold water ended, she swept one hand across her face to clear her eyes and saw the black, foul puddle forming at her feet. She was blue with the cold and shaking with palsy when he poured out the last. He set the bucket down and turned to get the blanket. Bella wiped water from her eyes and looked at her feet.

Blood ran from one knee and horrible bruises dotted her legs. She had no time to catalogue other injuries. He pulled the blanket firmly around her, and rubbed her head with it for a moment or so to sop up the water.

Then he lifted her into his arms.

As Sir John strode the entire width of the ward, the castle came alive again. The boy who looked like Iain ran out of the stables. The ring of the blacksmith's hammer started up again. The doors of the hall were flung open and a flood of people came outside. Every man Sir John pa.s.sed bowed to him. Each woman spread her skirt or ap.r.o.n and curtsied deeply.

This was the most unusual dream she'd ever experienced.

Bella could not control her shaking or the clacking of her teeth. She was too cold to faint, but would have welcomed that oblivion if she had.

Sir John resolutely crossed a foyer and mounted a set of spiralling steps that wound counter-clockwise inside a bartizan. The only light on the dangerous steps came from arrow slit embrasures. Eventually he stepped onto an upper floor, where Bella saw a cheery fire burned in a ma.s.sive fireplace of an asceticly furnished room.

Two footmen swung open double doors at the end of that long room and closed them after Sir John pa.s.sed through.

Here, a ma.s.sive, high bed, draped and canopied, dominated the chamber.

Another fire burned in the fireplace and before that sat a huge wooden tub filled with steaming water. He said, "Voila, mon mari. It is as I promised, n'est pas? And here is Clarise, with hot towels and soft soap and all the cooing you will need."

The woman spread her ap.r.o.n and bobbed to him as he set Bella on her feet, holding her gently at the waist to make certain she did not collapse. He tested the water with his hand then his other palm pressed against the small of her back, urging her forward.

Bella wanted in that steaming water more than she'd wanted anything in her entire life. Her shivers and shakes had turned to tremors. She reached out to grasp the edge of the high tub and found the knight's hand instead. It was rock hard and steady.

As the heat swept up the one leg she dipped into the tub, he whisked the blanket away, slid his warm hands under her arms and a.s.sisted her over the rim. As he lowered her into the water, Bella let out a deep sigh of relief for the immediate warmth.

His hands slid forward, cupping her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. That was the most exquisite, intimate touch she'd ever felt in her life. He knelt at the edge of the tub, behind her and his elbows flared along the rim. His palms drew her back against the solid resistance of his naked chest.

Bella closed her eyes, glad that her dream had turned pleasant and sensual.

His head bent to her shoulder and lips touched her frozen ear. His breath warmed her shivering skin. The point of his tongue traced the sensitive curves, forcing an altogether different sort of shiver onto her racking body.

Bella felt her nipples harden against the rough skin of his palms and she craned her neck as his teeth nipped her throat. She sighed deeply, opening her eyes to sensual slits, wispering a soft prayer, because this sort of dream, she wouldn't want to ever stop.

"Hmm." Sir John's lips lifted from her shoulder and she felt the intensity of his hungry gaze on her hardened and aroused b.r.e.a.s.t.s that filled his hands. "Perhaps, I should stay and bathe you myself, Bella. You haven't been this compliant in a long, long time."

One of his hands dropped below the water covering her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and swept across her belly. But when she felt his fingers touch her curls and cup her between her legs, his touch was too real. Bella caught hold of his hand, staying his exploration. Was she really dreaming? Or was this real?

She looked up and found the servant woman stood right there at the side of the tub. Her eyes were politely downcast, but for heaven's sake! A public exhibition, even in her dreams, went strongly against Bella's principles.

What if this wasn't a dream?

Bella had to get a grip upon herself, right now! And not the grip her fantasy knight was intent upon delivering, either!

She lifted his other hand away from her breast, scooting over in the large tub and twisted out of range. "I'm filthy. You said so yourself. I think I can bathe myself. Please, go away."

His hands returned to the rim of the tub. Bella covered her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with both her arms. She could feel the heat of his stare and sensed that he regretted the impulsive caress. Bella drew up her knees and huddled deeper in the water, shivering in spite of the heat. Her eyes followed him as he stood.

"You may have your bath, my lady."

She had to raise her chin to see his eyes. They were as cold as the icy water in his well. Dear Lord, but he was tall and terrifying, hard and cold as stone. He stared at her without blinking his eyes once.

"I have yet to decide whether to forgive you or not, Bella. Best you pray that you never again forget whose wife you are. Nor where your loyalties belong."

John de Chandos stalked out of his wife's bed chamber to the sound of water squashing in his boots. Her footmen shut the doors behind him. He resolutely crossed the solar, pa.s.sed through the opposite alcove and entered his own chamber.

His manservant, Guilamu, bowed and offered the flowing salute of a true believer, sweeping hand to his brow, his lips and his heart. "My smoldering lord, I have brought hot water and laid out dry clothing for you. How else may I serve you?"

Chandos flashed a withering look at the Muslim. "You may start by wiping that smirk off your heathen face and open the windows so I may breathe clean, untainted air."

The lord of the manor dropped onto a stool beside his steaming copper tub and brought right foot to left knee to unfasten the buckles on his cross-gartered leggings.

Guilamu reluctantly opened the shutters beneath the stained gla.s.s window and dutifully removed the pillows from the window seat so that the deluge of English rain would not damage costly Eastern silk and tapestry fabrics.

He and Lord Chandos were ever at odds over England's climate. Guilamu demanded fires burn all days of the year. Chandos revelled in fresh air and cool, damp winds. Despite differences over every subject in the world, the Arab and the Christian were bound for this lifetime by the debt of each owing his life to the other.

Boots off and leggings disposed of, Sir John stood and stripped away his sodden, wet breeks. He grunted audibly as he sank into the steaming tub scented by oil of sandalwood. The fragrance wafted upward with the steam to mingle with the lingering, unpleasant odor of the Well of Souls in Chandos' nose. John closed his eyes and allowed the heated water to obliterate the last trace of l.u.s.t from his groin. When, he sourly asked himself, would he cease to be affected by Isabella Saint Pierre's alluring body?

"Allah has granted his mercy again, my lord Chandos,"