She sat, took a clean parchment from the drawer, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the quill, unstopped the ink and began to write, determined to put all these strange things down, to make a record of what was and had happened to her.

The cat climbed up on her lap. She pushed it down and went on writing.

"What do you there?" Sir John asked after the room had gone so quiet only the splatter of the rain on the roof and the sc.r.a.p of the stupid quill could be heard.

"I'm making a list," Bella answered crisply. Actually she was making a mess. He had her so rattled by that pa.s.sionate kiss that the ink blotched with each cross stroke of the quill.

"A list? Ink and parchment does not speak. Nor can you hear what is written upon it."

Bella looked up from her writing to glare at him. A moment pa.s.sed before she caught the meaning he gave to list.

"No," she said, drawing on a dwindling reserve of patience to condesend to explain herself. "Where's a Webster's Colliegiate when you need one? Where I come from, Sir John, list means to enumerate. Words do change over time, sir. Among its other meanings is one that pertains to knights in a tournament jousting in the lists. I'm sure you know the sport I mean, one where lances are leveled at an opponent and you and he charge at one another in the effort to unseat the weakest man."

By the time Bella finished her long explanation, Chandos came to stand beside the escritoire. His face looked very much like it had the first time she'd seen it, hard and uncompromising. He picked up a sheaf of parchment she had filled with words earlier and studied it. The corners of his mouth twisted down as he said, "This is not Latin."

"No, it isn't. Latin is a dead language. In my time no one uses it any more. I write the words in phonetic symbols of the way they sound as I speak. In other words, spoken English has become written English."

"This is gibberish, Bella," he said harshly. "You know you cannot read or write."

Well, there was proof of who she was right out of his own mouth. "Your Bella can not read or write, sir. I can."

For a long, tense moment he stared at her with a face as solemn as a new appointee to the Supreme Court.

"Then what does it say?" He put the spotted, blotchy parchment before her, laid his right hand flat on the tabletop and let his left grip the back of her chair.

"You don't read?" Bella asked, acutely aware of that unusual scent that had first alerted her that someone had come in the room. The strong flavor of the outdoors, moist earth and pine emanated from him, his clothes or maybe his skin, she couldn't be certain which. The scent teased her nose with the persistence of a tickling feather, commanding that she find the source.

"Read," he repeated with soft menace.

"Fine." She picked up her parchments, shuffled them into correct order, lifted her chin and read. "June 12, 1995. We have been in England a full week. Last Sat.u.r.day was spent with the queue of tourists and natives congregated outside Buckingham Palace to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's official birthday. Ari and I spent the whole day caught up in the splendid pageantry of the Trooping of the Colors.

"Prior to that we had spent three days in England at the International Automobile Show which I found boring beyond belief. I didn't have any choice. The Automobile Show was the only reason Ari agreed to this trip.

"Bright and early this morning we rented a car in London. We had breakfast at the Clairidge Hotel before striking out for a day devoted to casual sightseeing on the way to Brighton. Our first stop was at Lewes to visit a Cluniac Priory that has been a ruin since the late 13th century. Also at Lewes is a major battlefield of the Barons War. Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, captured King Henry the III in this battle.

"Ari and I toured the Anne of Cleves Museum then went to the battlefield.

"The A275 cuts the battlefield in half. Prince Edward's position is across a road from the rest of the field, though it is still possible to form a general picture of how the battle was lined up originally. The train from London to Brighton distracted me and I remembered about the pit of bones disturbed in 1846 by the construction of the railroad. Ari wanted me to hurry, because he was hungry. We read the placards at the king's position then went over to where Richard of Cornwall flanked the king."

Bella stopped reading in the middle of the third page. "That's as far as I have gotten." She laid the parchments down and looked up at Sir John to judge his reaction. He had removed both his hands to his sides and stood looking down at her with a very forbidding expression on his face.

"What's wrong?" Bella asked.

"It is treason to speak of Simon de Montfort and you know that."

"Really?" Bella leaned slightly away from him. "I shouldn't wonder why. He could have made himself king, I suppose, but he didn't. And in the end, he paid for his rebellion with his life. Edward the first slaughtered de Montfort and the rest of the Barons including Monfort's eldest son, Henry--at Evesham two years after Lewes. I think Simon was a very brave and n.o.ble man.

"By the way, Montfort is greatly respected in my time. Modern Englishmen view him as a heroic n.o.ble who helped establish Parliament's right to guide the monarchy. The England I was visiting is a far different England from what you would know."

Sir John folded his hands behind his back and began to pace the chamber. At the fireplace he stopped and turned around looking at Bella as though she might have suddenly turned as green as the two children of Wulpert reported to King Steven in the year, 1150 A.D.

"Bella, why did you leave this house last week?"

"I have no idea why your Bella left you."

She wasn't certain if the grimness about his eyes and mouth was caused by the shadowy chamber or because he could not fathom what she said. It was clear he was upset.

He sighed very, very deeply, turned on his heel and stared at the crackling hearthfire. "I will ask a priest to come and exorcize you."

That brought her to her feet. "I'm not possessed of devils, if that's what you think."

Sir John spun on his heels. His eyes fairly scorched at her with brindled anger. "Then what, pray G.o.d tell me, can be causing you to speak like this? You are my wife-- joined to my hand by the Bishop of Canterbury, sixteen years now. Do you think I would not know you after all these years?"

Bella retreated two steps in the face of his temper and certainty. "No, of course, you would know your wife. I must look very much like her but I am telling you the truth. I'm not your wife. I don't know you."

That seemed to insult him more than anything she had said so far.

"You speak as if we are strangers to one another yet nothing about you has changed. Your eyes are the same ginger I have written songs to adore. Your skin the cream of winter dusted with cinnamon freckles. I have kissed you and lain with you and loved you, Bella. Why? Why? Why must you torture me so?"

LORD AND MASTER.

-7.

She was touched by the anguish in Sir John's face. A pain and hurt that ran so deep it echoed back at Bella with paralyzing effect. Dear G.o.d, the man deeply and sincerely loved his wife.

That truth served to make Bella achingly aware of her own pain and confusion. To be caught up in his torment only made this whole farcical situation more tragic than anything she had ever felt in her life.

The last thing Bella wanted to offer this sincere and earnest man was mockery in the face of his great admission. Her nature had always been to comfort and soothe others in great pain.

John de Chandos slowly approached Bella as she stood immobile beside the writing desk. The candles flickered slightly in the draft caused by his small movement, tossing brighter light across his striking features.

He reached up with both hands to grasp and hold her head. Strong, broad-knuckled fingers removed her linen cap. He cast it to the parchments scattered on the desk, then slid his fingers into the coils of her hair.

"Do you tell me this is not the same brow that I have kissed a hundred times?" He bent his head and warm lips touched the smoothed back point of her widow's peak. "Or that this hair of red and gold does not belong to my wife?" The crude pins that held the coils in place loosened and Bella's hair tumbled over his hands and spilled onto her shoulders. He gripped her head even tighter, tilting her face upward. His fathomless blue eyes now smoldered with pa.s.sion as they searched her every feature. Where eyes went, lips followed until he'd kissed her eyes, nose, cheeks, chin and mouth.

Against her lips he said, "How could I forget my wife's face or mistake it for another?"

Tears welled in Bella's eyes. "I would like to think I wouldn't be so easily forgotten or mistaken for another."

"Then how can this tale you weave be true?" His eyes bore into hers. His words full of reason and surety. "'Tis a fable, Bella. A dream, a faery tale."

"No, it isn't." She shook her head, insisting that what she'd told him was the truth. "I'm from another century. You've got to believe me."

His fingers tightened on her skull and she felt a small tremor as he shook her ever so gently. "Nay. 'Tis naught but a sweetly told lie to save your hide from the beating you surely deserve."

"No," Bella denied that.

"Bella!" he said her name sharply. "I would be of the mind to forgive you. I would, did you but repent your lies. I pray you, desist now. Cease this useless prattle. Be as you were. I will forgive all the past tempests to have your mind whole and unbroken, will you but put this madness of yours aside."

"Oh, my G.o.d," Bella gasped. "You can't think I'm crazy."

His mouth tightened. "Do not babble incoherently. You have shown me this night that your mind retains its logic and reason."

Bella pleaded with him. "I haven't lost my mind. I know who I am and where I belong."

"You belong here." He pulled her to his body, arms folding across her back as his mouth descended over hers.

His lips scored and seared, his tongue intruded deep within her, erasing thought and will, replacing her reality with his pa.s.sion.

Heaven help me, Bella prayed.

With that deep, soul-binding kiss reason evaporated from her mind. Chandos' kiss went on and on, hard-soft lips sealing and affirming a bond between them that expanded all of her previously held conceptions of time. This was the man whose kiss she had desired in her most secret fantasies, whose touch, she had always been denied.

In John de Chandos' arms, Bella's past ceased to exist. Only the present moment in his embrace mattered. That one certainty that had always been lacking in her life suddenly was revealed by the touch of his mouth to hers.

His was no stranger's kiss. It was the kiss of the longed-for man of her dreams and restored to her the sole truth that there was magic in just a kiss--peace and love and desire so deep--it ran like quicksilver through her veins.

He could have kissed her like that for hours. Maybe he did, because her will melted against his heat--like wax against the flame consuming the wick of a candle.

She found the source of his scent, a tonic splashed against the smoothly shaven cheeks of his face and the sc.r.a.ped skin beneath his jaw and throat. His lips skittered down her throat, sucking, tasting and nipping tender skin. His tongue dipped into the crevice between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The lacing holding the bliault so tightly against her torso loosened beneath his hand. He lifted the heavy garment over her head, cast it across the lyre stool, and tugged at the tapes holding the sheer cotte closed at her side. It spilled open, freeing straining b.r.e.a.s.t.s, leaving cloth covering nothing but back and arms.

His fingers tightened on her waist, holding her fast against him as he dropped to one knee and put his mouth to the deep and heavy curve under her breast.

Bella gripped his shoulders, fingers taut and anxious--kneading the musculature beneath them.

"My lady." He tilted his head and looked up at her flushed face with wondrous love in his eyes. "Would your husband forget the birthmark that runs like a sickle beneath these wondrous b.r.e.a.s.t.s that suckled each of his sons? Or the way your navel dips and curls inside you? Or this triangle of fire that points as surely as an arrow where he has joined with you time after time?"

Bella mouthed no words to gainsay him. It simply wasn't possible to think or say them to a man who knelt like a supplicant before her. Her nipples ruched and pointed hard. She wanted his mouth on them. He didn't give her what she so wanted, but the moist trail of his tongue encircling each aureole instead made her ache all that much more for his continued touch. Her nipples hardened more and the wanting went deeper and deeper, then burst like fraying firecrackers exploding in her very core.

Her anxious fingers tugged on a jeweled b.u.t.ton at his shoulder and clumsily twisted it free of a cloth loop. His cotte hardie fell as open as had her own garment. She fell to her knees, pressing sensitive and straining b.r.e.a.s.t.s against the warm, welcoming comfort of his chest.

She knew she wanted this--wanted him deep inside her. Somehow, she seemed to have done exactly this, time after time, in another lifetime, a thousand times before, exactly as he said, but never with more hunger or more need than she did so this very moment.

As he lowered her to the priceless eastern carpet, Bella's pa.s.sion turned into the rawest, most urgent need and desire she'd ever felt.

He jerked at his hose, freeing his swollen shaft. Bella reached for him, grasping his rod with hungry hands, sighing at the thickness of him, the heat and hardness. He parted her legs, brought his hand slowly and torturously to her center. He touched her nub and a floodgate opened. He thrust a finger deep inside her, and she screamed with pure pleasure of his touch.

His head hovered above hers, face dark and red with strain. She knew from the turbulent bucking of his rod, he held back at great cost.

"Bella," he called her name as he cupped her in his hand. "Would I not know the feel, the taste, the smell of this?"

The question did not bear answering. She couldn't anyway. Nor did it make any difference to him what answer she would have given him. He bent his head and his lips opened over one breast. She revelled in the feel of his teeth and tongue drawing her nipple deep inside his mouth at last.

His finger touched her womb and withdrew then plunged again, two fingers filling that hot crevice. It wasn't enough. She whimpered, needing more and put her thumb to the head of his shaft, caressing it with the gentlest of touches. A drop of moisture dampened the pad of her thumb. He jerked and gasped, releasing her breast from the depth of his mouth.

Then he moved over her, positioning himself, grasping both her knees and lifting them. Her hips left the floor as he raised her and plunged deep, deep, deep inside, seated to the hilt.

Fused, welded by the oldest, purest juncture known to man and woman, they began the slow, tortuous ascent to the height of pa.s.sion that crested with a near volcanic o.r.g.a.s.m for each of them.

Never in her entire life had Bella ever tasted such splendid union or come to such a shattering end.

Afterwards, spent and caught up in le pet.i.te morte, the little death, they lay side by side, fingers twined and shoulders touching.

Bella sensed she sprawled on a sultan's carpet, in a pillow of her own hair, with knees bent and thrusting like twin peaks suffering earthquakes. Tremors racked the muscles of her inner thighs.

There was more than just flesh that was shaken inside of her. Though she had been a married woman now for almost half of this lifetime, the moments when she'd eclipsed the highest peaks of pa.s.sion had been rare and few. It was a sad commentary on the state of her marriage in that other life. This made dying and being somehow reborn again in another time and place a reward, the greatest gift she had ever been given.

Bella closed her eyes and wondered how this could have happened to her? Her life had been so simple and ordinary. She had no claim to any gift or special skill that set her apart from any woman of her time. In truth, the only rarity she could possibly claim came from the fact that in her suburban neighborhood, she was a woman who didn't go off to work.

If anyone was a more unlikely subject to have her whole world turn upside down, it was Bella Wynford.

Sir John recovered enough to twist onto his side. He propped his head upon a stand made of his elbow and his hand and toyed with her tangled hair.

"What are you thinking, Bella?"

"About car keys and plane tickets and the insane absurdity of what would happen if your wife came back and found us here like this."

"What are khar...keys?"

"Cars...are carriages on wheels with motors in them. Keys lock and unlock them. A car is a vehicle that move without horses, or animals to pull them. Everybody has cars in the future. They make a lot of noise, dirty the air with their exhaust and make it possible for people to travel great distances in a little time. To start them you have to have a key. I had the car keys in my purse when all h.e.l.l broke lose. Ari's stuck in Lewes."

"And this plain ticket? What is that?"

"Oh, well, that's harder to explain. Planes fly like through the sky, like the birds sort of, so people can go from country to country in a few hours time. But it's hard to explain how exactly that is done."

"Who is king?"

"We don't have a king. In America, everyone is equal. There are no n.o.bles, no kings and no lords."

"In your list, you said there was a queen."

"Ah, yes. England has a queen. Her name is Elizabeth and she is very regal, very much loved, but she is queen only in name. She does not have the power of pit and gallows that monarchs do in this century."

His fingers stroked across her temple, drawing through the waves of hair till he clutched a handful of it on the carpet beside her head.

"You dream these things because you fell inside the Well of Souls. How long were you inside it, Bella?" She stared at the high, high ceiling, tracing the line of the bressummer that supported the trusses of the cupola. "I don't know. I would swear it was just a moment's time from when I blacked out and when I woke up in your arms. But it seems I was there six-hundred-fifty years."

"I promise you, no one will fall in that pit again. It will be filled tomorrow."

Bella rotated her head and looked straight at him, saying, "But if you do that, I won't be able to go back."

Sir John sighed. He adjusted his breeks, then moved to his knees and reached into the woodbox for a log to feed the fire. Barehanded, he rocked the split of cordwood back and forth until it was well seated over freshly-broken coals. He drew back his hand, dusted it on his knee then looked levelly at her.

"No, you won't be able to go back. You will stay here. With our sons. With me. And you will not defy me or my king any more."

"Defy your king? How could I have defied your king? I don't even know him," Bella said, completely baffled.