Page 20 of Stay with Me

She was beautiful. More so than any earthly maiden. Her long, dark hair had been loose the last time she’d visited and had fallen across his arm when she knelt beside him, silky and thick and tantalizing. She’d been wearing the strange tight tunic again and leggings, leaving little of her figure to the imagination.

In fact, when she’d bent over him and her generous curves had brushed into him, he’d nearly forgotten all about the fire racing up and down his back. He’d also been distracted by the way her leggings had stretched tight, giving him a perfect view of her rounded hindquarter.

Much to his dismay, the feel and images of her body had lodged at the forefront of his mind. Even though he didn’t want to lust, he hadn’t been able to cease thinking about how desirable she was and how he wanted to press up against her and run his hands over her body.

“Curses upon me,” he whispered, closing his eyes and picturing the way the sun’s rays tinged the treetops in the Weald at sunrise. The hues of pink and purple and blue were a feast for a man’s soul. The splendor of the woodland in the spring, the earthiness of freshly plowed loam, the wide eyes of a doe in the new growth of a coppice.

Yes, the Weald was unrivaled in its beauty and was where he needed to focus his thoughts. Not upon Sybil nor upon any woman.

If only over recent months he hadn’t been struggling with the lusts of his flesh. But his urges had been steadily increasing, against his better efforts to stave them off. The more his urges flared, the more he loathed the prospect of becoming like his father and Simon, using women with little consideration or kindness in return. His father had been married four times and Simon three so far. In addition, they’d both taken advantage of the maidservants, always bringing a different one to bed whether she was willing or not. He’d once witnessed Simon accost a maidservant in a hallway, leaving her crumpled on the floor and crying afterward.

Nicholas had vowed he’d never force himself upon a maiden. He hadn’t needed to. The fairer sex had always been more than agreeable to being with him, and he’d never been without a woman during the years he’d been quartered in London. After he’d met Jane during one of his missions to the coast, he’d revised his waywardness and stayed faithful to her. She’d been only sixteen, and he’d been willing to wait to marry her—had waited three long years.

They’d been on the cusp of their wedding when the French had attacked Rye...

He lay back on the ground and closed his eyes at the grievous memories. All that had happened didn’t consume and torture him the way it had in the days following the death and destruction. But after losing Jane, he hadn’t wanted anyone else, in spite of Simon’s efforts to form financially beneficial unions for him.

Maybe with the grief of her loss fading into the past, his desires were reawakening. Now he was feeling needs he hadn’tin years. Needs he’d been denying. But how much longer could he hold off?

If he survived this attempt on his life, should he take a wife?

He expelled a taut breath, as if that could somehow expel the tension in his body from the encounter with Sybil. She wasn’t someone he could allow himself to be attracted to.

If he had another encounter with his angel, he’d think of her and treat her like a sister and nothing more for the few brief moments she was with him. He was strong. He could do it.

At the clang of a door and the call of voices, he returned to the same position as earlier, forcing himself to relax and pretend he was unconscious. He didn’t relish the prospect of being soaked with cold water, but if doing so extended his life, then he had no choice.

He had to endure for as long as possible and keep hoping for a miracle.

~ 10 ~

Sybil awoke with a crickin her neck and a pounding in her temples.

She opened her eyes to blackness. Where was she and what had happened?

For a moment, she could only blink, trying to sort her way through the fog in her head.

“No,” came a man’s voice nearby. “We’ll be waiting until the lord returns.”

“But if we haven’t succeeded in waking Sir Nicholas, the lord will whip us instead.”

“No sense in rousing him only to have him nod off again.”

Sybil sat forward with a start, the events of the past couple of days rewinding and then flashing forward at double speed. Finding the test tube with a droplet of holy water. Overlapping to the dungeon and meeting Nicholas—twice. Dawson’s hurtful rejection. The failed attempt to overlap again. Then the decision to drink the holy water and travel to the past.

Had she made it?

With a strange sense of anticipation, she quieted her thoughts and let her senses take over. Slight light was coming in the cracks of the square doorway of the closet. This door wasn’t solid. Instead, it had slats with several gaps.

The mustiness was back more powerful than ever, as was the dampness and chill in the air. A clawing near her boot told her she wasn’t alone in the closet. Perhaps a mouse or rat lived here.

She kicked at the vermin, and it scuttled away.

Her fingers were stiff around the hilt of the dagger she’d taken from the study. Thankfully, she still had the weapon. She set it aside, then wiggled her hands to bring feeling and warmth back to them. At the same time, she skimmed her fingers over the floor beside her. Her mobile wasn’t there.

Was she solidly in the past this time? If so, how long had she slept?

“I say we at least take him out to the whipping post.” A man spoke again, and this time, Sybil cocked her ear closer to the door to listen to the conversation. “We can leave him hanging there.”

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