Sweet Enchantress by Parris Afton Bonds Read Free Book Online Page A

signet ring proclaimed the missive hers. How it had been intercepted, she did not know. Defiantly, she stared up into the Englishman’s flawed face.
    "Such encoura gement of rebellion is an act of treason against His Majesty King Edward III of England and Duke of Aquitaine.” She watched the indentation of his upper lip flatten into a harsh smile. "I do not imagine I need remind you of the penalty for treason, mistress.”
    She couldn ’t repress a shudder at the merciless glint in his eyes.
    "Perhaps I can enliven your imagination,” he said. "Our Duke of Aquitaine's grandfather, King Edward I, shut a Scots countess in an open cage which he suspended from the city walls. Her humiliation was likely as horrible as her death, weeks later, when birds of prey began picking at the rotting flesh of the weakened woman.”
    "You are a cold-blooded bastard!”
    His face darkened, and his hand raised, as if to strike her, and it was perhaps only her missive he held that saved her that debasement. He cast the missive into the fire. "Who is this Denys Bontemps?” he demanded.
    "Denys is innocent of any plot.”
    "Who is he, I asked.”
    "A friend from childhood. The son of a stonecutter.”
    He leaned down to pick up Arthur again, twining in and out between his leather boots. Stroking its fur with gentle hands, he said, "I do not slay damosels, mistress, but be forewarned of the consequences. I shall take my reprisal on a male of your household one at a time for any further rebellious act of yours.”
    Baldwyn waited until the soldier had taken his leave, then warned, “ As the peasant says, my lady, ‘Let not the hen crow before the rooster.' I shall sleep outside your doorway from this time on.”
    When he, too, ha d departed, she crossed to the polished silver mirror. She half expected to find a welt where the Englishman’s fingers had touched her cheek, as though the heat of his fury had branded her. She rubbed the back of her fingers across the spot, reflectively.
    For the first time in years she thought of one of the manuscripts stored in her library. The precisely illuminated work was one of several that Baldwyn had fled with from the Templar Preceptory before King Philip the Fair had raided their commandery. Many of the works there were said to have been brought from the far lands of the East to the Kingdom of Jerusalem by the Arabs and from Jerusalem the Templars had then brought them to Paris.
    This particular one spoke of a particular practice of Hinduism, called Tantrism, where enlightenment was sought through profound experience of sensual love "in which each was both.”
    Even more than the concept, she had been intrigued by the Hindu goddess depicted not as a holy virgin but in a sensual embrace of stunning beaut y. A remarkable contrast to the cult of the Virgin Mary, which the famed Abelard had claimed despised that part of a woman from which sons of men were born.
    With a ha rshly indrawn breath, she admitted to her reflected image her deepest fear that she possessed a perilous connection with this English soldier who venerated such a cult. It was no accident that he, out of the dozens of the English king's military leaders, was ordered to take Montlimoux.
     
     
    A large hand clamped on Iolande's stooped shoulder, and she cried out.
    " ’Tis only I, old woman,” Baldwyn said.
    "Don ’t sneak upon me like that, leper!” The contemptuous form of address was her longstanding way of keeping the Knight Templar at a distance.
    Ah, but he had been such a handsome gallant when first he had ridden into Montlimoux's courtyard. And she had never been a beauty. Her hooded eyes appraised his ravaged face, mercifully shadowed because of the high, narrow windows in this part o f the chateau. Here, outside the buttery, he was once again young and magnificent and handsome.
    But da ydreams had never been her weakness. Had she even been a beauty, Baldwyn de Rainbaut, best lance of the Templars, had foresworn marriage, at