To Burn (14 page)

Following the trail of water, she marched to the doorway of the frigidarium, the linen of her cloak slapping against her calves and the long end trailing in the water at her feet. It was empty. Where...?

A low, rippling laugh from the exercise room caused her to jerk her head in that direction. So he hid from her there, but that laugh... it was a woman's.

A vision of Dorcas and that leering madman of hers rushed upon her. They had used the exercise room, too....

A rush of pure, hot fury rose up from her belly and lodged itself in her throat, choking her. She could see his mouth on a slender, female throat, his strong hands on a firm bosom, his golden body lowering a woman's fragile form to the ground where he would hold her to him, covering her and sheltering her even as he pierced her, his large hands entangled in dark spilled hair as his mouth moved to devour a hard-tipped breast... his golden hair falling across her torso as his hands moved down... as his mouth... and his eyes.

His eyes would burn blue as he thrust into her.

Melania hurtled through that doorway like a launched spear and would have struck him with the same slicing force if she hadn't been so stunned by what she saw. She locked her knees to keep them from buckling. Oh, it was Wulfred, as she had known it would be, and with a female of her household, Ness, but what they were doing was a complete and disgusting flaunting of Roman tradition.

Ness was giving the oaf a massage!

Melania ignored the wash of relief that tumbled through her and focused instead on this latest affront to Roman ways.

"You are an ignorant fool, Saxon, to let her attend you. Only males serve males in the bath. Ness, you should have told him what error he was in when he forced you to this duty; never think that I will hold this against you. I know you have been taught better. Now go back to the kitchen, where you are more needed, while I speak to the Saxon."

Ness did not move. Worse, she looked very happy to rub her hands over the back of the Saxon, who had only a linen sheet draped negligently over his buttocks, and that slipping with each pass of her hands. In fact, the Saxon looked rather content himself. And they both all but ignored her.

Melania smiled coldly at Ness. "Do you have trouble understanding me, Ness? Is my Latin suddenly difficult for you to decipher because you have grown used to the Saxon tongue?" When Ness only smiled in feminine superiority and trailed her hands down the oaf's back to linger on his buttocks in a touch that was blatantly a caress, Melania walked to the table, ignoring the near-naked Saxon. "Very well," she said, “then I will use a language that you will have no trouble understanding.

"Go, Ness," Melania commanded in Saxon, her color high. "Go the kitchen. Stay there." Melania grabbed Ness by the arm and propelled her toward the door, her feet barely touching the tile floor.

Ness ran out of the baths, Wulfred apparently forgotten. If Ness had thought Melania powerless because the Saxons had come, she had just been shown how wrong she was.

Wulfred had said nothing during the exchange. Alone with Melania, he continued to say nothing.

Turning on his side and supporting his head with a hand, he watched Melania expectantly, an odd smile on his face. The sheet was held in place by miracle alone. Melania moved briskly away from the table where he lay in insolent arrogance.

"You dirtied my water," Melania began, tightening the sheet that sheathed her, wishing he would do the same to his own slack sheet. "If I didn't know you for a fool and a pig, I would think you did it intentionally."

Wulfred eased himself onto his back, the sheet slipping down past his hip joint, and crossed his arms under his head. The size of his muscles could only be described as repulsive; there could be no grace in such monumental bulk and bulging lack of smooth symmetry; her father had looked nothing like this man with his mass and his definition.

Romans did not look like this. Civilized men did not look like this. Only barbarians had such height, such breadth, such formidable dimensions, such blatant and unrefined power. Even his belly was ridged with muscle; his digestion must be crippled by such rigid bands.

"We have argued before about what you
know,"
he said easily. "I am too relaxed to argue with you now. You were right about one thing: this is far better than the river. I wonder why you have waited so long for a bath of your own."

"I had other things on my mind," she said, twisting the sheet tighter around her, in direct defiance of his casual disregard for his own covering.

"And now?" He slid his glance sideways, amused as he watched her battle with her sheet.

"And now the water is foul," she barked.

She would have struck him—certainly the urge was upon her—but he was so... so... unclothed. She kept her distance.

"I am but one man."

"But so very foul," she answered. "The cleaning of the rooms will have to begin again, and from the ground up. Tell me, exactly which rooms have you used? No, never mind. The smell will guide me."

He smiled, the cords in his throat moving in silent laughter. His hair was lighter, brighter, washed of its film of dirt and oil. Even the hair on his chest was golden, and the soft hair of his underarm was the color of clear amber. He was golden and yellow all over, mountains and valleys of muscle that shone with massage oil, long lashes of umber shielding such intensely blue eyes.

Eyes that were the solid blue of lapis, but so very much lighter and hotter and brighter. Saxon eyes. Uncultured. Unkempt. Uncivilized. And laughing at her.

"I amuse you?" she said coldly.

"In your Roman way, you do," he answered, rolling again onto his side. The sheet fell with silent grace to the floor, revealing layers of muscle, a long frame, golden hair: stark male nudity.

Her eyes covered the length of him, refusing the urgent commands of her thoughts. She had never seen such a body. She had never imagined that a male body could grow to such dimensions or that muscle could bulge so high. And she had certainly never seen a man's most private parts before. Even at that point he looked muscular, growing and hardening even as she watched. Melania dragged her eyes away from the stunning metamorphosis and looked at his face. He was smiling in male delight.

Understanding flared like a sudden fire.

He was baiting her, knowing how the sight of him repulsed her, unnerved her, distracted her. Knowing that this was but a new battle, she summoned the resolve to fight him as she had always fought him and as she would always fight him. He was Saxon; he would not defeat her.

"How very intelligent of you." At his questioning look, she added, "I wouldn't have thought that your kind could be amused by anything less than a murder or a rape or a fire. That you could find it in your limited range of thought and purpose to be amused by a conversation with your intellectual superior is a sign in your favor. Perhaps you have learned something in the time you have spent among Romans here."

"I have learned much in the past from Roman hands," he answered, his smile vanishing. She did not look at his body, so hypnotically large in its formation. She kept her eyes on his face; she had learned to tolerate his face.

"Bravo," she cheered falsely. "You do credit to your race. Someday you may be taken as an exhibit to Rome, to show the scholars that some Saxons are able to learn. You may change the history of your kind."

"It is the history of Rome that I will change," he said with suppressed rage.

"And so you begin in Rome's backwater; oh, yes, I know that Britannia is not the hub of Roman thought. Why attack the heart when you can slice a finger? Yes" —she smiled, arranging her sheet to fall about her like a royal robe— "you do show some signs of intellectual promise."

Melania left him there, naked and enraged, defeated in his purpose. Once she had arranged for clean water for her bath, it would be a perfect day.

* * *

In clean water, Melania enjoyed her bath. This time Dorcas attended her. Theras watched the entrance to keep all at bay while she was within. She knew Wulfred would not intrude; he had left the baths shortly after she had, in an obvious rage, and gone for a walk in the hills, the somber Cynric his only companion. Sighing and sinking lower into the water, Melania smiled in contentment. It had turned into a wonderful day.

She leaned forward against the coping of the pool so that Dorcas could scrub her back. She had already been to the tepidarium for a warm soak, followed by the caldarium to build up a healthy sweat and cleanse the pores, then back to the tepidarium for a rubbing with soap, which Dorcas was doing now. Glorious. Even remembering the hairy oaf in his nakedness could not destroy her victorious mood.

"You have lost much weight, Melania," Dorcas noted. "Your breasts have lost some of their fullness."

Melania shrugged. "The men of Rome favor small-breasted women."

"There are no Roman men near. Do you think Saxon men share the same preference?"

Melania glanced over her shoulder.

"Why should I care what Saxon men favor? A wolf would be their preferred mate, I should think. Or a sow."

"They do prefer women," Dorcas said gently in reproof.

"Excuse my callousness, Dorcas," Melania said softly, and turned to face her. "I had forgotten that you couple with them."

"I do not couple with
them.
Just one: Cenred," Dorcas said, blushing and dropping her head.

"If you are not displeased, then I will not make trouble over it, but have a care, Dorcas. The Saxons are little better than animals. I would not have you mauled,"

Dorcas seemed on the verge of saying more, but Melania rose from the water and waited for the cloth to be draped around her. They walked carefully on the stone-and-tile floor to the frigidarium. Melania dropped the cloth and stepped into the cold-water pool, washing the last remnants of soap from her body. The icy water made her catch her breath. It was no pleasure to linger in this pool.

Rising again, she stepped out and walked quickly to the exercise room for her massage. Dorcas rubbed her briskly with a woolen cloth and then laid it aside, ready to begin kneading Melania's muscles. Melania groaned in contentment as Dorcas's fingers pressed against the tight muscles of her shoulders. Why had she waited so long for this?

"They are not such animals," Dorcas said with some hesitation; servants did not begin conversations, but things at the villa had changed since the coming of the Saxons. Thinking of Cenred and his perpetual grin, she blushed. "Their ways are different, but they can be kind, even thoughtful...."

Melania sighed in weary concern. "He is using you, Dorcas, and you are allowing it to make your way easier," Melania said bluntly. She did not want Dorcas hurt when this dream she had constructed shattered. "If you make more of it in your mind, you will only add to the hurt he has brought you."

Dorcas manipulated the disks of Melania's spine gently for some time before she said, "I will not dispute what you say, but have you considered that you could use the same method to protect yourself?" When Melania wrenched her head around to glare at Dorcas, the girl rushed to explain. "It is just that Wulfred shows signs of being attracted to you..."

"Yes, he is very attracted to the idea of killing me."

"He spends so much time with you, he truly seems intrigued by you, and his looks are often so heated, even intense."

"Murderous," Melania said, flopping down on her stomach again and pillowing her head on her arms.

"Why not use his attraction to encourage him into treating you more kindly? I worry for you, Melania. He is a man who has much anger in him and it all seems to be directed at you," she finished awkwardly.

Melania rolled over so that Dorcas could massage the large muscles of her thighs. She tried to answer patiently; truly, they no longer seemed so much servant and mistress as sisters from a civilized world trying to survive in a barbarian wilderness.

"Dorcas, I am already as pampered as a cat. He prohibits hard labor, watches what I eat, and feeds me only the best of the table; only his constant company clouds my days. I certainly do not want to encourage him to get any closer to me than he already is. What would I gain from feeding this attraction for me that you tell me he already has? And let me hasten to say that I do not see it at all. He can hardly stand the sight of me, and I return the feeling."

"You have been very sheltered here," Dorcas said. "I think you do not understand what you are seeing in him."

"I know bloodlust when I see it. He wants me dead, after he has seen me grovel, of course."

"What he feels for you is strong, that is true, but it was a Roman whom he sought to kill. You have become more to him than that. You are a person now, one he knows..."

"With that feeble mind?"

"...and one whom he has come to respect."

"As well he should."

"He has seen that you are more than just a Roman. Can't you see that he is more than just a Saxon?" Dorcas said, urgent in her appeal.

"I can see that he is a Saxon pig." Melania snorted. When Dorcas looked at her with pitiful appeal, Melania reasoned, "And again I say, to what purpose? Could my life here be any easier? Why should I dupe the fool into believing that I return whatever attraction you say he feels for me?"

Dorcas said nothing. She kept her dark head lowered and vigorously rubbed the muscles of Melania's right calf. Melania propped herself up on her elbows and asked again, "Well?"

"I had thought that you might feel some softer emotion toward him, in time. He is not such a—"

"Ha!"
Melania interrupted with a burst of victorious laughter. "Give up your schemes, Dorcas. I will not soften toward the Saxon oaf. If your Saxon brings you some comfort in this disaster, take your comfort with no censure from me. But do not expect the same of me. The Saxon is my enemy. I have not forgotten it. Neither has he."

Dorcas said nothing further on the subject, for which Melania was grateful. Cuddle up to the Saxon oaf? Where was such insanity born? No matter that Dorcas thought her an innocent in such things; she knew enough to know that all such a plan would get her was a large and hairy body pressing her down on her cot and crushing the wind out of her. What victory there? Oh, he would have fun enough; it would be an added victory for him, but what gain for her?