To Burn (33 page)

"What you ask of me," she whispered, gazing into his dark eyes, "he would not ask of me. Wulfred would not ask me to betray my own honor on any point."

Marcus opened his mouth to argue, and she knew what he would say. He would speak again of love, but she had the answer to that as well.

"Marcus" —she smiled tremulously— "he would not ask me to betray you."

It was the truth. He could read it in her eyes, and it put an end to their battle. They stood apart, in all ways separated, truly, for the first time. Only their love for each other remained, and it had been sorely bruised in this contest. But it was without condemnation that he looked at her, and she felt her eyes fill with tears at the loss she read on his face.

"You will be safe?" he asked, his voice hoarse with unshed tears.

She thought of Wulfred, his strength and defense of her against even his friends.

"I will be safe; give no thought to that. But you must travel west, as far west as there is to go. Go to a place where there are no Saxons. Go to a place of peace."

"I don't think there is any peace left on this earth, Melania. There is war everywhere."

"Not for you," she said with the force of prophecy. "You will find your place. And you will find peace. But it is not here."

"No," he murmured, kissing her forehead, "it is not here."

The dawn brightened into a misty morning. The birds were active and the ground moist; it was a good day for riding. And he had so very far to go.

"I will never forget you, Marcus," she cried softly. "I will love you always. Know that. Know that," she repeated desperately. She had so little to give him. "I love you," she whispered on a sob.

Marcus squeezed her once more and then picked up the bundle and walked away, leading Optio. Walked away from Melania. Walked away from the life he had known and the life he should have had, and walked toward the unknown and unfamiliar.

Melania watched him until he was lost in the mist. He did not look back. She thought him wise not to do so. Turning, the mist cool against her wet cheeks, she looked up into the twisted branches of an old apple tree. It would produce no more. There was no more life in its branches; the energy had been leached out of it through season upon season. Feeling like an old woman, Melania walked with a heavy step back down to the villa.

Chapter 24

She didn't hurry. Each step carried them farther apart, and she found herself dreading each step. She would never see Marcus again; life was too uncertain and the distances too far in the hazardous world the Saxons had invented for them. She had just said good-bye to someone she had loved longer than memory, and she would never see him again.

Her heart struggled to beat.

Her eyes wept without permission.

Her mind told her with each breath that she had done the right thing. Made the right choice.

But her heart wept tears of blood, regardless.

As slowly as she moved, the villa appeared before her anyway. Home. She lived in a home full of strangers. Except for Wulfred. Wulfred she trusted in the way she trusted that a boat would float and that wood would burn.

He waited for her in the courtyard, looking somewhat grim. In fact, he wore much the same expression as when she had first seen him, peering down at her lying on the floor of the library, gasping for cool air. He could not be irritated because she had arisen and left their chamber before he did; he had done the same to her the day before. And she had not been pleased. Still, she had certainly not looked as solemn and forbidding as he did now.

"You return," he said, glaring down at her.

"Of course."

He nodded, taking her by the arm and leading her to the protection of the portico. It had begun to mist and the droplets hung heavily in the air before descending to quietly wet the ground.

"Did you doubt it?" she asked.

"Should I?" he said swiftly, leading her to the antechamber of the library.

The antechamber, where the Chi-Rho symbol of Christ had been painstakingly pieced into the tile floor in the time of her grandfather, was used as her place of worship. It was a closet in which to withdraw and seek the will of God. She prayed there daily, needing the solace of knowing that God was still at work in the world more with each day the Saxons stayed. What reason would Wulfred have to drag her there now? Did he want to pray with her? It hardly seemed likely.

Theras stood in the small room. Waiting? Dorcas and Ceolmund were suddenly at her back. Melania turned to give Dorcas a searching glance, was met with an emotion-filled stare that she could not decipher, and turned again to Theras, her eyes full of questions.

"Shall we join in prayer together?" she said to no one and everyone. "I would enjoy the companionship, but didn't think you especially pious, Wulfred. Have you developed an interest in the one true God since residing among the civilized saved?"

Wulfred hardly spared her a glance, the oaf, but said to Theras, "Is anything else required?"

"Just her freely given vow before witnesses."

"Then all rests on you, Melania," Wulfred said, turning to give her his attention.

"I'm not surprised, but what, exactly, do you need from me?"

"Your vow," he said, his blue eyes piercing and strangely hot. "Your freely given pledge to be my wife."

She could only stare in shock. And horror.

"I have asked Theras," he continued, ignoring her insulting response, "about the marriage ritual for Romans. He told me that you are a follower of Jesus the Christ. I am prepared to partake of any ceremony that would please you."

How carefully he said the words. How carefully had he chosen them? He knew, he had to know, that a ceremony that invoked the presence and the power of the Christ would bind her to him securely. Of course he knew. He was no fool. His rituals might not bind her; hers would.

Still, his motives could have been more generous than she'd suspected initially. He could just want her to have a ceremony that would have meaning for her, since he had all but tricked her into a Saxon marriage. Why prevaricate? He had most definitely tricked her into marriage. It was thoughtful of him to arrange for a marriage ceremony that would conform to her own beliefs.

Thoughtful? How stupidly sentimental she was becoming; he was plainly no fool. It would be best to look away from those unnatural and melting eyes while she thought this through.

If she spoke her vow, in Christus, then she would be bound by her own word to be a true wife to him.

He knew that.

Melania looked at Theras for some hint of his feelings on this turn of events. Theras's face was carefully blank. As it should be. This was her decision, and she would be the one who had to live with it.

Marcus would not share in this; he would be unaffected. She need not consider him. Even now he moved relentlessly west, away from her.

Marcus was gone. Permanently.

Had she not already decided where her future lay?

Melania looked again at Wulfred. He had said nothing to rush her or sway her. He had not attempted to bully her, though little good it would have done him. He understood that her answer would be her own and that she would hold to it. He understood much about her.

He understood much.

He accepted much.

She had told Marcus truly when she had said that Wulfred had never scolded her for her temper or her passion or her rages of feeling. It was the first time in her life any man had treated her so. Her father, for all that she loved him, had not been so tolerant of her volatility, and she had felt a buried sense of failure that she could not be more "Roman" in her deportment. She felt no such failure with Wulfred. In Wulfred's eyes, she could not possibly be more Roman than she was.

He stood formidable and silent and huge. He was a man who could force her to anything, or so he claimed, but he was not forcing her to do this. There was a freedom in her relationship with him that she had experienced with no one else, not even with Marcus.

Marcus had tried to bully her. Marcus, more often, had tried to gently manipulate her. Marcus had even lost his temper with her. Not so Wulfred. Wulfred, the savage barbarian, never lost control.

With him she could be exactly who she was. What greater freedom was there?

Facing him, the Chi-Rho beneath her feet, she took one large golden hand in hers.

"I will be bound to you as wife and I will serve you truly until my death. Or until I am cast off."

Wulfred did not smile; had he been so certain of her decision?
Oaf.
He took her hand in his, mimicking her, and said, "A Roman may abandon a wife when he tires of her, but a Saxon takes a wife for life. I will not cast you off, Melania." The planes of his face were hard in the subtle light of the room but his eyes burned hot. She knew the look of him and was not afraid. "I will protect you from harm and provide for your needs."

He looked at Theras, silently asking if there was more to this ceremony of Christ.

Theras asked, "Will you, Melania, respect your husband?"

Melania looked up into Wulfred's hard warrior's face, her hand in his. He was an ox of a man: big and powerful and flatly magnificent. And, though she would lick fire before admitting it to him, he was wondrously handsome. She had never seen anyone like him in all her life; even the Saxons who now roamed her home could not challenge him.

But she was not such a fool to bind herself to a face. No, against all she had ever been told, this Saxon had a mind. A keen and observant mind that was capable of intelligent deduction and cool reasoning. He also had remarkable control of his temper. He was not the unthinking brute she had believed him to be, though there was no reason to tell him of her change of attitude. He was arrogant enough already.

"I do respect him," she said, "and I will."

For once, she thought she saw surprise on his face, but he wiped it clean so soon that she was not certain.

"Will you, Wulfred," Theras continued, "love your wife?"

Wulfred looked down at Melania, studying her, his face still while his eyes were full of turmoil. They had never spoken of love. It was hatred and a desire for revenge that they shared, not love. It had never been love. He was a man who spoke what was in his heart and was steadfast in his vows; if he loved her, he would have spoken of it. Now he was called to speak a vow of love to her, and she did not know what he would say. Her own heart trembled as she watched his eyes, afraid of what he would say. Afraid of what he could not, in honesty, say.

"Yes," he said, his voice a low rumble, "I will love her."

"Then you are one, in the eyes of the Christ and the Father and the Spirit," Theras pronounced solemnly. "May God bless you in your oneness."

Melania felt Wulfred's words roll through her as her mind tried to cling to his words. It was hopeless. She knew only stunned shock; her mind could not grasp the meaning behind his words. He had vowed to love her. Was it possible? Could all the turbulence and the anger they had shared have led them to love? She looked up at him, her eyes wide and measuring, trying to read him as she read the scrolls in her father's library. But he was not to be read.

For the first time that day, Wulfred smiled fully, his teeth white and gleaming. She pushed away the hot brand his words had touched upon her heart and smiled at him in answer. Later she would ponder his vow of love.

"You should smile, Saxon," she said, letting her hand rest in his, "for you have joined your life to mine today."

"I joined my life to yours by Saxon ritual, little snake," he answered, his smile looking suddenly sharp. "I smile because, by your own will and by your own vow, you have joined your life to mine." He released her hand and gripped her hard by her shoulders, casting off his smile in the doing. "Now," he said. "Who had his arms around you in the orchard this dawn?"

Chapter 25

He could see the confusion in her eyes and gloated in it. So she believed in the mewlings of her little ceremony and believed that he wanted to please her.
Arrogant Roman.
He had tricked her for a second time into giving her vow.
Stupidly arrogant, ridiculously proud woman. Roman woman.
How could he have forgotten that she was Roman and therefore deceitful? Hensa was right: he had been a fool to bind himself by Saxon law to a Roman. She was the enemy, as she always had been.