To Love Again (46 page)

“No woman is worth death, Wulf Ironfist,” the man called Greek said, and he faded into the darkness.

“Are you really the most exclusive whore in Byzantium, Cailin Drusus?” Wulf asked her solemnly.

“No,” she said softly, “but you had best treat me as if I were. Your host is my mortal enemy.”

“Can you walk, or is your ankle seriously injured?”

“I twisted it when I fell from the tree,” she answered, “but it is not broken. Nonetheless, you will have to carry me, and I will struggle to escape you. Justin Gabras would think it odd if I did not.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“We will talk when we have found a private spot. Now quickly! Pick me up before someone else comes along and wonders why we are not already engaged in passion’s battle.”

He came to stand directly in front of her and reached out to touch her face. “Antonia said you were dead, and our child, too.”

“I suspected she might have told you that,” Cailin answered.

“I want to know what happened,” he said.

“Wulf!
Please
!” she pleaded with him. “Not now! Gabras will soon come after us. He is a terrible and dangerous man.”

There were so many questions swirling about in Wulf’s head. How was it she was alive? And here in Byzantium? But he saw the genuine look of fear in her eyes. Reaching out, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. She immediately began to beat at him with her little fists as he carried her through the garden and back to where the others waited.

“Put me down! Put me down, you great brute!” Cailin shrieked. The blood was going to her head and making her dizzy.

“So, our other little rabbit has been caught at last,” she heard Gabras say, and then he came into her line of vision. “You have given us all quite a chase, my dear. Where was she?”

“In a tree,” the Saxon answered. “I wouldn’t have found her at all, but the branch upon which she was perched gave way.”

“I want to see you take her,” Justin Gabras said. “Here.
Now
!” A goblet of wine was clutched in his hand.

“My public performances are only in the ring,” Wulf Ironfist said quietly.

“I want to see this woman humiliated,” Gabras persisted.

He is dangerous, Wulf thought, and so he replied, “By morning I will have taken this woman in every way possible, and in some ways you have never even considered, my lord. If she is not dead, then she will be incapable of even crawling from the room where we will lie this night.” He turned to Jovian Maxima. “I want a room with no windows so none may be disturbed by her cries. It is to be furnished with a good mattress, and I will want wine. Also a dog whip. Women frequently need to be schooled in their duties, and this woman is too free, I can tell. It is obvious to me she does not know her place,
but she will learn it!
We Saxons like our females docile, and subservient.”

“By the gods!” Justin Gabras said, a genuine smile lighting his handsome features, “you are a man after my own heart. Give him what he wants, Jovian Maxima! The wench is in good hands.”

A few moments later they were escorted to the same room where Cailin and Casia had earlier been imprisoned. Now, however, the room was newly furnished with a large, comfortable bed upon a dais, several low tables, a pitcher of wine and two goblets, two oil lamps burning sweet-scented oil, a tall floor lamp, and, set at the foot of the mattress, the whip that Wulf had requested.

Jovian, who had accompanied them personally, looked nervously at it, and Wulf grinned at him wickedly.

“Close the door,” the Saxon said softly. “I wish to speak with you.”

Jovian complied with the Saxon’s request, but he looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“Just tell Gabras that I threatened you if we were not granted absolute privacy,” Wulf told the man.

“What is it you want of me, gladiator?” Jovian asked him.

“Tell me the nature of the danger Cailin Drusus faces from Justin Gabras,” Wulf demanded.

“He will use what has happened, what will happen this
night, to discredit the lady Cailin before the imperial court and the patriarch, who will then forbid her marriage to General Flavius Aspar. This is what Gabras seeks. The rest the lady Cailin must tell you herself, if you are of a mind to listen to her.”

“He is Wulf Ironfist, my husband,” Cailin said quietly.

“The gods he is!” Jovian Maxima looked thunderstruck, and then he said, “This is the truth, my lady?”

“That is why I came, Jovian,” she admitted. “When I saw him today in the ring, I was not certain. I had to be certain before I pledged my faith to Aspar. Wulf Ironfist and I must speak together now, and then I must remain in this room till the morning. When the dawn comes, however, I beg you to help me return to Villa Mare. And help Casia as well. If we are clever, we can keep this from Prince Basilicus. She loves him, you know.”

Jovian nodded. “Aye, and the prince loves Casia even as she loves him, but he cannot say it to her. He told me once when he was in his cups. When this night is over, I will tell her. It will give her comfort, I think. Now I must leave you both else Gabras become overly suspicious of why I linger here.”

The door closed behind Jovian, and Wulf set the wooden bar into place, which would protect their privacy. Cailin’s heart was beating very quickly.
It was really Wulf!
With shaking hands she poured two goblets of wine, sipping nervously at hers as he turned back to her and took up his own goblet.

He drained it swiftly and said bluntly, “So you are to be married. You have the look of a woman who has prospered, and one who is well-loved.”

“And you who loved me for my lands left those lands quickly enough. You told me you had tired of fighting, but perhaps a gladiator earns more coin, and certainly he has better privileges than a mere soldier in the legions,” Cailin countered. She had been mad to come, and madder still to believe there was anything left between them.

“How came you to Byzantium?” he asked her.

“In the hold of a slave galley out of Massilia, Wulf Ironfist,”
Cailin said harshly. “I was walked the length of Gaul to get there. Before that my time was spent in a drugged state in a slave pen in Londinium.” She gulped at her wine. “I believe our child lives, but what Antonia did with it, I cannot say. Were you even interested enough to find out?”

“She said that both you and the child had perished in the ordeal of childbirth,” he defended himself, and then went on to tell her of what had transpired when he had gone to Antonia’s villa to bring her home.

“What of our bodies?” Cailin said angrily. “Did you not even ask to see our bodies?”

“She said she had cremated you both, and even gave me a container of ashes. I interred them with your family,” he finished helplessly. “I thought you would want it that way.”

The macabre humor of it struck Cailin, and she laughed. “I suspect what you interred was a container of wood, or charcoal ashes,” she said, draining her cup and pouring herself more wine.

“How is it that you know Jovian Maxima?” he suddenly demanded.

“Because he bought me in the slave marketplace, and brought me here,” she told him coolly. “Are you certain you wish to know more?”

She was not the same person, he realized, but then how could she be? He nodded slowly, then listened, his face alternating between anger, pain, and sympathy, as she told her tale. When she had finished, he was silent for a long moment, and then said, “Will we allow Antonia Porcius to destroy the happiness we had, Cailin Drusus?”

“Ohh, Wulf,” she replied, “so much time has passed for us. I thought you would stay with the lands that were my family’s. I believed you would have taken another wife by now, and had another child of your loins. How could I have ever believed that we would meet again here in Byzantium, or anywhere on this earth?” She sighed, and lowered her head to hide the tears that had sprung into her eyes from nowhere, it seemed.

“So you went on with your life?” he asked her, almost bitterly.

“What else was I to do?” she cried to him. “Aspar rescued me from this silken Hades, and freed me. He sheltered me, and loved me. He has offered me the protection of his name despite incredible odds. I have learned to love him, Wulf Ironfist!”

“And have you forgotten the love that we shared, Cailin Drusus?” he demanded fiercely. Reaching out, he pulled her roughly into his arms. “Have you forgotten what it once was like between us, lambkin?” His lips gently touched her brow. “When Antonia told me you and the child were dead, I was devastated. I could not believe it, and then she was handing me that damned container of ashes. I returned to our hall and buried them. I tried to go on with my life, but you were everywhere. Your very essence permeated the hall, the lands! And without you there was nothing. None of it meant anything to me without you, Cailin. One morning I awoke. I took my helmet, my shield, and my sword, and I left. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew that I must get away from your memory. I wandered the face of Gaul into Italy. In Capua I met some gladiators at a tavern. I enrolled in the school there, and once I began to fight, I quickly became a champion. I had no fear of death, you see. That fear is a gladiator’s greatest enemy, but I did not feel it. Why should I? What did I have to lose that I had not already lost except my life, which was now worthless to me.”

“And did you escape my memory in your combats, in a wine jug, or in the arms of other women, Wulf Ironfist?” she asked him.

“You have been ever with me, Cailin Drusus. In my thoughts and in my heart, lambkin. I could not escape you, I fear.” He held her close, breathing in her scent, rubbing his cheek against her head.

The stone that her heart had become when she saw him again began to crumble. “What do you want of me, Wulf?” she asked him softly.

“We have found one another, my sweet lambkin,” he told her. “Could we not begin again? The gods have reunited us.”

“To what purpose, I wonder?” she answered.

He tilted her face up to his, and his mouth slowly closed over hers. His lips were warm, and so very soft, and as the kiss deepened, Cailin’s heart almost broke in two. She still loved him! Worse. She loved Aspar, too! What was she to do? Unable to help herself, she let her arms slip up and about his neck.

“I no longer know what is right, or what is wrong,” she said helplessly. “Ohh, cease, Wulf! I cannot think.”

“Do not!” he said. “Tell me you do not love me, Cailin Drusus, and I will help you to escape Villa Maxima now. I will leave Constantinople, and you will never see me again. Perhaps it would be better that way. Our child is lost to us, and the life you lead here in Byzantium is a better life for you. Civilization suits you, lambkin. You know the rough destiny facing us back in Britain.” Yet despite his words, he held her close, as if he could not bear to let her go.

Cailin was silent for what seemed an eternity, and then she said, “The child might yet live, Wulf. I somehow feel it does. What kind of parents are we that we do not even seek to find our child?”

“What of this Flavius Aspar? The man you are to wed?” he asked. “Is there not enough between you that you would remain here with him?”

“There is much between us,” she replied quietly. “More than you can possibly know. I give up much to return to Britain with you, Wulf Ironfist; but there is much waiting for us in Britain. There are our lands, which I have no doubt Antonia has appropriated once more; and there is the hope of finding our child. The land has a certain meaning for me. Aspar’s love, however, far outweighs it. It is our child that tips the balance of the scales in your favor.

“Once, and it seems so long ago now, we pledged ourselves to each other in wedlock. Our marriage would not be recognized by those in power here in Byzantium should I choose Aspar over you. It was not celebrated within their
church. But the vows we made in our own land are sacred, and I will not deny them now that I know you live. I am a Drusus Corinium, and we are raised to honor our promises not simply when they are convenient, but always.”

“I am not a duty to be done,” he said, offended.

Cailin heard his tone. She smiled up at him. “No, Wulf Ironfist, you are not a duty, but you are my husband unless you choose here and now to renounce the vows we made to one another in my grandfather’s hall that autumn night. Remember before you speak, however, that in denying me, you deny our lost child to us as well.”

“You are certain of what you are saying, lambkin?” he asked.

“No, I am not, Wulf Ironfist,” she told him candidly. “Aspar has been good to me. I love him, and I will hurt him when I leave him; but I love you also, it would seem, and there is our child.”

“What if we cannot find it?” he questioned.

“Then there will be others,” she said softly.

“Cailin,” he whispered, “I want to love you as we once loved.”

“It is expected of us,” she replied, “is it not? The door is barred, and they will leave us in peace until the morning, but you must take that short tunic off, Wulf Ironfist. The gods! It leaves little to the imagination, and I prefer you without it.”

Now they both stood naked in the flickering light of the lamps. Cailin filled her eyes with him. She had forgotten much, but now memory surged strongly through her. Reaching out, she touched a crescent-shaped scar on his chest, just above his left breast. “This is new,” she said.

“I got it at the school in Capua,” he told her, and then held out his right arm to her, “and this one at the spring games in Ravenna this past year. I was blocking a net man, and thinking he had me, he already had his dagger out. He died well, as I remember.”

Cailin leaned forward and kissed the scar upon his arm. “You must never go into the ring again, Wulf. I lost you once, but I will not lose you again!”

“There is no safe place,” he told her. “There is always danger lurking somewhere, my beloved.” Then his two big hands cupped her face and he pressed kisses on her lips, her eyes, her cheeks. Her skin was so soft. She murmured low, her head falling back, her white throat straining. He licked hotly at the column of perfumed flesh, his lips lingering at the base of her neck, feeling the beating pulse beneath. “I love you, lambkin,” he murmured. “I always have.”