Devour the Moon

A quiet fury built within her as he picked up his long waistcoat and began to wring it too. He worked up and down its sleeves, his hands tightening around it, squeezing with deliberate strength to draw the water out. His forearms tensed and relaxed like the throbbing vein in her neck, and with each squeeze, his full lips parted as if he were on the verge of grunting.

It was a moment before she realized she was biting her lip. She crushed her mouth into a line and chose to pretend instead that she hadn't been biting anything.

He threw the waistcoat to the bank with a final, deep sigh. He began to unbutton his dress shirt. Rochelle's hands slowed as she wrung out the bottom of her own dress.

The white linen untucked from his waist, the rolled sleeves slipping loose to hang around his hands. He undid the sword sheathed on his belt and tossed it to the ground.

A lump formed in her throat.

His shirt opened, revealing more of his thick chest, and her knees squeezed together as she took him in.

His big hands tugged free the last of the buttons, and he turned his back to her. The shirt slipped off his broad shoulders, and he let out a guttural noise as he pulled his burned arm through the sleeve. On his back, knotted muscles twitched and rolled, and she had never seen something so sinful--so deliciously human.

She took pains to remind herself who he was. It had been he who had brought her here. He who had kidnapped her, who had threatened her, who had nearly killed her.

He turned back to face her, and she averted her eyes.

"Do you know your way home?" he asked.

She shook her head like a guilty little girl. She was unable to even look at him, lest he should see those most shameless parts of her.

"Good." He wrung his shirt. "Then you had best stay with me if you want to see your father again."

She scoffed. "I'll go nowhere with you."

His knuckles whitened, hands shaking around the dress shirt as his grip tightened. Then it relaxed. "You'll continue to run, will you? Even to your death?"

She said nothing.

"I make my word a bond, girl. I promised your father I would keep you safe, and I meant it."

She let out a poisoned laugh. "With kidnapping and threats?"

He put his fingers back in his mouth and whistled again.

"Take your chances if you wish. As I said last night, your father will obey me so long as he assumes you are well. When you die unnoticed in these woods, he will still do as he's told for some time."

He whistled a third time.

Heavy hoof falls neared. Alexandre's buckskin snorted, shaking her head as it came close. The horse brushed up next to Alexandre, ears twitching as Alexandre patted her neck and laid the dress shirt over the horse's hindquarters.

"My father cares not," she said as dispassionately as she could. "Keeping me hostage won't make him more likely to listen to you."

He chuckled and picked up his waistcoat, laying it atop the dress shirt. "If your father will not obey me, then I will have no use for him. Like you, his breath is drawn at my pleasure, and if my life should become too displeasurable, I will take it from him as easily as I took you."

More threats. That's all he was. Words. The pastel of a man.

"How are you this way?" she asked.

"The world is lie stacked on lie," he muttered. "I am what I am, but I make no excuses for it." He picked up the sheathed sword and began fastening the belt around his waist. "Your father would go to no lesser ends were he in my position, whether he would admit it or not."

"He would never!"

He laughed. "Oh, to wade through the puddle of your mind."

"How can you say such things to me? How can you say it when you know less than even my name?"

"Names are for things worth remembering," he sneered, "and there's nothing worth remembering about you."

She jumped to her feet, pushing closer. Her finger came out. "When this is done, all I'll remember of you is the snap of the rope as you hang."

He turned on her. His eyes took on an inhuman intensity and flicked between her pupils. "Oh, then I must make these last days truly debauched." His face seethed. His naked chest glistened, marble-hard and damp within her reach. He stepped forward and his presence pushed her back.

"You won't cow me." She repressed the tremble in her voice. "Not now that I see you how you are."

"And tell me, how is that?" He stepped again, and she fell back still.

"You're a little boy. A little boy who howls and calls himself wolf. You may be rough with your words, but I have known rough boys all my life, and you are nothing but bark."

"Then let me show you bite." He stepped and stepped and stepped again towards her, driving her back until she was against the river's edge.

She fought back the tide of fear that swirled inside of her, her eyes locked hatefully on him even as he stared back with equal disdain.

Finally, his jaw flexed, and he backed away.

The breath hissed out of her, and she felt just how warm her cheeks had become. Her vision blurred with angry tears, and she turned, wiping her eyes before he could see.

After a moment, he cleared his throat. "You will ride first. To the village, at least."

Rochelle bent and picked up her shoes. She was too tired to run anymore, and who knew what fate could befall her even if she made it to the nearest village? Barefoot, she took the horse in sidesaddle, Alexandre watching beneath her. His torso was still bare as he took the reins in his hands, and he walked them back to the road.

The sun had risen, and the light poked through in jagged slants.

A part of her was guilty as they clopped forward--guilty as if she had been the one who had overstepped. It seemed laughable that she should feel guilty in the least after having been kidnapped and chased all night. Yet it persisted. He was a cruel man of vexing discontent, brandishing a sword one moment, then consoling her gently. She had known men in her life who were immoral and savage, but they had always been much easier to disregard.

Her eldest brother, Tomas, was one such man. He had a love of drink and women and vulgarities, and the day he'd last mounted his horse at her father's house, he had seen no tears from her. She loved him, of course, as one must a brother.

Not because he deserved it, but because he understood their shared histories. All those summers they had played together, the pears he had stolen from the market to eat with her, the angels they had made in the dirty Strasbourg snow. Tomas had always had a temper and a propensity for violence, but a childhood together had meant she knew him to be more than only that, too.

But Alexandre had no memories with her, no history. He was, by all she'd seen, a villain who possessed not even a spark of decent goodness.

So why could she not find it in herself to hate him as fully as he deserved? It was fear, she decided. It was a healthy impulse that told her to be afraid, to keep guard around mercurial men. Yes, it was fear alone that prevented her from hating him as he deserved.

Alexandre guided the horse onwards, the road meandering with a slack propensity through the tangled wood. His hair hung wet and loose past his ears, the curls she'd seen the night before washed away by the river. She stared at him as he led and noticed for the first time an uneven pink and white scar that cut across his back and shoulders. The inclination to ask how it had happened came over her, but she swallowed it. Her father would be the first to tell her that it was unseemly to ask people about their scars.

She hoped he was well, her father, and that he had made it to Dijon. Perhaps he was already using his new position to rally the marshalcy to come and save her. She couldn't help but smile at that. Wouldn't that be a sight? Her father riding in on some noble steed, rescuing her from the clutches of a madman. It was the sort of thing one might hear in a children's story, and it became comforting.

Her father had never seemed a gallant man. He was smarter than most, but he was disposed to talk before action, and if there were rescuing to be done, it seemed he would rather have someone do it for him.

Did that make him a coward? Because what was a man, if not his deeds, and what were her father's deeds if not deferred?

Alexandre was not a coward. She swallowed, looking at him as he sauntered on. He was a ruthless bastard, lacking in even the most decent of morals, but there was no doubting his daring. Of course, if his deeds defined him, then he made for a dark spot on mankind--and so maybe it was better if her father were a coward, that he should be unlike her captor in any way.

He looked back at her. The shade had kept her cool, but with one look, her skin turned hot.

Was she a coward?

It was not something she had considered in her life. When she was younger, her brothers would often pretend they were errant knights, and she a damsel. They were brave, striking sticks together as she watched. They had never called her craven, but brave was not a word they had ever called her either. She was like some small jewel to them, a thing to be fought for. And jewels could be many things--admirable and beautiful and valuable--but they were not brave.

But she was the one who had stolen the horse, the one who had ridden all night. She was the one who had raised up against the man who sought to possess her as if she were still that admirable, beautiful, valuable jewel. From the time she was a child, she had lived inside the lie that brave men would protect her, but where were they now?

Rochelle rubbed the top of the horse's head and stared at Alexandre. "What will happen to me?"

"That will depend on how you behave."

"And when will I be allowed to go home?"

"That will depend on how your father behaves."

She scoffed. "Why are you doing this? This is all so... I don't know what."

He looked back at her with a half-cocked smile that she might have otherwise liked to slap off his face.

"You've kidnapped me, and what for?" She shrugged. "My father is a provost marshal and not even set to be the most powerful man in Dijon. It's not as if he has the riches for ransom."

"Your father is responsible for presiding over the trials of many criminals. Criminals which my men are wont to be."

"What sort of criminals?"

"Murderers. Thieves. The hanged sort. Or worse, the sort that they march to Toulon on the Chain, that they might serve as slaves on the galleys."

Rochelle paused. "You don't think they deserve justice?"

"Is the law always just?"

"Are you?"

He shook his head but trudged on.

"So then, what? You'll keep me hostage until he frees your companions?"

"Just one companion." He looked over his big, round shoulder. "But, yes."

She groaned. Her eyes rolled back into her head. The days ahead would see her stuck with him, or at least around him. What a miserable experience that would be, forced to endure his hapless threats on and on. It was already exhausting and tiresome, and a few days more of it seemed utterly loathsome.

She groaned again, even more loudly, and turned up her hand. "If I must be your prisoner, then I demand you stop threatening me. I am bored by it. We both know you haven't it in you to hurt me, or my father."

He slowed, mulling over her words. He brought the reins in tighter to his chest and bade the horse to stop. Moving towards her, he surrounded her hanging legs with his body a wicked glint flashed in his eyes. "How do you think your father's position came to be vacant?"

"What?"

"Your father." He moved his hands up the saddle, grabbing the cantle with one hand and the horn with the other, trapping her within his grasp. "He is not the first man to hold his position. How do you think his predecessor ended his term?"

Rochelle sucked in her breath.

His cold, hard eyes stared back, and he nodded. "Consider, for a moment, that the world is a perilous place. Your father--though a man of some import--would hardly be the first to be butchered in his bed." He backed away like a storm receding. "And consider that perhaps my reservations about harming you are not a limit of my character, but a matter of timing."

Her stomach turned on itself, but before she could reply, he clucked his tongue and led on.

********

CHAPTER 4

********

Alexandre de Beaumont looked ahead to the Manoir de Maule rising out of the woods on a hill like some ancient bastion, where long ago it had transfixed the earth and was welded there now with blood and stone. Once, perhaps, Romans or Visigoths had sheltered on its slopes--perhaps even the house lords of Charlemagne--but gone were those days of their ancestral histories, when noble dynasties gripped the land and held it tight. Now were the dawning days of nations, and armies came no more from the banners sworn to provincial lords, but the regiments of common men. It was troubling then that the marquis behaved as if he lived still in that time immemorial--as if Dijon were his demesne and he paid no homage to foreign lords.

Over the manor, the clear coral sky faded to black, and in the distance a poise of stars hung at the blue handle of the earth, where Sagittarius, the just centaur, hung brightest among them all. In the woods, the grief-stricken chattering of bats had begun, and Alexandre felt in himself the onfall of that selfsame misery.

He did not consider himself someone who lived in the history of better days, but he did miss those, when he was far from this hill, still asea in the warm blue waters of the Caribbean. In France, the summers were warm, and one could as surely wear light cotton as much as nothing at all, only here the heat didn't sizzle but smoulder, and it came with no leeward breeze to dull its point--and, lately, it had been very pointed.

The scowls the girl had worn all day had weathered as she rode, and as the sun had gone out of the sky, so had the fight gone out of her.

Now, at last, the day had groaned to its penult, and he was glad for it. His boots had stopped sloshing by the noon hour, but he had walked the better part of the day in them, still damp, longing to dry his feet. Had he any faith she would not have tried to flee with Lundi as soon as he loosened his grip on the reins, he might have stopped to rest.

He scratched at his naked shoulder as they wound towards the manor. The skin was warm, but at least he had not burned in the sun. His arm that had burned in the fire had taken to aching and throbbing, but it did not seem in need of intervention.

The girl's eyes were half-closed as he led her on, her head lolling back, then snapping to when she realized what was happening. She had let out gentle moans and deep sighs of displeasure the whole day, muttering often how tired she was of the road.

He had kept quiet to let her sleep, but she had complained endlessly instead. As much as it might have annoyed him to hear her voice squeak out beside him, he tried to be considerate of her discomforts. She hadn't eaten since he'd taken possession of her and hadn't slept in that same time either. He might otherwise have found himself disinclined to her endless complaining, but he couldn't deny her discomforts.

Through the last bristle of woods he led Lundi on, and the manor appeared behind the bars of their ornate limestone gate. At the gatehouse, two of the marquis's house guard greeted them with upheld pikes and a noble salute. He requested a horse to ride the last leagues himself and they obliged.

From the gatehouse to the sprawling dooryard, the last steps seemed longer than the rest of the entire journey. They passed slanted green hedges and a fountain where some angelic figure's mouth had dried in a white crust, the water long since emptied from the fountain's base. At last, he paused before the foyer door and dismounted.

The girl seemed delirious, wobbling in the saddle as he reached up and took her hand. "Come down," he said, helping her into the stirrup.

"I'm exhausted." She let out a long breath. Her foot touched the ground, and as it did, she buckled under her own weight.

Alexandre caught her in his arms and scooped her up against his bare chest.

Her face nuzzled against him, arms folding in around her belly, and in her repose she almost seemed a bearable woman. She had a saintly face, but a jaw that was thin and sharp and wolfish.

An attendant came out, greeted him, and at Alexandre's command, led the horses away.

He carried her to the door, where another attendant closed it behind them. Candled sconces burned on the walls and in the chandelier above, and their patterns reflected wildly on the marble floor. He took her up the wide stairs to a chamber reserved for guests. There, the bed was made, and he laid her on it before taking a wool blanket from a dresser drawer and laying it over her. Past the point of exhaustion, she babbled something, but he had no more energy left in him to care. Tomorrow he would hear all manner of inane things from her once more, but tonight he was through.

He tiptoed from the room and shut the door, rubbing at his tired face. It had been a long two days and nothing had gone to plan. They had ridden out to ambush the provost's carriage in the morning, but had been caught flat-footed to find it still on the road in the dark. Things had gone well there, at least. No one had been killed, and even though the old man had needed to be handled, things were kept well-balanced. But now he was exhausted and just as in need of sleep as the doltish girl he'd laid to bed.

The others had ridden out in all directions, and he didn't know if they had yet returned, or if they were still searching. In the morning, he would find out, but for now, he was simply glad he had been the one to find her. The others were as angry as he had been to give chase, and anger could make a man do terrible things.

His belly growled, but it was something to tend to later. For now, the order was to sleep, and he would be glad to have it.

At his chambers, the tall, slim figure of Joseph approached, hands behind his back. With a twitch in his wispy black moustache, the marquis's footman nodded to Alexandre at the meeting of their paths.

"Your father wishes to speak to you," Joseph said, his voice as thin as ever. He took careful stock of Alexandre, nose crinkling as he sniffed the air between them. "You reek of the road."

"Tell the marquis I will speak with him in the morning. For now--"

"It must be now. He was adamant, monsieur."

"Then he must go disappointed tonight."

"Your mother also wishes to see you," Joseph added with a razor-edged smile.

Alexandre swallowed his frustration. He excused himself, redressing with a linen shirt that felt cool and itchy after a long day under the sun. He returned to Joseph, extended his hand, and invited the footman to take him onwards to the marquis.

In the great hall, the marquis waited behind the long table at the far end of the room. He sat alone, Alexandre's mother nowhere to be seen. Joseph said nothing, but kept his hands folded behind his back, waiting at the hall's wide main doors as Alexandre stepped deeper in.

Two long tables ran perpendicular to the marquis's table, their surfaces bare of dishes and guests. On the walls, shadows flailed from the flickering sconces, the moonlight beaming in through the hall's tall windows, while the marquis sat idly at his table, hands flat across it.

"So comes my son," the marquis said. He picked up the silver goblet before him and waved his other hand towards Alexandre. Under the long black of his overcoat, the marquis's dark red waistcoat shimmered in the candlelight, and a blue cravat was tied tightly at his throat. The years weighed on the man, his hair thinning and short, his curls more limp and flecked with grey, the whiskers around his mouth streaked with white, but the strong shape of his face was still the same as Alexandre's, and despite hope, there was no denying that he and the marquis were made of the same coarse cloth.