Free Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass Page A

of green silk topped with a bodice of green and ivory striped silk, its square neckline low cut over the swell of her breasts, the lacy cuffs of her chemise tumbling from its elbow-length sleeves. On most sixteen-year-old girls the costume would have looked ridiculously and horribly provocative, but on Noah it looked perfect, perhaps because she eschewed the overbearing ringleted hairstyle so beloved of women of fashion and wore her sleek dark hair loosely piled atop the crown of her head where it made clothing that would otherwise have been overly flirtatious and insulting to Noah’s youth merely an adornment to the beauty of the girl herself.
    “The land,” she said, her head inclining very slightly towards the window. “Do you feel it?”
    “What?” he said, stupidly.
    By the Lord, what would happen if the earl or countess discovered their charge in his room? Whatif a servant happened by, and heard Noah’s warm, rich voice issue forth from beneath the door?
    He knew he should be demanding she leave. He knew he should be furiously stoking the fires of his indignant anger, of his moral outrage…of his concern for her innocence, for sweet Jesus’ sake, but Thornton could do none of this.
    He could only stand, and stare at her.
    “The land,” she said yet again, and he marvelled at how calm her voice was; how assured. “You were sitting in the chair, being at one with the land. It is why I am here.”
    “Noah…”
    She walked forward, as if her presence within his chamber was the most natural and expected thing, until she stood directly before Thornton; then she turned calmly about, and presented her back to him.
    If she had been coquettish, if she had been hard, or abrasive, if she had shown wantonness or lewdness, if she had shown herself to be overly practised…if Noah had done or shown any of these things, Thornton would have found it easy to open his mouth and speak scathing or condemnatory words, or perhaps to have taken her arm in a gentle hand, and spoken to her words of wise caution as he escorted her to the door (and, in both instances, to have presented the earl with his regretful resignation in the morning).
    Instead, he found himself staring transfixed as his hand—moving as if it were controlled by a mind other than his own—raised itself to the bare skin of her shoulders above the neckline of her bodice, and rested itself there, its palm flat against her soft warmth.
    She drew in a slow, deep breath, her head tilting back very slightly, and Thornton heard joy in that breath. He moved his hand across the rise at the back of her neck, where the column of her neckjoined her shoulders, and realised that he was caressing her.
    And then realised that his other hand had raised itself to the laces of her bodice and was pulling them loose, one by one.
    One of her hands raised itself, as if to pull at the sleeve of the bodice.
    “No,” he whispered, and, kissing the back of her neck with a soft, gentle mouth, pulled her bodice free himself.
    She caught it the instant before it fell to the floor, and draped it over a nearby coffer.
    Her chemise was made of a very fine linen, a lawn, and Thornton could see the gleam of her skin through it.
    Sweet Jesus, her skin…it glowed in the night, as if it were lit within by a soft ivory fire.
    Then the chemise was unlaced, seemingly of its own accord, and was falling away, and Thornton’s hands had slipped about her body, and were now caressing her breasts.
    She turned within the circle of his arms, and lifted her face for his kiss.
    Her breasts brushed against the skin of his chest, and Thornton groaned as he bent down to her, and kissed her with more abandon and passion than he had ever thought himself capable of.
    “Do I taste foul to you?” she said, pulling her mouth away just enough to speak the words.
    “Foul?” he said. “How could that be?”
    “A man said to me once, as he kissed me, that he could taste the foulness of corruption in my