“And fool me—also!”
“Easily in some ways, if I would. And yet—I could not.”
They stared at each other a moment, breathless, irreconcilable, wondering—two proud birds hovering breast to breast. Desire played like summer lightning. Each saw the other’s pale face flash out of the darkness of dreams wreathed with a wreath of flame.
Fulk opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. In the wood they heard a sharp crackling of dead twigs, and the harsh voice of a man muttering out prayers.
“Merlin!”
She sprang up, snatched her lute, and slipped away among the trees.
CHAPTER XII
Isoult saw Merlin loitering for her among the fir trees, and she could imagine the smile on his face—that face with its red, libidinous mouth and hungry, restless eyes. He stood there in a little alley of the wood, a figure like a grey monolith marking the spot where some king had fallen.
Isoult’s soul hardened itself against him, and she struck the strings of her lute and murmured the words of a song.
“Trust a priest to cheat at any game.”