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Berenice felt her pulse race.  Every nerve was tuned to his nearness.  Each separation was like a bereavement.
    Still the dance continued, building tempo.  He touched her more often now, a hand on an arm to guide her, his other hand holding hers, turning her in a circle, weaving complex patterns with their bodies.  She breathed harshly, mesmerized by the experience, never wanting it to end, begging silently for it to stop before she collapsed.
    Round and around, through and over and under again.  Her heart was pounding.  Her eyes sparkled.  The soft fabric of her skirts brushed her bare legs.
    The music came to an abrupt, crashing end.
    They stood for a moment, their hands still clasped, their eyes locked, their chests heaving, their breaths mingling.  Applause washed over them - they didn’t hear it.  Their world was each other, united in the music.
    Berenice looked up at Gareth.  His misty grey eyes were darker, deeper than they’d appeared that morning.  She felt herself being drawn into their smoky depths.  It would be so easy to lose herself there, to forget all the cares and woes of her daily existence.
    “No!” she breathed.
    She would not do it.  She would not respond in the way he demanded of her.
    Wrenching her hands from his grasp, she ran.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    The heat rose from the stony road like a tangible thing, a beast it was necessary to battle in order to breathe.  This day promised to be the same as all the days of the previous weeks – hot, dry and cloudless.  No-one could remember a June like it.
    The carpenter’s cart swayed from side to side, bouncing along the rough track like a ship in a storm-tossed sea.  Each lurch threatened to dislodge the load of lumber it carried.  Six strong patient oxen pulled it, stirring up a cloud of dust as they went.
    The two women riding on the cart wore their shawls over their faces to keep out the dust and the flies, and roughly made straw hats to keep the sun off their faces.
    “Don’t let your skin get brown,” Jessamine’s mother had drummed into her since she was a small child.  It was one admonition she took to heart.  Martha hadn’t taken her own advice, and her skin was as weather-beaten as any gypsy’s.
    Jessamine thought again about walking.  Her brother and father led the beasts, and it would be safe enough with them.  The choice was difficult – sore feet or a sore rear, her mother’s inane chatter or her brother Albert’s sly taunts.
    She chose to tolerate her mother’s company for a while longer.  They’d entered a forest, and the shade made a welcome change.  The towers and turrets of a grand castle came into view above the trees.  Red and gold banners bearing a coat of arms in black flapped in the meager breeze.
    Perhaps this time her father had found work with someone who deserved his talents.  He was, after all, a master carpenter.
    “What’s that place?” she asked her mother.
    “That’s Betizac,” answered Martha, crossing herself.
    “Is that where we’re going?”
    “No, thank God.  Your father would do no work for the Count.  My Georges would be lucky to be paid, and the Count’s an evil man, it’s said.  We wouldn’t be taking you there, petal.”
    A Count, thought Jessamine, how interesting.  Was he young?  Was he handsome?  Was he wealthy?  From the size of the castle, he had to be.
    Martha’s version of evil didn’t worry Jessamine.  Evil, to her mother, meant not going to Mass.  Jessamine, on the other hand, had known a number of men in her nineteen years who would undoubtedly meet her mother’s definition of evil.  Many pleasant memories started her squirming with desire on the hard bench seat.
    “Where are we going then?  I’m tired of this road.  We seem to have been on it forever.”
    “Now then, petal, it won’t be much longer.  It’s taken us days longer than it needed to already, because the travelling’s upset you so.  You used to be a much better traveler when