In the crackling roar of the burning wreckage, he did not even hear the galloping horse.
The girl put the big white stallion to the hedge and they flew over it. Horse and rider landed in balance and immediately plunged forward again after the burning, screaming figure in the centre of the field. The girl unhooked her leg from the pommel of the side-saddle, and as they came up behind Michael she pulled the stallion down to a sliding halt and at the same time launched herself from his back.
She landed with her full weight between Michael's shoulder-blades, and both arms locked around his neck, so that he was knocked sprawling flat on his face with the girl on his back. She rolled to her feet and whipping the thick gabardine skirt of the riding-habit from around her waist, spread it over the burning figure at her feet.
Then she dropped to her knees beside him and wrapped the voluminous skirt tightly around him, beating with her bare hands at the little tendrils of flame that escaped from around it.
As soon as the flames were snuffed out, she pulled off her skirt and heaved Michael into a sitting position on the muddy ground. With quick fingers, she unbuttoned the smoking greatcoat and stripped it off his shoulders and flung it aside. She pulled away the smouldering jerseys, there was only one place where the flames had reached his flesh. They had burned through across his shoulder and down his arm. He cried out with the pain when she tried to pull the nightshirt away. For the love of Christ! The cotton shirt had stuck to the burns.
The girl leaned over him, took the cloth in her teeth and worried it until it tore. Once she had started it, she ripped it open with her hands and her expression changed. Mon Dieu! she said, and jumped up. She stamped on the smoking greatcoat to extinguish the last of the smouldering wool.
Michael stared at her, the agony of his burned arm receding. With her long skirt removed, her riding jacket reached only to the top of her thighs. On her feet she wore black patent-leather riding boots fastened up the sides with hooks and eyes. Her knees were bare, and the skin at the back of them was smooth and flawless as the inner lining of a nautilus shell, but her knee-caps were smudged with mud where she had knelt to help him.
Above the knees she wore a pair of carni-knickers of a sheer material through which he could distinctly make out the sheen of her skin. The legs of the knickers were fastened above the knee with pink ribbons, and they clung to her thighs and lower body as though she were naked - no, the semi-veiled lines were even more riveting than naked flesh would have been.
Michael felt his throat swell, so that he could not breathe, as she stooped to pick up his charred coat, and he was allowed a brief vision of her small, firm buttocks, round as a pair of ostrich eggs, gleaming palely in the early-morning light. He stared so hard, he felt his eyes begin to water and as she turned back to him, he saw in the fork framed by her hard young thighs a dark triangular shadow through the thin silk. She stood with that mesmeric shadow six inches from his nose while she spread the coat gently over his burned shoulder, murmuring to him in the tone a mother uses to a hurt child.
Michael caught only the words froid and brfiW. She was so close that he could smell her; the natural musk of a healthy young woman sweating with the exertion of hard riding was mingling with a perfume that smelled like dried rose petals. Michael tried to speak, to thank her, but he was shaking with shock and pain. His lips wobbled and he made a little slurring sound.
Mon pauvre, she cooed to him, and stepped back. Her voice was husky with concern and exertion, and she had the face of a pixie with huge dark Celtic eyes. He wondered if her ears were pointed, but they were hidden by the dark bush of her hair. It was windblown and kinked into dense springy curls. Her skin was tinted by her Celtic blood to the colour of old ivory and her eyebrows were thick and dark as her hair.
She began to speak again, but he could not help himself, and he glanced down again to that intriguing little shadow under the silk. She saw the movement of his eyes and her cheeks glowed with a dusky rose colour as she snatched up her muddy skirts and whipped them around her waist, and Michael ached more with embarrassment at his gaffe than he did from his burns.
The overhead roar of Andrew's Sopwith gave them both respite and they looked up gratefully as Andrew circled the field. Painfully and unsteadily Michael clambered to his feet, as the girl settled her skirts, and he waved up at Andrew. He saw Andrew lift his hand and give him a relieved salute, then the green Sopwith circled out and came in on a straight run not higher than fifty feet above their heads, and the green scarf, with something knotted in one end, fluttered down and plunked into the mud a few yards away.
The girl ran to it and brought it back to Michael. He unknotted the tail of the scarf and grinned lopsidedly as he brought out the silver flask. He unscrewed the stopper and lifted the flask to the sky. He saw the flash of Andrew's white teeth in the open cockpit and the raised gauntleted hand, and then Andrew turned away towards the airfield.
Michael lifted the flask to his lips, and swallowed twice. His eyes clouded with tears and he gasped as the heavenly liquid flowed scalding down his throat. When he lowered the flask, she was watching him, and he offered it to her.
She shook her head, and asked seriously, Anglais?"Oui, non, Sud Africain. His voice shook.
Ah, vous parlez franqais! She smiled for the first time, and it was a phenomenon almost as stunning as her pearly little bottom.
A peine, hardly. He denied it swiftly, staving off the flood of voluble French that he knew from experience an affirmative would have brought down on his head.
You have blood. Her English was appalling, only when she pointed to his head did he understand what she had said. He lifted his free hand and touched the trickle of blood which had escaped from under his helmet. He inspected his smeared fingertips. Yes, he admitted. Buckets of it, I'm afraid. The helmet had saved him from serious injury when his head had struck the side of the cockpit. Pardon? She looked confused.
J'en ai beaucoup, he tianslated.
Ah, you do talk French. She clapped her hands J-n_ nn endearing, childlike gesture of delight and took his arm in a proprietorial. gesture.
Come, she ordered, and snapped her fingers for the stallion. He was cropping the grass, and pretended not to hear her.
Wiens ici tout de suite, Nuage! She stamped her foot. Come here, this instant, Cloud! The stallion took another mouthful of grass to demonstrate his independence and then sidled across in leisurely fashion.
Please, she. asked, and Michael made a stirrup of his cupped hands and boosted her up into the saddle. She was very light and agile.
Come up. She helped him, and he settled behind her on the stallion's broad rump. She took one of Michael's hands and placed it on her waist. Her flesh under his fingers was firm and he could feel the heat of it through the cloth.
Tenez, hold on! she instructed, and the stallion cantered towards the gate at the end of the field nearest the chateau.
Michael looked back at the smoking wreckage of his Sopwith. Only the engine block remained, the wood and canvas had burned away. He felt a shadow of deep regret at her destruction, they had come a long way together.
How do you call yourself? the girl asked over her shoulder, and he turned back to her.
Michael, Michael Courtney. Michel Courtney, she repeated experimentally, and then, I am Mademoiselle Centaine de Thiry Enchante, mademoiselle. Michael paused to compose his next conversational gem in his laboured schoolboy French. Centaine is a strange name, he said, and she stiffened under his hand. He had used the word drole, or comical. Quickly he corrected himself, An exceptional name. Suddenly he regretted that he had not applied himself more vigorously to his French studies; shaken and shocked as he still was, he had to concentrate hard to follow her rapid explanation.