Dreamspell (35 page)

“I sent the physician. Be content.”

She knew she shouldn’t say it, but out it flew. “You unfeeling jerk! How can you just walk away?”

His mouth tightened, but it wasn’t anger that next passed his lips. “’Tis difficult,” he said, so solemn his heart showed, “more difficult than I can say. But does a man not learn from his mistakes, he is a fool without hope of redemption.” He reached forward, stopped his hand near her jaw, and lowered his arm. “You made me a fool. I will be a fool no more.”

Kennedy felt the burn of tears. “But you are a fool if you go from here and pretend you can forget what you leave.”

His crooked eyebrow rose. “Mayhap, but better one of my own making.’ He strode to the door and retrieved the torch.

“You won’t forget me,” Kennedy called. Wishful thinking?

“Do I not, ‘tis Lady Lark I shall remember.” He nodded. “I liked you better when you were she.”

“And I liked you better when you had a heart!”

A moment later, the door supplanted him and the lock turned. And Kennedy could only stand there in the dark, her heart crashing to the bottom of her.

Fulke halted when he reached the bailey. Though aware he was watched by the night guards on the walls, he remained unmoving, feeling his way through the words and emotions that had pressed on him as he stood before Nedy. She had infuriated him, but still he had longed to hold and kiss her.

“Nay,” he growled. He put a foot forward only to pivot and look up the tower. Why this feeling he had just erred greater than before, that his mistakes were rushing toward one another with heads lowered, that all the ills upon his house would only get worse?

He shook his head. Why this feeling? Because Nedy was right. He could not forget her.

M
ac was back. And full tilt going by the contentious light in his eyes.

Kennedy scooted nearer and was warmed by the shaft of afternoon light that fell through one of the narrow windows.

“You’re still here.” His voice was as coarse as sandpaper.

“As are you.” She mothered the blanket higher up his chest. “How are you feeling?”

“How do you think a one-legged man feels?”

“No, Mac, look.” She laid the lower edge of the blanket back. “The physician attended your leg and—”

“He wanted to take it, didn’t he?”

“He suggested it as a way to deal with the injury, but—”

“The only way. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Hope was a powerful healer, so she lied. “You’re wrong, and so was the physician. When he came again this morning he said it looked better.” The tight-lipped man had said nothing of the sort, but when she had asked for an updated prognosis, he had shrugged. In her opinion, that laid it wide open for interpretation.

Mac pushed onto his elbows, considered his bandaged thigh, and met her gaze. “Did no one ever instruct you in the art of lying?”

He knew her well. “Of course not, but I’m working on it.”

“Not hard enough.” He laid back heavily. “Do you think you’re dead yet?”

“No, I’m still dreaming.”

“Are you?”

She stared into his weathered eyes.
Was
she dreaming? Or, by some miracle, was she truly here? As always, logic railed against the reality of this time and place but, increasingly, her heart rallied opposite. Maybe this was a second chance. Maybe her love for Fulke
was
real. “It seems real—everything about it—but it can’t be. Time travel isn’t possible.”

He laid a hand over hers. “It is possible. Now tell me, have you felt the pull?”

“What’s that?”

“The feeling of being pulled back to the present.”

“Yes, though only the second time. The first time I must have slept through it.”

“Then you haven’t felt it since your last journey here?”

“No.”

“Each time I also felt it, most strongly the last time—three days after I returned—but I fought it and, finally, a peace came over me as if I were ascending.” His eyebrows bumped. “I did die, didn’t I? I’m not in another coma?”

“You died—in an old warehouse.”

He sighed. “Perhaps I could have done it again and corrected the mistakes that put me here.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t have to pick up where you left off, Ken. The dream places you wherever you think yourself, just as it did when you first dreamt it. You see, had I always been disappearing, it would have been impossible for me to serve as protector to John and Harold.”

Suspending disbelief, Kennedy bent near him. “You can start over?”

“Of course, though I didn’t attempt it until I fell asleep the last time. I brought myself back a week prior to the end of my previous journey, which allowed me to use the time to make certain everything went off without a hitch.” The next few seconds seemed to age him ten years. “But it didn’t. John and Harold will still die.”

Kennedy’s thoughts were spinning. “What if
I
repeat the cycle one last time? Perhaps I could—” What was she saying? She sat back. “I’ve lost it big time.”

Mac’s eyes pierced hers. “No, you have to believe me.”

Therein lay the dilemma. She did believe. She lowered her head.
Dear God, my end must be near.

F
ulke had not felt so awkward since he was a boy. Breath trapped in his throat, he waited as John lifted the lid.

Silence, then a peal of delight echoed by Harold.

“Soldiers!” John picked one from the box.

Harold scooped up one of two dozen carved figures. “A hundred of ‘em!”

Fulke let out his breath. Though he felt Marion’s gaze where she stood beside the boys’ bed, he ignored her as he had done since entering the room. He didn’t like what he saw in her eyes each time they fell on him. He almost preferred her supposed madness to this knowing of hers that conjured visions of the woman who had denied him sleep on the long night past.

“Look!” Harold held up a figure. “This one’s riding a horse, and his sword is metal.”

“Let me see.” John reached for it.

Harold hugged the worn, black figure to his chest. “I saw him first.”

Fulke prodded himself from the hearth that had surrendered its last ember hours earlier. “There are others,” he said.

John searched out one and thrust a white, horsed figure into the air as if it was the only prize to be had. “He looks most fierce, and his destrier as well.”

Fulke dropped to his haunches before the boys. “This one and Harold’s are knights, and fierce as you say.” Unexpected childhood memories rushed at him. “They were my favorites when I was your age.”

The disbelief that rose on the boys’ faces nearly made him laugh. “Aye, once I was also a child.”

“’Tis true.” Marion stepped from the bed. “Your uncle and I played out many battles on this very floor.”

“You?” John was surprisingly indignant for one so young. “A girl?”

Marion folded her arms over her chest. “One who did not always lose to a boy.”

Fulke nearly groaned. Making battle with his sister was something of which he would not have boasted. As his older half-brother had been occupied with his service to God, his younger brother, Richard, was removed by five years, and his mother had not allowed her children to play with those of ignoble blood, there had been only Marion. But the truth was that she, a year older than he, had been a wonderful companion.

Harold rose from the box. “Truly, these were yours, Uncle?”

“Aye. Now they belong to you and John. I trust you will take good care of them.”

“Ever so!” Harold wiped his runny nose on his sleeve.

John lifted the box and brought it with him to his feet. “We will be careful with them.”

Fulke ruffled his hair. “I am sure you will.”

“Thank you, Uncle.”

“Aye, thank you,” Harold chimed.

Fulke stood. “Belowstairs with both of you. And no warfare until you have broken your fast.”

“May we first show our soldiers to Jeremy?” John asked.

They had missed their illegitimate half-brother, as Jeremy had missed them. Still, they should eat first. “After you are done at table.”

The boys groaned but didn’t argue. However, John paused at the door. “When may we see Sir Arthur?”

The warmth that had begun in Fulke’s chest turned chill. That man stood like a wall between him and his nephews. Was there no way over or around him? Through him?

Fulke shook his head. “Not this day, for he is not yet fully recovered.”

Disappointment fell from the boys’ faces.

“But he is going to be well,” John prompted.

Fulke knew the physician’s determination, that if the leg was not removed Crosley’s life would likely be forfeit, but that was not for children’s ears. “He is doing better. Now belowstairs with you.”

When the sound of their footfalls in the corridor was all that remained, he looked to Marion.

“Doing better?” she repeated. “You really do not believe it, do you?”

Fulke returned to the hearth and stared at the errant rushes between his feet. When he came around, Marion was waiting with hands on hips. “You would have me tell them the truth of Crosley?” he asked.

She advanced on him. “What truth? That you are wrong about him?”

“You know ‘tis his leg of which I speak.”

She halted before him. “The two are related, are they not? He has one because of the other.”

“Deservedly so.”

Anger suffused her cheeks. “I know it’s in there.” She poked his chest. “Let it out, Fulke.”

His heart again. First Nedy Plain, now his sister. But they were wrong. He stepped around her. “Do not go again to the tower room,” he called as he quit the chamber.

As he traversed the corridor, he heard her defiant “ha!” His sister was back and, as when they were children, she preferred to stumble and fall rather than bow to him.

“Bloody rood!” he grumbled as he descended the stairs. Was there no end to this tumult and turmoil? Would he never know peace? A vision of Nedy assailed him and caused his absent heart to pound. With her he had known peace, for their short time in the wood had been unfettered and more alive than he had ever felt.

Though he told himself it had all been false, when he reached the hall he was no nearer to ridding himself of unwanted feelings than he was of the woman who had sown them. So he denied them into the nooning hour that came and went with the arrival of Lady Jaspar.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

S
he denied it, and so convincingly Fulke nearly believed her. He tried to pick the glimmer of a lie from Jaspar’s tear-swollen eyes, but if it was there, she was holding it too near to let it be seen.

He rose from the lord’s chair and strode past Sir Leonel who sat at the far end of the table with his head in his hand. The knight’s own denials had been even more convincingly told than Jaspar’s.

Fulke paced the hall. Who had hired Moriel to set upon Lady Lark? Cardell in hopes of making it appear Fulke was responsible for the death of Edward’s illegitimate issue? What gain? Fulke’s imprisonment or hanging that would see John and Harold once more in need of a protector? That protector being Baron Cardell?

Ignoring his mother’s questioning gaze where she sat at the hearth with Marion and Lady Lark, Fulke strode back the way he had come.

What of Alice Perrers? According to Lady Lark, the king’s mistress had despised the woman Edward flaunted as her rival. It was not beyond Alice to remove that threat.

“Fulke,” Jaspar implored from where she stood on the raised dais, “you must believe me.”

Then there was Sir Arthur and Nedy Plain. Had the attack on Lady Lark been but a means to assure the knight’s abduction of John and Harold? Why pretend to be Lady Lark? More diversion? Possible, but not as believable as it being Lady Jaspar who had ordered the attack, with or without Sir Leonel’s aid. A husband Jaspar wanted, and the arrival of Lady Lark as the king’s chosen one was to have laid to rest the possibility she might one day sit at Fulke’s side.

It might also have been someone not heretofore considered. What of the two-headed wyvern?
If
it was true what Nedy Plain told. The device was from Edward’s paternal side, that much Fulke knew, but there his knowledge waned. Thus, before Lady Jaspar’s arrival this noon, Fulke had sent one of the king’s men to London to search out the giver of such medallions.

Lady Lark rose from her chair before the hearth. “My lord, I have grown weary. I bid you good eve.” She turned to Fulke’s mother. “My lady.”

The older woman lifted an eyebrow. Two days gone now and she liked Lark no better.

“I apologize for distressing you so, Lady Lark,” Fulke said. “Good eve.”

Lark stared at him and searched for a response to this man her father would have her wed. It was there, a curious attraction that might grow if she allowed it, but she would not. She had made a vow and would keep it. Bride to Christ, never to man.

Though she tried to ignore the presence of the one she had disregarded throughout Lady Jaspar’s pleadings, she glanced at Fulke’s brother, Richard, who stood near an alcove. His arms were propped over his chest and legs spread, emphasizing the arrogance on which he seemed erected. Strange, though he had yet to speak a word to her, she was stirred each time their eyes met. If he was the one she was to wed, could she so easily refuse?