Spellbound & Seduced (5 page)

‘You, who are no more capable of falling in love than I,' Jura retorted. ‘You were lost, and I was lonely, that is all.'

‘But I'm not lost now, and I want you more than ever. And you can't be lonely, because here I am, and I know you want me too. I can tell from the way your eyes darken. The way your breath quickens when I touch you. If you let me see your aura, it would be the colour of sunrise. I know you want me, and you know you do, and unless you say no, then I am afraid I'm going to have to do something about it.'

He was smiling his wicked smile, and she was tingling all over in response, for his blatant desire made her feel powerful in a quite different way from her magic. Jura shook her head. She leaned towards him, deliberately brushing her breasts against his chest. ‘I don't want you to,' she said, sinking down onto the flagstones between his legs, just as he had knelt between hers last night. ‘I don't want you to do anything at all about it. This time,' she said, trailing her fingers up the insides of his thighs, delighting in the way it made his muscles ripple, ‘it's my turn.'

‘What would you use for a soothing tisane?'

‘Liquorice root. Peppermint leaves. Valerian to aid sleep,' Lawrence said.

‘Skin rash?'

‘Oatmeal paste for something minor, a poultice of chickweed and comfrey if there is poison to be drawn.'

‘Childbed fever?'

Jura listened as Lawrence recited the various treatments. His coat lay over the back of the wooden chair. He had his sleeves rolled up. His hair fell over his cheek and tangled with his lashes. A week he had been here at her cottage, seven whole days, the pair of them closeted together seeing not another soul, and yet she still felt she could not get enough of him. It worried her, the strength of the attraction she felt for him. It had worried her enough to make her creep out to her still room in the dark of night and renew the spell. Her magic had never let her down, her powers made her inviolable, yet why then did her heart skip a little beat every time she looked at him? Why did it lurch when she woke beside him? What was this warmth which enveloped her, like a thick velvet blanket, when their gazes locked over some little domestic task? Why was it that he had only to look at her in a certain way for her stomach to clench, her blood to tingle, her pulses flutter? And what was it that made her feel, in the aftermath of their fervent lovemaking, that she was no longer herself, but had become another?

‘Jura?'

She pushed aside the vellum-bound book of herbs, thrusting aside also her doubts and questions. A thaw was in the air, she could smell it. All too soon he would be gone, and they would both be safe. What she felt, strong as it was, could not possibly be stronger than her magic. ‘Your understanding is impressive,' she said to Lawrence. ‘You are a very fast learner.'

‘I have a most accomplished teacher.'

‘You flatter me. You don't need me, just this book.'

‘No. I need you.'

Something in his tone made her skin prickle. His eyes too, it was not desire which lit them. And his aura—white for significant change and purity of feeling. ‘You are insatiable,' she said, deliberately misunderstanding him.

He caught her wrist as she rose to tend to the fire. ‘Jura?'

‘I'm a little tired, Lawrence.'

‘These last days together—I've never felt like this before.'

‘You've never met a witch before. The novelty will wear off.'

‘That's what I thought at first, but it is showing no signs of doing so.' He touched her cheek, wrapped a long tress of her hair around his wrist, an endearing habit of his, as if he would bind her to him. ‘There's a thaw coming, even I can tell that. I'll have no excuse to stay here once the bridge is mended, I shall have to go off and claim my castle, but…' He grimaced. ‘I don't want to go. I don't want this to end, Jura. Whatever it is.'

‘Lawrence, it has to. You know it has to.'

‘I don't know anything anymore,' Lawrence said ruefully. ‘I know it's only been a week, but I feel as if my life has been turned around—as if I was looking at it before through the wrong end of a glass. I know I'm not making sense, and I am not making any promises either…'

‘No! Stop!' Jura interrupted, thoroughly panicked at this wholly unanticipated turn of events. ‘I don't want you to make any promises,' she said, though even as she spoke she couldn't help wishing—but there was no point in wishing! ‘Lawrence, there is no point in talking about this, you know we can have no future. You can't care for me, any more than I can care for you in—in that way.'

‘But what I'm trying to say is that I might. Damn it, Jura, I don't know what I'm trying to say or what the devil it is that I feel for you, but I feel something and I know you do too!' He had not meant to say even this much, but her very rejection made him more sure. ‘What we have—don't you think it's worth giving it a chance?'

‘I
can't,
Lawrence,' Jura said, blinking desperately in an effort to control the hot swell of tears. She gripped the tabletop so hard that her nails dug into the wood, every bit of her recoiling at what she had to say, but knowing that she did, indeed, have to say it. ‘You know I can't. The curse. My spell…'

‘Are you so sure that it's working?'

‘Yes! Yes of course it's working,' Jura exclaimed defiantly. Though it certainly didn't feel like it at present. The thought of losing him, though she had known all along that she would, was unbearable. But she would bear it, because the very notion of hurting him was impossible. ‘Lawrence, I'm sorry, but there is no point in us talking about this. You have quite mistaken what I feel.' It was an agony, but she met his gaze unflinchingly, determined to allow him no room for doubt.

He could not quite believe what was happening. He felt as though he'd been put through the mangle which stood in the little wash house at the back of the cottage—wrung out, turned inside out, and then flattened. This morning, sitting at the table beside her, he'd thought nothing more than that she made him happy, and that he liked being happy, and he had believed he made her happy too. He'd wanted to go on being happy with her, but she…would not, could not, it didn't matter which. She did not want him, and that hurt much more than he could have believed possible. He felt bereft, deprived, strung up and out, all at the same time.

But there was no point in prolonging the agony. ‘I see,' Lawrence said stiffly, for her rejection pierced his pride as well as his newfound feelings. ‘I think perhaps it's best if I leave today. I'm sure I'll be able to ford the river, if the bridge is still not repaired.'

The change in him almost cracked Jura's resolve. That hard look, she had never seen it before. She never wanted to see it again. And there was to be no farewell. No last joining of their flesh. She told herself it was for the best, but as she watched him gather his belongings together far too quickly and efficiently, as she clutched Brianag to her chest and watched Lawrence trudge off across the melting snow half an hour later after a farewell that rivalled the snow in temperature, Jura felt as though she was losing a part of herself. Closing the cottage door, she slumped onto the floor against it. A chasm of loneliness such as she had never known opened up before her. She dropped her head in her hands and let the bitter tears fall.

 

A childish giggle, quickly stifled, roused her from a torrid night filled with dreams in which she ran up and down endless flights of stairs with Lawrence always just out of reach. Her head felt as if it had been stuffed with rags. Her burning eyes, the damp pillow, told their own story. Footsteps, several pairs of feet, pattered under her bedroom window. A snowball thudded against the front door of the cottage.

‘Witchy, Witchy, Witchy, come out and play.'

Dragging herself out of her bed that right now she would have given all she possessed to be able to hide in until she died, struggling into her clothes, feeling like the old crone most people imagined a witch to be, Jura opened the cottage door.

‘Me ma said can you come and look at the bairn, for she's not feeding proper.'

‘And mine says can you bring some of that stuff for measles for our Jamie.'

‘And Mister MacSween the factor is down with the gout again.'

‘And please, before you come with us can we play the snowball game?'

‘And can I play with Brianag?' lisped the smallest girl, tugging on Jura's sleeve.

Five glowing faces looked up at her expectantly. They could not see the fog of grey hopelessness that enveloped her, nor the tight, painful bands that were squeezing her heart. Their beaming smiles, that would normally have made her day, now made Jura acutely conscious she'd never have a bairn of her own smile at her in such a way. Frantically, she tried to swallow the huge lump in her throat, tried to smile back, for it would not do to let them see Witchy was upset.

‘Wait here and I'll get my magic wand,' she said, earning herself an ecstatic cheer. The snowball game was one of the silly tricks she did only for the bairns, a simple spell to turn snow into multicoloured showers of light.

Returning with the brightly painted stick which the little clutch of ragged bairns believed to be magical, she managed to put on a brave face, leading them in a dance round the cottage, encouraging them to chant gibberish while she said the real spell under her breath and Brianag watched from the safety of the window ledge.

Gales of delighted laughter filled the air as the children threw snowballs that exploded into glittering rainbows in mid flight. The children could not have been happier. Watching, her face pasted into a rigid pastiche of a smile, Jura could not have been more devastated.

 

Later, as she made her way through the village, besieged by people in need of her care, Jura told herself that she was coping, that she would continue to cope, that the pain would recede and the pleasure she had once taken from helping these needy people would return. It astounded her that she could walk among them, carrying on with her work, listening to their gossip and their cares, and that they could be quite unaware that she was drowning in sorrow. It would pass, she told herself. It would pass as she added a cheese, some oatcakes, a black pudding to her basket. She would not take payment in coin, but she knew the pride of these Highlanders well enough not to turn down their offerings.

It would be Christmas Day soon. There was much talk in the village of the new laird, of whether he would hold the annual ceilidh. Returning to her cottage at dusk, Jura's footsteps slowed, for she dreaded its emptiness now. It was no longer her sanctuary, but the place where Lawrence had once been. No one in the village had asked her how she would celebrate their special day. No one asked her to share it. Not a single soul enquired whether she would attend the ceilidh.

Loneliness swamped her. ‘It's my own fault,' she told Brianag as she poured the cat a saucer of cream. ‘They think I am happy with my own company, because I've never said I'm not.' She poured hot water over raspberry and camomile leaves for tea. ‘And I am,' she said forlornly. ‘I will be. Once I have become accustomed to him not being here.' A single tear plopped into her cup. ‘I miss him.' The silver cat twined around her ankles. ‘I miss him quite a lot,' Jura whispered. ‘It hurts, Brianag. What should I do? He can't love me, because he's never loved anyone, he said so. Though he did say that I am different, Brianag, and I know it is wrong, but for a moment, when he said that, I felt so—happy!' The cat set about cleaning its face. ‘I know,' Jura said, wringing her hands, ‘he can't love me, any more than I can love him, because my spells never fail me, so whatever it is I'm feeling isn't love, and anyway the point is that I almost don't mind for myself, but I don't want him to be unhappy. I can't bear him to be unhappy. Only, if he stays here even for a few days, weeks, our paths are bound to cross. So he has to forget all about me, only how can he—oh!'

Jura leapt from the settle so quickly that she almost tripped over Brianag, who gave her a haughty look. ‘A piece of the subject, a piece of the subject,' Jura said feverishly. She had his hairbrush, she remembered. It was quickly retrieved. In the still room, her eyes glittered gold. Her hair sat about her face like a cloud, as if there were lightning in the air, as it always did when her powers were at their most potent. She tugged at a stone in the wall above the little pot-bellied stove, and from the cavity behind pulled out a small book with a faded blue cover. It took her some moments to find the correct page. Carefully, meticulously, she read the words written in her great-grandmother's spidery writing.

As she began to chant, the air in the still room thickened. She blew out the candle and held the hairbrush in both her hands, pressed against her heart—the heart that she felt would break as she said the words. The heart that would surely be torn from her if she did not. Clearly, slowly, painstakingly, she said the words.

 

A week passed before he saw her again. A week in which he told himself he didn't miss her, he didn't want her, he was better off without her, and utterly failed to persuade himself of any of it. He missed her desperately. He felt as if he had lost a part of himself. The vague feeling he remembered from being lost in the woods that day he met her, of seeking something different from his life, took a quite definite shape. It was Jura who was missing. There was a shape, her shape, inside him, which only she could fill.

But she had made it quite clear she could never do so. During the day, Lawrence went about his new business in a trance, grateful only for the small mercy that since none knew him, none could be aware of the dramatic change in him. At night, he walked. The castle grounds. The battlements. Up and down the Great Hall. He walked into the early hours of the morning, desperate to wear himself out, retiring to bed empty, drained, lying sleepless, for it was in bed, with the cold space at his side he had always cherished, that he felt most lost.

It was his factor who first mentioned Jura, and Lawrence discovered that despite the snow, his presence had been well-known in the village long before his arrival at the castle. ‘Is it true,' Lachlan MacSween asked lasciviously, ‘that she dances naked at the full moon? She can make a potion which will have a man as potent as a prize bull, ye ken. They say…'

‘They say a lot more than their prayers.' Lawrence had exclaimed, and his factor, though he drew him a knowing look, said no more. In the village it was different. The people spoke of Jura with a mixture of awe and admiration, a touching gratitude from those whose pains she had eased, or whose bairns she had helped into the world. The children called her Witchy, but it was they who spoke of her most warmly, as a source of fun and games and gingerbread. Picturing her playing in the snow with these ragged little urchins, Lawrence felt an odd pain in his heart. A wee one, with amber eyes and amber hair, the image of her mother, danced into his head before he could catch her. When he returned to the castle, he looked hard at his sketches and plans, and realised what was missing was a nursery.