Teresa Medeiros (28 page)

Scowling, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Christ, lass, you’re making my head ache with all these riddles. ’Tis unheard of for a man to be in love with his own wife. Just ask Arjon. He’s spent his entire life being in love with other men’s wives and they with him.”

Tabitha noticed that he was beginning to speak with more bluster than conviction. “So in two months when Lyssandra turns eighteen, you still intend to marry her, however repugnant the thought of sleeping with her.”

“I haven’t any choice. I gave my word.”

“You were just a child, Colin. You didn’t make the pledge. Your father did.”

“But ’tis my sacred duty to honor it. ’Twould be unfair if I did not.”

“Honor! You’re talking about spending your entire life living a lie. What does that have to do with honor? With fairness?”

He turned on his heel and paced away from her, his voice rising to a shout. “You are the most vexing woman! You just drop into my life out of nowhere—”

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”

“—and expect me to have no obligations, no pledges to fulfill Is that fair?”

“Probably not,” she admitted softly.

He sank down on a wooden chest and dragged a hand through his hair, letting her see the full extent of his desperation for the first time. “You heard MacDuff’s thinly veiled threats tonight. If I break my vow to him, he’ll ally himself with Roger.” His gaze was both fierce and imploring. “I cannot fight them both. My people will perish.”

Their familiar faces drifted before Tabitha’s eyes in a
vivid tableau: Magwyn with her gaunt beauty and stern pride; courageous Auld Nana; Granny Cora puffing serenely on her pipe; the irrepressible Chauncey; sweet little Jenny, who’d just rediscovered her voice and her smile. And Wee Blythe, the innocent baby Colin had cradled in his arms as if she were a treasure beyond price.

How could she ask him to choose between her and those he was sworn to protect?

Suddenly inspired, she dropped to her knees and clasped his thigh. “I can help you. I can do more for you than the MacDuff can. I can rid your life of Brisbane forever.”

He frowned at her. “How?”

She held up the amulet. “With this.”

Tabitha could almost see his hand tremble with the urge to trace a cross on his breast. “I cannot, lass. ’Tis a devil’s trinket.”

His words stung her to the heart. She rose and backed away from him. “Then I must be the devil’s handmaiden.”

He eyed her with hopeless longing before hoarsely confessing, “No matter what the Church says, I cannot believe that of you.”

Tabitha remembered something her mother had told her long ago, when she’d been a sullen thirteen-year-old sobbing over a ruined birthday. Tabitha said to Colin, “Didn’t it ever occur to you that this God of yours might have given me my powers? And if he did, wouldn’t he want me to use them for good? To rid the world of a monster like Brisbane before he can destroy any more innocent people?”

Colin shook his head, his face implacable. “I cannot fight evil with evil. If I do, then I’ve gained naught for all my striving.”

Tabitha bowed her head, knowing there was no moving him.

He stood, his voice hoarse with hope. “Even if I marry, we can still be together. I have a small holding in the Highlands. ’Tis isolated, but lovely beyond imagining. I’ll come to you as often as I dare and you’ll lack for naught. I cannot offer you my name, Tabitha, but you will have my heart.”

She turned her face away so he wouldn’t see the tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. She didn’t cry prettily like Lyssandra.

He stretched out a hand, inviting her to join him in the silvery pool of moonlight. “Come to bed with me, lass. Please.”

Even desperate and half-drunk, he was temptation itself, more irresistible now that she’d seen the dents in his armor. A naive girl can be infatuated with a knight, but only a woman can love the man inside the armor. How easy it would be to tumble into that rumpled bed with him! To let him do to her all the naughty, delicious things he longed to do. To hold him in her arms until the inescapable light of dawn forced him to sneak out of her bed like a thief.

She’d always known they came from different times, different cultures, different worlds. She’d just never guessed it was a gap that couldn’t be breached, not even by love.

She gazed at him through a veil of tears. “I can’t be your wife, Colin. And I won’t be your paramour.”

His hand fell to his side and he grew very pale and still, as if she’d dealt him a death blow.

She struggled to smile through her tears. “Wasn’t it you who told me courtly love was ‘the tragic tale of a noble knight pining for the unrequited affection of his lady’? Maybe they’ll write a ballad about us someday.”

“You are more canny than I realized, my lady. And more pitiless.”

It was a tribute to his rigid self-control that he managed to turn on his heel and make it as far as the door without staggering. But when he reached the door, he hesitated. A spark of hope flickered to life in Tabitha’s heart.

When Colin turned, his resolute expression doused it. “Give me your charm, lass. I’ll not have you rushing off on some daft quest to confront Brisbane. I’ve no need to hide behind a woman’s skirts.”

Tabitha was shaken that he’d read her half-formed intentions so accurately. “If you marry Lyssandra so her father will fight on your side, that’s exactly what you’ll be doing.”

Colin refused to be diverted. He advanced on her, holding out his hand. “I’ll not let you put yourself in peril again. Brisbane is a dangerous man.”

Tabitha held up the amulet. “And with this, I’m a dangerous woman.”

“More dangerous to yourself than anyone else. Whether you choose to spend your life with me,” he faltered and had to swallow hard before continuing, “or with some other man, I want it to be a long and prosperous one. Which is why I intend to keep your charm until your temper has had time to cool.”

His fist closed around the chain, warning her that this time he wouldn’t tolerate her refusal.

Her whisper was choked by the threat of tears. “I trusted you enough to give you the amulet once before. Can’t you trust me enough to let me keep it?”

Although regret clouded his eyes, his only reply was to snap the fragile gold chain, catching the emerald in his hand.

Then the door slammed and he was gone, leaving
Tabitha to sink to her knees and bury her face in the bedclothes.

Tabitha hurried across the deserted courtyard, checking over her shoulder for signs of pursuit. Other than the yellow hound who dogged her heels for a few steps before growing bored and loping away, no one at Castle MacDuff seemed to care that she was leaving. The eastern horizon was slowly melting from black to gray and the rising wind smelled of rain, a scent as timeless and unmistakable as the fragrance of Colin’s skin.

She once again wore Magwyn’s battered gown, but she still felt strangely naked. She touched the hollow of her breastbone, missing the weight of her mother’s amulet. But she refused to let Colin’s stubbornness stop her from giving him a wedding gift that would guarantee years of peace for both him and his unborn children.

She, Tabitha Lennox, who had once called a security guard to come kill a spider in her bathroom, was off to confront a homicidal maniac on behalf of the man she loved. She might not have the amulet to focus her magic, but she had plenty of twenty-first-century know-how and her own powerful, if somewhat erratic, talents to fall back on.

Lifting her skirt, she stepped over a heap of squires snoring off the effects of last night’s merriment. She had hoped to find Chauncey among them, but feared he was off wooing that milkmaid of his. She glanced over her shoulder again, but the shadow she thought she saw flitting across the courtyard must have only been a swallow or a bat.

As she slipped into the stables, the horses welcomed her with sleepy whickers. The musty smell of hay tickled her nose, making her pinch back a sneeze. She moved
from stall to stall, searching for a familiar face. But the face that emerged as a caped figure glided out of the shadows and pushed back its hood was not the one she would have chosen.

Lyssandra was no less lovely with her cheeks streaked with tears and violet smudges beneath her eyes. She didn’t say a word, simply hugged herself and gazed at Tabitha in sullen accusation.

To Tabitha’s relief, she spotted Chauncey’s even-tempered sorrel in the very next stall. “Good morning, Lyssandra,” she said brightly, throwing open the stall and dragging a saddle down from its wooden peg. “I really must be getting back to Gotham. If you’ll just tell my cousin—”

“He is not your cousin.”

Lowering the saddle, Tabitha slowly turned to face Lyssandra. She owed her at least that much. “How did you know?”

“Because I heard him yelling at you last night.” A scornful smile curved her lips. “He never yells at me. He always treats me with the most unfailing courtesy.”

“I know what you think you heard. But nothing happened between the two of us last night.”

“Only because you sent him away.”

Tabitha wanted to deny it, but she had nothing left to offer this kind and generous girl but the truth. “He’s still going to marry you, you know. As soon as you turn eighteen.” She nearly choked on the words, but managed to get them out. “He’ll be a good husband.”

“Aye.” Bitterness darkened Lyssandra’s eyes, making her look less like a girl than a woman. “He’ll kiss me on the cheek and bring me sweetmeats for supper. He’ll rock my children in his arms and praise my handling of the castle accounts. But when he gazes out the window on a moonlit night, ’twill be you he’s thinking of.”

Tabitha shook her head, blinking back tears. “He’ll forget me.”

“I pray to God so.” Then as if ashamed of her fierce declaration, she whispered, “Where will you go?”

Tabitha wasn’t sure how to answer that question. By abandoning the amulet, she might very well be risking her only way back to the twenty-first century. But if she returned to this place and saw Colin’s face again, she might lose her will to leave him. She might end up living in that Highland castle, forced to love him only in shadow instead of sunshine. She might grow old and bitter while she waited for him to leave this woman’s side and come to hers.

Knowing that could never be enough for any of them, she said softly, “I’ll go far away from here. So far he’ll never find me.”

Satisfied with her answer, Lyssandra pointed to a sleek gray horse in a nearby stall. “You can take my steed if you want. Colin gave him to me on my tenth birthday. He’s gentle, but as fast as the wind.”

Tabitha nervously eyed the elegant beast. “No, thank you. I’d rather take Chauncey’s horse. At least he’s familiar with me.” She hoisted the saddle on the sorrel’s back, determined to go before her courage faltered.

After watching her fumble with the leather straps for several seconds, Lyssandra stepped in and tightened the girth with a few expert jerks.

As Tabitha led the horse through the stable doors, the girl trailed behind her. Squinting against the brisk wind, Tabitha searched the horizon, realizing she didn’t have the faintest idea how to get where she needed to go. She would have wished herself to Brisbane’s castle, but given the unpredictable outcome of her wishes without the amulet to temper them, she feared landing in his
dungeon or on one of those deadly spikes capping his castle walls.

She shuddered. “I have some unfinished business to take care of. I don’t suppose you could point me toward England?”

Lyssandra’s brow puckered in a frown. She pointed left, then right, then left again. Before Tabitha could mount, the girl pulled off her cloak and thrust it at her. “The sky bodes ill for your journey.”

Tabitha wrapped the warm woolen cloak around her, and clambered into the saddle. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was facing the horse’s head instead of his swishing tail. As she drew the hood up over her hair, the first raindrops began to fall.

Lyssandra gripped her ankle. “Take care, my lady.” From the girl’s troubled expression, Tabitha sensed she was sincere.

She wanted to smile, but all she could manage was a fierce nod. “And you take care of him.”

She didn’t wait to hear Lyssandra’s response. As Chauncey’s sorrel cantered across the drawbridge, she glanced back only once to find the girl still standing by the stables, growing smaller with every hoofbeat. Then she turned her face toward the future, thankful for a wind strong enough to snatch her tears before they could fall.

CHAPTER
23

“I
t appears the wages of sin is the sleep of the dead.”

At that dour pronouncement, Colin pried open one eye to find Arjon standing over his bed, grinning impishly down at him.

He groaned and burrowed his head beneath the feather pillow. “ ’Tis punishment enough that God would send a fiend such as you to torment me.”

“Ah, but friend or fiend remains to be seen.”

Tossing the pillow at Arjon, Colin sat up. The sudden motion nearly undid him. He squeezed his skull between his palms in a vain attempt to make it stop throbbing. “Would you please go tell MacDuff’s priest to stop ringing those damnable bells?”