The Lady and the Knight (Highland Brides) (7 page)

The skinny lad turned, terror in his eyes.

"Go back!" Sara screamed. "Go back!" But no one heard her.

The boy touched the blade. The clouds turned to dark, gnarled faces. And the river turned to blood.

"Nay!" Sara shrieked. She woke with a start. Evil approached. She felt it in her heart, and in wild desperation, snatched up a branch from the fire.

Her scream ripped Boden into wakefulness. He grabbed for his sword and slashed even as he leapt to his feet.

Shadows sprang toward him through the darkness. Boden slashed again, catching the nearest man across the belly. He screamed and crumpled to the ground, but there was no time to think. The first brigand was felled, but there was another behind him, shrieking a battle cry. He dove from a nightmare, hefting his sword as he came.

Boden ducked, stabbed, and ducked again. Blood spurted into the night air. A man fell with a gurgling cry. Another came on.

Where was the woman? Was she dead?

Boden slashed again, then felt the bite of steel against his arm. The hiss of pain was his own, but his opponent fell, and now he could see the woman. She stood with a blazing brand in her hand while a villain lunged at her.

She screamed, but in the same instant she swung. An arc of sparks sprayed outward, lighting the villain's hideous expression. Wood met steel and the wood was severed. The villain laughed as he sprang forward.

Boden lunged toward them. A mace swung from the darkness. He leaped sideways, but not soon enough.

Thunder echoed in his head and he staggered. The world slowed. Reality trembled as a brigand screamed a battle cry. The sound echoed in Boden's mind. He turned, disoriented, dulled. Someone leapt toward him. He reacted by instinct. His arm lifted, blocked, parried, and suddenly the villain was impaled on his sword.

The man fell, dragging Boden's blade with him. He staggered sideways, pulling Adder free and searching for Bernadette. Did she still stand? He turned, trying to focus.

She was there. The flaming end had been severed from her brand, but she stood with her legs apart, nearly atop the child she so desperately tried to protect. The villain laughed again and lunged toward her, but in the wavering shadows of the failing fire, he tripped, and in that instant she swung wildly. The club connected with his skull and he fell to his knees.

Bernadette stumbled backward. The baby cried. She reached down, scooping him into her arms, but in that instant the brigand rose with a roar.

Darkness swirled around Boden. He grappled with it, yanking it aside as he struggled through the tattered webs of his failing consciousness toward her.

The brigand lunged. Bernadette raised an arm, trying to shield the baby.

A battle cry ripped, unbidden, from Boden's throat. Adder swept upward and suddenly, like black magic, it was embedded deep and ugly in the villain's back.

Boden watched the sword drop from the other's hand, watched his body reach skyward and stiffen before it crashed to the earth.

Then there was silence. Boden listened to it for a moment, nodded to the woman, and then he, too, slumped into darkness.

The music and the dream became one, cushioning him like a lover's arm, easing his aches, drawing him gently toward consciousness.

Still, the two young boys played on in his mind. One was dark, with a crooked smile, the other fair. A golden-haired woman with ethereal eyes and the face of an angel stood nearby. A river flowed over his feet and away into happiness.

Boden drank in the feelings, let them swirl around him, fill him. There was peace here, happiness, a soft cocoon between him and life's harsh realities. A man smiled, and suddenly he realized it was himself. The woman laughed and he reached for her hand. Warmth washed over him.

He opened his eyes slowly, and he saw her. Bernadette. The woman with the heavenly eyes. It seemed right somehow, predictable, fated.

"Can you stay?" he asked, still wrapped in the soft cocoon of his dream.

Her eyes were very wide and shone dark in the light of the fire behind him. He could see a pulse beating in her throat just below her jaw. "I thought ye had left us," she said, not answering his question.

No. He had not, for this place was too filled with beauty and peace. This place so difficult to find—until now. Until he was with her.

He held her gaze as a thousand soft emotions washed over him.

She shifted her eyes away. "You've been wounded. I feared ye might not come to."

Reality bloomed suddenly in his head. There was no peace. Dear Lord! They were under attack! Memories swarmed in. He jerked upright, trying to clear his head, to find his sword.

"Nay. Dunna," she pleaded and pressed him back down.

He tried to push her aside, but there was no strength in his arms. Terror seized him.

Vulnerability threatened. He struggled harder, but she merely tucked away his hands and eased him onto his back.

"Quiet! Lie still! Ye are safe. Shush now."

But the brigands! He must fight. Yet he could not. Panic welled up.

"Ye are safe," she said again.

He forced himself to relax, remembering his dream, the feel of her slim hand in his. "Tell me, lady," he murmured. ""Are you an angel?"

"Hardly that, sir."

"Then are you a witch?"

"Nay," she denied, drawing back. "Why would ye say such a thing?''

He lay still, drawing in perceptions. Her hair was the color of spun gold, her skin like fine ivory, and when she turned her eyes on him, his heart felt somehow too heavy for his chest. "You make me feel things I've not felt before. To dream dreams I've not dreamt."

She glanced momentarily sideways, then hurried her gaze back to his. "Tis the battle. Not me."

The battle. Possibly. Boden tried to concentrate on the events just past. Brigands had swarmed out of the darkness. How many? Five? Six? He had slashed and swung by rote, the familiar terror making him act. A man had fallen, then another and another. Boden had ducked but not quickly enough, and he had been struck.

He shifted his eyes to glance sideways. A half dozen bodies lay strewn on the ground about them. The earth was dark with their blood. So the battle was over. Once again the maniac inside him had been loosed, and once again he had survived. Nausea twisted his stomach, replacing the panic as it always did. He turned his attention back to the woman and saw that her gaze had followed his own.

Her body was stiff, and in her eyes he saw the shock he had missed before.

"There's no need to worry," he said, though his own pulse was just now slowing again.

A shudder racked her fragile form. She turned her gaze to his face. "They are dead," she whispered.

The statement almost made him laugh. Pain and the possibility of death always made his mood unpredictable. "Aye," he said, managing to keep his tone subdued. "They're dead. They'll not hurt you." But even as he said the words, her eyes told him he spoke a lie, for their deaths already haunted her. When had it ever been that a death did not scar the living?

He watched her face, lit only by the firelight's golden glow. A million thoughts were reflected there. A million emotions in her eyes. They worried him, scratching at his soul. The feeling was uncomfortable, so he pushed it aside, concentrating on what he knew. Survival.

"What woke you?" he asked.

"I was dreaming," she whispered.

Her answer seemed nonsensical, and he saw now that she was struggling to keep her gaze from straying onto the field of battle. He'd seen young squires look the same. Boys who had thought war would be bold and glorious had found the ravaged, horrifying truth far different from their expectations. Many emptied their stomachs after the sight of their first skirmish. But only a weak-kneed few were nauseated after every battle. Boden tried to ignore his queasiness.

"A soldier sleeps lightly by necessity, lest he sleep forever," Boden said, holding her gaze with his own and willing hers not to stray to the gore beyond the fire's brightest glow. "I heard nothing to wake me. What alerted you?"

She lifted her gaze, looking dazed, but now he found the strength to grip her arm and hold her attention with his eyes.

"How did you know they had come?" he asked again.

"Twas the dream," she said, clutching the silver dragon in her fist.

Premonition laid its cold hand on Boden's shoulder. "What dream?"

She didn't answer immediately, but stared at him as if she were entranced. "Of two boys by a river. One was stout, the other small with dark hair and a crooked smile."

His own dream! "What woke you?" he asked again, his tone raspy, his heart racing.

Still she stared at him. "I dreamed he was in danger."

St. Adrian's arse! What was she doing dreaming his dream? Boden wondered. But he gave himself a mental shake. It was purely coincidental that their dreams were similar. Nothing but coincidence. He pressed his mind on to other matters. "What did they want?" he asked, turning toward the, dead bodies.

She tried to pull from his grasp, but he had found a modicum of his strength and held her steady.

"I dunna know," she said.

The fire sparked once, then fell silent.

"I think you lie," he said.

"Nay. I dunna know what they wanted. Coin, I suspect. Plunder."

He watched her face. He'd learned long ago that if one was openly trusting, he was likely to find himself parted from his head at a tender age. And he'd grown rather attached to his head.

So it seemed worth his while to try to sort the truth from fantasy, especially since the truth had brought on a half dozen men with big, nasty weapons. What had they been after?

"I dunna," she repeated, then drew a deep, shuddering breath. Her eyes, wide and haunted, shifted sideways. "They're dead," she whispered, and a tear, bright as citrine in the firelight, slid down her cheek.

Dear Lord! He scowled as he watched the tear glide along the curve of her delicate jaw. He might
hurl
on the enemy, but he never
cried
over them.

"Get the child," he said, stuffing his emotions quickly away. "We leave this place."

They rode for several hours, moving quietly through the darkness.

"You were singing in French."

Sara started from her reverie, but God knew it was foolish to jump from this man, for she was, once again, cradled in his arms like a lover as they rode along.

Tilly was tethered behind them. Perhaps it was the smell of blood at their campsite that had made her decide to follow docilely behind.

"Lady," Boden said, interrupting her thoughts with his low voice.

"Ye are mistaken. I dunna speak French," she said. Despite the darkness that still surrounded them, she could sense his gaze on her face, could feel the tautness of his chest against her back.

"It seems unlikely you could
sing
in French when you do not speak it. And singing you were.

Twas the words from my youth that brought me to consciousness."

Sara felt her heart thumping in her chest. She
had
sung in French. But how? She did not know that language. Where had the words come from? Why did she dream such frightening dreams? Why did Dragonheart seem so warm against her flesh at times? Was she going mad?

He was staring at her.

She didn't turn toward him. There was no need for that. She knew how he would look. She knew his face, for she had seen it before ever meeting him. She had seen it in a dream. She had seen it, his sword, his childhood! Dear God!

"Your mother is French," he said, breaking into her frantic thoughts. ' 'Yet she does not speak her native language?"

Sara caught her breath. She had forgotten her lies. "Nay, Mother does speak the language, but I dunna."

"Yet you were singing in that tongue just this night."

She twisted about, desperately catching his gaze. "I was not. I dunna know that language."

"Perhaps the amulet spoke it to you," he said, his expression dark, his tone the same. "Perhaps singing is one of your fine attributes that the pendant 'enhances.'

Was that not the word you used?" His eyes smote her. He was very close. So close she could feel his breath fan her cheek, could feel his forbidden allure.

She forgot to breathe as she fought his dark appeal and the swirling confusion. She could not afford to trust him. She had made up lies about Dragonheart's powers, pure lies, to save her life.

"Ye were unconscious," she said, trying to quiet the thrum of her heart. "Ye dreamed it."

"You were not singing?''

Perhaps insanity had truly gripped her for a while, for yes, as the dead men had lain in their hideous positions upon the ground, she had cradled Thomas to her chest and sung. "Nay I
was
singing."

For one crazed moment she was tempted to reach out and touch his arm, to beg him to protect her from the insanity that surrounded her, to tell her that all was well and normal. But all was not well and things were definitely not normal.

How had she known where to find the farm? Where had she seen his face before?

She remained as she was, staring into his eyes, lost in uncertainty, and fighting the inexplicable desire to touch him.

The horse had stopped.

"Twas a song from my boyhood you sang. A song that soothed me when I was small," he said.

His voice was very soft, but deep, like the quiet babble of rapid waters. "Twas French."

"Nay." She shook her head. "I swear, I dunna speak French. Twas Gaelic words I sang."

The world stilled as he searched for truth in her eyes, but suddenly he grabbed her arm in a tight frustration.

"Why do you lie?" he rasped, leaning closer.

"I dunna."

"You do. Who are you?"

"I am Bernadette."

"You lie!" he snarled, and slipped onto the earth in a heap.

He felt her presence like a ray of warmth the moment he awoke. Daylight had come. He lay on his back on a swath of green beneath a bent oak. The sunlight streaked between the branches overhead and glistened on her gilded hair. Her face was turned sideways, showing her delicate profile.

"Why did you stay?'' he asked.