Love's Magic (18 page)

“The maids went with Forrester to go and get some.” Celestia took some dishes from Bertram’s arms. “We will need everything in the wagon! Ah, candles—it is so dark in here, I feel as if the walls are moving closer and closer each time I turn around.”

Her voice cracked. The tears were coming whether she wanted them or nay. She had to leave before she shamed herself, and Nicholas, with her unseemly crying.

“I think I’ll go find them, mayhap they’ll need help bringing the rushes in—just set the things wherever you can.”

Nicholas called, “Wait for me, Celestia, I’ll go with you.”

She waved her hand, unable to look at her husband. “Nay, nay, I wish to be alone.”

“Take these, my lady,” Sir Geoffrey interrupted, handing her both an empty basket and her gardening dagger on her way out. “I saw some spring berries at the side of the keep nearest the tree line. Nothing like sweet fruit to lift the spirits!”

“Thank you,” she said, then she walked very fast out the front of the keep. Tears blurred her vision, so instead of going over the drawbridge, she carefully made her way around the stone walls to the right. Turning the corner, she found a tall hedge of thorns and a gate of the same height. She could see nothing beyond, but she heard men’s voices.

She pushed at the heavy wooden barrier until it finally gave way. Stubborn as she was, the gate never stood a chance, she thought with satisfaction as the door swung wide. Especially when she was in a temper.

Wiping away the tears that overflowed at will, she stepped into the rear of the keep, and almost dropped her basket.

“Oh, sweet Mary Magdalene!” She tightened her grip on the handle, amazed at what was hidden behind the keep’s walls. The entrance to Falcon Keep had been falling down and rotten, disguising its true treasures. The moat didn’t go clear around, so the noxious smell was hardly noticeable.

The back of the yard butted up against a grove thick with birch, beech, and oak trees on the left, and a large, forbidding cliff protected them on the right. The perimeter was handily fenced with stone and wooden palisades.

She was duly impressed with the fortifications. The rear of the keep opened to the yard, and she searched until she found what she thought might be the kitchen garden.

Neglected and lonely, some herbs that grew wild, and needed no coaxing, were barely visible. Her fingers itched to dig in the dirt, to fix what could be mended. Then she heard Nicholas’s voice, and she forgot about the garden.

Willy, Henry, and Petyr, still wearing blue and gold, were stabling the horses with fresh hay and setting things to rights while Nicholas himself was chopping wood in front of a large barn.

She stomped over to him, telling herself with each step that ladies did not stomp.

“Nicholas,” she demanded his attention. “How is it you beat me here?”

“I came through the kitchen.”

He was all surly male, making a pronouncement that he couldn’t be with her, and then pouting when she didn’t wait for him to walk with her. Well, she refused to cry in front of him. He could not know that he’d hurt her so badly.

Swinging her basket, she asked, “Do my eyes deceive me? Is this the same place?”

“‘Tis not quite as bad out here, my lady. Although it is just as deserted.”

“Did you find the other eight knights your father, er, the baron, sent?”

He pointed his axe toward the very last shed. “Four of them were in there, dead. We’ve looked everywhere else for the other bodies, but …” he shrugged and Celestia followed the line of muscle across his shoulders.

“We’ll have to drain the moat.”

Celestia lowered her eyes, her entire body suddenly chilled as she thought of the poisonous green water winding in front of the keep like a deadly snake. Her vision had centered upon it, and she was sure that they would find more bodies there. “I would not wish that upon any man.”

Nicholas’s jaw clenched tight. “I would find who committed these crimes, and hold them accountable,” he set the axe head down, holding the wood.

Thinking only to comfort him, Celestia put her hand on his wrist, realizing too late that she touched scarred skin. She found it difficult to breathe as she absorbed the heat of him; her pulse pounded erratically. His tunic was rolled up at the sleeves, untucked from his breeches and open down the front of his chest. She gulped and stared at the play of muscles upon his flat stomach.

She slowly brought her eyes up to his face, aware of the burning in her fingertips. Her breasts heaved with emotion, and she stepped closer to the source of her confusion.
Nicholas.

She flicked the very tip of her tongue over her dry lips. If only he would try to care for her, too!

“You are hurting me …” Nicholas told her as he gently removed her hand from his forearm.

Not understanding, she looked down and saw that her fingertips had burned their print upon his skin. Her eyes filled with stunned tears, and she dropped the empty basket.

Reaching forward to place her palm along the burn, to heal the wound she’d unwittingly inflicted, she pulled back, terrified of what had gone wrong. “I have never …” Celestia hoped that he would see the innocence in her eyes as she pleaded for him to forgive her. “I wouldn’t hurt anyone, and
never
you.”

She stumbled over her words, her hands fluttering ineffectually. “I’ve never caused harm, never …” She bit her lip and took a few faltering steps back, almost tripping over her neglected basket. It had to be the Boadicea legend. She’d been married without love, and this was the price she was paying.

Nicholas took her by the arm, careful to avoid skin-to-skin contact. “Celestia, calm down, I’ve never seen you like this—the burn was nothing, the marks are clearing already, do you see?”

She shook him off. In trying to heal his despair, she’d been unprepared for the devastation she felt now at the impending loss of her identity. “It is my turn to warn you, Nicholas, stay away—for your health, do you understand?” She ran for the forest, a wounded animal going to ground. “For your health!”

Chapter
Ten

C
elestia thrashed through the trees like a crazed rabbit being chased by a hungry red fox. She ran until her side cramped, and then she walked, caring little where she was going. She paid no heed to the height of the sun, nor the direction she went.

All she could think about was hurting Nicholas. Was this the first part of losing her gifts, as the legend predicted?

Somewhere in her mad dash, she’d twisted her ankle, and she was limping by the time she heard the sound of a stream. Her emotions had ranged from shame, injured pride, anger (at herself), irritation (at Nicholas), to regret. She eased her aching body onto a large, flat rock and cried some more.

The tears she had been denying ever since she had met her husband had been flowing steadily since her flight from the keep. She cried over leaving her family, whom she loved and missed; she cried because she would never know the love her parents shared, or the love between a man and a woman. “Especially not if you burn him whenever you touch him,” she scolded herself out loud.

The chirping of the birds was her only answer, and as silence reigned around her she began to feel foolish for running. Nicholas would never have chased after her; he would never give in to that kind of emotion.

She rubbed at her sore eyes. What was it to her if her face was puffy and red? Normally not one for self-pity, she was not sure what to do with her feelings. At home, if she was unsettled, she found someone who needed her.

The serfs at Montehue Manor were decidedly healthy.

Now she was married to a man who believed her to be a witch, and how could she deny such an accusation when she burned him with her healing touch? But the cruelest jest of all was the knowledge that she’d gone and fallen head over heels in love with her husband.

He was a good man, despite the demons haunting him. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, grateful that Gali was not there to see such an unladylike act.

But the thought of her sister’s absence brought on more tears, and she lay back against the rock, using her arms as a pillow. She closed her itching, watery eyes and prayed for her husband’s soul, and her own salvation.

It was late afternoon when she woke, startled by a cracking branch. Celestia sat up so fast that she fell off of the rock where she had been napping and landed on her rear.

Not for the first time in her nineteen years did she wish for more womanly curves. She slowly got to her feet, rubbing her backside and looking for any sign of danger. Rationally, she realized that it must have been a deer or some kind of woodland animal that was, hopefully, not hungry.

She couldn’t see anything, so she wandered to the stream and knelt on the banks, cupping the cold water in her hands to sip before leaning over and splashing some on her face and neck.

A twig snapped behind her, and she whirled, her panicked heart beating triple time. That was no deer, maybe a boar? “Who is there?”

She glanced around, her eyes darting wildly from left to right as she searched for intruders. She saw no one, but sensed she wasn’t alone.

Celestia cautiously made her way to the rock where she’d slept. Her stomach hitched to the back of her throat as she spotted the arrow lying in the exact place her head had rested. No wild boar carried a quiver of arrows—had she been watched—was she still being watched?

Debilitating fear threatened her usual pre-Nicholas composure, so she deliberately slowed her breaths until she regained her balance.

Her father had always said she was the most logical of his brood, the one most likely to calmly react. So she would think … She ran her thumb over the white feathers. It was getting dark, but there was enough dusky light flitting through the tree cover that mayhap she could pick her way back.

“Fool!” she muttered angrily. It was her own fault for running through the forest like a wayward brat. Her sense of direction was completely off-kilter, and since she’d never been here before, she had no landmarks to guide her.

Mayhap it would be smarter to wait until morning before trying to find her way back to the keep?

Nay, she chided herself. Whoever had been watching her was still out there. Weren’t they? Why would they leave her alone now, unless they were toying with her as a cat does a mouse—and what was the point of the arrow? A threat? A warning?

“Where are you, Nicholas?” Her whispered voice echoed eerily in the twilight. He was more than likely thanking the heavens that she was lost and praying that she’d been eaten by a wild badger. One less responsibility forced on him.

She brushed her hair off of her face. Sternly reminding herself that she’d never been a coward, Celestia lifted her chin, located as many of the broken branches she’d torn through as she could, and started walking.

Nicholas could not stop staring at his wrist. The burns had faded, just like he’d tried to tell Celestia before she’d darted away from him and run for the cover of the trees.

He hefted the axe, flexing his sore muscles. He didn’t use to be so weak, but the fever, as well as weaning himself off the opium, had abused what was left of an already sore-used body.

Abbot Crispin said that he’d never be well until he looked to his soul.

He swung down, inhaling the scent of freshly chopped pine.

Nicholas would offer the baron’s head to Saint James in return for his soul—vengeance would be just and right.

There was no time for emotional attachments. They couldn’t be trusted, for one thing, and for another, they got in the way. Celestia was dangerous, his wrist was proof of that.

With her kind of power, she’d see into his secret self—a place where even he didn’t dare to look. She’d fainted at just a glimpse of the darkness he lived with every day.

He might have fooled an ordinary woman into thinking they could be happy. Celestia would know the truth.
Damn.
He swung again.

He’d not imagined what had happened, and Nicholas refused to dwell on what couldn’t be explained. His heart bade him run after her and wipe the tears that had welled in her brilliant eyes, just as his head insisted that he stay away, for both their sakes. She even had his innards at cross-purposes.

What had she meant—to stay away, for his health?

He worried, and picked up another log. It was getting darker by the minute, and she hadn’t returned.

Celestia made him feel things he would rather not. Like hope. He tossed another chopped piece of wood to the growing stack near the kitchen garden.

If he’d followed her, he would have kissed her until they both forgot the consequences of making love. He had no right to take Celestia’s virginity, nor her heart, not when he knew he couldn’t give her what she sought.

He shivered and almost sliced his foot in two.
Her eyes grew luminous in passion, and she stared at him as if she knew him, as if she could love him, despite his many flaws.
His groin pulsed with lust. He’d not missed sex, but she’d reawakened desire.

Nicholas sank the axe into the chopping block and watched the handle quiver. Control. He needed to control the lust she inspired within him. He’d not give up everything that had kept him going as he’d crawled back from Tripoli.

Revenge.

That could keep a man’s blood hot, as well.

Viola and Bess, who’d started scrubbing the kitchen after laying the fresh rushes, came out to empty a bucket of dirty water.

“Where is Celestia?” Viola wiped her wet hands on her apron.

Nicholas walked away from the stack of wood, his gut heavy.

“She didn’t return from the forest?”

“No,” Bess said, her eyes searching the tree line. “Sir Geoffrey said she was gathering berries, and we—”

“We thought she was with you, and, oh, no,” Viola said.

Nicholas closed his eyes, and ran his hand over his forehead, calling himself ten times a fool. “She ran, she was upset, and I just assumed that …”

Bess, obviously forgetting about or not caring about, the differences in their rank, yelled, “You let her traipse off into the woods alone? In a strange place, with a band of mad Scots roaming around?”

Nicholas, red-faced, could hardly explain that he was trying to control his baser urges. “One would think she had more sense than a puppy.” He knew he was in the wrong, but he couldn’t stop his mouth. “Actually, she should have stayed inside, doing a woman’s work, rather than running around after a few berries.”

The maids both gaped.

Petyr cleared his throat, startling Nicholas. He’d been so lost in his own misery, he’d forgotten the knight was there. “Lets go find the lady, eh? It’s not getting any lighter,” Petyr said.

Nicholas cursed the falling darkness. “Aye, get the men, would you?”

Petyr snorted. “One day ye’ll have to claim us, or let us go.”

“I’ve enough to worry about at this moment, don’t you agree?”

Sighing, Petyr went off into the keep, and within moments, came back with all the knights in tow. Forrester, Henry, and Willy all stood with military precision as Petyr handed out torches.

Geoffrey stood shoulder to shoulder with Bertram without bickering. “We’ll search all night, if need be,” Bertram said grimly.

“Excellent.” Nicholas shrugged off his feelings of guilt; he hadn’t the time to dwell on mere emotion. “I want bonfires at the edge of the property, something to draw her toward us.”

Petyr nodded. “Henry, Willy—it looks like Lord Nicholas was preparing for such a disaster, so take what you need.”

“We’ll help, my lord. The sooner we get to the trees, the better,” Geoffrey said as he and Bertram each grabbed armfuls of wood. “It seems a long time to be gone, collecting berries.”

“She doesn’t know these woods, not like she does the ones at home,” Viola said, picking at a thread on her apron.

“I thought she was avoiding me, and that mayhap she’d slipped around the front of the keep somehow.” He’d needed the time alone to sort through his contrary feelings. It was not easy coming to terms with warring emotions, and Celestia sent his entire system into battle.

Bess looked at the woodpile, then she sent him a forgiving glance. “Aye, and so you were going to cut down all the trees in the forest while ye waited for her to come back?”

Nicholas scratched the back of his neck. Celestia needed him. Suddenly he knew that with every bone in his body.

“We can’t wait,” Nicholas grabbed a torch and set the resin tip alight. He gave up trying to control the fear that tore at his gut. If he had only chased after her, then she wouldn’t be in danger, and for certes, he knew that she was in danger.

If he had but listened to his heart, instead of his head.

He thought of her stranded alone in the dark, perhaps with her ankle twisted in a fox hole. Or maybe she had fallen, and hit her head on a gnarled tree root. He couldn’t stand it anymore. “Let’s go find my wife.”

Petyr grunted. “It is about time ye claim her, at least. Let us find the lady then, and mayhap our cursed luck will change.”

Nicholas didn’t argue.

They made enough noise to alert any wild animals to their presence, but since they weren’t hunting, Nicholas didn’t care. “Celestia!” His voice grew hoarse from shouting.

Wandering for what felt like hours, Nicholas came to the conclusion that he wasn’t dead to feeling after all. Each step he took, he imagined something worse, and yet he couldn’t give up.

“Over here.” Petyr pointed to a hunk of long blond hair caught on a branch. “She must have come this way.”

Nicholas charged forward through the concealing brush without a thought to his own safety, only to plummet down a hidden ravine, rolling and feeling every stone and stick until he landed out of breath on the hard turf.

“My lord! Are you all right?” Petyr’s voice bellowed down at him as he lay on his side, taking a moment to decide whether or not anything was broken. “Nicholas?”

Nothing ached, besides his pride, which had been taking a beating anyway. He shouted back, “I’m here, Petyr. Unhurt.”

Nicholas looked around the deep valley, startled to see sheep sleeping in the spring grass. They looked like woolly rocks in the dark. His head was still spinning, and he focused on a scrap of blue. The same shade as Celestia’s tunic.

His breath caught in his throat, and his voice came out as deep as a bullfrog’s croak. “Celestia?”

Rolling to his feet, he ran to where she lay as still as death. It was obvious that she’d fallen down the same steep hill. Had she broken her neck? He ran his hands over her hair, noticed the grass clinging to her clothing, saw a vivid scrape on her cheek, but she was breathing, and he thought her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“Celestia!” He shook her shoulder, willing her to wake.

Her eyes opened, startling them both. “Nicholas? You came for me? Oh, dear, I hope you didn’t fall …”

“You little fool—why didn’t you come back to the keep?”

She lowered her eyes, and her voice was a whisper as she said, “I fell asleep.”

Nicholas sat back on his heels, her answer not at all what he’d expected. “In the forest?”