Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (18 page)

Julian sat down with a thump, his grip
loosened on the flagon of wine. He held her gaze as steadily as an
owl. “I’m not a priest, Aurelia. I’m a lawyer.”

Lawyer? There was a word that had no meaning
for Aurelia - it must be simply some distinction between grades of
priesthood.

“
Call yourself what you
will!” Aurelia waved off this qualification. “Let us have the
wine.” Aurelia dropped her voice and leaned closer to Julian,
taking a confidential tone. “You know, for mere fruit juice, this
wine has an effect not unlike mead.”

“
Mead? Dear God, you have
drunk mead?” Marissa looked to be smothering a laugh. “Darling, I
thought only rural heathens drank that stuff. Likely because they
could not afford anything better.”

Aurelia fixed the other women with a stern
glance. Her garb this evening was no less revealing, for all its
apparent modesty. Marissa’s ankles were on full display and her
chausses emphasized the roundness of her rump in a most forward
manner.

“
I suppose,” Aurelia said
with all the hauteur she could summon, “that mead is beneath the
fine tastes of an overly indulged whore like yourself.”

“
Whore?” Marissa blanched
and her mouth dropped open before she bounded to her feet. “Whore?
How dare you call me a whore?”

“
Oh, I dare,” Aurelia said
smoothly. She eyed the emptiness of her goblet pointedly, then
glanced to Julian. He seemed to be struggling not to laugh and had
apparently forgotten the wine completely. “Though it matters
little. The truth is painfully obvious to anyone who even glances
at this travesty of a court.”

“
Well, I
never…!”

“
I should think you have,”
Aurelia retorted. “And often.” She met the other woman’s gaze with
a serene smile and shrugged. “Why else would the king indulge you
so freely?”

Julian began to laugh, but a hard light
glittered in Marissa’s eyes. “The king, well!” The whore laughed
awkwardly and glanced at Bard. “Where did you find her, darling?
Under a rock?”

“
Close to it,” Bard
commented evenly without even glancing to Marissa. “Why don’t you
tell us who you really are, Aurelia?”

Aurelia tried to sweep to her feet regally
at the implication that her word was not to be believed, but
stumbled instead.

Gods and goddesses, but this juice had an
unexpected power!

She lifted her chin proudly all the same. “I
am Aurelia, daughter of Hekod the Fifth, King of Dunhelm and Lord
of Fyordskar over the Sea, princess to the royal house and sole
heiress to the throne of Dunhelm.” She met the invader’s
considering gaze squarely and arched a brow. “Who else could I
possibly be?”

Bard glanced to a bound volume by his foot
and then back to Aurelia, his brow pulling together in a frown.

“
Anyone you can imagine,
obviously,” Marissa said tartly.

“
Marissa, that’s enough.”
Bard’s voice was stern.

“
Hardly!” Marissa snorted
and fired a lethal glance at Aurelia when no one responded. “Well,
it’s obvious that no one has any interest in my perspective about
all of this!” She stormed toward the door, clearly expecting
someone to stop her.

But Aurelia was snared by the intense green
of Bard’s concerned gaze and could not look away. They stared at
each other, the whore’s displeasure a distant annoyance.

The power of Bard’s effect upon Aurelia was
astonishing. She was sorely tempted to trust Dunhelm’s new king,
even knowing all she did about him.

Aurelia was vaguely aware that Marissa
sniffed with displeasure before stalking through the portal.

“
Good riddance,” Julian
muttered. He conquered the cork and splashed wine into all three
goblets, taking a hearty swallow himself.

Bard leaned closer and Aurelia’s heart began
to pound. “Princess, you can tell me the truth, you know,” he said
in a low sympathetic voice. His gaze was mesmerizing, his low words
hypnotic.

Aurelia was horrified to find her will
bending to mesh with his own. “But you know the truth!” she
retorted. “Why else did you imprison me in the well?”

Bard laced his fingers together and held her
regard, his voice low and authoritative. “No one imprisoned you,
Aurelia. We simply found you in that room, the well as you say. How
did you get in?”

Aurelia did not know what to say to
that.

Bard’s tone was so gentle that a less
worldly woman than herself might have been fooled into believing he
cared for her welfare. “Aurelia, your father is not the
king…”

“
He was, before you came,”
she said tightly.

Bard’s lips thinned, but his tone did not
change. “Did your father abandon you here at Dunhelm?”

Aurelia was appalled that he would try to
twist the truth to leave her honorable father looking responsible.
“No!” she retorted hotly. “My sire loves me! He would never abandon
me. We are each all the other have left in this world!”

Bard’s expression turned grim. “Did your
father die, Aurelia?”

How could Bard not know her sire’s fate?

Aurelia’s heart leapt. Her father had
escaped Bard’s vengeance, no doubt with the aid of the old woman on
the rocks.

Then her heart fell like a stone. Because
Bard knew Hekod had evaded him. She was the one who had been fool
enough to lead Bard to the sea caves! Aurelia groaned inwardly,
hating that she found herself in a predicament of her own making
yet again.

Clearly Bard thought Aurelia knew her
father’s hiding place. That was why he was treating her so kindly.
Oh, she had made a mess and a half of this!

And what else had she revealed this evening?
Aurelia knew all too well that she had talked overmuch, but her
recollection was already fogged.

Aurelia looked to the goblet of wine and
suddenly understood what had loosened her unruly tongue.

The drink had been enchanted!

*

Baird stared into Aurelia’s magnificent
eyes, once again certain that her mind was whirling. He could
almost hear the wheels turning - and wished desperately that he
knew what she was thinking.

Julian chose that moment to end his contest
with Aurelia.

The lawyer hesitated uncharacteristically in
the act of taking a sip of Chianti. When Baird glanced his way,
Julian wavered for a moment, his eyes rolled back, then he slid
bonelessly to the floor.

Aurelia waved her goblet over her head, a
flush not purely from victory staining her cheeks. “I win!” she
crowed and danced to her feet. “He could not face his own
brew!”

Her change of mood was breathtakingly quick
and Baird eyed her uncertainly. Aurelia changed from woman to child
in the blink of an eye - and usually right after she got that look
of terror in her eyes.

Her strong response to the idea of her
father being dead made Baird think he had hit a nerve. That
Aurelia, who faced life full-out, couldn’t bring herself to
confront the idea of her father’s death was obviously
important.

She was such a strong person that her
vulnerability over even one issue tugged at his heartstrings. Baird
resolved that he should be more gentle with Aurelia in his search
for the truth. If her father was dead, that wouldn’t be easy for
her to face.

And Baird was oddly determined to protect
his princess from hurt.

A less-than-festive Julian groaned from the
floor and his glass slipped from his limp fingers. It rolled across
the floor, spilling its ruby contents, but the lawyer did not
move.

Baird suddenly saw disaster in the
making.

“
The new tiles!” He swore
and ducked his head under the table to wipe up the wine, Aurelia
following suit. They bumped heads and she sat back on her heels
with a giggle. She clapped a hand over her mouth, fell back on her
butt with a thump, and watched him with twinkling eyes.

She was just so damned cute. Baird had to
admit that he liked how enthusiastically Aurelia had met Julian’s
challenge and liked even better that she had beaten the lawyer
soundly.

Julian would never live this down.

At least, if Baird had his way.

And if Baird could do anything about it,
he’d have Aurelia’s eyes sparkling routinely. Baird had to help
Aurelia face the truth, however painful it might be.

But right now, he had to ease away the
shadows he had unwittingly put in her eyes.

“
What do you seek beneath
the board?” she asked.

“
I was looking to see where
you hid all that pizza and wine.” Baird met her gaze solemnly. “Are
you sure you don’t have a hollow leg?”

“
Not me!” Aurelia laughed
heartily, a far cry from the contrived trill that Marissa
periodically let herself utter. “You have seen my legs enough to
know the truth!”

Oh, that he had. Baird snuck a glance at her
dancing toes and told himself that the heat in his veins was
because of the wine.

“
What about a dog?” he
demanded with mock skepticism. “Have you been slipping all your
pizza to some hungry mutt?”

“
No! There are no dogs in
your hall.”

“
Hmm.” Baird stood and
propped his hands on his hips, making a great show of looking
around the room. He fixed a stern eye on Aurelia. “But you’re too
small to eat more than me and drink more than Julian, let alone at
the same time. Are you sure you don’t have big pockets in that
dress?”

Aurelia scrambled to her feet and lifted her
chin proudly. “Do you doubt the word of a Pictish princess?”

“
No, just her capacity.”
Baird closed the distance between them, fighting against a playful
smile. “Maybe I should check,” he suggested wickedly and snatched
at her.

“
Oh, ho! You will not touch
me!” Aurelia danced away evasively, holding up her left hand to
ward Baird off.

It worked.

Three delicate, very blue whorls uncoiled on
Aurelia’s left palm, the trio radiating from an ornate spiraled
core. Each curve as graceful as a fern in the spring forest. It
almost reminded Baird of drawings of galaxies, before he realized
exactly where he had seen this pattern before.

It was in Talorc’s book.

The hair on the back of Baird’s neck rose
right on cue.

“
What’s that?” he asked,
and his voice was unusually strained.

Aurelia looked to her hand, as though it was
no big deal. “It is the mark of the onset of my courses and the
pledge of my vows. Surely you have seen one like it before.”

Oh, he had, but how could she know that?
Baird refused to even look towards the book. He took a step
backwards, his gaze locked on the tattoo. An eerie tingle danced
over his flesh.

It couldn’t be a Pictish tattoo!

Baird must have drunk more than he thought
he had, to even be considering such a possibility! Anyone could
have a tattoo made in any city in the world. It wasn’t hard to do -
and if Aurelia had wanted to play the Pictish princess with
conviction, she might have deliberately chosen this design.

If nothing else, Aurelia had done her
homework.

But all the logical explanations in the
world couldn’t undermine Baird’s intuitive certainty that this was
the real thing.

Which was not the way Baird thought, at all.
He wasn’t intuitive, he didn’t have any use for instinct, he
certainly put no value in emotion. Only logic served a man
well.

Even if logic was coming up a bit short in
this circumstance. Maybe it wasn’t Dunhelm that had cast a spell
over him, after all.

Maybe it had been Aurelia.

His blood ran cold at the thought. “It can’t
be real,” Baird argued, but there was no conviction in his
voice.

“
It most certainly is
real,” Aurelia scoffed. “I still recall the pain.”

“
Then why do
it?”

Aurelia lifted her chin proudly now as
though insulted. “I am half Viking blood, by my sire, and unafraid
of anything laid before me. A Viking neither backs away from a
challenge, nor forgets obligation, nor leaves the field in
defeat.”

She cast a scathing glance at Julian, now
snoring on the floor. “Tell your Roman priest that the power of the
old ones is yet strong.”

There was that talk about Julian being a
priest again. Baird shifted his weight uneasily and refused to look
to Talorc’s book.

Aurelia would have strolled from the room
regally, no doubt, but she stumbled on the hem of her dress. She
did an intricate little two-step towards the stairs and she caught
her balance before Baird could even move to help her.

Then, she took a deep breath and pivoted to
stare Baird right in the eye. “And tell him that the spell he laid
on the fruit juice was weak indeed.”

Spell?

Before Baird could ask, Aurelia turned away.
She must have done so a little too quickly, for she wobbled on her
feet, then gripped the doorframe for a long moment. She crossed the
foyer without looking back, the faint sound of a hiccup carrying to
his ears.

Baird stood and stared after her for a long
moment. She didn’t know what wine or pizza was, she drank mead, she
didn’t understand indoor plumbing. Aurelia couldn’t really be from
the eighth century.

She just couldn’t.

Baird eyed his snoring lawyer and realized
that although one contestant had made it to her room under her own
steam, the other one would need a little assistance.

And he was the only one left to provide
it.

*

Aurelia peeled off her clothes and cast them
impatiently on the floor when she reached her room. She knew it was
not her imagination that the whore’s chemise nearly burned her
skin. The woman’s malevolence was powerful enough to have a life of
its own.