Claire Delacroix (18 page)

He had stepped into a
Three Musketeers
movie.

The cold shadows of the stairwell rose higher and higher around him, the damp smell of the underground chamber filled his nostrils. He looked up, just before ducking beneath the portal as he had this morning, but was shocked to find the sky overhead a star-studded bowl.

It had been raining and gray this morning.

To Baird’s further surprise, the stone portal before him was slightly ajar. This wasn’t the same at all.

The dream Baird slipped through doorway cautiously, blinking in the shadows and shivering in the chill sheltered within. He stepped forward, slowly at first, holding the torch this way and that. His hand was on the hilt of his sword.

Baird could see the silhouette of Aurelia’s sleeping form. She breathed slowly and deeply, the sound a soft whisper in the dead silence of the well. The lady slumbered like a corpse, the flickering light giving the impression that her lips moved ever so slightly.

Baird drew nearer to Aurelia’s side, feeling the same weird magnetic pull he had experienced this morning. His heart thundered in his ears with the audacity of what he meant to do.

Aurelia lay undisturbed as Baird reached her side. The musty smell of the chamber enveloped him, the sweetly familiar perfume of Aurelia’s flesh rose to tease his nostrils. He held the torch high, eying the way her delicate hands were folded across her chest and felt the satisfaction of a man who had reached his goal.

What goal?

Gemdelovely Gemdelee. Should her true love kiss her, his bride she will be.

The strange phrase made Baird toss and turn in his sleep, as though he would tear free of his mind’s games.

But the dream-Baird was undeterred. His hand came to rest on the stone beside her hip. Baird had the same sense of powerlessness he had felt this morning. He was startled to see his hand garbed with heavy green leather and lace spilling from his sleeve. In his mind’s eye, he bent over the sleeping woman, his heart racing.

He was going to kiss her.

Baird’s attention fixed on the shadowed silhouette of her sculpted lips. His mouth was only a finger’s breadth from hers when a bellow erupted immediately behind him.

Baird straightened with alarm. He pivoted on his heel and saw the flash of the knife just before he was struck. Baird dropped the torch with a cry and hauled his own sword from its scabbard, too late to make a difference.

A searing pain erupted in his chest. Baird looked down in disbelief, the torch still burning fitfully from the stone floor.

A knife with an ornately chased grip was buried to its hilt between Baird’s ribs.

And his own blood ran in a dark, sleek current to puddle on the stone floor. A clatter of footsteps betrayed his attackers’ flight, then there was no sound beyond the lady’s faint breath and his own labored breathing.

A strangled cry broke from Baird’s lips, then he roared in mingled pain and disappointment. He tried to run toward daylight and assistance, but his legs refused to support him.

Baird fell to his knees and fought to crawl out of the well, but without success. His limp fingers touched growing pool of blood as though he could not believe it was his own. The room began to fade to black from all sides.

He had failed.

Again.

* * *

No!

Baird sat up bolt upright in his bed, shaking from head to toe. The sweat was running down his back in a cold river. His heart hammered, his breathing was labored and his fingers rose instinctively to touch the burning of his lethal wound.

But there was no raged hole in his chest, much less an ornate knife.

Baird swallowed his fear with difficulty. He ran his fingers across his unblemished flesh and breathed a ragged sigh.

There was no knife. He had not been attacked.

He wasn’t dying.

He wasn’t even bleeding. Baird took a deep, steadying breath and heard it rattle out of his lungs.

He was in his room, alone, safe in his new hotel.

And outside his windows, the moonlight toyed with the incessant waves of the sea.

Baird couldn’t help rising from his bed. There was no way he would sleep now. He shoved a hand through his hair, drawn to the window by some force he could not explain. His gaze sought the shadows shrouding the steps he had only cleared this morning.

Nothing moved on the resort grounds. Baird could see the outlines of the briars and barely detect the shadow of the descending stairs.

Baird hadn’t known Aurelia was there this morning - he couldn’t have known she was there. He had just wanted to uncover Dunhelm’s secrets because Dunhelm was old. And he had found a gorgeous if unbalanced woman that even now he felt compelled to protect.

Mr. Responsibility, that was Baird.

Baird had always loved the challenge of untangling a mystery - and Aurelia was an enigma and a half. His interest in her was perfectly logical, if he thought it through. She was beautiful and beguiling, a double whammy for a red-blooded man who loved mysteries. Baird almost believed his own explanation.

He looked to tangled sheets on the bed and swallowed awkwardly.

Almost.

Baird tasted again the agony of his failure and couldn’t explain its source, much less his certainty that it was not the first time he had been here.

Oddly enough, Baird’s gut demanded that he go to Aurelia right now and make sure that she was all right. It made no sense at all. She would be asleep!

As he should be.

Baird paced the length of the room and back. What had Aurelia been doing in that well? How had she gotten in there, without disturbing the briars? There must be another entrance...

But Baird knew he had seen no other entry point to the stone chamber. He looked to the right, pressing his hot face against the cool glass, knowing her room was three doors down. But he couldn’t see Aurelia’s room from this vantage point. Of course not! The wing was built perfectly straight.

Gemdelovely Gemdelee. Should her true love kiss her, his bride she will be.

Bride. Baird wasn’t the marrying kind, he knew that without a doubt. Only one other woman had kept him awake nights with desire, one other woman with plans for marriage.

And that had been nothing compared to this. Maybe that was what had prompted his nightmare.

Maybe he shouldn’t have had so much Chianti.

* * *

Aurelia sat up in her room and watched the moon climb higher as she puzzled over what she had witnessed.

Why had the dream come from another’s perspective?

Whose perspective had it been? Who had come to her while she slept? Why did she feel he had come more than once? If only he had awakened her and she could have witnessed the truth!

And what did the name Gemdelovely Gemdelee have to do with anything at all?

Aurelia frowned. The Dreaming was supposed to provide clarity, not more questions. It was clear there was more at work here than she had guessed.

Her head ached with the aftermath of the wine’s enchantment and Aurelia could think no more. What she needed was a good night’s sleep, for morning would undoubtedly bring some answers her way.

Perhaps there would be something better to eat in Bard’s hall than there had been on this night. Reassured at the prospect, Aurelia burrowed beneath the duvet and was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

* * *

Baird was feeling far from his best the next morning.

Chianti had more of a bite than he remembered. That was the only possible explanation for his headache. It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with his nightmare.

Or his restlessness afterwards.

It was indicative of how he was feeling that Elizabeth’s coffee didn’t taste half bad. There is nothing more frightening to someone who relies on a good cup of java to start their engine than the thin instant coffee offered in Britain.

Baird sipped and struggled not to groan.

What he needed was a couple of aspirin.

“There you are, Mr. Beauforte!” Elizabeth erupted from the little nook that she had made her own with a perkiness that Baird could not have returned to save his life.

Elizabeth was a woman in her mid-fifties whose hips showed a livelong love of simple hearty food and whose laugh lines indicated her merry good nature.

She was also as much of a morning person as Baird was not. Elizabeth reminded him of his fifth foster mother.

“Nothing like a good hot breakfast to get a man going in the morning!” she declared cheerfully and bustled about, setting the table with alarming efficiency.

Even watching her made his headache worse.

Baird shoved his hand through his hair as Elizabeth fixed him with a bright eye. “Will you starting with oatmeal this morning, Mr. Beauforte?”

“No, not today, Elizabeth. Maybe just the coffee...”

“Mr. Beauforte! Why, you can’t be eating so poorly in my kitchen, even if it is only my kitchen for a wee while.” Elizabeth waved off any potential objection before it could be uttered and trotted back to her lair. “You just sit right there and I’ll have a fine Scottish breakfast ready for you in no time at all.”

Baird sipped grimly and true to her word, Elizabeth was back in record time. With a flourish, she slid a plate loaded to overflowing with eggs, bacon and sausages onto table in front of him. Baird eyed the three eggs and what looked like half a pound of meat with doubt.

Never mind the six slices of wafer thin toast.

His stomach rolled in protest, but he knew that anything less than cleaning the plate would hurt Elizabeth’s feelings. Even though she was paid, it was awfully good of Elizabeth to come all the way up here every morning, just to fix breakfast for himself and Julian.

“You’re sure you’re not wanting oatmeal this morning, Mr. Beauforte?” Elizabeth asked, her ruddy face wreathed with concern.

“No, really, Elizabeth, this is more than enough.” Baird patted his abdomen and smiled. “I’m not usually a big breakfast eater.”

She looked unconvinced. “First meal of the day, Mr. Beauforte, and the most important of the lot. You should see Talorc put the sausages away.”

Ah, so there was more than himself and Julian benefiting from Elizabeth’s culinary efforts.

“Really, Elizabeth, this is plenty. I don’t even know that I’ll be able to finish this.”

She leaned closer and twisted her hands in her apron as her voice dropped. “Mr. Beauforte, are you feeling well? It’s not right and proper for a man to be greeting the morning without an appetite. Talorc, now, he’ll eat twice this and then some if I don’t put a stop to it!”

It looked like Baird was going to need an excuse.

“Well, to tell the truth, I didn’t sleep well last night,” he confessed and Elizabeth clucked her tongue.

“I’ve just the thing for you, Mr. Beauforte!” She bustled back to the nook where her hotplate and toaster were rigged up and emerged victorious with a small jar. “Some of my sister Mary’s marmalade will have you set straight in no time.”

The marmalade jar in question landed on the table with a thump.

“Now, Mr. Beauforte, if you don’t mind me saying so, tonight as when you go to bed, you take a bit of Mary’s marmalade and you drop into a wee dram of whisky.”

The thought made Baird’s stomach roar an objection, but Elizabeth nodded sagely at his glance. “You try it, sir, and mark my word, in the morning, you’ll be fit as a fiddle.”

Baird couldn’t help but wonder what Mary put in her marmalade.

“Fit as a fiddle?” Talorc echoed cheerfully from the doorway. “Elizabeth, are you advising folks to be destroying good Scottish whisky again? How many times have I been telling you that’s blasphemy? Trust a woman to be spoiling the only decent pleasure left to a man!”

Elizabeth straightened and fired a scowl across the room that would have sent a lesser man running for cover. Talorc puffed up his chest and glared back at her, his blue eyes twinkling merrily.

Not only were they both disgustingly morning people, but the pair of them obviously loved to spar.

“Talorc! If you’re thinking that you can sniff around my skirts and get yourself another breakfast, then you’ve another think coming, sir! Off with you and see to Mr. Beauforte’s hedgerows. Mr. Beauforte isn’t paying you to eat every speck of food in his larder. Go on! Go on with you!”

When Talorc took a tentative step towards the kitchen nook, Elizabeth let loose a cry of protest. She snatched up her broom and chased Talorc back out into the foyer.

“Talorc Sinclair, you’re no better than a stray hound, coming into my kitchen begging for scraps...”

Baird shook his head and grimaced as he took another swig of coffee. The eggs weren’t going anywhere without his help.

What he wouldn’t give for a decent cup of coffee. Another fortifying sip and Baird picked up his fork.

Julian strolled into the room in full sartorial splendor, his olive double-breasted suit accented surprisingly well by his cardamom tie.

But despite his dapper dress, Julian looked how Baird felt.

“Oh, my head,” he groaned. “Have you got any aspirin?”

Baird touched his knife to the marmalade jar. “That’s the only cure-all around.”

“Jam. Processed sugar. That stuff will kill you.” Julian dropped into a chair and eyed Baird’s plate with a grimace. “Looks like you’ve got everything but the squeal.”

“Careful, careful,” Baird wagged his knife at his friend, immeasurably pleased to find that he wasn’t suffering alone. “If Elizabeth sees you, she’ll be loading up the frying pan.”

Julian shuddered. “Won’t she just. Why can’t the woman understand the simple fact that I’m a vegetarian?”

“It’s unnatural, laddie.” Baird tried his Scottish accent, but it was as bad as ever. They both winced, then Baird poked his fork at his legal counsel. “She’s trying to convert you. Or save you.”

“And not successfully either way. There’s enough grease on that plate to lube a midsize car.”

“It’s not that bad.” Two slices of something dark lurked beside the eggs. Baird couldn’t guess what it was, resolved it was some kind of sausage, and cut a slice.