Dangerous Magic (28 page)

Gwenyth opened her eyes, immediately shutting them again against the glare of a late afternoon sun. Her mind overflowed with memories and dreams, too tangled to unravel. Only one mattered. Rafe was dead.

Misery clutched at her heart, but she couldn’t bring forth tears. The ache was too great. The agony too raw. She focused instead on the feather tick beneath her and the linens scented with lavender and tansy, the murmur of voices from the front room, the vibrating weight of Cothey curled into her side. Anything to hold at bay her last image of Rafe, eyes burning with words unspoken and left too late.

She shuddered and reached for Cothey’s reassuring warmth. As she shifted, her hand brushed against a corner of heavy, woven fabric. She paused, her fingers moving across the weaving, knowing it for what it was even before she felt the rough stitching crisscrossing its face. With a stifled cry, she crushed it to her, and at last the tears began to fall. From beneath her closed lids, they coursed silently down her cheeks, damping her pillow. The memories flooded forth, forcing her to relive them. Rafe’s death on the ship, Rafe’s death among the shadows. Which was truth and which was dream didn’t matter anymore. He was forever lost to her either way.

Painful sobs tore through her until her throat ached and her head pounded. She forced herself to muffle the sounds of her anguish. She wanted no witnesses to her despair. No sympathy, no pitying glances.

Despite her silence, someone must have sensed she was awake. The low-voiced conversation stopped, and, moments later, Jago’s face cautiously appeared around the edge of the door. A wary smile tipped the curves of his windblown cheeks and brightened his fox-brown eyes. “You’re back among us, are you? I’d begun to fear you found the lazy life of a great lady to your liking. You’ve been abed since the day before yesterday.”

He caught sight of her red, swollen eyes and his brows drew up in surprise. “Why do you weep? It can’t be you’re so pleased to see me, it brings you to tears.”

Gwenyth sniffed, scrubbing the back of her hand across both cheeks. His callous words stung her grief to anger. “Are you so cruel as to take pleasure in being proved right? Do you come to rub it in?”

Jago stiffened. Coming farther into the room, he frowned, rubbing a hand across his chin. “You think I would take joy at seeing you run as close with death as you did? That I would rejoice because I could crow a victory over you?”

She noticed the shadows smudging his eyes and the pallor of his skin beneath his tan and knew she misjudged him. Dropping her eyes to the tapestry, she ran her hand down the longest seam, stroking the ridge of heavy thread. A lump formed in her throat, and her anger faded back into numbing grief. “I couldn’t save him, Jago.” She choked back the tears as she struggled to speak. “I tried. But I couldn’t draw him back.”

Jago’s face flushed pink, and the earlier smile returned. “Then I’ll have to ask who the man is that Vivyan speaks with even now? Mayhap a changeling? One of the fey?”

Gwenyth shot upright, sending Cothey leaping from the bed. Her head whirled with dizziness; her limbs shook as if she suffered from the palsy. “Jago Killigrew, if what you say is naught but a story…”

Jago threw up a hand, laughing. “On my word, Gwenyth. Captain Fleming lies on a pallet by the fire. Weak, feverish, but as alive as you or me. I’ll not ask how you did it nor what it cost you, but blessed heaven, lass, don’t ever play such a fool’s game with your life again. My heart can’t take it.”

Disbelief shadowed her joy. Rafe lived. How had such a thing come to pass? She understood none of it and only Rafe’s face before her would lay her doubts to rest. She threw off the covers. “Take me to him. Now.”

Jago put out a supportive hand as she rose. “Careful. You may be a mite shaky.”

“If you speak truth, had I wings, I could fly,” she said, though she didn’t shrug off his help.

Despite her boast, the floor heaved and the walls spun. With Jago’s aid, she hobbled into the front room.

Vivyan bent over a pallet set close to the fire. The healing scents of linden and boneset rose in the steam from a pot of tea beside her. She held out a cup. “Come, Captain. Another sip only. It will make you rest easier.”

“I don’t want to rest easier. I want Gwenyth.”

The words were barely more than a whisper, but Gwenyth recognized the force beneath the raspy hoarseness. A coursing warmth flowed back into limbs she thought numbed to all feeling but pain.

“She’s sleeping still, as should you be, sir,” Vivyan scolded.

Tears sprang to Gwenyth’s eyes, but this time they were tears of joy and held none of the bitter sting of her earlier weeping. “I sleep no more.”

Pulling free of Jago, she rushed across the room to kneel at Rafe’s side. His face bore the flushed cheeks and gaunt, tired lines of fever, but his eyes burned with recognition and then passion as he lifted a hand to cradle her face.

“Do you live?” He glanced at her stomach. “Do you both live?”

Vivyan melted quietly away as Gwenyth smiled around her tears. “We all live, and I intend on keeping it that way. Oh gods, Rafe, I thought I lost you.”

She leaned into his hand, delighting in the feel of his warm, callused palm against her cheek. She shook with sobs as his thumb caressed her skin, brushed across her lips. She dropped to her knees, laying her head upon his chest, reassuring herself with his steady heartbeat beneath her ear.

He gathered her into his arms, kissing her hair, her face, slanting a kiss across her lips that left her breathless and aching for more.

“There was a great endless void,” he murmured. “A darkness that went on forever, but you were there. You held onto me when all I wished to do was drown in the black.”

“I know,” Gwenyth leaned back, shaking her head in wonder. “I know all of it. No dream, but a truth almost stranger than dream.”

Rafe closed his eyes. “I should be dead, Gwenyth. There was no way you could have—”

She placed a finger to his lips. “But I did. I am no god’s pawn. I choose my own path. And I choose to spend it with you.”

Rafe rolled up onto his elbows, his hand covering hers. She felt the strong pulse of him in even that small contact, and it thrilled her anew. She met his steady gaze. Like the gleam of sun upon a swift-moving stream, his eyes shimmered and flashed. Her Sight took hold. Her power reached out, drawing her beneath the surface of Rafe’s stare.

The room fell away; the air hummed with a sound like thousands of beating wings as Rafe’s gaze became a sliding gray-green river of light. But as it was when they were in the strange shadow world, she could go no further. Rafe’s mind was shut to her. Surprised, she pushed against the walls of his consciousness, but only a steady, iron resistance met her attempts.

She drew back until the luminous shine faded away and her vision was taken up again only by Rafe’s bemused expression.

His voice held surprise. “This time I felt only the brush of your touch upon me, but my thoughts remain my own.”

She dipped her head in acknowledgement. “You gained a strength and an ability while you lingered between life and death.”

A smile brightened his eyes. “I gained you. The dream’s power is ended, Gwenyth.”

She put out her free hand, caressing the strong lines of his face, the shadow of a beard darkening his chin. Leaning over, she pressed her lips to his with an aching need to feel the warmth of his flesh, the heat of his touch. He answered her hunger with a slow, lingering kiss that spoke more loudly than any declaration of love. She drew away, a smile of drowsy contentment upon her face. “It took the courage of a smuggler captain and the honor of a gentleman to do what you did for me. I once told you in the same way you learned to navigate the shoals and reefs you would learn to find your way between worlds. You have found your way, Captain Fleming. And it has led you home.”

June 1813

A full moon and a sky bright with stars turned the sea into a diamond-bright blanket of black velvet. The ship heeled over as the wind filled her sails and hummed through the rigging, tousling the dark hair of the man who stood pacing the windward side of the deck. Waves creamed out from her bow as she sliced through the water like a seal. Cornwall’s shore lay just over the horizon, a bright smudge a point off his port bow. His heart swelled as he felt the surge of the ship beneath his feet and thought of the home that awaited him. His daughter would be there. Already over three months old and just beginning to laugh, her toothless grin as welcome to him as her mother’s passionate embraces.

Gwenyth woke, heart thudding, body vibrating with unfulfilled passion. Not a vision of the future this time. An image of the past. A memory only days old of Rafe sailing into Polperro harbor with a ship full of cargo, wanting only to be home again.

The room lay wrapped in silver-gray shadows. The grove of ash surrounding the house whispered in the spring-scented breeze; a nightjar called from his perch within the tangle of branches. Far off she heard an answering cry from the woods and the fluting echo of Goninan’s well tumbling over the rocks.

Sending out a ribbon of thought, she touched the gilded dreams of the child wrapped and sleeping in a cradle across the room. As if he felt the brush of her touch, Cothey raised his head from the hearth, where he stood guard over the baby. His eyes glowed pale as quartz, and he set up a contented rumble deep in his chest.

She rolled over, burrowing in against Rafe’s side, laying her head within the crook of his shoulder. His arm snaked around her, pulling her closer. So he wasn’t asleep. With a quick twist, he rolled her up on top of him, so that they lay body to body. She felt the ripple of muscles in his chest, the flat plane of his stomach. One leg shifted to curl around her. Her eyes widened. No, he definitely wasn’t asleep.

“Kara slumbers,” she whispered. “Her dreams hold her fast. We’ve hours before she wakes.”

“That sounds like an invitation to me,” he answered, his hands running up her back and skimming her sides until she shivered with anticipation.

She laughed as she combed her fingers through his sleep-tousled hair. “Just think, if you’d managed things differently, it might have been you celebrating your wedding today instead of Gerald Minstead.”

Rafe pinched Gwenyth’s side, making her jump. “You’ll never let me forget that, will you? Gerald’s welcome to Anabel, and good riddance. I almost pity the poor man. She’ll lead him a merry chase.”

Gwenyth rested her chin on Rafe’s chest. “Derek warned he meant to fix things with Anabel, and I know no one liked Mr. Minstead, but I still can’t see how he managed it as well as he did.”

Rafe chuckled. “Being locked together in Bodliam’s butler’s pantry for half a day might have helped. If they didn’t kill each other by the end of it, they were bound to make a match. And as I hear, by the way they were found, it had to be a wedding or a scandal.”

Gwenyth bit her lip. “I hope Cecily isn’t too upset over her man’s betrayal. ’Tis a hard thing for a young woman on the brink of life to be crossed by love.”

“From her letter, it sounds like she has recovered. It’s Mother who still can’t seem to get over how things turned out. I think she still harbored some sort of hope I’d return and become the son she always hoped I’d be.”

Gwenyth glanced across to the cradle where Kara slept. The infant murmured before finding her fist and settling. “A mother’s dreams and hopes are hard to lay aside. They can make you risk everything you know and everything you are to bring them forth.”

“But had you not taken that chance…”

She put a finger on his lips to quiet him. “Never be speaking of what might have been. It doesn’t bear thinking on, and frightens me just knowing how close I came to such sorrow.”

Dropping her hand, she traced the dark edge of one butterfly’s wing where it curved over Rafe’s shoulder. “A mark of rebirth.”

Shivering at her touch, he caught her hand in his own, kissing the tips of her fingers. “A mark of our life together.”

Alix Rickloff grew up with a family tree that included a knight who fought during the Wars of the Roses (his brass rubbing hangs in her dining room), and a soldier who sided with Charles I during the English Civil War (hence the family’s hasty emigration to America). With ancestors like that, who wouldn’t be inspired?

Alix turned this fascination with British history, along with her love of storytelling, to good use. She began writing, releasing her first historical paranormal in 2007. Her books have been described as “sexy and intense,” “exciting and spellbinding” and “a universe you won’t ever wish to leave.”

You can visit her on the web at www.AlixRickloff.com or write to her at [email protected].