Dreamspell (27 page)

“Forsooth, I am pleased he did not know you, but ere you disappeared again, I determined I would wed you.” A frown displaced the tenderness with which he regarded her. “Where have you been? How did you escape my men? And, pray, do not tell me you dreamed yourself away.”

“Then I won’t. You found Sir Arthur and your nephews at Glenmar?”

For a moment, she didn’t think he would let her off so easily, but her question provoked him. “Nay.” His faced turned stony. “They were impostors, a man and his sons hired by your
friend
, Sir Arthur, to wander Sinwell in his name.”

As much as Kennedy hated Fulke’s transformation, she was relieved he wasn’t pushing to know where she had gone. He had not killed the knight, but there was a catch. If the dream was staying true, it was only a matter of time before the confrontation. In fact, Sir Arthur was probably at Farfallow now. How much longer before he and Fulke met over swords?

She knew she shouldn’t ask, but it was important—even if there wasn’t a thing she could do. “I seem to have lost track of time. How many days has it been since you rode to Glenmar?”

“How can you not know?” There remained a harsh edge to his voice.

She ventured a teasing smile. “Time got away from me.”

Questioning softened his face. “Six days you have been gone.”

Six days! That would place them near the two week mark cited in the book. Hopefully, the author had been off in his estimation of how long it had taken Fulke to catch up with Sir Arthur.

“Now I would know where you have been.”

Kennedy laid a hand on his jaw. “Why can’t we just enjoy the time we have together?”

“How much time is that?”

“I don’t know.”

He searched her face, then released a harsh breath. “My men say you are a witch, but methinks it more likely you are simply mad.”

This was a dream, plain and simple, but too far out there for him to entertain. “As I don’t care to go up in a puff of smoke, I’ll have to plead madness.”

The admission, if it could be called that, seemed to pain him. “You are not at all like my sister, Marion.”

What had sweet, vulnerable Marion to do with anything? “I don’t understand.”

“She also suffers a malady of the mind.”

Kennedy remembered her encounter with the woman. Off-key, perhaps, but mad? It was possible, but from what she had seen, the only thing Marion suffered from was a domineering mother. “Are you sure?”

“Thrice betrothed and thrice returned ere vows were spoken. She has fits.”

Unable to reconcile the image with the woman she had met, Kennedy said, “Perhaps she just doesn’t care to marry.”

Instantly, Fulke pulled back from the darkness of Marion’s madness. “If ‘tis true you are mad, still it does not explain how you escaped and where you have been for nearly a sennight.”

“I know it doesn’t.” She held his gaze. “You have no idea what it took for me to get back to you.”

“Why
did
you come back?”

“For you. You see, a funny thing happened while I was gone. . .or I suppose it happened while I was here. I came to have feelings for you. Where I’m from, people call it love.”

Fulke stared. She loved him? If it was true, how was he to respond? That he loved her in return? After all these empty years, was it possible? He didn’t know, but there was no denying what he felt for her went beyond lust—though he wasn’t certain how far beyond.

“Crazy, hmm?” She fingered the fleur-de-lis embroidered around the neck of his tunic. “Not that I understand how it happened. I just accept it. Why can’t you do the same? Accept me as I am?”

“Lark, you disappeared under escort of four knights. And now, once more, you reappear as if you never left. In the sight of many, it condemns you for a witch.”

“You know I’m not.”

“’Tis my belief, but one for which I seem to stand alone. As you know, in England witches are burned.”

“So unless I come up with a convincing explanation, your men are going to host a wienie roast with me as the guest of honor?” Confusion returned to Fulke’s face, but before he could ask her to translate, Kennedy said, “They’re going to light a fire under me?”

He shook his head. “You are under my protection. None will challenge me now that Cardell is renounced. Too, whatever your relation to the king, it shields you. But only for so long. Do you persist in disappearing and reappearing, superstitions will continue to mount. In such instances, ‘tis not unheard of for men to abandon their vows of fealty in the name of God.” He lifted her chin and regarded her with an intensity that caused her heart to ripple. “I may not be able to save you.”

If
she persisted. She might disappear one more time, but that would probably be the end of her. “You have nothing to worry about. The last thing I want is to leave you.” The truth, misleading though it was.

“You will stay with me?”

She stared at the man who filled so many empty places inside her. “For as long as I live.” Ignoring the ache of their imminent parting and the longing for him to declare his love for her, she said, “I am willing, Fulke.”

He levered up, pressed her onto his back, and brushed his mouth across hers. “And I am tempted.”

“Only tempted?”

“More, but I made a vow that if ever I saw you again, I would make things different between us. I have waited this long for you. I can wait until we are wed.”

Kennedy stared up at him against the darkening sky and wondered if they had that long. She did not think so. Still, she said, “We will wait.” Not wanting their solitude to end, she ran her hands up his back and, through the material of his tunic, felt the ridges she had seen the night she had relieved Lady Jaspar of assisting him with his bath.

“Tell me about these.” She traced a scar.

Fulke tensed. For what did she ask? He had told her they were gained in war. No further explanation was needed. “Rain is upon the air.” He pulled away. “We ought to return to camp.”

Lark glanced at the gathering clouds and sat up. “Why were you whipped?”

All he could think to say was, “It was deserved.” Turning back a vision of angry, vengeful faces, he stood and reached a hand to her. “Let us make haste.”

“What did you do?”

He stared down at her until she placed her hand in his.

“I’m sorry to pry,” she said as she rose alongside him. “I have no right.”

He was about to agree when he realized the wrong he did her. As they were to wed, she did have the right to know the truth of the man with whom she would spend the remainder of her years. But how would she react if he told her of Limoges, the heinous crimes committed in the name of England and vainglory, the reason for the flogging that had left him for dead? Would she run from him? Would her love turn to revulsion? Or would she forgive him his sins and love the man he had struggled to become since the bloodletting?

He pulled the medallion from his tunic. “As I told you, this was given to me for the retaking of lands in France. King Edward himself put it around my neck.” He lowered it. “But I do not wear it out of pride, Lark. I wear it in remembrance of all who died that it might be cast.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you wish to? Do you truly want to know this man you will wed?”

“I do.”

He yielded to the images from which he was forever turning. Like faithless old friends come to steal from him, they hastened to his side. “Do you know of Limoges, the great siege of 1370?”

Kennedy remembered the book had advanced that the blood shed in that city was as much on Fulke’s hands as those of the Black Prince, King Edward’s son and heir. “I know what happened there.”

“What do you know?”

“Hundreds of people died.”

“Among them, women and children. Do you know I was responsible?”

She didn’t want to hear this, would rather cling to the man she had come back for. If only she hadn’t asked about the scars. “I heard you were involved.”

He laughed, a sound so void it ached. “The French were advancing into Aquitaine, threatening Edward’s holdings. Something had to be done to turn them back—a show of strength, as I suggested to the Black Prince.” He stepped back and stared into the trees. “Limoges was to be that show.”

His words were barbed with regret. No matter what he had done, there had to be redemption for such remorse.

“The people were revolting against taxation and calling for an end to English rule. Thus, ‘twas decided the city must fall. Though the prince was ill, he determined to see it for himself and was carried to Limoges in a litter.” Fulke crossed to where his sword glinted amid the leaves and retrieved it. “The siege lasted a month, during which the prince became increasingly hostile. He vowed that when the city was gained, all would die for their faithlessness. I knew he did not threaten without weight, but I pressed on, directed the attack on the walls and the undermining.” He looked past his blade to Kennedy. “Pride is a terrible god, Lark. Once you worship it, there is no other. It makes of men what God did not mean them to be.” He slid his sword into its sheath. “No matter the cost, I was determined the prince would have his victory, and that I would be the one to give it to him.”

“Why?”

“I was military advisor to the crown. Having years earlier lost the earldom to my brother when he assumed the title he had eschewed, it was all I had left.”

Kennedy closed the distance between them. Once more able to make out his shadowed features, she asked, “What happened?”

He lingeringly touched her face as if it were the last time he would do so. “A massacre. He stared at her, then through her.

More than anything, Kennedy dreaded his admission to having put men, women, and children to death, but she had asked for it. Still, it did not seem possible that the man she had come to love was capable of such atrocity.

“Finally, the miners broke through. The people of Limoges tried to turn them back, but it was in vain. The prince’s army had waited a month for the day, and there was no end to their bloodlust.” For a moment, Fulke came back to her and saw her again. “Moriel was there.”

The assassin.

“He was among the first to kill, and he did not stop ‘til there was no more blood to spill.”

“Under your orders?”

He was slow to answer. “’Twas the prince who commanded that all be put to the sword.”

Then he hadn’t ordered it himself. A seed of hope rooted within her.

“But he did it through me, and so ‘twas done.”

“You were following orders.”

“Orders I should not have followed.”

She laid a hand on his arm. “Would it have changed anything if you had refused to give the order?”

“That I have asked myself a thousand times a thousand. The prince trusted me and oft took my advice, but that day he was in so violent a passion I knew it was useless to try to dissuade him. But mayhap I could have.”

If only he had tried that the people might have lived, that he would not forever agonize over what might have been. “You were only doing what you were told. Though that doesn’t absolve—”

“Only?” he said sharply. “I also killed, Lark. Five? Ten? More? I know not.”

She swallowed. “In cold blood?”

Questioning slipped in beside Fulke’s pain and drew his eyebrows near.

She had done it again, confused him with her twenty-first century jargon. “Did you kill merely to kill—like Moriel?”

“Nay. Ungodly I may be, but that I have never done. I raised my sword to defend myself and the prince’s men.”

“And what of the women and children?”

“Though none fell to my sword, they fell by my service to the crown.”

And in doing so, had broken his heart that he might discover he had one. “I think you’re wrong, Fulke. Men like your Black Prince do as they please no matter how loud the outcry.”

He searched her face. “Would that I could believe you.”

“You can. Regret what happened at Limoges, yes; learn from it, certainly; but don’t let it darken the rest of your life. You have to put it behind you.” That last made Kennedy wince. Shrink talk. In spite of her training, it was not her specialty.

Fulke stepped back. “You asked about the scars.” Once more, he retreated to that tortured place inside himself. “I had seen enough bloodletting. ‘Twas time I returned to England.” He drove a hand through his hair. “Though it was foolish to ride across France without an escort, I left the prince’s army to its pillaging and burning.”

Kennedy glanced at his hands and saw they had become fists.

“A league from Limoges I was set upon by a score of men and women who had fled the city. They brought my horse down and beat me. ‘Twas a woman who put the blade to my face.” He touched his scarred eyebrow. “They stretched me to a tree and took turns drawing blood from my back until they determined I was dead.” He blew out a ragged breath. “I remember their faces, the anger for all they had lost, the need to avenge themselves and their dead even if only on one man. My life was their due—and more.”

“But you didn’t die, Fulke.”