Lady X (22 page)

The pulpit had a wide arch made up of black and red flowers and there stood Galen Debbin and his best man.

Time to puke
, she told herself
. No, wait till you get up there and then do it all over
him.

Galen Debbin wore a superior smile across his wicked face. He wore a black tuxedo with a red satin shirt and reminded Exerilla of her idea of Lucifer.

She despised Galen. Compulsion, was the only reason she was marrying him.. She continued to walk down the aisle.

She heard her mother’s voice in her head and remembered that her mother had arrived, hoping to save her. Her mother was lying in pain upstairs. She had to break free and go to her so they could get out of here together, but her steps brought her closer to Galen.

Her father had compelled her to forget her mother’s plight; to walk away, but she remembered. She had to help her mother. White light exploded right before her eyes!

A tall, absolutely breathtakingly handsome immortal stepped out of that light and blue eyes glared at her father, before he turned to stroke her face.

Hunter
. She felt herself come alive. “Hunter! Hunter! Oh Hunter…” she whispered and reached for him.

Her father threw her behind him and bellowed, “How dare you. Get out of here!”

She saw Hunter surrounded by half a dozen dark warlocks Their wands all pointed at the man she loved.

He struggled, but the force of their combined magic kept him from breaking free. He said, “Exerilla, lass ye can break it. Ye can break from the spell…for me.”

He was zapped to his knees by six wands as she screamed. It was as though everything had become too much. Her mother in pain, her father ignoring her as an individual, and her big handsome love being brought low because of her. “NOOO,” wrenched out from her gut, as that black power she had forever kept in check…broke out.

“You will ignore him and walk past him to marry Galen,” her father said. He stared into her eyes, compelling her as no other had the power to do.

“NOOOO,” she screamed. She couldn’t move. It was as though she was stuck in limbo.

Hunter called to her. “Lass,
m’own true love
.
Coom to me
. Doona let them do this to ye--to us.” Then he gave a heart-wrenching call., “EXERILLA!”

Her heart beat out his name. Her mind showed her a memory of them making love, rolling around with laughter. Suddenly she found herself and ousted her father’s will. With her wand in hand, she struck at the warlocks holding her beloved down. This time it was dark magic beating them to the floor.

“HUNTER!” she called as she ran to him.

Warlocks from all around started toward them.

“No one touches my daughter!” her father commanded.

She used the advantage and holding onto Hunter cried, “My mother!”

Hunter managed to defeat two warlocks who obeyed by not attacking her, but attempted to attack him. He had them down and beheaded in a matter of seconds. This caused some of the warlocks to hesitate and wonder just who this newcomer was.

Galen bellowed. “Get him…and bring her to me!”

A fight ensued and magic swirled. Dark against light, but Hunter and Exerilla had the advantage.

Both were touched with dark magic inside of them, but they had something else…they had love. It didn’t take them long to get clear of the fight.

Exerilla zapped Galen, and with her wand pointed at his heart said, “Never look my way. Never say my name. We are done.”

Hunter grinned and added as he pointed his sword at the hapless warlock, “I thought she expressed that nicely, doona ye think so?”

“Hunter, my mom,” she said turning back to him. “My mom!”

He took her hand and used the portal rather than bother running up the stairs. Hunter scooped up X’s semi conscious mother and said, “Where to love?”

“Home…”

~ Epilogue ~

SO MUCH HAPPENED all at once that Exerilla, looking back on that day, was always filled with elation and sorrow.

The man of her dreams had found and saved her. Without him, she did not believe she could have broken the compulsion spell.

On that same day, she had denounced her father. He had turned into a stranger right before her eyes. He allowed her mother to suffer for his own selfish needs as he tried to force her to marry a man she despised.

She had refused to see him, even though he had made many attempts to seek her out.

Her mother had even spoken for him, telling her, “Exerilla, he is broken. Something happened that day that got through to him.”

“No, he is just trying to win you back. I saw evil in him, Mom.”

Hunter never intruded on their conversations about her father. He was strong, he was there for her and he listened to her rant about her father. He never agreed or disagreed, but now he cleared his throat and said, “I think yer mother is in the right of it, lass.”

She loved his voice, the sound of his Scottish burr weaving its delectable way through her mind, making her stop and look into his blue eyes.

That day, yer father was the devil I believed him to be.” He inclined his head, “Sorry I am to say that to ye, but, I saw that in him. But something changed. He followed us to the chamber yer mother was in and when he saw me pick her up, when he realized, another man was cooming to her rescue
, he broke
…wide open, and I think, some of yer light swept into him.”

She looked at Hunter as she clasped and unclasped her hands, “He is dark. How can he ever regain what he was?”

Hunter grabbed her hands and held them hidden in his as he kissed her fingers, “He is the father that loved and raised ye. He is the father that stood with ye for twenty-one years. Aye, he made a terrible mistake, he went into another world and came out thinking off balance, but he loves ye…and doona say ye doona love him,” Hunter said softly.

She turned to her mother who closed her eyes and said, “Exerilla, you don’t have to make any final decisions. Do you? Take it, little by little and we’ll see what comes.”

“How
can you
forgive him, after he left you lying there, knowing you were in pain?” Exerilla was incredulous.

“He did what he could. Once I crossed the wards, there was nothing he could do until I left the property. Dark as he was, he shouldn’t have cared,
but he did
. He enacted a spell to ease my pain.”

“That’s not enough! He should have taken you off the grounds, he should have…” Exerilla cried and she withdrew her hands from Hunter and shook her fist in the air.

Hunter and her mother went and hugged her and her mother whispered, “Let’s see what time brings us.”

After that, the summer days passed ideally at her mother’s home. Hunter had thought of everything. He had returned to the past to visit with Sir Jacob and tell him he had decided to make an honest man of himself and marry the lass of his dreams.

Hunter had already gone to Mary, and explained Exerilla’s disappearance, saying she came to him for help when David had accosted her in the woods. He told Mary that she was safely residing with relatives of his, but that he planned to marry her and return to MacTorry Castle in Scotland.

Mary was thrilled for them, and made him promise that he would ask Exerilla to write.

After relaying all this to Exerilla, she looked at him with open admiration and said, “I am impressed. I was wondering just how to handle the situation with Sir Jacob and the Horwich’s’. What a very good story teller you are. I shall have to watch out for you.” She wagged a finger and laughed.

The next time Hunter left her, he said it was to visit with his brother at MacTorry where he was keeping everything in readiness for them, hoping they would visit soon.

“What does that mean? We will visit with him in the past? But he is immortal and then one day, well, we will all be in the same era?”

“As to that, he can come forward whenever he likes. I left him to his own devices, but we’ll see him often, here and there. I want to take ye there soon, Exerilla and make love to ye in m’bedroom in m’castle, and I want it to be in the time that we met? Would ye do that for me?”

“You bet I will,” she answered and hugged him fiercely, looked up and saw her father standing there, and stiffened.

“I beg your pardon, X, seeing you together reminds me of what I tried to rob you of…happiness. I understand why you can’t forgive me, I cannot forgive myself.”

Exerilla’s heart was larger than her anger, so much larger. She ran to her father then and some of the feelings she had for him returned as she buried her face in his chest.

The end of August quickly approached, and it was time for her to go find an apartment near Columbia as classes would be starting.

Hunter grinned like a boy, “No need, to look for an apartment. I canna abide the places ye said were in yer price range. I have found a place a little more in keeping with what I am used to.”

“Snob.” She laughed and shook her head but he had her hand and was already pulling her through the magical portal and into the penthouse he had bought for them and furnished for her comfort.

She stood looking around in astonishment and pleasure and he beamed with pride. “Do ye like it, lass?”

“Oh yes, I like it.”

“When ye want,” he took out a credit card and handed it to her. “Ye can go off and buy the little things a lady likes and make it more yer own.”

She threw her arms around him.

The rest of the year sped by, and their wedding was a fairytale.

Her father wore a gray silk tuxedo, saying he just couldn’t wear white not yet. Exerilla had invited him to walk her down the aisle to her waiting Lord MacTorry.

They flew to Venice immediately after the reception and after a few hours of making love, sleeping and making love, nothing would do but for Hunter to boyishly say he was going to take her on a gondola.

Exerilla snuggled backward into her husband’s arms, as the gondolier paddled through the dark water on the return trip to their villa. Her husband had wined and dined her, strolled with her while musicians played. He had pointed out the stars and the constellations and told her stories of his youth and they had been engulfed with a magic like no other love, binding love.

At that moment all was right with her world.

He had just recounted a story that he had experienced in the l7th century as a boy and she shook her head and sighed to say, “You know, I have been thinking, my lord, that you are a very old man.”

“
What?
Where did that coom from?” he returned in shocked accents, “How can ye say so, lass?”

She laughed, “Well, you have a few centuries on me, you know. Yup, old, but experienced, wise, and brilliant.”

“Och aye, but not as wise as ye,” he whispered and kissed the top of her head which she rested back against his chest.

She turned and looked up at him, “I love you, baby.”

“
Baby,
is it? Old one minute, baby the next.”

She arched a brow, “Don’t you like me to call you baby?”

“Och aye, ye can call me anything ye like, ye can take from me anything ye want, and I’ll be damned before I’ll not give ye anything ye need.”

“Och aye,” she teased, and reached up for his neck, “Then coom closer, m’lord, coom closer,” said Lady X to Lord MacTorry.

~ * ~

A young woman just coming into her powers as a white witch, hidden evil in a school for high-born orphan girls, a dashing marquis with a hidden agenda of his own.

Enjoy a sneak preview of

Netherby Halls

~ Prologue ~

Sutton Village, England

1815

SASSY WALKED THE short distance from the livery, where’d she left her cob horse and curricle, and made her way to the curio shop that also served as their village book shop. It was a busy time of the morning, nearly lunch, and the wide avenue was bustling with people, horse-drawn wagons, and quite an impressive number of carriages of all sizes, ages, and styles for their quaint village.

The dust they kicked up didn’t do her well-worn blue cloak any good. With a grimace, she brushed and shook off some of the offending dirt as she made her way to the lead-paned window of Mrs. Plummet’s Curio Shop and stepped beneath the awning.

A little bell announced her arrival, and the tall, buxom woman Sassy had known forever looked up from the counter where she was arranging a stack of the new and latest novel that had only just come in. The woman smiled and welcomed Sassy. “Hallo, m’dear, and how is the vicar today?”

Pushing a stray hair away from her ear, Sassy adjusted her chip hat and sighed as she gave Mrs. Plummet a warm smile. “Papa is cranky today, I am afraid. He shooed me off and told me to come into town and purchase a book to keep me busy. He says I am always fussing about him, and he won’t have it.”

Mrs. Plummet laughed and said, “Good then, Sassy love. If he is feeling feisty, perhaps we will have a small miracle and he will take a turn for the better.”

Sassy almost released her pent-up emotions but fought back the urge to dive into Mrs. Plummet’s arms and cry. She held herself in check and unconsciously rubbed the ring on her right hand beneath her glove.

She couldn’t very well tell Mrs. Plummet about the guilt she carried because, once again, she felt useless. She hadn’t been able to save her mother two years ago when she had suddenly fallen ill and died within a week. What good was
the power
if she couldn’t rid the ones she loved of disease?

Now, her father was not getting any better, and not all the tisanes in the world were helping. Not even those her mother had taught her to concoct had worked to do more than ease his discomfort.

She picked up the latest novel by an author whose name she did not recognize and looked it over. “What do you think?”

“I started reading it last evening. It was very … absorbing.”

“Right then, I’ll give it a try.” Sassy fished in her knit purse for a coin. She shouldn’t be wasting her father’s money on a book, but he had insisted and she didn’t want him to worry about her. It was all he talked about these last few days—
her future
.

She knew she was going to lose him, and her heart was being ripped to shreds at the thought. How could she do without him and his guidance, especially now?

When her mother had passed, Sassy had been left to carry the burden of what she was alone, except for her father. He had kept her secret, even as he had her mother’s. Now that she had reached her majority, she was experiencing the ‘transition’; without her mother to advise her, only her father could help her.

She should, of course, be able to turn to her mother’s family, but they had disowned their only daughter when she’d defied them to marry a poor young man of the cloth. No, Sassy would get no guidance from them, although like her they had the ‘power’.

She set these disturbing thoughts aside as she took up the package Mrs. Plummet handed her and made her way outdoors.

Before crossing the avenue, she meandered down the walkway, stopping to look in the window of the village dress shop. It was still there—a gown that had caught her eye the week before. It was breathtaking. Yellow and in the fashionable A-line, low cut, trimmed with Belgium lace, and much too expensive for her. She sighed as she turned away from it.

Her own ensemble beneath the aged cloak, though once a pretty shade of blue, was becoming threadbare. She hadn’t thought much about refurbishing her wardrobe in the last two years. She had been devastated at her mother’s death, and then this year, while her father’s health dwindled, socializing had been out of the question.

The sound of laughter across the street caught her attention, and she glanced in the direction of the hearty noise.

Two men stood at the curbing at the edge of the avenue, but only one of them stood out. It was as though the atmosphere around him glowed, and her heart actually skipped a beat and then made up for the offense by beating faster.

His beaver-skin top hat was set saucily on his head of black silky hair. His black cloak had been rakishly thrown back over one shoulder, revealing not only the cream silk lining but the breadth of his obviously muscular chest.

As Sassy’s gaze traveled up to his face, unconsciously a small breath of air left her lungs, swished up her throat, and escaped in an audible gasp.

He was the most handsome man she had ever seen, but more than that, he was the man who had been making passionate love to her in her dreams!

This was madness. This was … Before she could complete the thought
, it
happened.
Only this time it was different. This time he was right there. He was nearby—the man of her dreams was standing only thirty feet away.

His blue eyes had suddenly locked with hers, and all at once she felt herself transported to another place.

It was a bedroom—and she recognized the bedroom, for she had been there many times in her dreams. It was as though she were in a theater shamelessly watching herself, watching him—watching, experiencing things she had no physical knowledge of.

She was a virgin, and yet in her dream she had been his intimately many times. Now, with him so near, she saw herself naked and lying across dark, smooth sheets.

He was bending towards her, his blue eyes glittering, his black, silky hair falling across and touching her breasts as he licked her nipple and then suckled there with expertise that sent her body into a convulsion of pleasure. His fingers moved over her flesh, and she could feel herself clench with desire as he touched—

What … ? No! No—this was just schoolgirls’ talk coming back to haunt her. This had to stop. She had to stop.
She tried to break with the vision. How could she know what it would feel like to have a man … how could she know?

And then she saw something in his eyes across the avenue that told her a fact she could not deny:
s
he wasn’t having this illusion alone. He was as well. It was so real and not only for her—but for him also!

When he took a step into the street towards her, Sassy Winthrop ran as fast as her little walking boots could take her and escaped around the corner.

An excerpt from Through Time-Whiplash

Through Time-Whiplash

She could be in trouble here

JAZZ WHIPPED AROUND so fast she nearly snapped her neck, to find not only a Seelie Fae but a Royal Fae Prince bearing down on her .

Had he heard the stone call her a Fios? He must have.

Oh, no, oh no
. She could be in trouble here.

She had given herself away.

He was not in human Glamour but cloaked with invisibility, yet she had acknowledged his presence when he’d surprised her. What was more, he was a Royal, and her mother had told her tales of what Royals did with their kind. She knew the tales of Royals, all Seelie Fae, visiting, discovering what they were, seducing, and then whisking them off to Faery.

Now what
? Play dumb,
yes
, that was it; she could do dumb. What moved her to peek at him she didn’t know, but she did. He saw her interest with narrowed eyes. What was she doing—what was wrong with her?

She had never seen a Royal before, but she knew by the torque around his neck, which was gold and etched with the insignia of his Royal House, that he was one.

Royals were the most magically potent of all Fae and therefore the most dangerous, and this one was the hottest Fae she had ever seen. She was mesmerized by the way his long, thick, flaxen hair blew in the wind all about his handsome face. She was so damned taken by his good looks and his smokin’ body. Oh, this was not good. There was only one thing to do …

She took off at a speed, even greater than the one she knew she possessed, aware that it was probably useless. No matter how fast she could run using her Fios magic, she couldn’t out distance him. He was a Fae, with the power to ‘shift’, which allowed a Fae to step from one place into another in only a matter of seconds. She didn’t know if that was science or magic, but she knew she would be trapped.

Fae seers had many extraordinary gifts. However, not all Fios had the same gifts. One of her particular gifts was speed. She held the hope that she would hold no interest for him and he would not bother himself to stop her. Wrong.

Evidently, stopping her was what he wanted to do
.

She ran into a brick wall that she realized was his chest, bounced off like a rubber ball, and fell backwards so hard she had the wind knocked out of her.

The Royal Fae Prince stared down at her as she lay back against the grass trying to catch her breath and asked, “
What, by Danu, are you?”

And Claudy Conn’s Spellbound-Legend--An excerpt.

How often did a girl get to flirt with a Fae prince and have a hunk looking on?

HERE WAS HER very own royal Fae, in all his human Glamour. His silver eyes were bright and his demeanor possessive as he swept through the room to come right up to take her hand and put it to his lips. Softly he whispered as he brought his eyes down to hers, “My Lia.”

She was enchanted by the way he spoke to her, as though no other woman in the world held his interest. His manner could waken lust in a ninety-year-old woman who had forgotten romance long ago. He was the thing of dreams for all women. Breslyn fit the hero bill—if you discounted that he was a male Fae, of another race, and an immortal race at that.

She twinkled at her prince, and he chuckled. They made a happy sound together, but it made Julian’s mood turn blacker. He stared at Maxie, who caught his look with some surprise.
Why is Mr. Broody glaring at me?

She ignored him and said by way of introduction, “This is Breslyn, Royal Prince of Dagda.” Max nodded towards Talbot. “And this is our host, his lordship, Julian Talbot.” She stared at Julian, who was busy glaring at the prince.

The prince spoke softly enough to make her look at his delicious mouth. “Aye then, Lia, his lordship and I have already met.”

There was an undercurrent that she couldn’t help but feel. What? And then she realized they must have met in Faery and had perhaps not struck up the best of friendships. She could only hazard a guess as to the why.

“Yes, indeed. We met briefly while I was being brought up to date.” Julian inclined his head at the prince.

The prince took Maxie’s glass of wine from her without lifting his silver eyes away from hers. He sipped from her glass, and when he gave it back to her, he made sure she held it so her lips would touch where his lips had been. It was bold, and it was infinitely sexy. Maxie didn’t ordinarily allow guys to get away with stuff like that, but she thought as she bit her bottom lip,
These are not ordinary circumstances, and Breslyn is no ordinary guy!

Flirting was good, she excused herself. Flirting was fun. How often did a girl get to flirt with a Fae prince and have a hunk looking on?

She downed her glass of wine.