Passions of the Ghost (10 page)

 

Lord Reynald de Mortimer ordered that the crops be sown in the northern fields this year because of the dampness of the meadows along the river. He gave grain to those who were in want, and instructed his stonemasons to begin work on the new hospice for the old and infirm, to provide them with some shelter when the snows come.

 

“Does he speak of the dragon?”

She swallowed her emotion, and met Reynald’s eyes. There was impatience and anxiety lurking beneath his usual calm. His pale hair seemed to glow in the subdued lighting of the gym, almost like a ghost.

The
Ghost.

Hastily she flipped through to the final pages. “Ah…Here’s something.

 

“Reynald said that there would be peace, but even as the ink was drying upon the papers of agreement between him and the Welsh, death was approaching on the wind. When the ‘dragon’ came, it took all before it. Those who could stood and fought. Lord Reynald did not run from his enemy, and was consumed. I, Julius, was struck down and lay like one dead for two days before men arrived from Shrewsbury, but I could not walk and never did again.”

 

“Aye,” Reynald said decisively, “I see where the problem lies. He speaks the truth, but that truth was been twisted.
Dragon
has been taken to mean the Welsh arriving to deal death by battle, and that is not right.”

“Maybe whoever translated couldn’t accept that there really was a dragon, so they decided it was a metaphor. I can understand that, Rey. It
is
hard to swallow. I don’t even know if I can swallow it.”

“You still do not believe me,” he said, bleakly.

“Rey, I just don’t know…” Amy glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’m sorry to be boring, but I’d better get changed for the cocktail party. Jez will never forgive me if I don’t turn up and charm Nicco.”

Rey caught her arm to stop her. For a moment she was only aware of his strength, the heat of his fingers; then his words brought her back to reality.

“Why must you flatter such a man, damsel? What is it your brother wants from him that he must use you as the sacrificial goat?”

Amy felt her face flush. “That’s my business,” she said angrily, and pulled away. Her heart thumping, she started up the stairs.

She heard him begin to follow her, then stop. Tempted as she was to leave him there, something made her turn and look down at him. He was staring back into the gym, rigid.

“Rey? What is it? What’s the matter?”

Slowly and unwillingly, sensing more trouble, she retraced her steps. “Rey?”

“Look, damsel,” he said hoarsely. “Can you not see?”

She followed his pointing finger, then she saw it, too. On the far side of the gym, by a door with a sign that read staff only.

The monk with the lantern.

“You again!”

Furiously, Amy started forward, but Reynald grabbed her around the waist, swinging her back into his arms. She felt vibrant and warm, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted again.

“Take care,” he warned. “This creature almost led me to my death.”

Amy tilted her head to stare up at him, her curls brushing his chin. “When?” she breathed.

“Last night. I followed it out onto the walls, and I almost fell from them.”

She drew a deep breath. “Rey, a few hours ago the same thing happened to me. I thought it was a…a monk, but whatever it is, it took me into a disused part of the castle and tried to send me down through a hole in the floor.”

He stared back at her. Amy had almost died, too? His eyes narrowed and he felt an anger such as he’d never known flare up inside him. She was his, how dare anyone try to hurt her! His arm tightened around her, and he gazed down steadily into her pale and anxious face.

“You were not injured?”

“No, of course not.”

His mouth twitched. “Of course not,” he echoed.

The apparition was swaying slightly, the light pulsing, as if waiting for them.

“Who is it?
What
is it?” Amy demanded.

“I thought it was Julius, but what reason would he have to hate me?”

“You’ll need to give it some thought, but in the meantime…do we go after it?” Her hands rested on his arm, and she seemed to nestle against him.

The apparition was at the open door, seemingly about to slip through.

“Yes, we go after it. But very carefully, Amy. You must stay by me.”

She nodded, and he heard the echo of his words in his head.
Stay by me
. He liked the sound of them. If only she
could
stay by him. But it was impossible. He and she were from different worlds.

With a sense of inevitability, he opened his arms and let her go.

She set off across the gym, then paused, glancing behind when he didn’t follow. “Rey? Aren’t you coming with me?”

“Aye, I am,” he said, and wished he could say more, as he strode after her.

Beyond the door, there were more steps, dropping away into the shadows. Amy fiddled with a switch on the wall, then swore softly, and said, “The light isn’t working.”

“Then we will move slowly and carefully, and you will keep behind me.”

“Will I?”

“Yes.” He sensed she wasn’t one to take orders without good reason, and this was how it should be, but he needed her to listen to him. She wasn’t a fool, and she didn’t disappoint him.

“Lead on then, my lord.”

He smiled as he moved forward. After a moment he felt her hand press to the middle of his back. “You know,” she said quietly, “I can usually take care of myself, but I’m glad you’re here. In fact, I’m
really
glad you’re here, Rey.”

Reynald was watching the light. It had steadied, as if whoever was holding it was waiting for them to catch up before moving onward. Unless the apparition had laid another trap?

“Together we are safe,” he said, reassuring her.

Her hand turned into a finger, and she gave him a gentle poke. “You have a way with words,” she whispered. “I like it.”

He was tempted to stop then and take her into his arms. He wanted to kiss her like a man suffering from thirst drinks from a stream. It required all his long years of training to enable him to resist.

“You said you thought it might be Julius,” Amy murmured behind him. “What would he have against you? From what I read in his chronicle, he sounded to me as if he admired you.”

“We were not always in agreement,” he admitted. “He did not like Angharad, but he did not understand her and why I needed her. Julius did not trust the word of the Welsh. I tried to explain to him that I needed to understand them, to speak with them, so that I could persuade them to make peace with us. Angharad helped me do that, but Julius would not listen.”

“So he didn’t like her because she was Welsh, is that what you’re saying?”

“He didn’t like her because he didn’t trust her.”

“You said that you speak a little Welsh. Couldn’t you have negotiated with them yourself? Then you wouldn’t have needed Angharad—cut out the middlewoman, I say.”

“Julius suggested that, too, but I felt Angharad was a wiser choice. It was just that she and Julius clashed over his religion. Angharad prayed to a god other than Julius’s.”

“She was a pagan,” Amy said. “Well, I can understand a priest not liking that.”

The stairs came to an end, and they found themselves in another of those long, narrow corridors. Behind him Amy gave a groan. “What
is
this place?” Her hand had tightened on a fold of his tunic, clinging tighter, as if afraid he’d leave her behind.

“This is the tunnel from the keep to the garrison,” Reynald explained calmly. “If we were ever under attack with arrows, or trebuchets hurling fire—”

“Trebuchets?”

“Catapults.”

“Ah, go on.”

“If we were ever under attack from the air, damsel, then it was safer to use this tunnel than run across the open bailey.”

She thought about that for a moment, then she said, “It smells like rotten meat.”

Reynald nodded in agreement. “It does. Perhaps something has died down here.” He reached back to touch her arm. “Remember, damsel, stay by me.”

And heard her murmured reply, “Oh, I will, Rey, believe me, I will…”

The light from the apparition was fading into the distance, and Reynald quickened his pace and set off after it. All his senses were alert for danger, although some of them were all too aware of Amy’s small, warm hand on his back. Around them, the tunnel walls were rough, hewn into the rock that formed the base of his castle, but it looked as if the floor had been kept clean and clear of debris. Apart from the guiding light ahead of them, everything was dark. And silent. Aside from their footsteps, and Amy’s soft breath at his back, Reynald couldn’t hear a thing.

Could the figure they were following really be Julius? It did not seem to fit. Julius, although strict and at times difficult, had been a good man at heart. Reynald couldn’t imagine him wanting to hurt anyone in this underhand way. And why? What would it gain him? Revenge for his afflictions? Julius would be more likely to use his inability to walk after the attack as a reason to count his blessings in other areas of his life. He had been a most devout man.

“Where’s he going now?”

Amy’s voice intruded on his thoughts. He looked ahead and saw that the light was moving upward. “There are steps leading up into the gatehouse where the garrison is…was. Where I nearly fell last night.”

“Maybe he’s going to try again?” She was pressing to his side—the tunnel was narrow, but she’d squeezed in beside him. “Rey, if you are who you say you are, then I can understand why your life might be at risk. But why me?”

“Because we have been joined together by the witch.” He looked down at her, and saw both fear and courage at war in her eyes. “Whatever is up there doesn’t want me to succeed, or you to help me.”

Inside the gatehouse it was just as gloomy as the tunnel. Reynald moved slowly and cautiously, aware of Amy. She’d taken his hand—not his sword hand, he noticed—and he let her. He could not remember the last time a woman had held his hand like this. Certainly not since he grew from a child.

He liked it.

They reached the top of the wall, feeling a blast of frigid air as they left the shelter of the gatehouse behind them. As Reynald peered ahead through the growing darkness, sleet stung his face, and he began to shake with the cold. Not surprisingly, the weather didn’t seem to be impeding the movements of the apparition.

“We’re going to die,” Amy muttered. “Although you’re probably used to the elements. You’ll be telling me that this is nothing compared to the weather you’ve been out in.”

He laughed. “’Tis true, I am not one to feel the cold—”

“You’re hot,” she said, and then for some reason blushed, as if she’d embarrassed herself.

“—but even I would not go out in a blizzard if I could avoid it.”

“I think you’re capable of anything.”

She meant it, he could tell. She believed him to be a heroic figure. Rey wished it was so, to please her, but the mere fact of her believing it was sweet. An ember of warmth in the pit of his stomach.

She startled him by grabbing his arm with her other hand. “Rey! He’s stopped.”

She was right, the light had stopped. Reynald watched as it appeared to hover just beyond them, on the other side of the battlements. Fifty feet down below was the drawbridge and the moat. It was impossible for any living thing to be suspended in the air without ropes or chains, or without falling to its death.

“Is it Julius?” Amy’s teeth chattered beside him.

Reynald peered closely, but could not distinguish the figure’s identity no matter how he tried.

“I think it’s a woman,” she said suddenly.

“Why do you think that?” Such a thing had not occurred to Reynald.

“I don’t know…Just a feeling.”

The light began to get brighter, dazzling them, just as it had before. Reynald put up his hand to shield his eyes and turned his head aside. If the apparition was tempting them to step out into nothing and fall to their deaths, then it would fail this time. He was about to call out to it jeeringly that it could not hurt them, when there was a thunderous roar.

The glowing light had formed a ball, and now it was moving toward them at high speed. Amy screamed, and he pulled her into his arms, bending to protect her with his body as the light came at them, crackling and hissing. He ducked to one side, just as it passed, and could feel the intense heat radiating from it. The skin and hairs on his arm felt seared. He looked up in time to see the ball tumble forward over the wall and down into the bailey, out of sight.

Fearing the apparition might be preparing another attack, he turned his head to face it again, only to realize that it seemed to be spent. It was shimmering, silhouetted against the darkening sky, and it began to fade and return to wherever it had come from. In another moment it was gone.

Amy had gone to peer over the battlements, and he followed. There was a scorched circle where the ball of light had struck the ground, but no other damage. Still, if it had struck them, it might have been a different matter. He had felt the heat of the thing as it passed.

“That could have killed us,” Amy echoed his thoughts, and her voice was higher than usual. She stepped into his arms, and suddenly he was holding her. But she was holding him, too, her arms fastened about his waist, her cheek pressed hard to his chest.

“It tried to kill us, but it failed,” he reminded her. “We are safe, Amy.”

“But it will try again?”

“Yes, I believe so.” There was no point in lying to her. “Whatever it is, it seems determined to stop us.”

In the past few minutes the weather had grown even darker and colder. Amy’s body was shaking uncontrollably, and he drew her still closer against him, trying to infuse her with his own heat.

She snuggled in with a sigh, then lifted her head to look up at him, her sharp chin digging into his breastbone. He knew then that he was going to kiss her, but the question was whether he’d fight with his conscience first, or not bother.

“Rey?” she whispered.

He decided not to bother, and bending his head, covered her lips with his own. She tasted sweet and clean, like springwater, and her lips were chilled. Her mouth wasn’t, and he gave a ragged groan at the first mating of her tongue with his.

She circled his neck with her hands, clinging on, and he drew her even closer into his body. It occurred to him that any number of his enemies could have crept up behind him then, and he wouldn’t have cared. Every part of him was fully concentrated on the feel and taste of Amy.

Her body fit so neatly into his, and despite his greater height, he didn’t have to strain his neck to bend down to her. He wanted her. The need was overwhelming. Unstoppable. Amy was no Morwenna, and he was no innocent youth. They were woman and man, and for the first time in his adult life, he had found both the desire and the opportunity to mate with a woman. The woman of his dreams.

Amy tried to collect her thoughts, which was difficult when she was being kissed so wonderfully and held by a big strong man like Rey. The lust that had been simmering in her veins ever since she first saw him was intensifying to an unbearable pitch. She knew if she didn’t make a move soon, she wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Rey drew her closer, his big, warm hands clamped onto her back. She pressed her palms flat against his chest, telling herself she needed to push him away now, before this went any further. There was Jez to consider, and Nicco, and her sanity…

And then she heard a sound behind her.

“Rey,” she breathed shakily, withdrawing her mouth from his. Her palms weren’t pressing him away after all, they were caressing him. His eyes were still closed, and his lips sought hers, like a man in a dream who didn’t want to wake up.

Amy probably would have let him kiss her again, she was already closing her own eyes. And then she heard it. The dry rustling of wings and the soft, sinister scraping of claws on stone.