Teresa Medeiros (21 page)

The summer afternoon mocked her with its beauty. Wildflowers sprouted from every rocky crevice, spilling down the hillside in a dazzling waterfall of color. A stand of firs loomed overhead, promising shade and respite for the weary traveler. A buoyant breeze caressed her face. The Scottish terrain painted an idyllic backdrop for one of her mother’s fairy tales—
The Princess and the Pyre
perhaps. Or
Little Roasted Riding Hood
. Eyeing the sharp glint of the axe dangling from Colin’s belt, Tabitha shuddered, fearing such a grim fairy tale could never have a happy ending.

“You should have given me back my pajamas,” she informed Colin’s unyielding back. “Federal law requires them to be flame retardant.”

They’d nearly reached the top of the hill. Colin remained as stoic and immovable as Abraham preparing to slay his beloved son at his Lord’s command. The analogy failed to comfort her.

“I hope you remembered to bring the weenies. Because I forgot the marshmallows.” When he continued to ignore her ferocious cheer, she added, “It’s terribly clever of you to pretend you’re going to torch me. Once your people see the smoke, they’ll assume you’ve done your duty and I can just be on my way with no one the wiser.”

Colin lifted a fir bough, motioning for her to pass. She should have had to brush against him, but he shrank
away from her, sending a fresh bolt of despair deep into her heart. If she could just get him to speak to her … look at her … touch her …

A ramshackle cottage squatted in the center of the clearing, looking less than enchanted. Its thatched roof resembled a moth-eaten toupee.

“What charming accommodations!” Tabitha said as he marched her through the weeds flourishing around the stone stoop and thrust open the door. “Not quite up to the elegant standards of Brisbane’s dungeon, but far more—” Before her eyes could adjust to the gloom, he neatly reversed their positions and slammed the door in her face. A bolt thudded into its mooring.

Her voice trailed to a whisper. “…  habitable.”

She sagged against the door, overwhelmed by loneliness. There was a vast deal of difference in being imprisoned with Colin and being imprisoned by him. She would have gladly returned to that tiny cell in Brisbane’s dungeon and faced the threat of decapitation all over again for the privilege of sleeping in Colin’s arms one more night.

Battling the inertia of hopelessness, she pushed away from the door and slowly toured her cottage prison. Narrow shutters covered the windows, filtering out all but the most tenacious of sunbeams. Dust motes peppered the hazy air, drifting past a stone hearth whose ashes had long grown cold, a mattress gowned in a threadbare quilt, a pair of half-melted candles. Cobwebs draped the rough-hewn rafters, fluttering in the musty draft like tattered wedding veils. A length of rope dangled from the center beam.

Tabitha reached up with her bound hands and absently touched it. The end was frayed as if it had been cut or severed by a violent tug. Without warning, Colin’s words spilled through her mind.

When I finally went to the cottage where we trysted to tell Regan I would make her my wife, I found her hanging from the rafters, my unborn child dead in her womb
.

Tabitha jerked her hands back as if the rope carried live electrical current. The jolt shot straight to her heart. She spun around, her pulse racing. She no longer needed magic to travel to the past, only imagination.

A fire crackled on the hearth, casting its merry glow over the lover’s bower Colin had painstakingly prepared for his lady. Perfumed candles scented the air. A clean quilt draped the mattress he’d stuffed with dried heather that very morning. He was warming his chapped palms over the fire when the door burst open and Regan came running in, her cloak frosted with snowflakes, her pale cheeks rosy from the cold
.

Colin eased her hood from her silvery blond hair, his hands shaking with want, yet unspeakably gentle. His lips claimed hers and they fell upon the mattress together, shedding their clothes with all the guilty abandon of any two teenagers eager to explore all the pleasures they’d just discovered their nubile bodies were capable of
.

Tabitha felt nothing but tenderness for the boy Colin had been—slender and newly muscled, a shadow of the man he would become etched in his unlined face, his smooth jaw, his bright, trusting eyes.

But Regan’s image tasted bitter, like ashes in her mouth. Pity for the girl’s fate mingled with jealousy. If Colin did what his thirteenth-century conscience demanded of him, Tabitha would never lay in his arms, her heartbeat unsteady and her skin flushed from his lovemaking. He would never stroke her hair or steal a kiss or touch her breasts as if he’d waited his entire life
to do so. For one brief shining moment, Regan had had everything Tabitha had ever wanted.

And been foolish enough to squander it at the end of that rope.

A darker image replaced the first—
Colin and Regan quarreling—hurtling cruel, foolish words at one another as only those very young or very much in love will do. Regan, her wan face blotchy with tearstains, paced the cottage, wringing her hands until one of them darted out like a nervous bird to slap Colin full across the face. Colin stood paralyzed by the blow from his beloved, finally turning on his heel and leaving the cottage without a word
.

Tabitha sank to her knees and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes in a vain attempt to blot out the image she knew would follow.

A slender figure stood in the doorway of the cottage, framed by the pale winter sunshine. He was no longer a man, but simply a boy on the brink of manhood clutching a fistful of dried heather in one hand and his heart in the other. A shadow crossed his face, once, twice, as the thing dangling from the rafters swung slowly to and fro, as if nudged by an invisible hand
.

Colin drifted toward the unspeakable thing, deafened to everything but the lazy creak of the rope. He blinked up at it, his golden eyes blank with shock. Comprehension slowly dawned, more brutal and merciless than the numbness that had preceded it. Roaring in agony, he rushed toward Regan, seizing her around the waist and lifting her as if it were not a lifetime too late to coax a breath into her mottled throat
.

He clawed at the rope, wrenching it in two with the sheer force of his desperation. Regan fell into his arms, cold and stiff where once she had been warm and pliant
.
Cradling her to his breast, he sank to his knees and tipped back his head in a soundless howl of grief
.

When Tabitha lowered her hands from her eyes, they were wet with tears. She rose to her feet, scrubbing roughly at her cheeks with her forearm. She was no Regan to manipulate a man with tears and accusations.

She stumbled to the window and pried away a rotted slat of shutter with her fingernails. Colin was nowhere in sight, but she could hear the rhythmic
thunk
of his axe biting into wood.

A stray sunbeam caressed the amulet, making it glisten in the murky light. Tabitha brushed the stone with her fingertips, understanding now why Colin had ordered Ewan to bind her wrists so loosely and leave her fingers free. If he returned to find the cottage empty and her returned to whatever mysterious place she had come from, he’d be spared the terrible burden of fulfilling his pledge to his people and his God. He’d be alone once more with only his regrets for company.

Consoled by an almost supernatural calm, Tabitha curled up in the windowsill, determined to do what Regan hadn’t had the courage to do.

Be there when Colin came for her.

The moon floated over the clearing, chasing the shadows of twilight back to their mossy hollows. It was the first silvery flush of nightfall when the curtain between the seen and unseen worlds evaporated to nothing more than a gauzy veil, easily disturbed by a reckless mortal hand. Tabitha wouldn’t have been surprised to see a band of fairy folk emerge from beneath their leafy stalks to caper around the stake in the middle of the clearing.

It was a fine and sturdy stake, set deep in the ground, jutting boldly into the night. Its thick length had been
hewn from the smooth trunk of an alder so as not to abrade the tender flesh of its victim. Moonlight laced the web of brush piled with painstaking care around its base. Tabitha had no doubt the brittle kindling had also been chosen with efficiency and comfort in mind. It would burn hot and fast, obliterating all trace of the woman condemned to writhe in its hellish embrace.

Her executioner had been on his knees for a dark eternity. But instead of humbly bowing his head, he appeared to be locked in mortal combat with his creator. He’d thrown back his broad shoulders and tipped his face heavenward to search the black void of the sky. His tortured profile was both beautiful and terrible to behold, like a Renaissance fresco of a fallen angel battling to reclaim his rightful place in God’s court.

When he finally bowed his head and climbed to his feet, Tabitha knew exactly who had lost the battle.

She stood in the center of the cottage, wanting to be on her feet when he came for her. She stood straight and tall, refusing to slump. Colin’s God might be required to grant him mercy, but she wasn’t.

He fumbled with the bolt, his hands robbed of their usual grace. His clumsiness betrayed just how much it would cost him to open that door.

When it finally swung open, Tabitha half expected to find a slender, dark-haired boy silhouetted against the moonlight. But it was a man’s rugged shadow that fell across her, a man who held the power of life and death in his loosely coiled hands.

His resolute expression shielded the dismay he must have felt at discovering she hadn’t accepted his invitation to vanish into thin air. He looped the trailing end of the rope around his fist, and gently led her across the dew-spangled grass to the stake that was to be her funeral pyre.

He refused to meet her eyes as he inclined his head and unknotted the ropes at her wrists.

“I have to admire you for sticking to your principles,” she said lightly. “Where I come from, most men don’t have any.”

That earned her a smoldering scowl, the first he’d given her in that endless day. She didn’t even struggle as he waltzed her backward to the stake, then went around to bind her hands behind her. His hot breath fanned her hair. It took him one, two, three tries to tighten the bonds to his satisfaction. By the time he was through, his hands were shaking harder than hers.

By not using the amulet to save herself, Tabitha knew she was taking a terrible chance. But for the first time in her life, she was compelled to put her faith in someone other than herself. If it turned out that she’d misjudged Colin, it would just be the ultimate screwup in a life devoted to screwing up.

He came to stand in front of her, each of his movements labored, as if he’d aged a decade in the time it had taken to bind her to the stake.

“You
are
going to strangle me first, aren’t you? I’d be very disappointed if you didn’t. You’ve always impressed me as a stickler for protocol.” Tabitha nursed an absurd flicker of hope. To strangle her he would have to touch her.

“You’ve left me no choice,” he said hoarsely. “ ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ ”

“ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ” she shot back at him, thankful she’d memorized at least that one commandment.

He paced a few steps away, as if refusing to look at her was becoming more and more of a challenge. “Have you any words to offer in your defense?”

It put a strain on her shoulders, but Tabitha still managed
to shrug. “I always paid off my credit cards before the interest came due.”

“Stop mocking me,” he roared, spinning around to glare at her.

Her hope flared into triumph. “Or you’ll what? Choke me to death, then burn my corpse to ashes?”

When Colin strode forward and seized her by the throat, she thought he was going to do exactly that. But his desperate grip was tempered by gentleness, his voice low and pleading. “Deny it, my lady! Deny the charge of witchcraft and I’ll free you. Even if it should cost me my eternal soul. Deny it and I’ll send you on your way. You will never lay eyes on my face again.”

Her helpless gaze traced his stubborn chin, that deliciously soft lower lip. How could she tell him that was the one threat she feared more than death?

She longed to do as he said, if only for his sake, but she’d spent her entire life living a lie. If Arian were there at that moment, Tabitha hoped her mother would appreciate the fact that she was willing to die for something she’d always resented. She’d finally come to realize that her supernatural powers were as much a part of her as her size ten feet and the bland color of her hair.

“I can’t deny it,” she said softly. “Not even for you.”

Despair darkened his eyes. His hands drifted upward, freeing the feathery strands of her hair from Magwyn’s ribbon until they fell in a soft cloud around her face. Tabitha tipped her head back, unable to resist his tender seduction. He cupped her throat in his palms, pressing his powerful thumbs to the pulse that beat in its fragile hollow.

“Close your eyes,” he rasped.

Tabitha couldn’t have said why she obeyed—to spare him the agony of watching the spark of life fade from
her eyes or to blot out the sight of his beautiful, merciless face. His grip tightened. Her lashes fluttered downward as she waited to die at the hands of the man she loved.

It wasn’t death that came out of the darkness, but Colin’s kiss. His lips seized hers with a fierceness that made her gasp. He took advantage of her shock by driving his tongue even deeper into her mouth, kindling a fire of another kind—dark, erotic, and all-consuming. She writhed in its flames, feeling as wild and wanton as the godless creature he thought her to be.

Wondering dreamily if he intended to kiss her to death, she surged against the bonds, her breasts straining against his chest, her nipples abraded to exquisite sensitivity by the rough linen of Magwyn’s gown. He pressed her backward until she was pinioned between the stake and the unyielding length of male flesh throbbing beneath his hose. As the flames licked lower, Tabitha moaned in mingled terror and delight.