Written in the Stars

Written in the Stars

Sherrill Bodine and
Patricia Rosemoor

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by
Sherrill Bodine and Patricia Rosemoor
. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in
any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact
the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.

Edited by
Keyren Gerlach

Cover design by Fiona Jayde

Ebook ISBN 978-1-62266-227-2

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition
August 2013

The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners
of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Technicolor.

Thanks to our wonderful critique group—Laurie DeMarino, Cheryl Jefferson, Jude Mandell,
and Rosemary Paulas for their endless support and encouragement.

Crescent Key, Florida
-
Present Day

Prologue

He walked the shore of Crescent Key by the light of a waning moon, his night-clever
eyes scanning the foam-whipped sand for telltale reales.

The air thickened with the threat of rain and the briny scent that had been part of
his life as far as memory served. He’d walked the beaches at night nearly as long.
Always in search of a dream. In search of treasure that remained elusive. A legend
that wouldn’t die.

This was it, his time. He sensed it. This expedition would pay out, give him everything
his parents had wanted and had never found. They’d instilled desire for the hunt in
him. This time, he would find sunken treasure that would make them all rich.

A breeze picked up—a soft wail that sent the flesh crawling along his neck and down
his spine. A warning. But of what? He glanced around. Alone.

And the water that sluiced his bare feet remained deserted.

About to give up, he spotted a large craft bobbing out on the horizon. For a moment,
he imagined it to be a ghost ship. But blink as he would, the apparition didn’t disappear.
A single-masted yacht. Tourists? Or other treasure hunters? he wondered, noting a
flicker from a cabin window, as if the moon had struck a shiny surface. As quickly
as it caught him, the flash of bright was gone. Still, he felt watched as he started
to turn away.

Silver glimmered through the sea foam that lashed the beach… He dived for the object
before the ghostly hand of a shipwreck victim could pull the coin back to the greedy
sea.

Success.

He hunkered down, heels dug deep in the wet sand, and examined his treasure. No coin,
but something of far more value.

His pulse raced…his mouth dried… His breath caught deep within his chest as certainty
filled him.

He turned his razor-sharp gaze back toward the horizon, as if he could part the waters
that shrouded the mother lode of the Celestine, abandoned to the ocean’s floor four
centuries earlier. Not yet—only that lone ship bobbing—but he felt time dissolve,
discovery imminent.

For didn’t he hold the proof in hand?

Moonlight silvered the splash of stars tumbling between his fingers as he traced the
edges and angles of the ring and imagined a curious warmth, imagined that it was somehow
able to expose what he so desperately sought.

It slipped on his ring finger easily—a perfect fit.

Warmth generated from the ring around his finger and then ran up his arm. He flushed
and his head went light, and for a moment, he was no longer on a sandy beach but in
a forest glade, a clear pool at its center.

As quickly as the image had formed in his mind, it was gone.

…

Peering through her telescope out her porthole, Cordelia Ward watched the man rise,
pocket something, and turn away. She intently concentrated on him, couldn’t tear her
eyes from his silhouette until it blended with the shadows.

Then other things came into focus for her. The moon a waning crescent, surrounded
by myriad stars. All were reflected in the ocean, so calm tonight. The heavens were
special to her as they were to all sailors who relied on nature’s map. But there was
something special about this sky. About this moon. These stars. This night.

The night before the hunt began.

Cordelia was already imagining the find that would make her career as a marine archeologist,
validate her late father’s research, and give her grieving mother motivation to live
life fully once more.

With barely a breath, Cordelia blinked, stared hard at the celestial pattern—unusual
and yet so familiar to her—then moved to the other side of the cabin, where she fetched
her treasure chest. She held it next to the porthole and gasped. The stars in the
sky traced the exact pattern on the face of the box.

Her wrist began to tingle.

She rubbed the star-shaped birthmark there, as if that would stop the sensation, sank
onto her bunk, emptied her treasures next to her, then slipped the ring from her right
hand. Something about this night, she thought again, before matching the single raised
crescent moon to the first of several slots.

She gave it half a clockwise twist.

The chest, forged of metal, was a clever piece of workmanship handed down through
generations of women in her family, along with the legendary Posey ring that made
half of a whole, the man’s half having been lost for as long as the rest of the sunken
treasure. As far as she knew, no one had ever breached the casket’s secret. Not even
her. And it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

She fitted the crescent to a second slot and turned it fully counterclockwise.

On the surface, the lidded box held family keepsakes. But it had always seemed deeper
than the interior at first appeared, and she’d come to the conclusion that the bottom
was false. Within the design of stars and moons decorating the treasure chest’s outer
surface lay the path to its heart, she was certain.

A third slot. A full turn.

She’d recognized the ring as key years ago, yet every effort to find the right combination
of twists and turns had thwarted her. She’d long ago given up. But now, at a significant
crossroads in her life—hopefully she was at the brink of the find of a lifetime—Cordelia
let sheer instinct guide her.

Slot number four. Another full turn.

What could be hidden within the chest? she wondered. A map, perhaps? A guide to the
sunken treasure her parents had sought for so many years? If only her father had lived
long enough to see his dream come true.

The fifth slot. A counter turn.

Her wrist tingled once more. Hand shaking, she matched the crescent to the sixth and
final slot. Her mouth was dry, and she couldn’t seem to breathe. This was it, then.
As she was about to turn the ring, the tingle turned to a fierce burn. Hesitating,
she looked down at the angry red birthmark.

An omen…

Then she did it. Turned the ring halfway in the opposite direction.

A soft nick and the velvet-clad inside of the box popped open. Her breath caught as
she investigated. No map here, but a bound book, its leather cover embossed with stars
and moons. Inside, there were pages of highly stylized writing on age-fragile parchment.
Cordelia scanned the top page and realized it was a woman’s personal journal written
four centuries before.

Not knowing why her heart thundered so, she began to read.

PART I: England

Dunham Castle, 1601

On this day I shall begin a journey inevitable from the moment I was born on Midsummer
Eve, Witches’ Night. My nursemaid, Cybil, proclaimed that I am marked as a child of
magic.

Yet I am not a witch, for the face of my beloved and what awaits me at journey’s end
is shrouded from me by the veil of time. I know only that with him I shall scale peaks
higher than my spirit could ever strive to reach alone, and because of him, I shall
descend into valleys which will try my soul.

My old nursemaid warned me of danger should my choices not be wise as she coiled around
my hips the celestial girdle spun of gold into mesh studded with rubies, pearls, emeralds,
sapphires, and delicate chains of diamond stars hung by jeweled, golden crescents
of the waxing moon. Hidden within its chains is a tiny dagger. It is said the old
pagan gods forged this girdle to protect the Wharton women from all evil. I tremble
at what may lie before me, but I dare not turn away from this destiny, for it is set
firmly in my stars.

To have remained safe in the loving haven of Wharton Keep in my gentle father’s domain
would have denied me my future and that of you who come after me. I can only record
my journey here, so that you may know me and the path I take for you.

I hear the tower bell toll.

It is time.

Chapter One

The beat of her heart echoing the tolling bell, Lady Elizabeth York stood outside
the thick, dark oak doors of the great hall of Dunham Castle.

The bell ceased, and she caught her breath, watching the heavy doors swing slowly
open.

Knowing that within moments she would confront her destiny, fulfilling her duty as
her father’s only child, she lifted her chin. The blood of good Queen Bess flowed
in her veins. There was naught Elizabeth would not do for her lineage.

Looking forward, proud she would forge the alliance between two powerful families
to make them both safer and stronger by marrying the duke’s heir, she walked beneath
the barrel vaulting, past the tapestries and the carving which made the great hall
famous throughout the land. She halted before the dais crowned with the Lennox coat
of arms. Framed within the rich purple draping sat the duke and his duchess with one
man standing at either side. Both men were broad-shouldered, their doublets braided
in silver.

Sunlight slanted in through the high windows, bathing them all in a bright, shimmering
light.

Blinded for an instant, Elizabeth blinked several times, before her eyes found and
lingered on the man standing beside the duchess. He had the duke’s same wide, watchful,
cornflower-blue eyes and mane of golden hair.

Her gaze melded with his, and she couldn’t look away from the light flickering through
his eyes like sunshine playing upon the sea on a perfect day at Wharton Keep. The
strong bones of his face knitted together in an arrangement which took away her breath.
So deep was the rush of hot, strong longing that she felt tears burn behind her lids.

I need not have feared my old nurse’s warning. With a look, my heart is his.

Content and now eagerly awaiting her destiny, she knelt before the duke and his son.

A heartbeat later she felt a strong hand take hers.

With joy she looked up.

Shock turned her icy cold, the trembling rising up from deep inside her as her gaze
met the dark, heavy-lidded eyes of the other man with the same golden hair as the
duke.

He glanced away to stare at the star-shaped birthmark on her right wrist and smiled.

“Ah, Lady Elizabeth, you are as bewitching as foretold.” Urging her to rise, he turned
them both to the duke. “We have chosen well, Father.”

The world spun around her, as if it had been hurled through time and space. Had those
moments of looking into the stranger’s eyes and seeing all she had ever hoped to find
in a man been a dream she was now cruelly waking from?

Conquering every feeling of confusion and aching disappointment, she firmly clasped
the hand of her betrothed, Carlyle, Earl of Seymour, heir to the Duke of Lennox, and
allowed him to lead her forward.

His mouth curling deep at the corners, the duke inclined his head. “You are welcome
to Dunham Castle, Lady Elizabeth.”

His duchess, as fair as Elizabeth was dark and nearly as young, leapt to her feet.
“I am Laurel, and I know we shall be great friends.”

Surprising Elizabeth with her kindness, Laurel engulfed her in a tight, warm embrace.
“You are as beautiful as rumored, Elizabeth. Is she not, Will?”

Her laughter as light as the patches of sun on the cold stone floor, Laurel twirled
back to urge forward the man behind her. The man Elizabeth had believed to be her
destiny.

His slow smile mirrored the duke’s as did the indulgence in his eyes as he gazed at
Laurel. “Yes, Lady Elizabeth’s beauty cannot be doubted. Much like her fatigue from
her four-day journey to us.”

“How thoughtless I am! And, as always, how considerate you are, our brave Captain
of the Guard, Will Grey.” Her brown eyes wide, Laurel clasped Elizabeth’s cool hand
between her warm palms. “Take Elizabeth’s other hand, Will. We shall all be family.”

Will Grey is family, yet not the elder son who I must marry? This is wrong! I should
not be promised to Carlyle but to Will! I know it!

As if he felt her confusion and fear, Will hesitated before clasping her fingers loosely
within his.

The birthmark on her wrist tingled and burned. The power which lit up the heavens
during a storm shot between them, blistering through her blood. She knew from the
stark widening of his eyes and firm line of his long mouth that he had felt the shock,
too. She bit her lip, stopping the words choking her throat. She knew it was her duty
to stay silent in this time and place.

“Am I not family, dear Laurel?” Carlyle drawled, strolling toward them.

Laurel’s lips quivered. “Of course. Come join us, Carlyle.”

“We all do your bidding.” Carlyle bowed and Will stepped away, allowing the duke’s
son to clasp her hand.

What had once been alive with warmth now felt strangely numb, and where before her
blood had run hot, it now cooled, the chill seeping into her bones as it did when
she was fearful.

“Now all is as it should be,” Carlyle proclaimed in a loud voice.

Agony stark on her pale face, Laurel nodded before a spasm of coughing doubled her
over. Alarmed, knowing from what Cybil had taught her that such a cough could cause
sickness unto death, Elizabeth pulled free from Carlyle. Honed instinct urged her
to help Laurel back into her chair. Will Grey was there before her, and both of them
took Laurel’s slight weight into their arms to ease her down upon her cushioned throne.
Elizabeth’s breasts brushed against Will’s arm and again the hot, tingling connection
blistered between them, impossible to ignore or forget.

They both glanced away, yet she saw her confusion mirrored in his eyes.

Trembling, she knew this is what her nurse had foreseen. Will is my choice, and it
cannot be.

“Laurel, you must rest.” His face anguished, the duke hovered over his wife, who shook
her head, her fair hair whipping against her pale cheeks.

From behind the curtain, an older man with snowy hair as thick as sable and a neat,
short, white beard strolled to her side. The calmness in his eyes, his gentle manner
as he touched Laurel’s forehead, and the practiced way his fingers rested on the pulse
beating in her throat cast a net which soothed them all.

“Laurel, I know you wish to stay and visit with Lady Elizabeth.” He smiled. “Perhaps
tomorrow would be better for both of you.”

Her face scarlet from coughing, Laurel took a long, ragged breath, her eyes watery
but slowly clearing of worry. “Yes. Elizabeth, you will find our Charles Grey is the
finest physician in the land and right in all things.” Both her voice and smile were
gentle. “On the morrow please join me in my chambers. We have much to learn of one
another.”

“I look forward to the morrow, your grace.” Dismissed, Elizabeth could do naught but
bow. Every instinct, every new desire, screamed for her to stay, to find answers to
the questions beating through her mind and heart.

Knowing she must, she tried to walk proudly, tried to hold her head high as she swept
from the great hall. Weakened by confusion, she felt eyes following her and knew it
was Will Grey’s gaze that warmed her body

And Will himself who consumed her thoughts.

…

Will watched Elizabeth walk from the room, her heavy ebony hair half falling from
the twist studded with pearls she wore low on her long neck. Such a desire to follow
her filled him, he stepped off the dais.

“Will.” His grandfather’s firm voice stopped him.

Looking around, he saw Laurel reaching out one trembling hand toward him, while the
other clutched the duke’s arm.

She smiled up at Will’s grandfather. “Our fine physician demands I rest today before
the festivities on the morrow.” She laid her cheek against the duke’s shoulder. “As
does my lord. Please, Will, come visit with me awhile.”

Ignoring Carlyle’s smirk and sardonic bow, Will obeyed.

When they reached Laurel’s chambers, her maids were ready with satin pillows piled
high on her bed and a goblet of wine beside it.

Laurel still looked pale and weak as the duke eased her onto the pillows and smoothed
her hair back from her high forehead.

“Shall I stay?” the duke asked in the thoughtful, loving voice Will remembered from
childhood.

“Be gone, my lord. You are eager to go hawking.” She laughed softly.

The duke looked up, and Will met the plea in his eyes. “I swear I will make her rest,”
he promised.

“I trust you in all things, Will.” The duke nodded. “I shall return to find Laurel
well once more.” He placed a gentle kiss on her lips and stalked from the room.

“My lord cannot bear when I am ill.” Laurel sighed. “Now you must sit by my side.”
Her smile trembling at the corners, she patted the edge of the satin-draped bed.

He sat close, as bidden, and held her cool, outstretched hand.

“Will, tell me your thoughts about Lady Elizabeth.”

Before this day, he would have sworn he could share all with Laurel. Now sharp unease
and heavy confusion caused him to choose his words with care.

“Lady Elizabeth is more beautiful than rumored.”

“’Tis true!” Laurel sat up straighter. “I’ve never beheld such an abundance of curling,
shining dark hair, nor eyes as light green as spring buds. I hope she will become
my friend.”

He tightened his grip on her hand. “All wish to be your friend, Laurel.”

“Yes, I saw kindness on her face, yet I felt—” Laurel shook her head. “—such power
around her. You felt it?”

From the moment their eyes met, nay, before, watching her walk with pride and strength
toward them, he knew Elizabeth was coming to him.

He shook his head to clear it of traitorous thoughts and desires.

Not to me, to Carlyle.

“Lady Elizabeth has great pride and knows well how to behave as a future duchess.”

“I hope she brings much merriment to our court and to our villagers, for they plan
a fair in her honor.” Laurel coughed and took a long, shuddering breath as if struggling
to draw air into her lungs.

Will reached for the goblet of wine. “Drink.”

“Nay.” She shook her head. “I need it not. What I desire is to see young Stephen on
the morrow. He is all I need to make me light of heart and health. As all he needs
is a mother.” Laurel slanted him a familiar worried look.

Sighing, he smiled, acknowledging her concern. “You know Stephen has his nursemaid,
and you are a mother to him.”

“Will, you are the brother I was never blessed to have, and I am a loving aunt to
Stephen. Yet he needs more. A woman who will catch him when he stumbles. A woman you
want always by your side.”

I have found her and she belongs to another.

“Will, your face! What troubles—”

Laurel’s sudden spasm of coughing cut his heart. He knew worse could follow.

“Call my grandfather,” Will commanded the hovering maid.

“I am here.” His grandfather spoke from the door and moved swiftly to take Will’s
place.

“Laurel, drink this potion I’ve prepared for you.” Charles Grey held a cup to her
pale lips and she clasped it with her palms, swallowing it in great gulps.

Sighing, she fell back on the pillows. “Truly in your hands, the magic of the old
gods is good.”

“There is no magic in the elements of our world. Air. Fire. Earth. Water. They are
gifts to us to be used wisely.”

“Your wisdom brings me much peace, Charles Grey,” Laurel whispered, her eyelids drooping.

“Then rest and find more comfort, sweet Laurel.”

Will and his grandfather stepped away, watching Laurel close her eyes. When her breathing
became an even rhythm, his grandfather nodded.

“The plant I brewed will help her sleep. It grows in a part of the forest seldom visited
by others.” His grandfather stared deep into Will’s eyes. “There I found signs of
the old, dark pagan ways. The blood of the sacrifice was fresh upon the altar. Have
your scouts heard rumors of the dark practices rising again to menace us?”

Instinctively, Will’s hand went to his sword. He knew of the glade in the deep forest
where such an altar had once stood. Long ago, when they were boys, Carlyle had shown
him a special place he had found. It was an old memory he kept silent out of past
love for his brother. For the love he still felt, he tried to ignore the cunning and
depravity he sometimes sensed in Carlyle. If his brother had succumb to his fascination
with the old, dark ways, he would discover the truth and put a stop to it for the
sake of their father. And to spare Elizabeth.

Will lifted his chin and stared steadily back at his grandfather. “Have you spoken
to the duke about what you have seen?”

His grandfather glanced back to Laurel, who slept peacefully now. “When her attacks
of the lungs become less frequent, I shall burden him with the news. No need to spoil
tomorrow’s banquet to celebrate Carlyle and Elizabeth’s betrothal.” Watching him,
his grandfather’s eyes darkened. “What think you of the match, Will?”

The match is wrong! Elizabeth belongs to me! As he had done with Laurel, Will chose
his words with care, fighting the powerful feelings pounding through him from the
moment he saw Elizabeth.

“My brother is a fortunate man.”

…

The pungent aroma from the flowers and herbs Florea kept thickly strewn across his
chamber floor masked the sharp scent of blood.

Carlyle waited for her as he had every night in remembered time.

She appeared as if born of the shadows. Her long fingers stroked his hair, knew where
his neck muscles corded with tension. He sighed, lifting one of her gnarled hands
to his lips, kissing the rough flesh.

This was the hand, as strong as the sacred oak, which had held his fist clutching
the jeweled blade for his first sacrifice to the old gods.

“My Flower, it is as you foretold. Elizabeth is marked by magic.”

Florea’s chuckle warmed his ear. “As you were marked by magic as a babe suckling at
my breasts and learning the lore of our pagan gods in your nightly lullabies. All
shall be as I promised.”