The Knight's Kiss

by Nicole Burnham

  She stood, drawing herself up to her full height, though she still stood several inches below Nick. In the most commanding, I’m-a-princess-and-you’d-better-listen-to-me voice she could muster, she said, “No. No, you’re not leaving, and no, no one will lock you up. But I want to know here and now what’s going on with you.”

  He balked, and before she could stop herself, she reached up to cup his cheeks with her palms and caress his stubble-roughened skin. “Whatever your secret is, you can tell me. I’ll believe you.” At the obvious look of doubt in his eyes, she said the words she never before believed she could. “I love you, Nick. I love you with all my heart. And if I can take away your pain, I want to try.”

  His eyes hardened, but he didn’t shake off her touch this time. “I was born in 1163, Your Highness. If you want to know how old I am, you do the math. No amount of love or understanding can take away that fact or the pain that goes with it. Wish it were so.”

  She took an involuntary step back and gasped. He couldn’t possibly have said what she thought she heard. It wasn’t possible. “Did you say 1163?”

  “One, one, six, three.” He cocked an eyebrow at her and hooked his thumbs through the belt loops at his hips. “You want to know why I know so much about every piece of ancient junk in this room? Why I know how to hold a sword, or how many days it took a medieval monk to transcribe a sermon or illuminate a manuscript? It’s not because I have a fancy degree. I never wrote a dissertation or even studied history, for that matter. I lived it. All of it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Her heart wanted to believe him, just as she’d promised, but her brain wouldn’t allow it. “Nick, that would make you nearly a thousand years old. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Now tell me I’m not crazy.”

  She shook her head slowly, thinking over every word he’d uttered since they’d met, every action he’d taken. “No, I know you’re not crazy.” She glimpsed the aspirin bottle on the desk again, but forced herself to focus on him.

  “Trying to convince yourself? That’s understandable.” He strode to the desk and picked up the bottle between his index and middle finger and swung it in front of her face. “As I told you before, I had a serious head injury. That’s why I pop these things like they were candy. I was thrown from my horse in the winter of 1190, while crossing Italy. I fell down a hillside and lay in the brush for days before some local villagers found me and carried me to one of their homes for care. If it wasn’t for the curse, I probably wouldn’t have survived it. Anyway, needless to say, I can’t exactly waltz into a doctor’s office and explain my medical history. So I suffer the headaches. And that’s all they are. Headaches, not delusions, though there are days I’d rather be delusional than immortal. But I don’t get a choice.”

  Taking the bottle from his fingers and placing it on the desktop gave her a second to think. She sank into the desk chair, trying to keep her mind open, despite the impossibility of Nick’s words. “What do you mean by ‘the curse’? Are you saying you don’t age—that you’re immortal—because you’re cursed?”

  He nodded. “Now you see why I don’t exactly parade myself out in public, why I keep my own counsel about my past. People would categorize me as one of those whack-jobs who stand out in the desert waiting for the UFOs to arrive.”

  “Tell me everything. Please.”

  His gaze bored into hers, but she refused to waver, knowing he tested her with each word and each look. “I have to know you believe me, first. Telling you this puts me at great risk, as you might imagine. It’s bad enough your father’s chief of security knows there’s something wrong with me.”

  Isabella sucked in a deep breath of the cool storeroom air. How many afternoons had she spent with mental health professionals, learning about the breadth of the problem, about the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness and about what she could do to help? Her education on the subject, balanced against the time she’d spent alone with Nick, left her confused. A mental health expert would instantly conclude he suffered from delusions, but looking at him now, she wasn’t so sure.

  “You believe what you’re saying. So if you tell me your story, I’ll believe it, too. And I promise, if you don’t want me to tell anyone else, I will not.” She made an X on her chest with her index finger. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Hope to die? That’s not funny.” He shot her a grin, but a muscle twitched in his jaw, betraying his sense of unease.

  She held out her hand to him. “Have you ever told anyone?”

  He stared at her outstretched fingers for a moment, then surprised her by taking her hand and kissing it. “A couple times, early on. Only my wife knew the whole story. It always turned out badly, especially in her case.”

  “You were married, then?” Jealousy pricked at her, but in the same instant, she realized that his wife was probably long dead. And he’d been forced to endure the loss of a spouse, just as her father and Federico had. “What was her name?”

  He gave a too-casual shrug, one that only showed her more intensely the depth of his pain. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Pulling him closer, she whispered, “I want to know anyway.”

  “Why?”

  She tilted her chin up to him. “You were the first person who ever understood my loneliness. How I could be surrounded by people, yet live so apart. Now I know why.”

  Emotion flickered in his eyes, and she stood to brush his lips with a reassuring kiss. “Nick, you took away my loneliness. Let me take away yours. Or at least try.”

  He dropped his forehead against hers, and then for the next three hours, he talked. Hesitantly at first, but once he realized she wouldn’t interrupt, and that she genuinely wanted to know his tale, with more passion. Nick hadn’t believed the curse at first; he’d never put stock in tales about witches with mystical powers. But as time dragged on, and he’d still maintained his youth while those around him—including his beautiful wife—aged and died, he’d been forced to accept its truth.

  As he described the witch, what happened to him in the woods and with his family, and then his years wandering through Europe, Isabella found her admiration for him growing, and the last of her doubts washing away. No one could make up a story like Nick’s—at least not with the historical detail he did.

  Besides, other than the unbelieveable fact that he was over eight hundred years old, everything he said clicked with something specific she’d observed about him. His reaction to seeing the keep, his knowledge of the artifacts—including the fact that the door to the storage area was the original—and even the fact he’d obviously had terrible medical care earlier in his life. As a twelfth-century knight, he’d been lucky to make it to twenty-seven, the age at which he’d been cursed, since he’d embarked on his career as a fighter at the tender age of fifteen.

  What pained her the most, however, was the fact he’d given up. After centuries of battling the curse, sacrificing as no man in the history of the world, and then finally searching for answers through research, he’d admitted defeat. Right on the floor of the palace’s former armory, where he’d spent so many of his earliest years. Now she understood why the cries she’d overheard were filled with such hopelessness.

  “Please stay,” she urged once he’d finished his tale. They were both sitting on the floor now, shoulder-to-shoulder, their backs against the stone wall. “You still might find something else here. Something that could break the curse. And if you’re willing, you can visit my private physician. I’ve known him since I was a small child. He signed a confidentiality agreement with our family long ago, and he’s never violated it. If I ask him to keep your condition to himself, he will. And he can get you the medical care you need for your headaches.”

  She put a hand on his knee, and met his dark, pained gaze. “I hate to see you suffer, Nick. You’ve suffered enough, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was flat as he added, “Because of my actions, my choices, someone died. Or at least,
I thought he died. Someone innocent.”

  “I think you’ve punished yourself enough for that. Far more than Rufina could have.”

  “Still.” He swallowed audibly, then turned his head to study her. “You have no idea how tempting your offer is to me, but the risk is too great. If I stay, there’s a chance the tabloids will get wind of it. Even if there’s a hint that something is amiss with me—a palace employee—they’ll dig and dig until they find something to pin on you. It’ll be the Harvard incident magnified a thousand times.”

  “I don’t care,” she could hear her voice edging toward hysteria and tried to bring it down a notch, but couldn’t. “I can’t let you go, Nick. And as scared as I am of what the tabloids might say, I love you more. This past week, I realized that without you I’m not living a full life. I want you here for me, as much as I want you to stay for your own benefit.”

  “That’s what frightens me.” He was quiet for a moment before adding, “It broke my heart to watch my wife give up her friends, her social life—even her dreams of having a child—all because she thought she should stick by me until the curse was broken.”

  He reached over to her, running his fingers along the curve of her cheek, then tucking a stray curl behind her ear. Though his touch was gentle, the seriousness of his expression sent her heart plummeting. “I love you, too, Isabella. More than I’ve ever loved any woman, including my wife. I want you to live your life to the fullest, to break free of the restrictions you feel upon you to find love and happiness. But not with me. I would rather live another thousand years than see you devastated by the curse the way it devastated my wife. That’s why I cannot stay.”

  Hot tears pricked at her eyes, as they had several times while he told his story. But this time, she couldn’t prevent them from burning a path down her cheek. “Nick, you owe it to yourself to stay. It’s the only chance you have to break the curse. Don’t you see—”

  “Sir.” A voice came from the entryway behind them, causing Nick to drop his hand from Isabella’s face and jump in shock. “I’d prefer to stay. Perhaps you should consider it.”

  Nick pushed to his feet, then offered Isabella a hand up. The princess must have left the door open behind her, or he’d have heard Anne’s approach. He hadn’t heard Isabella come in, but then again, he wasn’t exactly listening at the time.

  His heart raced, filling with fear for Isabella and her family. How much had Anne heard?

  “Anne?” He raised an eyebrow in question, but his secretary’s hard stare let him know that while she might not have heard everything, she’d certainly heard enough.

  “I know I shouldn’t have eavesdropped, sir. But I did. And I believe you should stay.”

  Nick glanced at Isabella. Worry lines etched her forehead, and he didn’t like it.

  He turned back to his secretary, who seemed strangely calm given the situation, and addressed her in as solemn a tone as he could muster. “I want you to forget what you might have heard. Or thought you heard. We are going back to Boston as soon as possible. If your fifteen years of employment with me have meant anything to you, respect my wishes on this. It has nothing to do with you. Understood?”

  “I beg to differ. It has everything to do with me.”

  If he’d suspected the palace walls somehow intimidated Anne, or left her feeling squirrely, he’d been mistaken. She’d never spoken in such a frank, brazen manner before. As far as he could remember, she’d never even contradicted him. The short hairs on his nape prickled, but before he could open his mouth, Isabella’s smooth voice interrupted.

  “Anne, what do you mean?”

  Anne continued to stare straight at him, her shoulders squared, her chin at a defiant angle. “If those fifteen years mean anything to you, sir, then you should take a minute to hear me out. Once you do, I believe you’ll stay.”

  Feeling outflanked, Nick crossed his arms over his chest. “Fine. But you won’t change my mind.”

  Anne nodded toward the princess. “You told Princess Isabella that to break the curse, you’d need to sacrifice. Right?”

  “According to what Rufina said, yes.”

  “Until the past few weeks, you’ve never done that.”

  Nick ground his teeth to keep from saying something he shouldn’t in the presence of women. Anne obviously hadn’t overheard everything he’d told Isabella—at least not about the years he’d spent cleaning up muck from the floors of medieval hospitals, or about giving away every cent he had to his name, volunteering his time and labor in the most dank and disgusting places on earth. If she didn’t consider that sacrifice, then what was?

  Anne raised a palm in the air to stop him from arguing. “Sir, everything you’ve done, you’ve done for yourself. True, others benefitted from your work. Greatly. But you only did those things to break the curse. I know you grew to appreciate that you could help people, and at times even enjoyed doing so, but deep down you did it for yourself.”

  In that moment, something crumbled inside Nick. This morning, he’d come to the conclusion that he’d spent his life beating his head against the wall, trying to break the curse. But only because he thought Rufina had died. If what Anne said was true, then perhaps there was still hope.

  It also meant he was as shallow and uncaring as Rufina accused him of being. A man unable to sacrifice. After so many years of thinking he had done more, sacrificed more than any man alive, the realization he’d done nothing that qualified as a sacrifice stung.

  Isabella put a hand on his lower back, and again he felt humbled by her ability to sense when he needed comforting. The princess directed her attention to Anne, however. “Then what did you mean when you said ‘until the past few weeks’? Has something changed?”

  Anne beamed at the question. “Nick—Domenico—returned to San Rimini for the sole purpose of breaking the curse. He even risked being discovered, because he thought he had a good chance of doing so. But as he got to know you, he risked discovery for another reason.”

  Nick blinked. “I wanted to take Isabella out. To show her that she could experience life. That she didn’t have to live the way I have.” He frowned at Anne. “No, that’s too simple. That’s no sacrifice. I did it because I wanted to.”

  “You wanted it for her instead of yourself.” Anne shrugged, though she continued to smile. “And it is just that simple. And now, because you fear she’ll suffer the same fate as Coletta, you’re willing to leave San Rimini. You’re willing to give up the only chance you thought you had to break the curse, to give up a chance at love with a woman who wants to be with you and to give up a chance to be close to the royal family, which was what got you in this predicament in the first place. That’s a true sacrifice. One that doesn’t benefit you in any way, and in fact, can only hurt you.”

  “No.” After years of searching, this couldn’t possibly be the answer. “No. I’m leaving because I love her, not as a sacrifice—”

  Nick felt Isabella’s hand twitch on his back. “Nick, was Coletta your wife’s name?”

  “What?”

  “Coletta.” Isabella’s voice was low, strained. “Anne mentioned the name Coletta. Yet you never did. Not tonight, not to me.”

  A hard lump formed in Nick’s gut. Hadn’t he said Coletta’s name? Surely he had. But the calculating look on Anne’s face said otherwise. In that moment, everything finally made sense. His jaw dropped and his entire body tensed with the realization.

  “You’re Rufina, aren’t you?” he whispered. Her hair was red, though now it was streaked with gray, and she was older than the Rufina he remembered. Shorter. More calm. But then again, during their brief encounter Rufina had been beating her way through the dense brush of San Rimini’s borderlands, searching for her missing son. How could he not have seen it? “You are Rufina. How is that possible?”

  One side of her mouth curved up. “How is it possible that you’re immortal? How is it possible that it took you eight hundred long years to figure something out that could have been done in
a day?”

  Her expression turned serious as she added, “If only you’d let Coletta go, or done something that was one hundred percent for someone else, this curse would have been broken long ago.”

  “All this time.” Nick stared at Rufina, trying to absorb her words. She’d been under his nose for the past fifteen years. And probably a lot longer. He wasn’t sure whether to hug her, if the curse was indeed broken, or throttle her for all the pain she’d caused him. Then he remembered.

  “I’m so sorry about Ignacio. I’ve never forgotten him. You have no idea how many times I’ve wished I could tell you that. Or wished that I could make it right.”

  “I know. And I know that you truly are sorry.” Rufina withdrew an envelope from a pocket on the side of her purse, then handed it to Isabella. “He asked me to buy plane tickets back to Boston. This one’s in his name. I put him in your hands now.”

  The witch’s face filled with a quiet warmth, and she laid her hand on Isabella’s shoulder, in the same manner a grandmother might when a young child had done something particularly endearing. “You have taught him more in a month than I could in centuries of following him around the world. Perhaps,” she flashed a quick smile at Nick, then turned back to Isabella, “perhaps you were his destiny all along.”

  With that, she strode out of the room. Nick stared after her, unable to believe what just happened. He had so many questions—

  Forgetting Isabella for the moment, he sprinted up the stairs, hoping to catch Rufina. But when he got to the top of the stairs, she was nowhere to be seen. He thundered down the long hallway connecting the keep with the main palace, looking into open doors as he went, until he he rounded a corner and came face-to-face with Nerina.