St. Leger 1: The Bride Finder

by Susan Carroll

  "It was a strange experience, after so many years of hating the man, to feel a connection to him. Stranger still to feel it with that Mortmain woman."

  "With Evelyn?" Madeline asked, astonished.

  "Yes, I know this is going to sound odd, but…" Anatole frowned, as though groping for the words to explain. "I realized that in many respects Roman, Evelyn Mortmain, and I were not so different. We'd all been distorted, embittered, even held prisoner in some way by the mistakes of the past."

  "But the mistakes were not yours."

  "Perhaps not all of them. But I cannot help wondering. If I had tried to be more careful with my mother. If I had not been so frightening…" He paused, brushing back one of Madeline's stray curls. "I have never even asked your pardon for the way I terrified you that night in the old keep."

  "Oh, Anatole! I'm the one who should be asking your forgiveness. I should never have run away from you."

  "There is nothing to forgive. I nearly brought an entire castle down on your head. Hell, I terrified my mother, and all I ever did to her was attempt to send her flowers."

  He tried to speak lightly, disguising his feelings behind a rueful smile. But as he guided Madeline back up the path, she saw it in his eyes, the flickering of the old pain, the old fears.

  He towered above her, this powerful husband of hers with his formidable stature and fierce stare that could set any enemy atrembling. But she saw him at his most vulnerable and was filled with a rush of emotion. A fierce sense of protectiveness she knew she would feel toward Anatole St. Leger to the end of her days.

  She realized now what he had been doing these past days, the reason for the quiet, the stillness. He was trying to suppress his powers around her, trying to be so careful. She had told the man she loved him, would do so forever, and yet he was still afraid of losing her.

  "Send the flowers to me," she said softly.

  "What?" He cast her a confused glance.

  "Send the flowers to me," she repeated more firmly.

  She felt him stiffen when he realized what she wanted him to do. He gave a shaky laugh. "Madeline, if you want flowers, I can march up the hill and gather you as much as you want without resorting to any devil's gift."

  "It was that devil's gift that saved my life," she reminded him. "There are some particularly fine blossoms at the very top of that tree. Please, Anatole, send them down to me."

  Anatole stared at her, feeling his gut clench. He'd finally come to terms with the fact that Madeline had to know what he was. But to continue flaunting it before her…

  She thought his life being spared was too fragile a gift to be questioned. But it was her love he feared risking. He longed with all his cowardly soul to refuse, to put her off.

  But she was waiting, looking at him with such a wistful expression.

  "Please," she repeated, offering him a nod of encouragement.

  He was not proof against the plea in those warm, spring green eyes.

  "A-all right," he said hoarsely. He turned toward the pink flowers blossoming on the rhododendron trees a few yards up the path. His hand shook as he raised his fingers to his brow.

  At the first sign, the first hint of fear in her, he was prepared to shut himself down as though an ax had fallen. Staring hard at one of the branches until it quivered, he snapped a blossom from its delicate stem.

  Pain stabbed behind his eyes. The power itself seemed to tremble with his fear and reluctance. He floated the flower, somewhat unsteadily toward Madeline.

  * * * * *

  She stretched out one hand and caught it. He held his breath as he looked at her face. Her lips parted, her eyes round, not with fear, but pure awe.

  Glancing back to the tree, he moistened his dry lips and focused and tugged free another rhododendron, his mental grasp stronger this time. Stronger still with the next. He wafted the flowers toward Madeline, though they were born aloft by a gentle breeze.

  A trill of delighted laughter escaped her as she caught the next one and the next. Anatole found himself forgetting even the pain that throbbed behind his brow as he filled her hands with flowers.

  Burying her nose in the fragrant blossoms, she peered at him over the bouquet of lush pink flowers, her voice breathless with fascination. "How—how does it work? How are you able to do such an amazing thing?"

  Amazing? Anatole reflected wryly that he had never quite seen his power in that light before.

  "I don't know," he said gruffly, feeling strangely embarrassed. "I just focus. There is this burst of pain in my head as I think of what I want to happen. And then it does."

  "Pain?" Madeline's smile dimmed. "It hurts you?"

  "A bit." He grimaced a little, rubbing his brow.

  Madeline reached out. Brushing his fingers aside, she caressed his forehead herself with her warm soft fingers, her eyes alight with concern.

  "Oh," she said. "Then, you must not do it anymore."

  The statement was so simple, so practical, so completely Madeline that he wanted to laugh. But his throat was strangely constricted, and he found he could not even speak.

  His arms closed around her instead, crushing her hard against him. Blossoms tumbled unheeded to the ground as she returned his embrace, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  For a long time he just held her. It was as though in these last few moments, with those few simple words, she had undone years of pain, fear, and self-loathing. He could almost feel the fetters of the past falling away from him, setting him… free.

  Straining her close, he kissed her feverishly, her soft yielding mouth, her delicate brow, her silky soft hair. He paused only long enough to brush the tears from her cheek, astonished to realize that some of them were his.

  "Madeline," he said huskily. "I know you don't want me to speak of this, but I have to. The vision in the sword… the only reason it was defeated, the reason I did not die is because of you."

  Tears glittering in her eyes, she started to shake her head, but he caught her face gently between his hands, preventing her denial.

  "I have never had the power to change the future, but you do, my dearest heart. You have already altered my destiny forever. The real miracle is not that I am still alive, but that you are still here, loving me."

  "As I always will be," she whispered.

  He gazed into the mists of her eyes, his own heart swelling with such love for his small, but indomitable wife, he ached. But he managed to smile.

  "Forever is a long time to spend with an ogre in his haunted castle by the sea."

  Her soft mouth wobbled in a smile. "I believe I will manage, my lord."

  But when he moved to kiss her again, she ducked her head. "Er, Anatole… about the haunted castle. I—I have something to confess to you." She toyed nervously with one of the buttons on his shirt. "Something I did while you were laid up in bed this past week."

  She looked so adorably guilt-stricken, his smile widened with tenderness.

  "And what have you been up to, milady?" he demanded with mock fierceness.

  "I—I went to the old castle keep to visit Prospero."

  "You what!" Anatole's smile fled, his blood freezing at the mere thought. His Madeline, braving that God-cursed sorcerer all alone. "Whatever possessed you to do such a thing? Woman, this curiosity of yours will prove the death of me."

  "It wasn't mere curiosity," she protested. "I had something important to discuss with him."

  "Something to discuss? What in heaven's name could you have to say to that devil?"

  Madeline squirmed, but she continued resolutely, "I—I told him that I respected his role as founder of this family. But that I was not going to have him haunting or teasing you anymore. And then I—" Madeline tensed herself as though bracing for Anatole's anger. "I—I asked him to go away and leave us in peace."

  "Damnation! Did he let loose a lightning bolt or did he simply laugh in your face?"

  "No, he was very charming. He agreed."

  Anatole eased her away from him, peering
into her down-turned face, certain he could not have heard her right. "W-what?"

  "He promised that he would stay away as long as I kept you out of trouble and Castle Leger continues to prosper."

  Anatole gaped at her, absolutely thunderstruck. He'd wanted free of Prospero's interference and plaguey tricks for as long as he could remember. He'd even once tried to persuade his cousin Zane, the exorcist, to get rid of the ghost. But Zane had refused to practice his arts on a member of the family.

  In truth, Anatole had thought Zane afraid to challenge Prospero's power. Well, hellfire… when it came down to it, all the St. Legers were.

  That Madeline should be the one to do so, his delicate slip of a wife, conquering her fear to confront the ghost… It positively staggered Anatole. The more so as he realized she'd done it for him.

  Crooking his fingers beneath her chin, he forced her to look up. She fretted her lip anxiously. "Are—are you angry with me?"

  "Angry?" he breathed. He caressed her face, his touch fraught with wonder.

  "My brave… beautiful Madeline. There surely has never been another St. Leger bride to equal you, my lady. Whatever is a wretch like me to do with such a remarkable woman?"

  A mischievous dimple quivered in her cheek, but her eyes were soft and shining as she replied, "Simply love me."

  * * * * *

  That night the bedchamber glowed with an array of candles, for Anatole St. Leger was no longer a man with anything to hide.

  He felt like a battered knight who battled his way through a hard and perilous quest to reach this moment when he approached his lady to offer up his sword one last time.

  "Madeline," he said, his voice low but strong. “I gave this sword to you once before in a ceremony that had no meaning. Because I did not understand then what it meant to surrender my heart to a woman, as I now do."

  He knelt before her, her fire gold hair shining about her shoulders, her slender form draped in the soft white nightgown, almost luminescent in the candle's glow.

  He raised up the sword. "Will it please you, lady, to accept it now? My heart, my soul, yours, forever?"

  "Aye," Madeline whispered, thinking there was so much she had not understood herself on that long-ago day. Her fingers closed reverently over the golden hilt of the weapon, this time fully aware of the power, the great trust that had been placed in her hands.

  She said solemnly, "I promise to keep both your heart and the sword safe in my keeping."

  An anxious look flickered briefly across Anatoles face. "You—you won't ever attempt to use it again?"

  "No, my lord. All I ever want to know of the future, I see shining in your eyes. I'll tuck the sword away until hopefully one day we will have a son of our own."

  Bending down, she sealed her pledge by brushing her mouth across Anatole's in a tender kiss. He rose to his feet, and she put the sword aside to move into his arms. But he held her at bay for a moment.

  He was all too aware of one secret he had yet to tell. He had thought it more fitting that she find out herself in the natural way of these things. But this woman had become too much a part of him. He could no longer hold anything back.

  "Madeline," he said slowly. "You—you are already carrying my sons."

  "Sons?" she faltered. "You—you mean—"

  "Aye, twin boys."

  Her eyes flew to his, stunned, her hand moving almost reflexively to the region of her womb.

  "I believe they were conceived that day beneath the standing stone."

  "But—but how could you possibly—Never mind." She gave a shaky laugh. "What a foolish question."

  She caressed her midriff with both hands, surprise giving way to a look of intense joy suffusing her features. Anatole shared that joy in equal measure, but he felt obliged to warn her.

  "Madeline, you have to understand. The life growing inside you has not yet even seen a months duration. I could not feel our sons' presence so strongly if they were not true St. Legers in every sense of the word. What will you do if they prove to have powers such as mine?"

  She smiled, her mind clearly already spinning soft dreams of what was to be. Her answer came without hesitation.

  "Love them as I do you. Help them learn to read, be great scholars. Guide ' them the way Fitzleger did you. Teach them that while one may float a ball in the garden, it is not proper to levitate forks at the supper table."

  Her words banished whatever apprehension may have lingered in Anatole's heart. He surprised himself by letting loose a great shout of laughter. It had never been his nature before for joy to flow so freely into mirth.

  But then, he had never known what it was to be this happy.

  The laughter stilled quickly into emotion more deep, far more intense. Madeline felt it, too, her eyes locking steadily with his as he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed.

  There he laid her down to tenderly undress her. To kiss, to caress, to love her. To take her again and again to that height of passion where bodies united, hearts touched, and souls became one.

  And somewhere in the night, another legend was born.

  --The End--