The wolves loped off over the snow. ‘Can you talk to any animal?’ he asked incredulously.
‘I can make myself understood. They trust me, I can read their auras, just as I can with people, but I can’t actually talk to them, and they certainly can’t talk back.’
Lawrence picked her up and twirled her round in the snow, laughing. ‘You are quite extraordinary, do you know that?’
‘Am I?’
‘Show me that laboratory of yours. Explain to me what you do, how you do it. I want to know.’
‘I can’t, Lawrence,’ Jura said, laughing, for his enthusiasm was infectious and he was so very handsome, and because it was lovely just to laugh with someone. ‘I mean, I could teach you about herbs, how to heal with herbs, that’s just a skill, but I can’t explain my gift. Besides, why would you want to know?’
‘Because it’s fascinating. Because you’re fascinating. Because I could, I suppose, make my way to the castle, but I don’t want to, not yet.’
‘The castle?’
‘Dunswaird Castle. That’s it over there, is it not?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘It belongs to my mother’s family, and by a very roundabout route it’s mine now. That’s why I’m here.’
‘You’re the new laird!’ She hadn’t counted on that. She had assumed that when he left he would be gone from her life. Of course, it made no difference, her magic would protect her, and Lawrence had made it clear there could be no risk to his own feelings but still… ‘Put me down, Lawrence. Does this mean you’ll be stopping here in Dunswaird?’
He let her slither back to her feet, enjoying the feel of her body against his. ‘For a while. I thought I might renovate the castle, depending upon what kind of state it’s in. You know, I hadn’t realised it was so close. Perhaps it would be best if I left today.’
‘No!’ Jura exclaimed, without giving herself time to think about whether it would indeed be best. ‘A few days,’ she said, more to herself than to Lawrence, for this is what she had promised herself. ‘There can be no harm in a few days. Besides,’ she remembered with relief, ‘the bridge is down. That line you can see, it’s not a dip in the ground, it’s a river.’
‘Then I have no choice,’ Lawrence said, more relieved than he cared to admit at having the decision taken from him, ‘and you have no excuse. I shall expect you to share some of your magic with me. I have every intention of sharing more of mine,’ he said wickedly.
It was what she craved, but Jura hesitated, wondering why she craved him quite so much when she had never craved anyone before. She was being foolish. What she needed was to make things plain, not so much to Lawrence, but to herself. To say it aloud, not quite to repeat the spell, but to reassure herself of its existence.
‘What is it?’ Lawrence said, noticing her wistful look. ‘I was only teasing, you know. If you don’t want to…’
‘I do,’ Jura said hastily, more alarmed by the idea that he might think her unwilling than by the niggling question as to why she felt so very willing. What was wrong with her? She shivered.
‘You’re cold, and no wonder.’ Lawrence scooped her up into his arms, and carried her back into the cottage, setting her down by the fire on the cushioned settle, casting off his greatcoat and kneeling on the flagstones beside her, cradling her feet. ‘Don’t you have shoes?’
‘I hate them.’
He blew on her toes, then kissed each of them. ‘You taste of snow. I don’t suppose you have anything so mundane as tea here?’
‘Something like. There’s leaves…’
‘Don’t move, I’ll do it.’ Catching the look of surprise on her face as he set about brewing the tea, he grinned. ‘Much of the time when I’m working on a project, I camp out by myself. I find it gives me the feel of the building. I’ve learned to be quite self-sufficient when I need to be.’
‘But you have servants? A house?’
‘A small estate in the country that my father left me, and where my mother stays from time to time—when she wants to play the grand hostess. A vineyard in Tuscany. A pied-à-terre in London and another in Paris. My work takes me abroad for a significant part of the year. And now I have a castle in the Highlands.’
‘I would like to travel.’
‘I would like to show you Italy. I’d like you to see my vineyard. The farmhouse there, it has a loggia that goes all the way round, so you can catch the sun or the shade at any time of day. You can grow anything you like there, you could have a herb garden…’ Lawrence stopped abruptly, not because he did not wish to tell her any more, but because he found himself wanting to tell her too much. He could picture her there, all too easily he could see her wandering barefoot in the dusty red earth. He poured her a cup of fragrant tea, and took one for himself rather dubiously, joining her on the settle. ‘What is wrong Jura? Out there, my mother would have said you looked as if someone had walked over your grave.’
Jura shivered again. It would not be her grave. It would not be anybody’s grave! ‘There’s a reason I live alone here, why I’ll always be alone. I think it best that you know it, since you’re going to be here a while. After—when the snow clears—I don’t want you to think that I—that we could—not that you would, for you told me yourself that you have a short span of attention where women are concerned, which is just as well because—because so do I. I mean with men. At least, I expect that is how it will manifest itself, though to be honest I’m not exactly sure.”
“How what will manifest itself?” Lawrence asked, amused, endeared, and perplexed by her earnestness.
‘The spell.’ Jura took a quick sip of tea then put the cup onto the floor at her feet. ‘I cast a spell upon myself, Lawrence, to make sure I could never fall in love.’
‘Why on earth would you do something like that?’
‘Because I can’t fall in love. Must not. I am quite determined, you see, to break Lillias’s curse.’
Lawrence choked on his tea. ‘Curse! What curse? Who the hell is Lillias?’
‘My grandmother, about ten times removed. She was burned at the stake on Christmas Day two hundred years ago exactly come this Christmas. Her daughter it was who gave evidence against her. She was married to the local laird’s son, and he and his father were by all accounts heartless men who thought a witch-burning would provide their guests with a memorable entertainment. They held a sham of a trial, and they burned her, and as they set alight the bonfire, Lillias cursed them.’
Jura paused to draw breath, shaking her head at Lawrence when he made to speak, anxious now that she was started not to lose momentum. ‘The daughter’s husband died, just as Lillias said he would, a year to the day on which they were wed, and so it has been, down through the female line—for we seem to bear only females. We are each of us witches, and all of us widows. Every one of us for two hundred years, Lawrence,” she said, her voice cracking. ‘My own father died before I ever knew him. I am determined to put an end to it. No man will die for loving me, and since I would wed none I did not love—for you and I have that in common—I have cast a spell upon myself to make sure that I can’t. Fall in love, I mean. So when the snow is over and you go to your castle, you need not fear that I shall be wanting more from you, because I expect by then the spell will have taken effect and I shall be just as pleased for you to go as—as you will be to leave,’ she concluded, trying very hard to look pleased at this rather awful prospect.
Lawrence was quite at a loss for words. At pains as he usually was to make it plain at the start of any relationship that it could have only a limited future, it had not for a second occurred to him to say anything of the sort to Jura. Finding himself on the receiving end of her brush-off, no matter how original… Except it wasn’t a brush-off. Her anguish was quite obvious in those big expressive eyes of hers, and he was willing to bet that her hands would be clasped tight under her apron. She meant it—the spell, the curse, the whole lot. ‘Does this mean it was one of my ancestors who was responsible for burning your ance
stor?’ he asked, not the most relevant question, but an appalling notion.
‘No, no. I came here to Dunswaird a few years ago when my mother died. I hoped to make a fresh start.’
‘And have you succeeded?’
‘My powers will always isolate me, even where none know of my history, but they have no fey wife, no other healer. I can do good here, that is enough.’
‘And if you say that another thousand times, you might convince yourself,’ Lawrence said, touched by her bravado. ‘I can’t quite believe what you’re telling me. If I’d heard it from anyone else—if I hadn’t seen for myself that you really do have powers—to live under such a cloud your whole life, it’s some horrible fairy tale. Surely this Lillias must have made some provision to revoke her curse? Isn’t there always such a thing?’
‘She said that only a true and perfect love could break the cycle, but in two hundred years, the cycle has not been broken. Maybe we witches are not capable of a true and perfect love—my mother’s love, I know, was stronger for me than it was for her husband. Or maybe those who claim to love us do not love us enough. I don’t know, but I do know that I can make sure I am the last of us.’
‘It seems to me an enormous sacrifice, to be alone always like this without the comfort of a husband or children.’
‘I am not so different from you, Lawrence. You will not take a wife, and so will not have a child.’
‘Yes, but…’ Lawrence frowned. When she put it like that, he was conscious of the tiniest niggle of doubt. Did he really want to be alone for the rest of his life? He brushed this question aside impatiently. ‘The point is that I have a choice. To have none, to have no hope, Jura—that is a bleak future indeed.’
‘Don’t pity me,’ she said, brushing the tears from her eyes and trying to smile, ‘I have much to be happy about. My powers do good, Lawrence, that must be enough.’
‘And you are certain that this spell you have cast upon yourself is effective?’
‘I’m four-and-twenty, and I’ve never yet felt even the slightest inclination towards any man.’
‘That’s hardly a nice thing to say, when I was under the impression last night that you were very much inclined towards me,’ Lawrence pointed out.
‘You, who are no more capable of falling in love than I,’ Jura retorted. ‘You were lost, and I was lonely, that is all.’
‘But I’m not lost now, and I want you more than ever. And you can’t be lonely, because here I am, and I know you want me too. I can tell from the way your eyes darken. The way your breath quickens when I touch you. If you let me see your aura, it would be the colour of sunrise. I know you want me, and you know you do, and unless you say no, then I am afraid I’m going to have to do something about it.’
He was smiling his wicked smile, and she was tingling all over in response, for his blatant desire made her feel powerful in a quite different way from her magic. Jura shook her head. She leaned towards him, deliberately brushing her breasts against his chest. ‘I don’t want you to,’ she said, sinking down onto the flagstones between his legs, just as he had knelt between hers last night. ‘I don’t want you to do anything at all about it. This time,’ she said, trailing her fingers up the insides of his thighs, delighting in the way it made his muscles ripple, ‘it’s my turn.’
Chapter Five
‘What would you use for a soothing tisane?’
‘Liquorice root. Peppermint leaves. Valerian to aid sleep,’ Lawrence said.
‘Skin rash?’
‘Oatmeal paste for something minor, a poultice of chickweed and comfrey if there is poison to be drawn.’
‘Childbed fever?’
Jura listened as Lawrence recited the various treatments. His coat lay over the back of the wooden chair. He had his sleeves rolled up. His hair fell over his cheek and tangled with his lashes. A week he had been here at her cottage, seven whole days, the pair of them closeted together seeing not another soul, and yet she still felt she could not get enough of him. It worried her, the strength of the attraction she felt for him. It had worried her enough to make her creep out to her still room in the dark of night and renew the spell. Her magic had never let her down, her powers made her inviolable, yet why then did her heart skip a little beat every time she looked at him? Why did it lurch when she woke beside him? What was this warmth which enveloped her, like a thick velvet blanket, when their gazes locked over some little domestic task? Why was it that he had only to look at her in a certain way for her stomach to clench, her blood to tingle, her pulses flutter? And what was it that made her feel, in the aftermath of their fervent lovemaking, that she was no longer herself, but had become another?
‘Jura?’
She pushed aside the vellum-bound book of herbs, thrusting aside also her doubts and questions. A thaw was in the air, she could smell it. All too soon he would be gone, and they would both be safe. What she felt, strong as it was, could not possibly be stronger than her magic. ‘Your understanding is impressive,’ she said to Lawrence. ‘You are a very fast learner.’
‘I have a most accomplished teacher.’
‘You flatter me. You don’t need me, just this book.’
‘No. I need you.’
Something in his tone made her skin prickle. His eyes too, it was not desire which lit them. And his aura—white for significant change and purity of feeling. ‘You are insatiable,’ she said, deliberately misunderstanding him.
He caught her wrist as she rose to tend to the fire. ‘Jura?’
‘I’m a little tired, Lawrence.’
‘These last days together—I’ve never felt like this before.’
‘You’ve never met a witch before. The novelty will wear off.’
‘That’s what I thought at first, but it is showing no signs of doing so.’ He touched her cheek, wrapped a long tress of her hair around his wrist, an endearing habit of his, as if he would bind her to him. ‘There’s a thaw coming, even I can tell that. I’ll have no excuse to stay here once the bridge is mended, I shall have to go off and claim my castle, but…’ He grimaced. ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want this to end, Jura. Whatever it is.’
‘Lawrence, it has to. You know it has to.’
‘I don’t know anything anymore,’ Lawrence said ruefully. ‘I know it’s only been a week, but I feel as if my life has been turned around—as if I was looking at it before through the wrong end of a glass. I know I’m not making sense, and I am not making any promises either…’
‘No! Stop!’ Jura interrupted, thoroughly panicked at this wholly unanticipated turn of events. ‘I don’t want you to make any promises,’ she said, though even as she spoke she couldn’t help wishing—but there was no point in wishing! ‘Lawrence, there is no point in talking about this, you know we can have no future. You can’t care for me, any more than I can care for you in—in that way.’
‘But what I’m trying to say is that I might. Damn it, Jura, I don’t know what I’m trying to say or what the devil it is that I feel for you, but I feel something and I know you do too!’ He had not meant to say even this much, but her very rejection made him more sure. ‘What we have—don’t you think it’s worth giving it a chance?’
‘I can’t, Lawrence,’ Jura said, blinking desperately in an effort to control the hot swell of tears. She gripped the tabletop so hard that her nails dug into the wood, every bit of her recoiling at what she had to say, but knowing that she did, indeed, have to say it. ‘You know I can’t. The curse. My spell…’
‘Are you so sure that it’s working?’
‘Yes! Yes of course it’s working,’ Jura exclaimed defiantly. Though it certainly didn’t feel like it at present. The thought of losing him, though she had known all along that she would, was unbearable. But she would bear it, because the very notion of hurting him was impossible. ‘Lawrence, I’m sorry, but there is no point in us talking about this. You have quite mistaken what I feel.’ It was an agony, but she met his gaze unflinchingly, determined to allow him no room
for doubt.
He could not quite believe what was happening. He felt as though he’d been put through the mangle which stood in the little wash house at the back of the cottage—wrung out, turned inside out, and then flattened. This morning, sitting at the table beside her, he’d thought nothing more than that she made him happy, and that he liked being happy, and he had believed he made her happy too. He’d wanted to go on being happy with her, but she…would not, could not, it didn’t matter which. She did not want him, and that hurt much more than he could have believed possible. He felt bereft, deprived, strung up and out, all at the same time.
But there was no point in prolonging the agony. ‘I see,’ Lawrence said stiffly, for her rejection pierced his pride as well as his newfound feelings. ‘I think perhaps it’s best if I leave today. I’m sure I’ll be able to ford the river, if the bridge is still not repaired.’
The change in him almost cracked Jura’s resolve. That hard look, she had never seen it before. She never wanted to see it again. And there was to be no farewell. No last joining of their flesh. She told herself it was for the best, but as she watched him gather his belongings together far too quickly and efficiently, as she clutched Brianag to her chest and watched Lawrence trudge off across the melting snow half an hour later after a farewell that rivalled the snow in temperature, Jura felt as though she was losing a part of herself. Closing the cottage door, she slumped onto the floor against it. A chasm of loneliness such as she had never known opened up before her. She dropped her head in her hands and let the bitter tears fall.
A childish giggle, quickly stifled, roused her from a torrid night filled with dreams in which she ran up and down endless flights of stairs with Lawrence always just out of reach. Her head felt as if it had been stuffed with rags. Her burning eyes, the damp pillow, told their own story. Footsteps, several pairs of feet, pattered under her bedroom window. A snowball thudded against the front door of the cottage.
Spellbound & Seduced Page 4
