Tiger shark!
She froze.
They are not your enemy. Trust yourself.
Taking a shallow, ragged breath, Cordelia listened to the voice in her head and swam straight toward the man she’d mistakenly mistrusted.
Morgan’s beam picked up a brilliant gleam in the sand below him—emeralds set in a crescent of gold. Her pulse picked up a beat. He waved the sand from the artifact and revealed a patch of gold mesh. When he pulled at it, Cordelia could see that he’d found Elizabeth’s celestial girdle, and as he fought to pull it free, other, smaller treasures popped out of the sand.
He’d found the mother lode.
She shot toward Morgan faster.
Then another headlamp clicked on, taking Morgan’s attention from the treasure.
Innis reached past him and from the girdle still half-buried in a sandy grave, removed the dagger.
A frantic Cordelia closed the distance between them, and as Innis raised the blade to strike, she grabbed his hand to stop him. His gaze met hers through their masks. She saw surprise and then the shock of betrayal. They struggled for control of the dagger. The blade nicked his thigh. He jerked hard and pulled free of her grip.
Before he could strike out again, Morgan lunged upward and shoved Innis away from her. A thin trail of blood from Innis’s thigh wound followed.
Innis came back at Morgan and the men struggled in bizarre silence. Just when Cordelia feared the dagger would find its way to Morgan’s heart, he knocked Innis’s arm hard. The dagger dropped back to the sea’s floor.
Morgan moved toward Cordelia, and a current sizzled between them even before he reached her. She felt as if she was just seeing the real man now for the first time. Her heart pulsed with anticipation. He held out his hand to her, and she took it. The touch was electric, a pulse that beat throughout her, and she realized he was wearing the Posey ring that was mate to hers.
Before he could draw her away from further danger, she saw Innis recover the dagger. He came at them, blade raised to pierce Morgan’s back. Cordelia shoved her love out of the way.
The dagger struck…
…her…
…plunging hilt-deep into her stomach.
Shocked by the pain, Cordelia froze, saw her life’s blood ooze from the wound in dark, foggy fingers swirling around her, saw Innis before her, his eyes behind the mask opening wide in horror.
Movement from the corner of her eye raised the flesh along her spine. Drawn by the scent of blood, the sharks were circling, motions increasingly frantic.
Clasping her hands around the dagger hilt, fearing to free it and do more damage, she tried to stem the blood with her fingers.
Morgan reached for the chain and crescent. No sooner had he lifted the artifact over her head than Innis grabbed him around the neck from behind and ripped his air hose from his mouth. Apparently Innis had vanquished any regret. He closed both hands around Morgan’s neck and squeezed. Morgan struggled, but without air didn’t have what he needed to free himself.
Growing weaker from each second of blood loss, Cordelia despaired. She could do nothing to save Morgan. She could do nothing to save herself. She could barely move. They were both going to die.
Don’t give up. Born on Witches’ Night, we are magic. Use our power…
Cordelia tried to focus on the words whispered in her mind.
Power.
Elizabeth’s power.
Their power.
The sharks were closing in on them, drawn by the blood billowing from her wound and from the cut on Innis’s thigh. Soon they would grow bold enough to attack.
Cordelia focused her mind on finding some way out of this. The girdle! She switched on her headlamp to look for it, but the seafloor had claimed it once more. Picturing the priceless artifact, she called to it with her mind. She visualized it—every gem-studded detail—and directed her thoughts to lifting the girdle from its watery grave. Within seconds, bejeweled strands of chain snaked out from their briny hiding place.
Concentrating with everything she had, Cordelia called on her latent telekinesis. Emotions high, she urged the source of Elizabeth’s power from its grave inch by inch, at the same time visualizing what she wanted of it.
Suddenly, the girdle seemed to take on a life of its own and flew at the would-be murderer. It wrapped around his back and Innis jerked and let go of Morgan, who quickly recovered his air hose. The girdle’s chains snaked around Innis and held him captive, suspended and unable to flee, no matter that he fought it with fury.
Morgan kicked him away and swam to her side, pulling her from the path of the sharks closing in. When one came too close, he snapped the chain still in his hand and smacked the predator in the nose with the crescent. Sparks shot where it hit, and the shark swam off into the deep.
Mere yards from them, Innis fought to free himself from the threat of several sharks working up to attack, but Elizabeth’s magic held him fast.
Cordelia’s vision dimmed. Morgan was alive. She’d fought the dream-vision and won this time. She might be lost, but at least he was saved. She would have the comfort of his arms around her as she joined Elizabeth in her celestial home.
Her eyes grew heavy, her head light. She felt disembodied.
Dying.
Suddenly her life flashed before her, from the kiss with Morgan at the club backward…back to the hurricane the summer a dozen years before when she’d met Innis…and further yet…
She threw herself onto Will’s hard chest, and his powerful arms closed around her. “To have had such a love”—she sobbed, swallowing tears—“and to have lost it is a tragedy of the soul.” She flung back her head, resting it on his shoulder, and gazed up at him. “In God’s eyes, you are the duke’s firstborn son. I should be yours.”
Excruciating pain slid through Cordelia as the dagger slid out of her side. Her eyes fluttered open for a last look at Morgan before she died. She could feel more than see his panic.
We have become one in all ways.
We have pledged our love with Posey rings which will last for eternity. And so we will confess to the duke who I know will bless our love.
In joy I have made my choice.
Yet in this moment my joy is turning to fear.
Something cold and hard pressed against her flesh. Forcing herself to focus, Cordelia saw that Morgan had placed the crescent from the girdle over the wound.
Again I feel the terror of finding Will fallen upon the grass, blood gushing from his wounds, staining red the earth beneath him.
Again feel my joy when I press a crescent from my celestial girdle against his flesh and it heals into a scar of the waxing moon upon his wrist as it did on Laurel’s forehead.
Again the blackness consumes me as the powers of my celestial girdle are not great enough to heal the deep stab wound in Will’s back…
Morgan was trying to save her the same way Elizabeth had tried to save Will, Cordelia realized.
Too late for Will…too late for her…
Behind her mask, she wept, for finally she understood what Elizabeth had meant when she’d written
…we are one and shall meet and fight for what is written in our stars.
Through the veil of time I have seen the face of you who comes after me, and I have seen Carlyle beside you. He shall menace you with his evil. You must defy him and overcome his magic curse.
Believe this, for it will be true for you.
Cordelia touched Morgan’s face and looked into emerald-green eyes that spoke the truth, just as they had when she’d accused him of tampering with her air gauge. She’d recognized hurt then, and now the hurt, more desperate, dug deeper. Despite the fact that she’d given him absolutely no reason, Morgan cared for her.
Beyond him, the sea thrashed red with fury.
&nb
sp; Horrified, she realized the boy she had once loved was finished. He’d been finished the moment he’d put his plan to get rid of Morgan into action. She didn’t even know the man he’d become. Even so, digging her fingers into Morgan’s arms to brace herself, she couldn’t help the tears gathering inside her mask.
As the sharks tore Innis to pieces, Morgan forced her upward so she didn’t have to watch.
Chapter Twenty
Morgan willed Cordelia to live, and by the time he got her back to the surface a short swim from the boats, her bleeding had stopped. A voice in his head had made him press the crescent around her wound. Underwater, he felt as if another had controlled him to save Cordelia. Now he replaced the chain and crescent around her neck. Despite the blood loss, she was conscious, if weak. He still had his arm around her back to support her in the water. As he headed them toward the boats, he didn’t want to let her go.
Ever.
He’d been denying his feelings for her, but he couldn’t any more.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
Though her voice was weak, she said, “I’ll live.”
“You’d better stay with me, Cordy.”
“I don’t have the strength to go anywhere myself.”
“I don’t mean just now.”
He pulled her closer to his side, careful not to hurt her.
From the moment he’d met Cordelia, he couldn’t see life without her by his side. She reminded him of someone he’d known once long ago, someone he couldn’t quite place…almost as if he were trying to remember a different lifetime. He’d told himself that he was only after the treasure, had convinced himself she was simply another child of privilege to be dismissed, had tried to erase her from his mind and heart, had steeled himself from giving in to what he’d thought as lunacy.
But no matter the argument, his heart had its say. Cordelia was intelligent and strong and brave. And while he’d thought no one here gave a damn about him, she’d risked her own life to save his.
Emmett the seafaring poet had been right on the money when he’d said love might be the most valuable treasure of all.
By the time they reached the Evening Star, Madelyn was at the rail, peering down at them in the water with a concerned expression. “What’s going on?”
“First,” Cordelia said, her voice weak but steady. “I’m fine, no reason to worry.”
Madelyn gasped. “Your trying to assure me makes me worry all the more!”
Morgan helped Cordelia up the ladder. The wound might have closed, but blood loss could be serious. She might need a transfusion.
When her mother saw the tear in Cordelia’s swimsuit, she went pale. “Let me see.” Madelyn pulled away the cut material and cried out at the crescent-shaped scar.
And though Morgan had been the one to seal the wound, he still felt somewhat disbelieving at the magic that had saved her.
Madelyn grabbed her daughter to her and began to cry. “I could have lost you, too.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m fine. We’re fine.”
Madelyn looked around. “What about Innis?”
Cordelia opened her mouth as if to tell her mother about him, but in the end, she simply shook her head.
“She’s in shock,” Morgan said, wrapping an arm around Cordelia to hold her close.
“I don’t understand.” Madelyn’s confusion was clear. “What happened?”
“Innis was trying to kill me, and Cordelia pushed him out of the way.”
“Oh, my, oh…” Putting a hand to her mouth as the blood drained from her face, Madelyn looked as if she was in shock, as well.
“We’re going in to get Cordelia checked out by a doctor.” Picking her up in his arms, Morgan resisted crushing her to him lest he press against the seemingly healed wound.
He carried her to a padded deck lounger where she could rest. Her mother brought a light blanket and covered her. He looked over to the Sea Rover. Emmett was at the rail, looking concerned.
“We’re going in!” Morgan shouted. “You stay out here. The divers don’t go down until the after the authorities clear the site.” He turned to Foley’s divers, who were equally interested in what was going on. “You, too. Stay put.”
“Where’s Foley?” one of them called back.
“Shark bait.”
A horrified expression crossed the man’s face.
As Morgan took over the Evening Star on engine power rather than sail and headed the yacht in toward Crescent Key, he knew no one would go down to the wreck site before what was left of Innis Foley was retrieved.
Madelyn had fetched orange juice for Cordelia to drink to help stabilize her. Cordelia was catching her mother up on the details of what had happened to them, and Morgan realized Madelyn already knew things he didn’t.
She said, “I told you if Elizabeth and Will were trying to find each other again, Carlyle would try to stop them.”
Elizabeth…Will…Carlyle…
Familiar names, and according to his research, all connected with the mother lode on the Celestine when it sank four hundred years ago.
“You don’t have to worry any longer, Mom. It’s over now.” Cordelia took her mother’s hand, saying, “You look a little shaken. Maybe you should go lie down until we get to the dock.”
“What about you?”
“I need the air. Don’t worry, Morgan won’t let anything happen to me.” She inclined her head as if signaling her mother to leave them alone.
Madelyn nodded and left.
Cordelia looked as if she were trying to get to her feet.
“Stay right there!” Morgan ordered. Putting the boat on autopilot, he joined her. “You need to be resting, too.” Though he would rather she did it here, where he could keep an eye on her.
“Probably. But oddly enough, I’m feeling a little better, and I want to talk to you.”
“About?”
“How did you know to use the crescent to stop the bleeding?” she asked. “I read about Elizabeth using it trying to save Will in her journal, but how did you know?”
He said, “Instinct,” because she wouldn’t believe the truth.
“Liar. How?”
Morgan sighed. Considering the circumstances, perhaps the truth wouldn’t sound so outlandish. “A voice told me what to do.”
“A woman?”
He shook his head. “A man. He said the girdle was spun with magic and that the crescent would save you.”
“Will,” she whispered.
His ancestor. Was it possible?
“I didn’t know what else to do, so I put my faith in what he told me.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “It wasn’t the first time.”
“That you healed someone?”
“The voice, Cordy, the voice. How do you think I found you when you ran out of air? And before that. It all started after I found this ring. I kept seeing things…hearing things…but I convinced myself the expedition had simply kicked my imagination into high gear.”
She took his hand and placed hers next to his so the rings lined up. She read, “Doubt the stars are fire…yet never doubt my love.” She fell silent for a moment, then said, “About my siding with Innis…I’m so sorry I suspected you, Morgan. I had time to think everything over carefully and realized you weren’t to blame. I knew you were in danger.” She licked her lips. “I’d dreamed it more than once.”
“Are you saying you’re psychic?”
“Something like that.”
Cordelia then told him about her precognitive dreams and the fact that she saw one man cut the other’s air hose. She told him how she’d been determined to find and destroy the dagger before that could happen.
“What made you decide that I wasn’t the killer?” he asked.
“I think i
t was the look in your eyes after I let Innis convince me you messed with my gauge. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”
“I was angry.”
“You were hurt. Among other things.”
Morgan would have liked to deny it, but he couldn’t. Not wanting to expose himself further to her, he gruffly said, “Get some rest now, Cordy. You need time to recuperate. We’ll be at the marina in twenty minutes.”
Cordelia gave him a long, lingering look that made his pulse race and made him wish for things between them that were never going to happen. Not that he looked away. He loved her with everything he was, and if she could only be honest, she would admit she felt the same for him.
His return gaze challenged her to be brave in all things, including matters of the heart.
…
Cordelia was feeling a little stronger by the time they pulled into the marina. Morgan had radioed ahead for the authorities. An ambulance was waiting to take her and Mom to the medical center. The rational part of her understood why Morgan stayed behind to make out an incident report and to lead the investigators to the wreck site. But the other part of her deep inside didn’t want to let him out of her sight.
He was her Will…
At the medical center, she was poked and prodded by a doctor who marveled at the incredible way the cut had healed but told her she would live. He kept her overnight for observation, in addition to giving her a transfusion. He also said she would have to take it easy for several days. No diving for at least a week.
Which left the wreck site open to a pirate.
If Morgan really was one.
Cordelia didn’t want to think it, not after all they’d been through. But he’d made no commitment to her. They’d formed no legal partnership, and Morgan didn’t know it was their destiny to be together.
Cordelia waited for him to come to her. Waited while she went through tests. Waited while she was put in a bed where she was given fluids and a pint of blood. Frustrated at being kept to her bed for several hours even with Mom’s company, once the transfusion was finished, she tried to get up.
Written in the Stars Page 18
