And that woman of flashing fire and rare courage was forbidden to him by the whim of a king.
Navarre shook away the images, feeling old despair mingle with new fury. Caught between two times, he felt past and present flow together, merged in the chaos of the storm.
The wind was like a fist, hammering the trees as he crossed toward the darkened gatehouse.
Trying not to remember…
But the scream of the wind brought another wave of memory and the vision of a woman lost to him for centuries. The pain nearly crushed him, but he strode on through the wind. Draycott had shattered everything he cared for in his life. Now Navarre would bring this great estate to rubble. After that would come the greatest blow.
Not death. Nothing so simple. Instead his enemy would be delivered through the barrier, taking Navarre’s place in the twisted loop out of time.
He closed his eyes to lost joy and focused on revenge.
THE WIND HOWLED, driving sand into her face.
She struggled forward with the sure knowledge that her pursuers were a mere hour behind. Her cloak whipped at her head and she prayed the storm’s fury would hide her steps.
Forbidden or not, her lover would come for her. She pinned her whole being on her trust in him. And if Navarre did not come, she would die here in the endless sand, suffocated and buried. At least she would be free of Philip’s evil hands.
She closed her mind to fear.
Drawing her cloak around her, she struggled on through the storm.
DRAYCOTT WAS STILL ON the roof where Navarre had set him, rigid and unmoving. With a hissed rush of words, Navarre brought his betrayer awake and back into time, back into the fury of the storm.
“What—”
“Silence. You’re here by my wish. Don’t waste the little time I give you.”
Draycott’s eyes filled with fury, but there was cool intelligence there as well. He bowed his head by a fraction. “As you wish.”
“I want answers. Who is the woman? What binds her to you?”
“She is a visitor to the house. Here for work and no more.”
“Liar.”
“My thoughts are open to you.” Draycott stood taller. “Read them now,” he snapped.
“So I will, betrayer. Your deepest tricks won’t hold against my mind.”
And Navarre probed deep, found layers of memory heavy with love for this great old house. The force of it set Navarre back. Love for a house was not what he’d expected to find.
Yet a woman held sway in that powerful, complex mind, too. A woman with gentle eyes and a calm voice by the name of Grey. Draycott had sent her away for her safety at the solstice, Navarre saw.
She was not the woman from the roof.
Other secrets beckoned, secrets from centuries past. Friends lost and grieved for. Battles won and lost.
Navarre cursed, pulling away. He would not risk the softening that came from longer contact. “Who is she?” His fingers caught at Draycott’s throat. “What is her bond to you?”
“Better you should ask her bond to you, Navarre. Can’t you feel it singing through your blood?”
“What bond?” Navarre took a sudden step back, feeling the hot fingers of memory strike his mind like a harp.
Soft muslin. Sweet lavender in her hair.
Her eyes full of trust and vast pride in his deeds.
Her love, given freely and without limits. Saints, how it hurt him, feeling as if it were yesterday.
“No,” he growled. “A trick of your cunning. Marianne is gone, lost to me.”
“You can lie as you wish to me, Navarre, but not to yourself.” Draycott’s eyes clouded. “I felt the weight of her past the second she stepped on abbey grounds. Though I did not understand all, I knew the danger of it. The rest is for you to find, because I have no answers. I never saw either of you again, though I searched from Jerusalem to far Damascus and sent couriers from one end of Outremer to the other. Not even the captains in the ports had news of you.”
“Liar. Just as you always were.” Navarre’s voice was raw with fury. “I came here to destroy this abbey, Draycott. Not for a woman.”
“What you came for, Navarre—man who was once my closest friend and the finest knight in the Holy Lands—is known only to yourself. The answers are locked in your mind. Only your key can reveal them.”
Navarre raised a hand, fingers open on Draycott’s neck. They closed, sucking out the energy, making Draycott sway. Even then the man did not ask for mercy.
Navarre’s hold tightened, anger and misery driving the need to hurt as he had been hurt.
Somehow Draycott stayed upright against the unseen wave of Navarre’s fury. His voice came in a mere whisper. “Hurt me as you will, old friend. But what you seek is not in me. You’ll have to find the answers yourself, in your own heart and your oldest memories. You can feel them stir already.”
“More lies.” Navarre’s grip did not soften though he felt the truth rise within him. He hid that awareness, summoning his old anger. “You’ll watch your noble house fallen to rubble and no way to stop it. That is the only truth I have for you.”
Somewhere a low ringing cut through the silence. Navarre remembered the woman’s small silver device.
And he realized he had a faster way to find his answers. He would pick them like hard stones from the woman’s mind, drawing them from the silk of her body.
Whether she willed it or not.
He took time to reset his sword over the roof stones to ward against any intrusion.
Draycott watched him, his eyes fierce. “Don’t do it. You’ll lose everything you were, even your soul, if you persist upon this path, Gabriel. Only a fool would—”
Navarre turned. “My soul is already lost.” One toss of his hand, one whispered phrase and Draycott stood frozen, silent once more.
INSIDE THE SLEEPING house, all was in shadow.
Every room held old secrets, Navarre sensed as he strode through the dark halls. Great power and love remained, along with terrible dangers over long centuries. None of that mattered to him.
He refused to let it matter.
The gatehouse was still in shadow as he found his way by memory. In a room with blue curtains he saw the woman’s shape beneath the coverlet on the bed. He caught the restless rush of her mind with all its confusion. So many layers, so much uncertainty.
He found his way to her side. The woman did not move, though he felt the chaos of her dreams.
He leaned down, close enough to smell the scent of apples and spring in her hair. His thoughts blurred at the smell, and for an instant Navarre was in another place of hot sands and hotter skin, feeling a woman’s sigh as silks pooled.
He drove away the image. His hands trembled at what it cost him.
Too late, a knife drove into his side and he was thrown forward onto the bed. By a trick of rare cunning, she twisted up and dropped him swiftly, her foot against his back, her knife at his neck.
In that moment, captor became the captive.
CHAPTER TEN
SHE WAS STILL SHAKEN, caught blind from sleep. She’d heard a creak at the door and gripped the sturdy set of nail scissors she had found in the tidy bathroom. As he leaned down, her tae kwon do jab caught him by surprise. It had been easier than she’d thought to force him beneath her.
Or had that been his intention all along? Lying prone on the bed didn’t seem to bother him. His soft laughter only made Sara drive her heel harder into his back.
She drove the point of the scissors at his neck and tightened her heel against his spine. “Who sent you here?”
“I sent myself. As I’ve told your Lord Draycott already.”
He didn’t struggle. Probably he was preparing a countermove.
“He’s not mine. And he’s not a lord. Where is he now?”
“Still on the roof, of course. A little rain won’t hurt him. And he is most assuredly a lord, though he lies superbly.”
The man was insane. She’d have to subd
ue this one and then help free the estate manager, who had looked sickeningly pale. Probably some kind of stroke or heart attack. If she locked this man, Navarre, in the closet—
“It won’t work, you know. I’m stronger and quicker than you.”
She glared at his back. Two fingers at his vagus nerve, in an old Chinese dim mak move, and he’d be out long enough for her to apply restraints.
She leaned down. Carefully, her fingers closed on his neck.
He didn’t fight her, which was beyond strange. Something slipped into her mind, an image of a quiet garden, ringed with trees in bloom, and the sound of birds. Sara blinked. Where had that come from?
His body moved as if in slow motion. He rolled to his side, watching her with each movement, and somehow Sara was powerless to stop him; her mind refused to fight, even when he rose to his knees and tossed her back against the sea of cool white sheets.
Her hands fisted. Her mind shouted in fury.
No words came. She simply…
…collapsed.
Standard evasion moves flooded through her thoughts, but she could not bring her muscles to carry them out. “Let me go,” Sara whispered.
“I have not bound you. Not with hands or ropes.”
His eyes stripped her bare, keen and measuring. He found her palm and pulled back the cotton cuff, turning her wrist to his mouth. “So much anger. So much certainty and determination. I think you must be very good at your work. Tell me again what kind of work that is.”
“It’s secret,” Sara hissed.
“Witch or spy. Lover or lord’s harlot. Or all of those,” he said quietly. “Name one.”
“Damn you. Stop—”
Navarre raised his hand, almost casually. Suddenly he was in her head, a tall shadow Sara could not dislodge.
She stiffened, expecting fury and disgust. Instead she found curiosity and a stream of images personal enough to be her own memories. She saw their bodies, thigh to thigh, breaths caught as heat drove them together in blind climax.
“Now you see it, too.” His hand opened over her wrist, fingers slow and gentle. The heat spread over her skin and into her mind as more hot images raced to life.
They had been lovers. There were no secrets between their bodies.
Impossible.
Sara struggled against the yielding, fought her way to one elbow. “More tricks. You don’t fool me, Navarre.”
“There’s no point in resisting.”
“If you think that, you don’t know anything about me.”
“It is a waste of your energy,” he said roughly. “I will always win. I am more than mortal.”
“Magic again? That’s pathetic.” But Sara knew her voice betrayed the doubt in her words. “You’re doing this for a reason. What do you want?”
“Maybe I’ll ask you to halt your trust in Draycott. You’ll find me a better master. I’ll give you the things you want.” His whisper at her ear was low and soothing. “Name your price. Lands or wealth beyond measure.”
Not that Sara believed a word of it.
She closed her ears to him, but in silence the visions grew, two shadows mating, sleek and perfect. “Stop.”
“It troubles you?” His eyes were unreadable.
“Of course it does. It’s…unnatural.”
“Mating is never unnatural.”
“You being in my mind like this…that is unnatural. I’m sure there’s a satisfactory explanation—and until I think of it, get out of my head.”
“I choose not.” There was the faintest challenge in his dark smile.
“Why not? What does it gain you?”
He seemed thoughtful, then irritated. “It shouldn’t matter. You shouldn’t matter.”
“Then leave me alone,” she said fiercely.
“So I’ve told myself.” He sank back on the bed, frowning. “Yet there are questions that remain.” His voice fell. “You have the same scar, the mark of the waning moon.” He traced the silver curve at the inside of her wrist. “It was given when your first horse threw you. You were barely nine, so you said.”
The words fed new images, dim and grainy. Somehow they had the unmistakable weight of truth. She remembered the sharp terror and then the blood spilling over a child’s small wrist.
Her wrist.
“No…”
He didn’t argue. He was too deep in her mind not to understand her fury and confusion. “The scar is yours. You can see that now. Why argue with me? I prefer this instead.”
His voice turned rough. His hand opened on her cheek. Images flowed as if a tap had been thrown open.
The moon rising. Hot winds over hot sand.
A man’s touch like velvet in the night.
For a moment Sara dangled, caught on the edge of remembering. But the memories carried more pain than she could bear.
“We’ve both seen it. He was right then. Damn Draycott for that.”
“You keep calling him Draycott. He’s not the viscount.”
“Most certainly he is.” He stood up suddenly, his posture stiff. “These memories change nothing. You will stay here.” A muscle clenched at his jaw. “Until I decide what to do with you.”
“It won’t work, Navarre. People will come looking for me. I will be missed.”
For long moments he didn’t turn. When he did his face was cut from granite. “A lover?” His voice fell. “No, I would have seen him in your mind. No one has touched you in long weeks.”
Sara flushed at the intimacy of his words. “You don’t know that.”
“No? Your mind is like water to me. You feel this tie as much as I do.”
“I feel nothing,” she said wildly. “Now—get out of my head.”
“I don’t believe I can do that. Not now.” He seemed angry at the thought. He released her and stood up slowly, his eyes shuttered. “The noose spreads wide, and there’s no going back.”
Lightning flared through the tall casement windows. She felt the force of his gaze in the space of that brief flash. Amid the anger she sensed his infinite loneliness. And then he was gone.
Sara listened intently. There was no sound of a key being turned in the lock. No guards and no ropes to bind her.
She sat on the bed, staring at the door. She had never been given to wild imagination, priding herself on good sense and excellent reasoning.
And yet she didn’t want to move. For long minutes after he was gone, the scents of cardamom and cloves drifted in the air, rich and earthy as his touch.
The line between reasoning and magic was getting harder and harder to find, she thought grimly.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE CRUSADER SEETHED.
Striding through the dark corridors, Navarre felt the pull of images that mocked him, seduced him. He saw a woman’s face, pale and determined. Over that face were features from another time. A mouth of strength and gray eyes of rare innocence, the face of a lover forbidden to him, vanished and dead centuries before.
Her death was beyond changing, he told himself. Revenge for Draycott’s treacheries had kept his spirit alive over the long centuries caught in punishment between worlds. His own death would have been a gift then.
He sensed that gift would come soon. As Navarre strode toward the moat, the wind fed on his fury, screaming across the abbey walls. Rain beat at his shoulders and he smiled, glorying in the weather’s very outrage. But even then memories stabbed, sweet with trust and longing. Memories of a woman with eyes the color of a summer’s twilight.
The memories left him weak, fighting questions he did not want to answer. His revenge would target Sara along with the abbey. Even if he somehow managed to draw this woman away from the danger, how would he begin to be free of her in his thoughts?
Strangely, Navarre had never planned what would follow his act of destruction. He had never hoped for a future of any kind as long as his act of revenge was fulfilled. The shattering of his own soul seemed a small price to pay for the torment Draycott had caused him and those he loved ce
nturies before.
But now he paused, rain drumming on his face, cold wind digging at his shoulders.
He realized just how lonely those cold centuries had been, watching history unroll through a dim window, but forbidden from having any part in it. Now the window had opened, and that same magic might hold a life for him here in this world’s future.
Not dead. Not cursed.
The possibility left him shaken.
The storm roiled over him, tossing up gravel and broken branches. In the storm of his mind, Navarre felt the prick of some other intrusion. He recognized Sara’s thoughts. By all the saints, she was strong, and even now she sang in his blood, stormed through his head, twisted his will.
He wondered if she knew what power she held. He decided she did not. Like any mortal, she did not believe in her own magic.
But their contact could not continue. He had to drive her from his mind before their link was too deep to be broken. He could not risk weakness now.
Flinging up his cloak, he whispered harshly, sealing her away from his thoughts with the mark of his hand against air. Yet the silver cord of contact between them shivered and held, drawing him to her like the north-pointing metal he had seen direct caravans through the desert.
Through their restless link Navarre felt the fury of her thoughts. Beneath that lay the weight of duty that tied her to her work. But he also sensed her curiosity about him, mixed with the half-buried embers of desire. The knowledge made him whisper a protest. He was a warrior and a mage, not some boy to be swayed by the beauty of a woman. Furious, Navarre shoved her from his mind with a final spell, tearing away every thread of thought between them.
It was done.
Separate at last, he stood sweating, face toward the storm. A vast sense of emptiness engulfed him.
So be it. Empty he would be. Lonely he had always been. Either one was a small price to pay for his success. He had given up homeland and friends when he left for the Crusades. After a decade of fighting, he had lost his family and his own life on those hot, deadly sands.
Draycott Everlasting: Christmas KnightMoonrise Page 40
