by Brynn Paulin
“Your husband chose the wrong side to support,” one of the men rasped.
“He does his duty to king,” she argued.
The man ignored her. “And so we will take all from him. Starting with you.”
“I want her first,” the man who’d grabbed her announced. She realised she’d seen him before, when she’d visited town that day. He’d eyed her but she’d ignored him.
“You cannot. I am wed to another before God,” she said, hoping to deter them. The trio laughed.
“Where is your man, then?” one of them asked. “He leaves you alone, wandering unprotected while he fights his foul king’s battles. He deserves to lose you.”
“No…”
“I’ll take her now,” the first man said again, lurching towards her. “I rather fancy a fucking to the rock of a boat.”
“No!” Emma screamed, attempting to stand and run. But where? She tripped over her skirts, tumbling forward before dragging herself upright again. The boat tilted in the violent waves just as the man reached for her. Emma fell sideways, hitting her head on the side of the boat as she careened into the icy waves.
* * * *
“Emma!” Ailig bellowed as he had the last time he’d returned from his duty. He dismounted his horse at the gate and headed for the keep. Inside, three bodies lay. Recently dead.
Panic overtook him and he drew his sword, dashing into the castle in search of his wife. “Emma,” he called, the sound of his voice echoing off the walls of the empty keep. “Emma!”
What had happened? She’d foreseen his death, had she not? Oh merciful heaven no!
His breaths came so fast he couldn’t fill his lungs. Her solar was empty. Their bedchamber. Empty. He couldn’t find her anywhere. And where had the servants fled?
“My lord,” his squire greeted him, when he re-entered the great hall. “The men in the courtyard were killed with knives to the throat.”
“No…”
“We must go to the village and see if there’s anyone who knows what has happened.”
Ailig shook his head, only able to think of Emma. “I have to find her,” he whispered.
“We will, my lord.”
Shaking from the emotions choking his heart, Ailig followed his servant from the keep. On the shore below, a tangle of dark hair and green fabric caught his eye. No!
He ran, heedless of the steep, rocky terrain, heedless that he stumbled and ripped skin and garments as he flew down the incline. Reaching her, he sank to his knees, tears burning his eyes as his world closed around him.
“Emma, no,” he sobbed, lifting her against his chest. “No.”
* * * *
Emma’s corpse lay on the long trundle table in the main hall, awaiting preparation for burial. So recently they’d celebrated their marriage here, and now…
He’d take revenge on those who’d done this. But who? There were no traces of who’d taken her and the servants he’d located had no information that would reveal the assailant’s identities.
He paced, occasionally stopping and brushing his fingers over Emma’s marble-like cheek. Without her, his life had ended…their time had been so short. All his dreams for the future were contained in her. His fingers slid over the rounded stone of the necklace still around her neck.
The blessing he’d received had promised them an eternity together. An eternity, they would have.
Carefully, he removed the necklace from his love. Their dreams could be others’ dreams. Grasping the stone in his hand, he ran through the keep gathering supplies like a madman, and perhaps madness had indeed overcome him. He’d seen too much, endured even more. He’d lost the only thing of worth to him.
He retrieved a bottle and stopper from the kitchens, a quill and parchment from his thinking room, rope from the storage pantry beside the main hall. With a heavy heart, he returned to Emma and set the implements beside her. Dipping the quill in ink, he wrote:
A stone that's blessed by lover’s hands
To bless the wearer with a love that stands.
Through time and toil, no stopping fate
As lovers united, no hand can break.
So take this token and wear it true,
Destiny awaits with love for you.
A favour I ask from you to me
Once blessed return my gift to the sea.
For others await the hand of fate
My blessing to love's true mates.
Quickly he signed it, Ailig Bennett December 1264.
Gently he kissed Emma’s lifeless lips then kissed the stone. “Unite the lovers,” he said. “Unite them and give them the happiness we would have had.”
With care, he rolled the thick parchment and placed it in the bottle along with Emma’s necklace. He sealed the bottle. Sitting again, he wrote a second letter, this time to King Henry.
Leaving it on the table, he lifted Emma into his arms then picked up the bottle and the rope. Emotion escaped him as he looked around the keep which had been his home for so long. Once he’d been proud of this solid walls bequeathed him by the king. Once he’d had dreams of giving this to his son.
None of it existed for him any longer. None of it mattered.
“Stay here,” he told his squire as he passed him in the courtyard outside the great hall. The man nodded, busy removing the remains of the men who’d died there. He barely noticed Ailig, which Ailig decided was good. He had no desire to argue with his servant.
With measured steps, Ailig returned to the place where he’d found Emma. He paused as the icy water swirled around his ankles.
“Find them. Unite them,” he whispered. Drawing back his arm, he hurled the bottle into the waves, watching momentarily as it bobbed and was drawn away. “And now our turn,” he told Emma. After binding her to him with the rope, he paused again, this time lifting a prayer to the heavens for salvation and forgiveness of what he was about to do.
Then he walked.
Emma cradled in his arms.
“Our life here is ended,” he murmured. “But I will find you again, love. Our souls are entwined, and we will be together again…”
Ailig’s body fought the water, but his resolve was stronger as the ocean flowed over him. His chest burned as everything went dark, with Emma still clutched to his chest, and he sank deep into the waters, dragged down by the weight of his heavy mail.
And then brightness, unlike any he’d seen, filled him as he was drawn away. The pain from the cold and the water filling his body no longer tortured him. The pain from his loss lessened as peace flowed through him.
Emma stood before him, smiling as she reached for him.
“My love,” she said.
“I cannot live without you.”
“Nor I without you.”
Ailig dragged her to his chest, distantly aware of ethereal figures circling them in the distance. He held no fear or wariness. They would not harm him.
His mouth covered hers and she kissed him back. There was no urgency, no overwhelming lust. They had transcended human need. For now. Ailig knew when they again united it would be unlike anything he’d before experienced. Better. Perfect.
“We cannot stay here,” Emma told him, her fingers smoothing his long hair from his face.
“What? No!”
“It is not our time to be here. We still have our life to live together. In another time and another place.”
“No. I do not wish to be parted again.”
“We must. For a time. We have much before us, love. But trust. We will be united again.”
“No!” Ailig screamed as he was pulled from her by an unseen force. His scream turned to an unintelligible cry as his being was pressed and he found himself staring up into the exhausted face of another woman.
“Sweet baby,” she murmured. “It’s all right, my Alexander.”
Ailig continued to cry as the task before him settled into his soul and the memory of the one he loved faded from his mind. He would find her again…someday.
&nbs
p; And as the waves covered the great knight and his love, the bottle travelled across the waters, searching for other great loves to unite until the day when these two souls would again be entwined and the necklace would once more rest against the heart of the beloved…
A LEGEND ACCOMPLISHED
Brynn Paulin
Dedication
To the newest Tartlet. I’m glad you joined us.
Chapter One
Northern England, Present Day
Legend has it that long, long ago, a great knight fell in love with a fair maiden. He took her to wife and together they lived in his great keep high on a hill overlooking the ocean…
Emily Harteger looked up from the text she’d just scrawled in her notebook, glancing around her as a powerful wave surged up the shore and puddled around her bare feet. She smiled, the warmth of familiarity creeping over her. Before long, the water would surround the stone where she sat. How many times had that happened when she’d been distracted?
She blinked. What was she thinking?
That had never happened to her. She’d never been to this beach before today.
Being here was like déjà vu or something equally weird. For the last fifteen minutes, it had seemed as if she’d finally arrived home. She knew this place. Everything was familiar—the crash of the waves on the rocks jutting from the ocean. The trees lining the shore. The castle overshadowing the beach as it stood high above her on a rocky hill. Even the wind seemed to carry a familiar scent of ocean and wood smoke.
Yet she’d never been here. She’d never been out of the United States before this week.
She looked up at the shadowy castle, wondering if the interior would be as she’d seen it in her head. Likely not. She was just a romance writer with an overactive imagination. Wasn’t it that imagination that had drawn her here to the northern shores of England?
Another wave engulfed her ankles while she watched the water hypnotically lap at the shore. She breathed in the heady scent of the salty sea air and closed her eyes. This was the sort of place where Ailig and Emma, the hero and heroine of her latest novel, had fallen in love. She imagined what it had been like for young Emma when she’d fallen in love with Ailig. Emily could see her sitting on this rock, waiting for him to arrive so they could have a few stolen moments before her parents realised she was missing.
“My love,” he’d whisper as he knelt beside her knees and cupped her cheek with his work-roughened hand.
Emily jerked as her imagining became so vivid she felt his hand. Her eyes popped open, and she choked back a surprised scream as she stared into a pair of dark blue eyes.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, his voice a deep rumble of concern. “The tide is coming in, and I was afraid you’d fallen asleep.”
Hastily, she stuffed her notebook in the bag beside her and yanked the tote’s strap up her shoulder. “I’m fine. Thanks.” She attempted to smile and soften her snapped words. She didn’t mean to be abrupt. It was just—
He was the very embodiment of the man she’d envisioned as Ailig. Tall and sturdy with dark brown hair and blue eyes. Full lips, prominent cheekbones, muscles made to make a girl feel safe…he had it all. Granted his hair was shorter than Ailig’s whose hair fell to his shoulder blades, but aside from that difference and the modern jeans with a knit shirt, he could be her knight.
She scrambled over the flat rock to drier ground as another wave headed to them. It washed over his bare feet, dampening the bottom of his jeans.
“I appreciate your concern,” she said as he followed her at a more sedate pace. “I was just…thinking. I’m a writer. We spend a lot of time thinking.” And babbling apparently.
One side of his mouth turned up as he stepped closer. “I’m glad you’ve finally come.”
He leaned forward, pressing his firm lips to hers.
Home. Nirvana. The embodiment of many dreams. Emily groaned as the warm shroud of familiarity she’d felt since arriving here wrapped around her. Where she should have felt terror or indignation instead she felt complete rightness and belonging. What was happening to her? Her fingers curled into his soft shirt as her eyes closed and her lips opened to him. Shouldn’t she shove him away? Shouldn’t she run?
This is right, her brain whispered. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed into his embrace and the familiar strength of his body. She moaned as his tongue delved inside bringing the taste of peppermint and coffee. He used to taste of mead, she thought. Mead? Where did that come from? What the hell did mead taste like anyway?
Over and over he thrust his tongue inside her mouth. One hand splayed on her back while the other cupped her breast, finding the nipple and plucking the beaded peak. Emily trembled as desire swept her away. Ribbons of pleasure twisted their way to her core.
His cock throbbed against her belly. She wanted him. She wanted that cock inside her.
Ailig…
Wait!
Emily’s eyes shot open and she shoved away from the man. She stumbled a few feet backward and out of his reach.
“Are you high?” she exclaimed. Was she? This wasn’t Ailig and she sure wasn’t Emma. It was just her overactive imagination that attributed the features of her book’s hero to this man and it was familiarity and ease of writing which had made her give her own features to the heroine including her tendency to have visions.
All her foster parents had found that aptitude disconcerting and she’d learned young to keep it to herself but it didn’t stop her from giving such traits to her characters. Or using it on occasions like this.
Calmly, he regarded her. He shrugged as if his action—their action—was completely normal. “I saw you here and knew I had to kiss you. You’re on my beach, by the way.”
“Yours?” No wait, idiot. You’re supposed to call him on kissing you not question his ownership of the beach! She glanced over her shoulder, gauging how far it was to the place where she’d parked. She could probably sprint back to her car. And he could probably catch her if he wanted to. She wasn’t in that great of shape and he looked…perfect. She bit back an infatuated-girly sigh. She was twenty-six for God’s sake.
He didn’t seem poised to chase her, however, as he calmly studied her. He jerked his head towards the castle. “I own the bed and breakfast.”
“The castle?”
“Yes. Would you like to see it?”
God, wouldn’t she? It would be a dream. But he was a stranger and this was the middle of nowhere. Was she too stupid to live or what?
Okay, she’d been to one too many writers’ conferences. She wasn’t a heroine. This wasn’t about walking into a dimly lit basement with a killer on the loose. This was a guy. And every instinct within told her to trust him. Her instincts had never been wrong. Never.
He wouldn’t harm her. He didn’t want to harm her. He didn’t harm people.
“Why do you ask?”
He shrugged. “Most Americans seem to like castles. I thought you might like to see it. And I want to get to know you.” He laughed. “We did kiss. You can ring your girlfriends to tell them where you’re going. You’ll be safe.”
“Girlfriends? Why do you assume I’m not here with a man? My husband could be waiting for me at the hotel.”
He raised an eyebrow. Damn, she loved men who could do that.
Turning away from her, he went back to the rock and retrieved her black Airwalk shoes before they were swept away by the ocean. He held them out to her. “And you kissed me like that? I think not. You’re not married…or so I surmise from your lack of ring. That would leave a boyfriend. He’d be a fool to let you wander free, and apparently unsatisfying, too. But you don’t strike me as the type to cheat. Am I right?”
“Yeah,” she replied, then promptly kicked herself for being so disgustingly honest. Did she want to invite danger?
“So that leaves girlfriends. Or possibly family.”
She bit the inside of her lip to keep from telling him she was alone on her tr
ip. “I need to get back to my hotel.”
He looked away, but not before she saw the disappointment in his eyes. He gave a single nod, then looked back to her. He held out his hand. “It was very nice to meet you.”
The bottom twisted out of her stomach, tears pricking her eyes. Suddenly it seemed she was leaving behind something imperative to her future happiness. Forcing a smile, she shook his hand, ignoring the shock that rode up her arm, then sprinted up the embankment to her car.
Alec Woods watched the woman rush away and steeled himself against the urge to chase her. When he’d seen her earlier…he’d known she was the one for whom he’d waited so long. Unlike many, his first word had not been ‘mama’ or ‘dada’ like many infants. It had been ‘Emma’.
Thankfully, his mother was a firm believer of past lives and their influence over current incarnations. She’d written down all his childish ramblings about his former life as a knight, his adventure, who he’d served, and most importantly about his lost love. She’d never said anything about this, secreting away her notes until he was much older and had forgotten all the things he’d told her. Then when he’d reached his mid-teens, she’d encouraged him to be regressed. He’d recalled many lifetimes. In all there had been something missing. A hole in his happiness. Someone who should have been at his side.
When he’d finally remembered his life with Emma, he’d known. That life was the root of all things he’d felt lost to him in the lifetimes between. He’d written everything he could remember. That was when his mother had shared her journal.
And he’d had hope. Surely Emma would come to him. That had to be the reason he’d finally remembered. The time was now.
Perhaps that was all fantasy. Wouldn’t Emma recognise him too when she saw him? He’d known her immediately when he’d seen her perched on the rock and staring out at the sea that had once taken her life. Yet she’d stared at him like a stranger.
