Heart of the Dove

by Tina St. John

  All of Calandra's warnings came back to her now, a thousand cautions about the brutal, unfeeling nature of men. What a fool she had been to doubt her mother, even for a moment.

  Serena ran out of the water and up onto the beach, but the man was right behind her. His steps were weak, faltering from his exhaustion and the lack of traction in the sand. But still he gained on her, each long-legged stride outpacing two of hers. Suddenly he was on her. A firm, heavy hand landed on her shoulder, throwing her off balance. He spun her around to face him, teeth bared bright white in the darkness, his breath hissing out from between his clenched jaw.

  "Why run if you have nothing to hide, eh, girl?"

  "Let me go!"

  Serena struggled against him, but it was futile. He locked her shoulders in his iron grasp, glaring down at her. Before she could think better of it, she brought up her hands and slapped them against the muscular planes of his chest.

  Mother Mary.

  She touched him.

  Touched him without the protective barrier of her gloves.

  Sensation hit her at once, a gale force wave of emotion. Her palms felt white-hot where they pushed against him, enlivened with the awakening hum of insight. Too stricken to break away, too awash in the power of her gift, Serena could only stand there, frozen, gaping up at his furious countenance while her touch read all the anger and hatred that filled his heart--indeed, his very soul.

  Rage.

  Destruction.

  Bloodshed.

  Anguish.

  Emptiness.

  Vengeance.

  Too much pain to bear. Serena's breath went shallow and panting as the blackness of his feelings engulfed her. It ate all of her strength, devouring her like a pestilence, swiftly, thoroughly. Serena felt her legs go weak beneath her. She could not stop the flood of hurt and violence that assailed her in that moment, a chaotic tempest of seething emotion pouring out of him and into her as if it were her own.

  "God's blood, what is wrong with you?"

  The stranger's words sounded far off and muffled. He shook her, but it only made her sway more on her boneless legs. She could not hold her own weight any longer. She could not think, nor could she form the words to demand that he release her. The Knowing held her in a tighter hold, merciless and unrelenting.

  Shadows edged her vision...

  The stranger's face blurred before her, and then she felt herself collapse against him.

  * * *

  Rand let out an impatient hiss, forced to catch the woman as she slumped against him in a faint. His fingers closed on slender ribs and warm, soft skin, her feminine curves too thinly covered by the muslin chemise she wore. Small, pert breasts pressed firmly against his bare chest, sending an instant, unwilling spark of awareness through his veins.

  Anger flared in its wake.

  Fragile maid or nay, this uncaring wench had shown him a heart as cold as stone when she left him to die on the incoming tide. If holding her now should inspire anything in him, it should be mistrust and suspicion. And not a little fury. Gruffly, he drew her away from him, his hands gripping her beneath her limp arms.

  "Wake up, girl."

  She flinched at the stern command. Her head lolled on her shoulders, but she did not rouse. Her long, straight dark hair fell like a glossy veil to her waist, the mass of ebony silk swinging as Rand tried to jostle the woman to her senses.

  "Open your eyes," he ordered her, having no use for helpless female swoons--particularly coming from someone who had refused him much needed aid while casually stealing him blind. "Wake up, I said. Before I drop you."

  It was no idle threat, for while her weight was as slight as a child's, it was more taxing than he cared to credit. His muscles ached from fighting the sea the night before, and his injuries from the shifter's claws now bled anew, freshly opened. He needed food, rest, and care. He needed to find the Chalice treasure that had been safely ensconced in his satchel when he washed ashore.

  Hadn't it been?

  God's bones, but the ordeal he had endured at sea had left him uncertain of that fact.

  He swore he could remember seeing the lumpy form of the bejeweled cup within the satchel as he lay exhausted on the beach. He swore he could feel its weight in the leather bag, the long strap caught tight in his fist, tugging at him with each pull of the lapping waves.

  And he swore he knew the presence of a woman--this woman--prodding his motionless body with a stick, her homespun skirts brushing his bare skin as she walked around him, merciless of his suffering, yet morbid in her curiosity. She admitted she had taken Elspeth's pendant from his neck; what would keep her from taking the object of greater value?

  With a snarl, he caught the woman around the waist with one arm, then reached down to grab her lifeless hand. He brought her fingers up between their bodies, clasping her in a hard grip as he shook her.

  "Damnation, wake! Whatever your game, I have no time for it!"

  At last, success.

  Her eyes flew wide open, her long-lashed gaze staring up at him, stricken. The delicate bones of her hand jolted in his firm grasp, the tendons of her fingers flexing tight. All of her went rigid in that one instant.

  "N-no!" She drew a breath, sharp and shallow. "Release me!"

  He held fast. Although his grip on her was unyielding, he did not aim to hurt her. Not unless she forced his hand. Yet despite his efforts to keep from bruising her small hand and wrist, she arched and writhed as though clasped in a vise of burning iron. She cried out, a keening howl of anguish that carried high on the night breeze. If she pretended at the pain to win his sympathy, she would find him an unswaying audience. Still, he had to admit she gave a convincing performance.

  Rand's patience held on a threadbare leash. "I warn you, woman, do not trifle with me."

  "Please," she begged, her voice raw, almost whimpering childlike. "Let me go. I cannot bear any more..."

  Her eyes fixed on his with a piercing, wild intensity. Her pupils seemed huge in the moonlight, as though they had absorbed the darkness around her.

  As though her gaze had absorbed far more than that.

  The fight seeped out of her, but her queer rigidity remained. Rand thought she might fall into a second swoon, but no sooner did the possibility register than he heard a sudden disturbance of the forest vegetation behind him. There was a banshee scream, then Rand turned to find a white-haired wraith flying at him from out of the woods.

  "Unhand her!" The female voice shook with fear and selfless, protective fury. A slim dagger flashed metallic in the moonlight as the woman crashed toward him, prepared to kill. "Take your hands off my child!"

  Rand released the younger woman to pivot and face the elder before she had the chance to plunge her wicked little blade into his back. She leaped on him like a mad she-cat, thrashing and snarling, a frenzied blur of flowing white hair and flailing limbs. Her rough homespun gown smelled of cooking herbs, rich earth, and spicy soap--a madwoman, perhaps, but a clean one, and surprisingly agile as well.

  Rand kept his focus on the weapon, his combat-trained hands seeking out the threat with greater strength and speed than even this desperate mother determined to protect one of her own. He wrenched the dagger from the woman's grasp and flung her off of him in a heap. She hit the wet sand of the beach not far from where her daughter sat in a mute daze, her legs folded beneath her. Dark hair shielded her down-turned face from view; her crossed arms shielded her body, which rocked back and forth in a slow, mindless rhythm.

  "Serena! Oh, mercy. What did he do to you?" the woman cried, her attention diverted from Rand only for a moment. Long enough to spy the blood marring her daughter's chemise from where Rand's wounds had touched her. In the dim moonlight, the stains looked near to black, alarming against the stark white muslin. The crone sucked in a throttled moan. Her accusing pale eyes cut toward him again, narrowed with loathing. "What have you done to her--you and your brutish hands!"

  She did not wait for his answer, but instead lunged
at him, fingers curled into talons. Rand brought her up short in a trice, her own dagger leveled calmly at her throat. She eyed the blade, then registered a note of understanding as her focus lit on the slash marks that glistened slick and red on his bare arms.

  "I have done nothing, woman, save to question why I was left to die on this beach today. And why this girl--your daughter, do you say?--thought fit to insult me further by thieving my belongings while I was too weak to stop her."

  A sober look crept into the ice of her gaze. Or perhaps, he guessed, was it guilt?

  "She did only what I told her to do. If you wish to punish the hand that did not help you, then take it out on me. Not her. Serena left you on the beach because I told her to. She only obeyed my wishes."

  Rand scowled at the chill admission, but he believed the woman told him true. "Is it your custom to be so uncaring to others in need?"

  "Our customs are of little concern to you," she answered, bolder than was wise when she did not know him, or whom he might serve. "The only thing I care about is the safety of my child. I don't expect a man to understand that."

  So, it was his gender alone that earned him such animosity. The woman was wrong about his instincts toward protecting a child--or protecting anyone weaker than himself who could not rise in their own defense--but the crone's barb stung with more accuracy than it should.

  "What cold shore is this that breeds such hostile women?" he asked, gesturing to the dense strand of night-black forest that edged the long pale stretch of beach. His body ached for a bed, his stomach for a trencher of warm food and strong dark ale. The gashes on his arms and chest needed cleaning before the sand and crusted salt from his prolonged sea bath invited infection.

  And even more crucial than those immediate physical needs, Rand was determined to recover the piece of the Dragon Chalice that now appeared inexplicably lost to him. Unbelievably lost, he was tempted to think, his gaze straying back to the wary-eyed woman and her peculiar daughter.

  "What is this place, I said?" Rand quickly grew tired of waiting on a reply. He flicked a meaningful glance at the blade still gripped and threatening in his right hand. "I would know what town or fief you and your daughter hail from, woman. It is not a difficult question."

  "The nearest town is Egremont. It lies inland, half a day north by foot."

  The answer came not from the crone before him, but from the strange beauty named Serena. She was calmer now, recovered from her hysteria, although her face still glowed ashen pale as she looked up at Rand.

  "And the both of you--where do you live?"

  "Here," she replied simply, no guile or venom in her voice.

  Rand noted the narrow footpath leading from the forest edge, the only sign of human habitation on the entire stretch of sand and sea. "You and your mother live here, in these woods?"

  She nodded her head.

  Hunkered down at her side, Serena's mother cast a look at him that seemed on the verge of pleading. "We've a simple life, and wish no trouble from the likes of you."

  Rand lowered the dagger with a low-pitched oath.

  Half a day to the nearest town. Half a day's walk to the nearest hope of food and shelter was half a day's more strength than he had at present. Half a day's walk would take him that much farther away from this shore, where, if the Chalice treasure had indeed washed out with the tide, it might also return.

  God's love.

  To think he could have lost the cup to the sea after fighting so hard to keep it!

  Rand cursed his own misfortune, scowling as Serena's mother helped her to her feet. He scrutinized both of them in turn, the waifish forest nymph and the haughty hen who clucked and fussed over her as if the young woman were crafted of breakable glass. Perhaps neither one was fully sane. They might share an inherited madness, cast out in shame of it, or otherwise forced to live on their own in this wild wood. They had no man to look after them, overlord or kin, or Rand surely would have faced him by now. No, these women were alone. Like him.

  He would have to make do with what meager boon he had.

  "I will needs stay with you for a day or two," he informed the women, his tone inviting no refusal. He stepped toward them meaningfully, then gestured to the forest path with his chin. "Show me where you live."

  Neither one seemed eager to oblige him, so Rand reached out his arm. He meant only to turn Serena onto the beach trail behind her, but before his hand could descend to nudge the young woman forward, her mother had stepped between them like a shield.

  "Very well. We will take you there, as you give us no choice. You've no need of force."

  Chapter 4

  The cottage had never seemed so small as it did with the stranger occupying it. He stalked through the cramped space like some barbarian warrior from one of her mother's many tales. Those tales never ended happily, Serena reflected. Not for the maidens who embarked on foolish journeys, nor for the many splendid kingdoms that fell to the battering of steel and brutality delivered by men with hearts as dark as this one's.

  He had not seemed so large, so formidable, when he lay unconscious on the beach. But now, as he commandeered her home, half-dressed, bloodied from the savagery he survived at sea, Serena thought him nothing short of terrifying. She kept her distance from him while he perused their meager abode, regret gnawing at her for the fact that her actions had brought him there. A terrible mistake, she feared, to have returned to the beach against her mother's instructions.

  Would that she could take it back.

  If there was any providence to be claimed in this evening's misfortunate turn, it was that the intruding stranger had washed ashore without the trappings of war. He had no sword on him, no weapon at all, save the small dagger Serena's mother had forfeited to him on the beach. All he wore were tattered breeches and braies, the dark fabric hanging limply from his body. His chest and arms were bare, his tanned skin crusted with a fine layer of salt and sand.

  Firelight from a new blaze on the hearth glittered against his broad shoulders and the sculpted slabs of muscle that banded his torso. For a moment, Serena was transfixed, her gaze rooted on him as the undulating flames of the cook fire played about his bare skin like the kiss of starlight on smooth sand.

  It was a queer observation, one that only added to the feeling of how misplaced he was in the cottage, a creature of another place, another world. One she did not wish to understand, she chided herself, looking now to the fresh blood that trickled in thin red streaks from the slash marks he bore on his body and arms.

  His dark hair had seemed near to black that morning when it was wet, and again tonight with only the moon to light his features. Now, in the glow of the crackling fire, she could see the chestnut hues of a rich brown, the spiky waves falling thickly around the broad line of his shoulders. His face was grizzled with the shadow of a beard, his cheeks slightly hollow, the bones feral and sharp.

  And his eyes...like a hawk's keen gaze, the stranger's hazel eyes took in everything around him with a swift, assessing glance.

  He was large and commanding, an unsettling creature hewn of muscle and might, whose very air bespoke danger.

  Serena could not keep from staring at him.

  In part fear, part wary intrigue, her gaze strayed again and again across the small expanse of the cottage to where he paced and inspected, a conquering overlord familiarizing himself with the meager boon of his new territory.

  Her hands still trembled from touching him. If she closed her eyes, she still could feel the power of his tangible rage. His anger lingered within her, an echo of feeling that reverberated deep in her bones, coursing through her veins. Her gift of insight--the Knowing--had shown her such bleakness in his heart, such eager bloodlust in his mind. She had touched him for only an instant, but she had read his soul as surely as if he had spoken the truth of his purpose aloud.

  He meant to do murder.

  Violence drove him, and woe betide any who stood in his way.

  The thought haunted her as she
turned to retrieve her last pair of gloves from a clothing casket on the floor near her bed. Kneeling, she took them out, glad for the comfort the soft brown leather would give her, however small.

  Before she had a chance to slip the gloves on, she heard the stranger draw near.

  "Whose pallet is that one, beneath the window?"

  His rumbling voice filled the cottage like a sudden roll of thunder, despite that he spoke in a low tone. Serena spun around and drew herself up off the floor to face him. With a glance, he gestured to the humble bed that lay in disarray, a tangle of coverlet and bolster. Just as Serena had left it when she crept out of it earlier that evening to see what had become of him.

  "It is mine," she answered, purposely stepping aside as he crossed the small space of earthen floor toward where she stood.

  He grunted, scarcely looking at her. Bending down, he retrieved the thin feather-stuffed bolster, then thrust it into her arms before she could react. "It will do," he pronounced. "You'll have it back in a few days, after I am gone."

  "A few days?"

  The blurted reply flew off Serena's tongue faster than she could bite it back. Across the sole room of the cottage, her mother cleared her throat, a subtle warning against stirring the stranger's ire. Serena understood the prudence in cooperating with his demands, at least for the time being, but that did not make the situation any easier to accept. She frowned down at the bolster gripped in her tight fingers.

  A few days, he'd said. Could he mean to commandeer their home for so long?

  Whatever his intention, he gave her no explanation or excuse. With little more than an arched brow in response, he pivoted to face her directly, less than a hand's breadth between them. Serena clutched the bolster against her, a feeble barrier, but the only one she had when the stranger loomed over her so closely.

  "I will take this pallet for as long as I need it. And I'll have your ladies' word that no one will know that I am here. Do you understand?"

  His look penetrated as deadly sure as his voice. Serena nodded once, unable to tear her gaze away from the stormy threat that lingered in his eyes.