Every combat instinct in him warned that to agree to peace with Serena would merely begin a new kind of battle, one he would have to fight within himself, with his own desire. Already she was affecting him, despite his resistance and the knowledge that he could only hurt her in the end. But harder still was the thought of refuting her innocent gesture of faith. He could not break her tender gaze, any more than he could smash the hope that lit her aqua eyes.
"Peace," he said, practically growling the word. "I have not known it for a long while. I'm not sure I would know to recognize it, if you want the truth."
"Look around you," she said, gesturing to the deep green of the forest, the golden ribbon of sand, and the blue water beyond. "There is naught but peace here. Won't you permit yourself any part of it?"
He stared at her, wanting nothing more than to refuse her. But her shy smile caused a queer tightness in his chest. Her welcoming innocence cleaved his foolish tongue to the roof of his mouth.
"Come and join us for sup in the cottage, Rand. I've already set a place for you at the table. You must be hungry."
He was. His stomach was empty, and his body sorely needed a rest and a warm meal. Reluctantly, with a cocked brow and a gallant tilt of his head, Rand admitted defeat to the lady's will and followed her to the cottage.
Once inside, he was glad to leave obstinance at the door. He was immediately wreathed in the aromatic scents of baked bread and warm honeyed mead. A fire crackled on the hearth, golden and welcoming. The table had been set with three waiting bowls. Serena's mother tended the cooking. She eyed Rand and her daughter for a disapproving moment as they entered, but made no remark.
Rand approached the table, then paused, confused. Situated near the seat he was to occupy rested a pair of leather cross-strap boots. Folded neatly over the back of the chair was a plain tunic of russet-dyed linen, and faded fawn-colored hose.
Rand had neither the eye or the interest for courtly fashion, but even he could see that the attire, although in good repair, left something to be desired. The boots, which looked to be about his size, were outmoded by decades at the least, with leather shin bindings and battered hardware that had gone a bit rusty from the salty sea air. The tunic and hose were equally dated and common; rough woven fabric, well worn. But functional, all of it, and far better than the scant, shredded rags left from his washing ashore.
"What is this?"
"Clothes," Serena said, "for you."
She was smiling at him, offering him this gift like an olive branch to seal the new terms of his stay. Rand bristled at the kindness, but it would be good to have boots again, and clothes for travel, for he would soon be on the march. He reached for the tunic, then stopped himself.
"What's wrong?" Serena asked. She picked up the long shirt and held it up before him to measure its fit with her eye. "These were my father's clothes. We've had them a while, but they were stored in a chest, safe from moths or other damage."
Her father's clothes? From the cut of them, Rand would have guessed they had belonged to her grandfather, perhaps even that man's father.
"I never knew him," Serena added, "but he was a big man, like you, tall and broad shouldered. Was he not so, Mother?"
Serena's voice was hopeful. Across the room, the old woman said nothing, merely stared at the pair of them with a look somewhere between regret and loathing. For what was not the first time, Rand was struck with the strangeness of these women, of this solitary life they lived in the heart of the forest, away from all but each other. Serena, so open and innocent and kind; her mother, aged beyond her outward years by bitterness and mistrust of anyone, save her daughter.
Rand wished to be beholden to neither of them. He needed only himself, and the fury that sustained him. Already he found the days easing into one another in this place. He was there by chance, delayed only long enough that he could heal. He needed no kindness from them. He wanted none of their consideration, however small.
Although the thought of clean, intact attire--even ancient garb, like this--was a boon he could well use, Rand shook his head. "I cannot take these."
"I told you as much," Calandra scoffed, finding her voice at last.
Serena cocked her chin, studying him like a curiosity she did not quite understand. "You won't accept them? Why?"
"He is a man," Calandra said tonelessly. "No gift is ever enough to satisfy. A man would rather take that which he desires, than have it freely given."
Rand slanted a dark look at the haughty old woman whose bitterness seemed to pour off her in waves. "I don't want your charity."
"Why not?" Serena asked with frank innocence. "You need it."
He did need it, truly. He could hardly think to walk any distance without a decent covering for his feet. What's more, should he venture to town regardless of that fact, he had no coin with which to buy clothing once he arrived. He had no weapon, no horse...nothing. Silas de Mortaine had stripped him of all he loved; fate had taken the rest.
Yet here was Serena offering him food and clothing and shelter, without reservation or expectation.
"We've no need of these things," she said. "Take them, Rand."
He supposed it was only practical to take the garb Serena now held out to him, awaiting his decision. He would be a fool not to take anything that might help bring him closer to his imminent rendezvous with de Mortaine and the vengeance he so desired. God knew, he needed any advantage he could get, even something as basic as this.
Rand reached out, and slowly accepted the tunic from Serena's gloved fingers.
"Thank you," he murmured, and was rewarded with her smile.
"You are welcome."
He fisted his hand in the rough weave of the russet homespun, feeling a scowl crease his brow as he realized the mistake he had just made. With her open smile and guileless ways, Serena offered him so much more than she could possibly know. More, certainly, than just a wary peace and a meager collection of secondhand clothes. She offered him hope, and that might verily be the most dangerous gift he could accept from another human being.
* * *
From across the small space of the cottage, Calandra watched joy spread over Serena's face as Randwulf of Greycliff accepted the old tunic and hose. She had never seen the girl so animated, so radiant.
It broke Calandra's heart to see it now.
She did not crave Serena's unhappiness, but she knew it would come. Calandra knew it as surely as she knew her own foolish heart. She was watching her own past mistakes play out anew in Serena--history repeating, as it so often did.
There was little she could do to save her child from the hurt that was certain to come. She had done what she could to shelter her, to educate her in the wicked ways of men, but she had not expected this. For all her care and worry, Calandra never could have predicted that a man like Randwulf of Greycliff would wash up on their shore. In all her endless nightmares, she never could have imagined that her worst fear would come to roost after all these years.
Fate, she thought ruefully. There was, evidently, no outrunning it.
The wheels were in motion, and it was too late to stop what was destined to come.
Calandra had done all she could to protect Serena; now the girl's fate was her own to decide.
Chapter 10
There was something peculiar in this quiet stretch of English forest, Rand decided, on watch that night outside the cottage. He had taken a seat on a fallen log, reclining as best he could against a thick-trunked, bracing oak that rose like the scores of others around it, some indeterminable distance into the moonlit night sky. A pearly mist had rolled in from the beach around midnight, from his guess. It had dissipated little in the hours since. The moist air clung to his skin like a shroud, salted his lips like tears. Past the forest edge, beyond his vision, the tide threw itself ashore with a mournful rumble, a hollow, empty sound that seemed to echo somewhere deep within him.
Rand scoffed inwardly at his moroseness. Useless self-pity. He'd never indulged in
it before; he would not permit it a place in his heart now.
A subtle movement alerted him to stirring nearby. He looked up, saw the door to the cottage slowly open. Serena stepped out from the dark wedge of space. At first she did not see him at his post within the trees. He had deliberately hidden himself amid the darkness of the woods, more interested in keeping a clear view of the abode and outlying grounds than allowing himself to be seen by any outsider who might approach.
Now he sat in the cover of his position, watching Serena peer about nervously as she closed the cottage door behind her. She turned her head to the left and her gaze found him through the trees. Her hands were not gloved; one delicate fist glowed pale as milk where it clutched her mantle together at her neck. She gave him a look and nodded almost imperceptibly--shy, but not startled, neither offering excuse or seeking permission--before she stepped away from the little cottage and headed onto the forest path.
Rand merely watched her go, guessing that personal necessity called her outside in these thin hours before dawn. She disappeared into the forest, the hem of her long cloak disturbing the low-lying sea mist as it floated over the feathery ferns and dewy greenery that huddled close to the earth like a living carpet.
This was a peculiar place indeed, Rand thought again, as all traces of Serena vanished into the swirling fog and deep, enveloping woods. She was a peculiar woman, a curiosity he had no wish to explore, despite how readily his mind turned to her in idle moments. She was an oddity of nature, her strange ability an abomination, surely--a witch's trick--although it was difficult to condemn her outright when it seemed she had naught but light and guileless innocence in her heart.
Since his waterlogged arrival on the beach, when he first glimpsed her extraordinary beauty, Rand had looked for cause to mistrust her. He sought reasons to dislike her, to push her away from him as inconsequential, nothing more than a harbor--safe, or otherwise--in which to wait out his next move. Now that he had discovered the incredible secret of her peculiar ways, he had ample cause to mistrust and dislike and dismiss.
Yet from all he had seen of Serena, he could not summon any measure of contempt for her. Despite the affliction of her knowing touch, she was no monster. Contrarily, she appeared as goodness and peace in fleshly form...but that did not make him look at her with anything less than earthly male appreciation. It did not keep him from wanting.
Rand hissed an oath into the darkness of the woods.
He had to get out of this place, and soon. It was beginning to play games with his mind, and on more than one level, none agreeable in the least.
He cursed the injuries that had grounded him here, though thankfully he was well on the mend and getting stronger all the time. He was well enough to move on if he pushed himself--and he would--but there was still the matter of the Chalice treasure. Without it, he was crippled in his fight against Silas de Mortaine. He could lure the villain out, of course, but then what?
Without the protective magic of the cup's two stones, Calasaar and Vorimasaar, Rand would be waging war with no weapons. His vengeance would be a jest, a mere annoyance to a man with de Mortaine's power. He dared not trust the cup he had lost in the storm--wherever it might have landed--would remain out of Silas's hands for long. Rand had witnessed too much evil, too much dark sorcery, to content himself with the idea that anything could ever stop de Mortaine from claiming the Dragon Chalice in full. Once the four pieces were recovered, the treasure restored and whole, there would be nothing strong enough of this world to check the deadly ambition of Silas de Mortaine.
Rand's closest friend, Kenrick of Clairmont, had himself been on a mission to prevent the Dragon Chalice from falling into de Mortaine's hands. He had spent years studying the legend of the treasure and its mystical origins, and had entrusted Rand to keep a secret key--a metal seal that would open a hidden vault leading to one of the Chalice stones. Rand had hidden the seal at Greycliff. When the shapeshifting raiders spilled into his keep with fire and unsheathed steel, it was that bit of precious metal they sought. And they had found it, though not until Rand's wife and child lay bleeding and dead in his hall. Not until they had beaten him to unconsciousness and left him to die along with his family.
He wished he had perished with them, then as now. He wished he could take it back--those hellish hours, the impotence of his vow that he would keep them safe. He had failed them in the most basic way, a trained knight skilled in battle, pridefully unmatched on the field, yet unable to shield his defenseless wife and child in their moment of need.
Which brought his thoughts sharply back to Serena.
She had been gone a long while.
Too long, warned his conscience.
There was no sign of stirring in the woods, naught to indicate that Serena was on her way back to the cottage as she should be by now. Only silence beneath the roar of the sea beyond, and a stillness that chilled Rand where he sat.
God's blood, if the hunters from Egremont had returned--or worse....
A pang of alarm stabbed him, fierce and quick, too protective, though he hardly gave himself time to consider the feeling. Without a sound, Rand leaped off the log and trained his eye on the surrounding forest. He saw nothing, heard nothing.
Nothing, save the rising thud of his own pulse when he thought of Serena alone in the shadowed woods, helpless should she meet with harm.
"Damnation," he swore, cutting through the pillars of pine and oak and ash that blocked his easy course toward the path she had taken.
He sped into the forest, torn between the stealth of silence and the need to call out to her, to assess where she was, and in what condition. Pine needles crunched under his boots as he hurried deeper into the grove. The mist obscured much of the area, whisking him unwillingly back to a night when it was smoke, not fog, that blinded him, impeding his vision as he fought off intruders and was forced to listen to his wife's anguished cries.
Those frantic moments bubbled just below the surface now, raw memories spurring him on as though they were real, as though he lived the moment in truth.
"Elspeth!"
He heard her name ring in his ears, soft syllables exhaled almost as prayer. It was his own voice, his own breath huffing out of his lungs in futile rage as the dark trunks of trees whisked past him. He was alone on the path; she had not gone this way. He veered away from the narrow trail and ran down into the bracken. The mist tangled around his ankles, smoky tendrils that churned upward, reaching for him. Was he going mad?
He called to her again, and this time heard an answer--faint, still distant, all but overridden by a great pounding roar of water coming from deep within the forest.
"Rand?...Is someone there?"
This was all wrong--somehow, even through the disorienting panic that gripped him, he knew that. It was not smoke before him, but harmless sea mist; not the soot-blackened walls of his keep scraping his arms as he careened past them, but the rough bark of towering, ancient trees. Not Elspeth's voice calling out now, but another.
Rand's head was spinning but he ran faster, dodging the forest's many obstacles. The din of rushing water was louder now, like the guttural clamor of beastly taunts, sadistic laughter. He headed straight toward the noise, vaulting over a large rock, slapping aside the low branches that clawed for him as he dashed by.
"Elspeth!" he shouted, praying to God she was all right, that he would reach her before they hurt her.
Through the silhouetted canopy of leaves, he saw the speeding falls of a woodland cascade. This was the roar he heard, the liquid plunge of the waterfall. Moonlight spilled over the veil of white, casting it in a shade of ethereal blue. At the base of the churning waters was a pool, its rippling surface spangled as though littered with countless scores of twinkling stars.
She was there, at the pool's nearest edge, having just come out of the water not an instant before he arrived. Her gaze was wide with alarm, her body nude and glistening. Time seemed to slow, distance falling away as his eyes registered reality.
Serena.
Not Elspeth.
He glimpsed only the briefest flash of smooth white skin--long legs, delicate hips, a slender torso curving beneath tantalizingly perfect breasts--before she reached for her cloak and quickly covered herself from his view. Water dripped from the ends of her unbound hair. Rivulets gilded in silver moonlight slid down her legs and onto her fine-boned, bare feet, making small puddles on the flat slab of rock on which she stood. She clutched the edges of her mantle tight with both hands, one between her breasts, the other at her midsection, but it was a futile gesture come too late. Her naked form was seared into his memory.
Serena.
Not his wife.
And she was not in any danger at all, but enjoying a private bath--until he had crashed through the trees like a madman, shouting his dead wife's name. Now Serena stared at him in anxious silence, as if uncertain what to say.
"What is it?" she asked him at last, but Rand could not speak.
She picked up her discarded chemise, having had no time to don it beneath her mantle. Holding the folded gown against her, she walked toward him, unafraid. Unaware of the tumult of feelings assailing him in that moment.
"I heard you call out for..." Her gaze was soft as her voice trailed off, no doubt to spare him the humiliation of explaining his frantic arrival. "Rand? Is anything...wrong?"
Aye, he answered to himself alone. Something was certainly wrong.
Forgetting the imagined peril that brought him there, or the ghostlike memories that haunted him since the night his keep was attacked, to his mind there could be nothing more wrong than the intensity of what he felt upon seeing Serena before him as she was now.
His body reacted swiftly, all that was male and animal in him waking at once to the tempting picture Serena presented, her dark hair twisted in wet silken ropes, her face glowing pale as milk, her curves tantalizingly apparent, torturously naked, beneath the paltry cover of her mantle. Rand's heart pounded heavily, stamping out the confusion that brought him to the pool and replacing it with a hunger he had no right to feel.
Heart of the Dove Page 11
