by Shari Anton
True to his word, Darian found a lovely inn in Rochester, and Emma eyed the bed in the private room with both gratitude and trepidation.
Tonight might well be her last night with Darian, and she could barely look at him for fear of bursting into tears.
This morn, they’d caught a ferry easily enough and found Perrin’s horse right where it should be. The ride to Rochester hadn’t proven a strain, except for growing distance between them. They’d ridden for leagues pressed close together with barely a word spoken between them.
Darian was still very quiet as he lit the charcoal in the brazier, and Emma struggled to find something to say to lighten the mood. If this was her last night with Darian, she wanted to spend it in laughter and loving, not pondering what she’d done wrong.
“Perhaps we should spend an added night on our journey to Canterbury. You are becoming more proficient at choosing inns.”
With the brazier beginning to glow, he rose up slowly, a soft smile on his face. “Am I? Good, because I have been giving thought to... after. I am assuming you do not wish to stay in Canterbury. Where do you want to go?”
“Home.”
The answer came out without thought, and Emma realized why. ’Twas truly her only safe haven, a place of comfort if not serenity. Among people who loved her. And if the king wished her to reside somewhere else, then he could damn well take time from the war to deal with her.
And joy of joys, she couldn’t possibly travel all that way on her own. She needed an escort, and just as she’d reasoned at Hadone that ’twas sensible to enlist Darian’s aid in getting to Bledloe Abbey, so did that reasoning seem sensible now.
“Would you be willing to take me to Camelen?” “Certes.”
Wonderful! Tonight would not be her last night with Darian, no matter what happened in Canterbury, which brightened her spirits considerably. Except for one thing.
“Must we go through London?”
He shook his head emphatically. “Nay. We can go to Dover and take a ship to Southampton—unless being on the water would be overly taxing for you.”
“Better I risk a vision than again pass by Winchester Palace. But what of you... after? Will you return to Earl William’s service?”
He sat down on the bed, his clasped hands dangling between his knees. “ ’Tis all I know how to do, though ’twill not be the same as before. I damaged William’s faith in me, and I am not sure I can regain it.”
Knowing how much he admired William, and how much the earl had done for Darian over the years, Emma understood his sorrow. She sat down next to him on the bed, not sure if he needed compassion or a distraction.
She decided on the latter. “Have you given thought to doing something else?”
“Such as?”
Emma shrugged a shoulder, having no suggestion in mind. “What do mercenaries do when they are no longer mercenaries?”
He gazed off into the distance, beyond the walls of the inn. “Thomas wants to purchase land in Kent, build a cottage, and find himself a plump wife to cook his meals and share his bed. Philip thinks that a good plan, too, only he would go back to Flanders.”
A wife and cottage. She swallowed hard against the heartbreak that someday a very fortunate woman might share Darian’s life until death did they part. Perhaps in Flanders.
“Will you go back to Flanders?”
“There is naught for me in Flanders anymore. But I may have no choice when the war is over. The Flemish in England are here by the king’s leave. When we are no longer needed for his army, he may well send us all home. ’Twould certainly make Bishop Henry happy, and I can think of few others who would miss us.”
Bishop Henry could go to the devil!
“I would miss you!”
He stared at her hard, setting her insides to churning and her heart to thumping.
“How much would you miss me?”
“Very much.”
“But not enough to remain married to me.”
Her thumping heart ached so much, the tears began to flow. She’d refused him once, with good reason, and those reasons hadn’t changed. He sought to protect her from the king’s machinations, out of a sense of duty. Not because he wanted her as his wife.
“Oh, Darian, if only—”
He put a finger on her lips, hushing her refusal. “When Thomas and Philip spoke of cottages and wives, I began thinking the arrangement sounded wonderful, but only if you were the wife standing in the doorway to welcome me home. I love you, Emma, and would never ask you to—”
Emma grabbed his hand and pulled it away from her mouth, her tears falling faster now, but for a joy-filled reason!
Darian loved her! ’Twas all she’d needed to hear. “Ask,” she commanded.
“But you are a princess. A cottage would never do—” “A cottage would do me fine!” How could the man be so stubborn! “Have pity, Darian! I love you, too! Ask!”
His eyes went wide with surprise, and the hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You do? You love me?”
Emma never got the chance to answer. Darian’s mouth possessed hers, his kiss a mix of elation and demand. They fell onto the mattress and celebrated with kiss after kiss, leaving Emma breathless and dizzy.
“This is not wise,” Darian said with no conviction in his tone, only relief. “Princesses do not marry commoners.”
“Since this one already did, I see no reason to discuss it further. We have dealt well enough together so far, have we not?”
His smile spread wider. Mischief glinted in his eyes. “In some ways, better than others,” he teased.
“In one way, best of all. You still have not asked.”
In a movement quick and lithe, Darian rose from the bed and shucked his tunic.
Emma held her breath as her vision became reality. Naked from the waist up, his smile glorious, Darian held out his hand in invitation, just as she’d envisioned him doing so many years ago.
“Will you be my wife, Emma? Share my life, whatever that life might be?”
Emma took Darian’s hand and joyously stepped into the vision she’d begun to doubt would ever happen. She hadn’t understood his declaration of love had to come first. With understanding came a serenity and ecstasy so sublime her eyes filled with tears.
“Gladly, my lord. I know not what that life might be, but I cannot envision my life without you.”
“Pray do not ever try.”
“Never,” she promised, and sealed their fate with a kiss.
Epilogue
The decision to visit Camelen was easily made. The decision to tell Gwendolyn about her visions and how badly she’d handled them had caused Emma many a sleepless night—without reason, as it turned out.
Gwendolyn had taken the news very well, indeed, and didn’t seem upset over the burdens she’d assumed whenever Emma suffered one of her headaches.
But now, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Gwendolyn on the edge of the bed in the lord’s bedchamber, Emma learned she wasn’t the only sister who had kept secrets from childhood on.
In her newly ring-bedecked hand, Emma held a scroll tied with a scarlet ribbon, and in the other hand rested a trefoil-shaped gold pendant. Both objects she’d seen in her visions. In one vision they’d sat on a table. In the other a little girl, who Emma knew would be Gwen’s daughter, had worn the pendant.
Emma glanced at her sister, whose pregnancy was now beginning to show, and who glowed with happiness in her marriage to Alberic and with the impending birth. Emma hadn’t yet decided whether to tell Gwen she would give birth to a daughter.
The decision could wait. First Emma wanted to know why Gwendolyn hadn’t told her about these ancient artifacts and of their significance.
“Mother gave these to you before she died?”
Gwen nodded. “Hours before, with little explanation of their power and no instruction on their use. With Alberic’s help, I have since learned how the magic works.”
“Magic?”
With bar
ely a pause for breath, Gwendolyn told Emma of the ancient spell written on the parchment. Of the ring Alberic now wore—which apparently couldn’t be removed from his hand—and the trefoil pendant, both necessary to the working of the spell.
A spell handed down through the ages from mother to daughter to granddaughter in an unbroken line of matriarchal inheritance to the descendants of Pendragon. A spell entrusted to them by Merlin the Sorcerer. A spell to recall King Arthur from Avalon at the time of England’s most dire need.
Emma gaped at Gwendolyn. “Recall King Arthur?” Gwen sighed. “I know this must sound impossible, but I swear, Emma, it is true. Unroll the scroll and tell me what you see.”
Emma saw words she couldn’t read, though they looked oddly familiar.
“Ancient Welsh, perhaps?”
Gwen smiled. “Then you see the same language I do, perhaps because we are sisters and Mother could have passed the scroll to either of us. When Alberic looks at the scroll, he sees mostly Welsh. Rhys the Bard sees the language of the Moors. So you see, there are guards in place so no one can read the spell who is not meant to.”
It took Emma a moment to absorb that the words on the scroll appeared in different languages to different people.
“Can you read it?”
“A few words only. As can Alberic. The phrases he can read appear to him in Norman French.”
Emma stared at the scroll. “I see no Norman French.” Gwendolyn laughed lightly. “Because you are not meant to read the spell, Emma. I am, as will my daughter after me. I always wondered why Mother gave the artifacts to me, not you. Perhaps because you were already burdened with the visions?”
Which explained much, especially the vision of Gwen’s daughter wearing the trefoil pendant. Emma suddenly knew what she was supposed to tell her sister, though she didn’t know why, or if it was important for Gwen to know.
’Struth, now that Emma had decided to accept future visions she couldn’t avoid, those from the past became clearer, their meaning understandable. Sweet mercy, she’d spent so many wasted days in bed with headaches she shouldn’t have suffered.
“You must give your daughter the pendant when she is very young, Gwen.”
“I intend to. I shall also explain both the spell and the responsibility to keep it secret and safe. I do not want her to suffer the torments of doubt and confusion I did.”
Emma knew well how doubt and confusion tormented the mind and hurt the heart. Visions had caused Emma’s torment; ancient magic had caused Gwendolyn’s. And they’d suffered alone because their mother had told both of them to keep silent.
Emma shook her head at their blind obedience. “We should have shared our secrets earlier. Neither of us would have suffered so much if we had talked of our fears.”
“I tried to talk to Father about mine, but it hurt him so much to speak of Mother that I ceased.”
“After Mother died, I could not bring myself to tell him I had envisioned her death.” Emma sighed. “Ah, Gwen, how young and hopeless we were.”
Gwen took the scroll and pendant and placed them in their velvet pouch. “Perhaps we were, but no longer. I am happy and content.” She winked. “I believe you are, too. Your Darian is both handsome and attentive. And our husbands seem to get on well. I would say that is cause for celebration.”
So would Emma, if not for Nicole.
“Does it seem selfish for us to celebrate our happiness when Nicole still lingers in Bledloe Abbey?”
Gwen frowned. “Did you not say she seemed satisfied to reside with the nuns for a time?”
Until the time came when the king decided on the fate of his ward, Nicole would be safe and well cared for at Bledloe Abbey. But Emma had another concern.
“Aye, so she seems. Gwen, you are the guardian of an ancient, magical spell. I have visions, which some would deem magical. ’Twould be reasonable to expect Nicole to possess some magical quality, too, would it not?”
Gwen thought that over. “I should think Nicole would have told one of us if she experienced something she deemed unusual.”
“Perhaps not. We kept our secrets from each other for a very long time.”
“From each other, but not from our parents, who then ordered us to keep our secrets. You by Mother, me by Father. Would Nicole have told Father if she experienced oddities? Or perhaps William?”
Gwen’s brow scrunched. “I doubt she told Father. But our brother?” She shrugged. “Nicole followed William around like a devoted pup, and he doted on her. ’Tis possible, I suppose. Do you believe we should ask Nicole?”
Emma didn’t know if, by asking, she would be doing the girl a disservice or not.
“Perhaps we should wait to see if Nicole brings up the subject, and then decide how to deal with it.” Emma tossed a hand in the air, remembering how they’d futilely worried over the tone of Nicole’s letters. “And perhaps we again worry over naught. ’Twould not be the first time!”
A rap on the door preceded Alberic’s entrance into the bedchamber, Darian behind him, his smile bright. Oh, how she loved his smile!
Alberic tossed an arm over Gwendolyn’s shoulders. “You two have been up here since supper, shamefully neglecting your husbands, who have decided such conduct must cease.”
Gwendolyn beamed at her husband’s teasing. “Poor dears.”
Emma crossed the room to take Darian’s upraised hand. “We did not mean to neglect you, merely lost all sense of time while we talked.”
“So we assumed,” Darian said. “Finished?”
Not hardly, but in the days ahead, she would have time for more such talks with Gwendolyn while Darian went to speak to Earl William at Wallingford. Having decided to leave the earl’s service, Darian felt honor-bound to inform the earl himself.
“For now.”
“Then we bid thee good night, my lord, my lady.” Darian pulled her out into the passageway and closed the bedchamber door behind them. A few steps away was the bedchamber Emma, Gwendolyn, and Nicole had once shared, which she and Darian would occupy for one more night before Darian left on the morn.
His packed satchel lay on the floor at the foot of the bed. His cloak hung on a peg near the door. Emma intended to take all night to say fare thee well.
Her thumb glided along the gold band she’d quickly become accustomed to wearing. It suited her perfectly, as did the man who’d given it to her. She would miss Darian, but assured of his love and their commitment to each other, she couldn’t begrudge him a few days apart.
“You neglected to tell me of the extent of your dowry.” Darian’s comment caught her off guard.
“Is that what you and Alberic talked about?” “ ’Twould seem my princess is not without means.” Good to hear!
“I did not tell you because I was not sure Alberic would honor my father’s intentions. Alberic is willing to give up a portion of Camelen?”
With a gleam in his eyes, Darian placed his warm palms against her cheeks. “Alberic and I came to a bargain. In return for my oaths of fealty and homage, he grants your dowry. The portion I am interested in is a holding he speaks of not far south of here. Apparently the manor house is large enough to hold us, several children, and a servant or two besides.”
Emma grasped fistfuls of his tunic, able to envision them there without the aid of a pool of water. “I know the place, and the manor is as lovely as anywhere in the kingdom. But Darian, be very sure you wish to settle in one place, or to serve Alberic as his vassal. I should hate for you to one day realize such a life was not what you desire.”
He lowered his head until their foreheads touched. “Alberic is a decent, honorable man I can serve in good conscience. Becoming his vassal will be no hardship whatever. Granted, for most of my life, I vowed I would never want a home or family for fear of losing all. Then I met you, and now I can think of nothing I want more. If you want something different, tell me now.”
“I want for you to be happy in your choice.”
“And I you.”
She’d sealed her fate when she refused to allow a king to hang a mercenary, and what an excellent choice that had been.
“Then I say we spend the rest of the night on the matter of producing children to fill our manor.”
And so they did.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SHARI ANTON’s secretarial career ended when she took a creative writing class and found she possessed some talent for writing fiction. The author of several highly acclaimed historical novels, she now works in her home office, where she can take unlimited coffee breaks. Shari and her husband live in southeastern Wisconsin, where they have two grown children and do their best to spoil their two adorable little grandsons. You can write to her at P.O. Box 510611, New Berlin, WI 53151-0611, or visit her Web site at www.sharianton.com.
THE MAGIC
DOESN’T STOP HERE!
Turn the page
for a preview of
Shari Anton’s next novel,
Sunset Magic
the third book in her
enchanting trilogy.
Available in mass market Fall 2007.
Chapter One
Wales, August 1153
Rhodri ap Dafydd skillfully wielded two weapons in the service of Connor ap Maelgwn, chieftain of
Glenvair.
During supper, to lift the gloom wrought by the latest bad news from England, Rhodri had played his harp and sung the praises of the Welsh princes who, after years of fighting, had driven most of the Anglo-Normans from Welsh lands.
Tonight, he sat cross-legged on the hard-packed earthen floor, within the central fire pit’s flickering glow, sliding a whetstone along the edge of his sword, preparing for another battle he hoped wouldn’t come.
Connor paced a path in the dirt and tapped the rolled parchment containing the bad news against his leg. “If it is true that King Stephen’s heir is dead, he may succumb to his magnate’s pleas to bargain for peace. England at peace always means trouble for Wales. Better they should continue to fight amongst themselves and leave us be.”
