In the sunlight the far bank of the moat seemed to shimmer and blur. Gray rubbed her eyes, which had begun to ache from hours of steady work in the sun.
And as she watched, the haze twisted, then resolved into glittering images. Sunlight flashed off steel breastplates as a row of ghostly war-horses pounded along the far side of the moat. Banners twitched in a phantom wind, red silk swirling with intertwined dragons.
Far away Gray seemed to hear the stamp of great hooves, the harsh call of a leader to his men. Over the green land the spectral army stamped, armor ablaze, pennants snapping.
Moving a foot and more above the ground.
And as they thundered past in blazing splendor, the rose shrubs beside the moat seemed to straighten, to raise their branches and climb up into walls of blue-gray and green, their foliage twisted like some wild, living thing.
The leader raised a sword of steel and crystal, then cried a single word of command—low and rich, the remnant of some old, forgotten tongue.
Gray shivered and drew her hands across her watering eyes, even then unable to tear her gaze away.
As she watched, speechless, the foliage formed a living arch above the riders’ heads. Every stem burst into wild bloom—crimson, fuchsia and white scattered against a vivid sea of green.
She caught back a moan. Dropping her sketch pad, she stumbled to her feet and spun around, putting her back to the moat.
A dream. A mirage. Merely a trick of light and shadow, just as Marston had warned her…
Behind her came a wild, excited shout as the phantom company thundered onward, ever closer to the steps of the gatehouse, where the great oak door creaked open in welcome.
And then there was a new sound, a high female cry.
Shivering, Gray opened her eyes.
A woman ran from the opened gate, her long gown gleaming golden in the sunlight. The man at the front of the line let out a shout and shot forward, bending low and swinging her up before him on the saddle.
Suddenly Gray felt a savage pain tear at her heart, a raw anguish such as she had never known before.
Tears began to flood down her face. Her breath came sharp and ragged as she swayed beneath a flood of churning emotions beyond logic or comprehension.
“N-no! It—it’s a dream, all of it!”
Fingers trembling, Gray rubbed her eyes willing the madness to pass.
Overhead she heard the shrill cry of a kestrel. An errant gust of wind played through her long hair.
Slowly she opened her eyes.
The parade was gone, the bank empty. Only the roses moved now, their dense petals nodding sleepily on the far shore.
Gray fought back a sob, wrenched by a raw, ineffable longing. For what, she could not say.
Clenching her fingers, she stared at the sunny ground. “Way too much sun and fresh air for you, Gray Mackenzie, to say nothing of Marston’s excellent cooking! But now the hocus-pocus is over. It’s time to get back to work.”
With a sigh, she looked down at the sketchbook dangling from her fingers. At least this one was passable. But the sketch still lacked something.
She yawned, brushing a glistening strand of hair from her eyes.
Pondering the problem, she sank down against a sun-washed boulder and braced her back.
She stifled another yawn and smoothed the half-finished sheet. Yes, there was something decidedly troubling about that south tower jutting out over the moat. The proportions were all wrong…
And that was Gray’s last clear thought.
A moment later, her eyes blinked, then fluttered shut.
Her head eased back against the sun-warmed stone. Unnoticed, the charcoal pencil slipped from her fingers.
HE SLID OUT OF THE shimmering noonday heat, his face angular, brooding.
In taut silence he stood, an imposing figure in dark clothes that seemed ill-suited to his powerful frame. His face was bronzed, carved with deep lines. Smaller lines of laughter, care and concentration radiated out from the corners of his glittering eyes.
It was his eyes that moved now, hooded yet keen, blazing from slate-gray depths. They flowed over the woman before him, anger and resentment warring with even more primitive emotions.
Why are you here? It was a silent shout of frustration. Of confusion. Of something that bordered on pain.
And Adrian Draycott was not used to being confused about anything.
Another test? he asked himself, as the wind tossed silky auburn strands about her shoulders.
Damn and blast, he had not known it could be so troubling, so personal, so intensely physical to return this way!
Frowning, Adrian stared down at his arms and legs, slanting a look of particular disgust at his dusty shoes.
By heaven, there was no dignity in such clothes! No beauty. No grace whatsoever.
But your velvets and lace were put down centuries ago. Right now they lie hidden in dusty, forgotten chests, fallen to threads and fragments.
Slowly Adrian dragged a hand through his long black hair. Yes, this new age, this garish, clamorous age, called for different clothes and he must adopt them or withdraw.
Suddenly a sleek shadow loomed at his feet, long tail at witch.
“What of the danger, old friend?” he asked of the animal beside him.
The cat meowed softly, his amber eyes never leaving Adrian’s face.
“So bad as that?” For a moment, rage coursed through the abbey’s dark-clad guardian. If only he could see more clearly! In the past, he had always been able to summon up at least some intuition of the dangers that threatened his beloved home.
But not now. Not with her on Draycott lands.
With her before him, Adrian found he couldn’t think normally at all. All he could do was feel. All he could do was drown in the sweet scent of her, in the silver heat that spiraled through him as he watched the soft rise and fall of her breasts.
Her hair was really quite extraordinary, he thought, fighting an urge to run his hand along its silken length. In the sunlight the auburn strands flashed in a thousand shades of red and bronze.
The wind caught a thick curl and tossed it playfully about her cheek. Adrian felt a sharp prick of jealousy that he could not do the same, burying his fingers in those gleaming depths.
His hands curled into fists as he was rocked by a knifelike desire. Bone by bone, it slammed down his spine, from his head to his feet.
He stumbled backward, breathless, fighting for control.
Who was this woman? Why did she affect him so? And what, in the name of heaven, was he doing here beside her, with a physical ache that threatened to burst his tenuous control any second?
Only inches away, the subject of these ruminations shifted. Sighing, she turned her head. Her fingers brushed the sun-warmed stone.
As he stared down at her, Adrian felt a need too long suppressed explode to life.
Dear God, he had never expected, never imagined—
He caught his hand just as it rose to comb through her hair. To skim the perfect curve of her cheek.
Stay clear! he warned himself grimly, even while his fingers trembled at the effort. Look, advise—assist, even. But she is not for you to touch. For, like the rose, she bears fierce thorns.
Even for a between-worlds creature like yourself.
But still, he stared—and still, he dreamed, pondering the sleeping face before him, luminous in all its innocence and peace.
For a moment, regret clung to him, as raw as a winter wind. His eyes narrowed, dark with regret and a thousand shattered dreams. He shivered, feeling images that were too faint to be called memories press at his head.
But when he tried to seize them, they vanished like thistledown on the wind.
At that moment Adrian’s eyes fell to the sketch pad balanced precariously on Gray’s knees. An odd, sad smile twisted his hard lips.
“So you love my abbey, don’t you, Gray Mackenzie?” His voice was carried in the whisper of the wind, in the drone of the passing bees a
nd the murmur of the moat.
Already he was fading. He could feel the telltale lightening, the not quite painful tingle at wrist and ankle.
Surely not so soon?
He lifted his head to the sun, closed his eyes and centered his thoughts.
Slowly the tingling faded. With a faint sigh, he knelt to study Gray’s sketch more intently.
You’ve come close, woman. Perhaps too close.
Something about the sketch left him distinctly uncomfortable—naked and vulnerable. Perhaps it was because no one had ever before come so close to capturing the abbey’s heart as she had just done.
And in a very real sense, Adrian Draycott knew that the abbey’s heart was his heart.
Yes, you’re good, Gray Mackenzie. You’re more than good.
Nearly as skillful as you are innocent and beautiful, in fact. But that stunning innocence of yours is deadly. Already, it captures me, entraps me, until I can think of nothing else but you.
Is that what you’ve come here for? To threaten every bloody thing I’ve ever loved and valued and fought to protect?
Adrian expected no answer, of course. But as he studied the hot blaze of the sun in her hair, he had the raw certainty that the next hours would bring danger—and a testing such as he had never known before.
Yet even with that knowledge, he could not seem to pull his eyes away.
Catching himself with a muffled curse, Adrian forced himself to look away. As he did so, he saw Gray’s rendering of the south tower. It was slightly off, he realized. The tower’s curve should have been broader and the crenels deeper. The moat, too, was off, twisting to the right where it should have veered slightly toward the left…
A wrenching pain exploded up his spine. The day flashed like lightning before his eyes. He felt reality heave and twist, then slowly begin to fade.
Or perhaps to return.
It was all a question of perspective, after all.
Slowly he bent down, his face lined with pain as he struggled to finish one last task before his vision faded and the darkness reclaimed him.
Grimacing, he shoved the charcoal pencil into Gray’s fingers, circled her hand and began to draw.
THE SUN POURED like warm honey onto Gray’s closed eyelids. She swept a hair from her eyes and stretched dreamily.
Her eyes finally opened. She frowned, looking down and searching for her pencil. Everything was blurred, her head throbbing.
Too much sun, she thought, rubbing her stiff neck, feeling as if she’d been asleep for a hundred years.
Eight hundred years, more like.
Now where had that thought come from? she wondered. And then she froze, recalling the strange images she had seen across the moat. Wide-eyed, she studied the far bank, recalling her dream of the night before.
Chill darkness lit by a score of beacon fires.
Danger on every side.
She gasped. Could the two things be somehow related?
Her fingers tensed and a moment later, the charcoal pencil in her hand snapped cleanly in two.
Dear Lord, what was happening to her here? What was it about this beautiful, crazy place that affected her so?
A gust of wind eddied up from the moat and tugged at the corner of her sketch pad. Slowly the paper rose. Whispering softly, it fell open to her last sketch.
At least it had been her sketch. But no longer. Now it showed the mark of a stranger’s powerful hand.
A shiver worked through Gray as she stared down into a landscape of dreams, captured in exquisite, inspired strokes such as she had never seen before in all her years of work and study.
At that moment, Gray realized she was looking down into a distant age and a world long gone. Into a valiant time, when the world rang to the cries of heroes and magic was commonplace. Each stroke captured the power of that distant era, suggesting but never quite revealing whence the magic sprung.
More dreams?
She shivered, studying the proud walls sketched upon the paper. Wrought with strength, they were yet insubstantial, their edges softened and blurred. Like poured emotion, like feeling made tangible, they stood with all their textures dreamlike and hazy.
And at the same time stunningly real.
The sketch was utterly different from her own work, which was almost superrealistic. In fact, the sketch was totally unlike any work Gray had ever seen before.
And it was absolutely beautiful, almost alive somehow, a dream spun of charcoal, patience, and love. A love so strong that Gray could almost touch it.
Dazed, she studied the sketch, understanding none of it. And something told her the longer she stayed in this ancient place, the less she would understand it.
Then Gray saw the other sheet. A mere scrap, it had been torn from her sketch pad and tucked into the pocket of her flowered skirt. The charcoal lettering was as bold and restless as the sketch of the abbey.
She shivered as she read the two scrawled lines.
Tonight at midnight. By the witch’s pool.
If you dare.
CHAPTER FOUR
GRAY’S BREATH CAUGHT. Raw indignation swept over her.
But in its wake came a fierce, forbidden curiosity.
She wouldn’t dream of going, of course. There could be no question of that. She had far too many other things on her mind to worry about an insolent caretaker with an attitude problem and a dislike for women who didn’t know their place.
Which for him probably meant the kitchen or the bedroom.
At that thought her cheeks flared with furious color.
Muttering angrily, she slapped open a new page, determined to complete her quota of sketches before the best of the sunlight was gone.
Yet her fingers, as she smoothed down that last, odd sketch, were surprisingly gentle.
“WHERE IS THE WITCH’S POOL?”
To Gray’s utter horror, the words burst from her lips the instant Marston finished pouring tea after dinner. Cursing silently, she glared down at her rose-strewn porcelain cup.
Horrified.
Infuriated.
But most of all gripped by curiosity as she waited for Marston’s answer.
Abruptly, she shook her head, her cheeks aflame. “Never mind. I can’t imagine why—” Her fingers tensed on the base of her teacup. “It—it doesn’t matter.”
Of course it didn’t matter! She wasn’t about to go anywhere tonight!
“The witch’s pool.” Marston straightened slowly, his brow creased. “Ah, now there’s a term I’ve not heard in years. Let me think.” His expression grew distant. “Down on the far side of the moat, it is, Miss Gray. Spring-fed and surrounded by thick reeds. A strange place, sure enough. Water bubbles up crystal-clear there, warm all year round. The problem is that sometimes a swan gets caught beyond the reeds and can’t get back out. I hear them crying there sometimes, in the silence of the night. Several times I’ve gone down to carry them back to the moat, but they never seem to want to go. The crazy things just struggle back as if they’re searching for something.”
The butler folded and refolded a damask napkin, his eyes fixed on the twilight shadows beyond the dining-room window. “Aye, it’s a strange place, sure enough. Some say it’s a haunted place. Legend has it that long ago a thane’s wife, distraught and despondent after her husband’s long absence, was found drowned there.”
Gray swallowed. Suddenly she was finding it difficult to breathe.
Somewhere in the house a clock chimed seven o’clock. Marston studied her curiously. “But why were you asking, miss? You’re not going to work down there, are you? I can’t say as I’d advise that, for it’s an odd sort of place. And what with the mist always drifting about, you could find yourself lost before you knew it.”
Lost? Gray felt as if she were hopelessly lost already!
Somehow she managed a lopsided smile. “No, I won’t be working down there, Marston. I was just…curious. Kacey must have mentioned the pool in one of her letters.”
“I see. Will
you have more tea?”
Gray shook her head. Speech was entirely beyond her. Dear God, what was happening to her in this strange place?
She started, realizing Marston was speaking to her again.
“…mousse. Or maybe some chocolate soufflé, if you’d prefer.”
She shook her head, feeling panic wash over her. Dear God, she could feel all the old vulnerability, all the raw, choking helplessness creep over her again. Only now it was worse, because now she wondered if her very sanity was in question.
“…quite all right? Shall I call a doctor?”
Around her the air seemed to hum and shiver, light and sound swirling together in odd, churning waves. And with it came the fear, like cold fingers inching down her spine.
“No!” In a sharp burst of movement, Gray tossed down her napkin and jerked to her feet, her hands clenched to keep them from trembling. “No, everything was lovely, Marston. Thank you s-so much. I’m—I’m afraid I had a bit too much sun this afternoon, though. I’d better make an early night of it.”
Once again the keen sideways glance, the slightly pursed lips. “Of course…” The kind voice drifted in and out of her hearing. “…hotter than you think, no doubt…better in the morning…good night’s sleep.”
But as Gray walked through the quiet courtyard and over the narrow stone bridge to the gatehouse, she had a sharp sense of purple shadows pressing close, menacing somehow.
And with them came an inexplicable sense of loneliness, of bitter regret and utter fatedness.
Almost as if the ancient abbey had been merely sleeping, merely waiting, guarding its dark secrets until the day she returned.
SHE WOULDN’T GO, of course.
Gray squared her shoulders.
She wasn’t about to be goaded and manipulated. Not again. She had learned that lesson too well with Matt.
And the first thing she would do to prove it would be to rip up the note. Then, after a long hot bath, she’d go straight to sleep.
Ten minutes later, steam twisted around Gray’s head. Lulled by the warm water, she shifted idly, stirring the crystal waters and watching mist rise in frothy white plumes.
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