Emerald

by Lauren Royal

  "Wake up," she repeated, her voice muffled against his chest.

  Muttering an unintelligible response, he tightened his arms around her. Her heart lurched madly, and she sank into the embrace, molding herself against him, reveling in the feel of his hard planes against her softer curves.

  "Christ Jesus, you feel good." He buried his nose in her hair. "Smell good."

  His mouth trailed from her hair across her cheek, settling soft and warm on her lips.

  The kiss was a sensuous, persuasive caress, nothing like the unschooled pecks she'd received from village lads. When his tongue sneaked out to trace her bottom lip, she gasped.

  He bolted upright, and she flailed back, landing on the floor in a twist of night rail and limbs.

  Above her, he blinked himself awake and stared at her on the floor, his eyes glazed with confusion. "I'm sorry." He ran a hand through his hair, staring at his fingers when it apparently ended way before he thought it should. "Bloody hell, I…did I wake you? I'm sorry. I…what did I say? Did I knock you over?"

  She struggled to her feet. "Never mind."

  "I was dreaming."

  "I certainly hope so," she huffed, sitting primly on the edge of the bed. Though she was feeling anything but prim right now. It took everything she had to stiffen her spine. She felt boneless. "What were you dreaming about?"

  His heavy sigh pierced the darkness. He lay silent a moment before words tumbled out, soft and rushed.

  "It's always the same. I see Mary, little Mary, dying, lying still as stone. And then the scene changes, and I'm fighting. A duel, to the death. I run a man through with my sword. Not my enemy, but an innocent man. Accidentally. He dies." His voice hitched and dropped to a whisper. "I don't know who he is."

  She yearned to touch him, but instead clasped her hands together in a death grip. "How perfectly dreadful," she whispered back, all but reeling from the pain that radiated from him.

  "All the more dreadful because it's true." He reached a hand to pry hers apart and laced their fingers together on the coverlet. "In pursuing Geoffrey Gothard, I did kill an innocent man. Gothard is to blame, and the reason I cannot rest until justice is served." His eyes searched hers in the dim reddish light given off by the dying fire. "Would a woman like you fault me, Emerald MacCallum?"

  Her heart squeezed in sympathy. He was needing forgiveness—from himself, not her—but she couldn't resist the pleading in those sleep-heavy eyes.

  "Nay, a woman like Emerald wouldn't fault you," she whispered. "And neither would a woman like Cait."

  His fingers gave hers a wee squeeze. Some of the tension drained from his body, and he rolled to his side, his eyes sliding shut. "We should sleep," he murmured. "The sun will be waking us soon. Between the rain and your nap, we lost time yesterday—we must make it up in the morning."

  When his hand slid from hers, she felt a little pang of loss. He could be disagreeable and overbearing, but his was a tortured soul, and he could be kind, too. He'd been a rock of security down in the tunnel.

  Perhaps she should give him the benefit of the doubt and start over in the morning. She'd let him call her whatever he wanted. She was stuck with him, and she had to get to London; she might as well make the best of it.

  Besides, she couldn't remember ever before feeling quite like she had when Jason held her in his arms.

  Her lips still burning from his kiss, she crawled into her bed and sank back into exhausted sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Downstairs the next morning, Jason looked up from the news sheet he'd spread on the polished wooden table. "Coffee," he told Mrs. Twentyman. "And…"

  He hesitated.

  Emerald was still upstairs getting dressed. Though his sister drank chocolate with breakfast, a woman like Emerald might prefer coffee instead. But maybe…

  "Chocolate for the lady," he decided. As Mrs. Twentyman nodded and hurried off, he looked back down to the news sheet and began to scan the articles.

  England was receiving New Netherlands in North America in return for sugar-rich Surinam in South America, under terms reached at Breda. Remembering his brother Colin's secret participation in that treaty with the Dutch, Jason smiled to himself.

  A man named Jean Baptiste Denis had succeeded in transferring blood from a lamb into the vein of a boy. Amazing.

  And Christopher Wren had—

  He looked up when two men sat down at the adjacent table, already deep in conversation.

  The ruddy fellow leaned across the table conspiratorially. "Me cousin wrote from Cumberland to say that none other than the celebrated Emerald MacCallum is in the vicinity."

  She's not in Cumberland anymore, Jason thought with a smug smile.

  "Damn me, but how does your cousin know that?" The man's companion, a thin, pale fellow, shook his head. "This Emerald MacCallum is naught but a fetching rumor, to my mind."

  Just what Jason had once thought. He opened his mouth to clear up the confusion, but then thought better of it. No sense making it known he had Emerald in tow, he decided as a serving maid arrived with two steaming tankards.

  A woman like Emerald might be liable to attract an unwanted entourage.

  The first man hitched forward. "Me cousin talked to her."

  "Surely you jest."

  "God's own truth. He asked her why she does what she does." He ran a hand back through reddish-blond hair. "Woman's got two little children to feed, a boy and a girl, and her husband died, leaving her with a mountain of debt."

  "Emerald MacCallum is a mother?" the thin man mused.

  Emerald MacCallum is a mother? Jason mentally repeated, stunned.

  Could that be true? It might explain why she seemed sweeter and more nurturing than he'd expected of a woman who made her living tracking.

  But a mother?

  "He also said the woman's over six feet tall. Imagine that."

  Imagine that, Jason echoed in his head, stifling a laugh. Here she came now, meandering down the stairs, all five-feet-four-inches of her.

  Unless, as she kept claiming, she wasn't Emerald.

  His breath caught.

  But that was impossible. He'd found her, a Scottish woman dressed in men's clothing, holding a pistol on a wanted outlaw.

  As she came closer, the sight of her emerald amulet reassured him. Emerald was fast becoming legend, he decided, and folk always exaggerated legend. Look what they said about William Wallace…seven feet tall, indeed! As absurd as Emerald's being six feet, and likely off by a similar measure.

  "Me cousin said she was kind," the ruddy fellow added. "He was sufferin' from the sore throat, and she gave him some strange Scottish herbs and told him to boil them in wine and drink the lot down."

  Now, that sounded like the Emerald Jason knew. As she slid into the chair across from him, he resumed breathing.

  "Hungry?" Jason asked, sliding a tankard in front of Caithren. "I can reorder if you'd like, but I reckoned you'd fancy chocolate over coffee."

  She breathed deep of the sweet steam. "You reckoned well."

  "How is your ankle this morning?"

  "Much better." Cupping the warm drink in both hands, she sipped. "I borrowed your comb. I hope you don't mind."

  "Not at all." He raised his own tankard. "I paid Mrs. Twentyman for the night rail. Did you pack it like I told you to?"

  "Aye. Thank you for that. And for having my clothes laundered and pressed." She smoothed her hunter green skirt and grinned. "Even if they were tossed over that chair rather haphazardly."

  "My pleasure." His eyes danced with good humor. "It was the least I could do since I couldn't find you new ones." Sobering, he took a sip of Mrs. Twentyman's strong brew. "We can reach London in four days if we hurry. I've a mind to make it to Stamford by nightfall, but it won't be easy." He measured her thoughtfully for a moment. "I want to thank you."

  "For what?" Caithren couldn't imagine. So far as she could remember, she'd done little but complain.

  His lazy smile made her stomach do a
flip-flop. "Last night, when I—well…I didn't mean to wake you with my nightmare, but it was nice to have you there."

  She couldn't think of anything to say to that. It wasn't as though she'd had a choice. And it had been nice for her as well…if one could call those feelings nice.

  She wasn't sure how to describe them.

  Her tankard made a swishing noise when she twisted it back and forth. "Who's Mary?"

  "Mary?" He busied himself swallowing his coffee and folding the news sheet.

  "You spoke of a Mary in the night."

  "Ah." An enigmatic glint came into his eyes. "A girl I love."

  "Oh." She studied her chocolate.

  "A young girl, all of five years."

  "Oh!" The rush of relief took her by surprise. "What happened to her in your dream?"

  "It's what happened to her in real life that signifies. Geoffrey Gothard was intent on taking pleasure of her mother, and Mary got in the way. She still breathed when I left, but she hadn't awakened. The surgeon said she wouldn't last the week."

  "By all the saints."

  "Mary was an orphan, abandoned in London's Great Fire. My brother rescued her, and I found her a home in my village. With the childless Widow Bradford—her husband had died in a mill accident. No fault of mine, but I felt responsible."

  "Why?"

  "It was my mill," he said lightly.

  His mill? Jason was a miller? She wouldn't have thought so, but then she hadn't thought at all of how he might earn a living. She'd been too busy being furious with him.

  Or, since the wee hours of last night, wishing he'd kiss her again.

  To hide her suddenly burning face, she sipped.

  "Mary was bright-eyed and intelligent," Jason continued. "She loved to laugh. She used to follow me around the village, and sometimes I'd stop by the Bradford house and play with her—"

  Cait's tankard clunked to the table. "Play?" She tried to picture Jason on his knees with a small child.

  "Yes, play. Backgammon and the like. She's remarkably good with numbers."

  "You play backgammon?"

  "Why does that surprise you?"

  She shrugged. "I cannot picture you playing anything."

  "My family plays lots of games. The man you've seen…he's not me at all." He rubbed his smooth upper lip. "When Gothard came into my life—destroyed people I cared for…"

  "What of the mother?" She ran a fingertip around the rim of her tankard. "Do you love her, as well?"

  He drank leisurely, delaying his answer. "No, but I feel responsible for her." He lowered the tankard, then steepled his fingers and studied her across them. "Why do you care?"

  "I'm stuck with you, Jase. I'm trying to puzzle you out."

  A slow smile dawned on his face, and he hadn't winced at the nickname.

  She decided to push her luck a little. "Who do you love? Besides Mary?"

  "What I'd love right now is breakfast," he said cagily. "And here it comes."

  And that was that for now, she supposed as Mrs. Twentyman set a plate before each of them. But he wouldn't keep her in the dark now that she'd put her mind to figuring him out. He might think he understood women, but he'd never met the likes of her.

  With a secretive smile, she watched him begin to eat.

  He did love to eat.

  Now she just had to figure out the rest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  "Tell me another," Jason said later, after they'd been on the road for hours—miles and miles of flat road that snaked through rich but unchanging farmland. It made a monotonous view that begged for a diversion. Lucky for him, Emerald had proved quite diverting indeed, regaling him with Scottish tales all morning.

  "Can we not stop for a while?" She flexed her shoulders uncomfortably. "Is it far still to Grantham?"

  "Not too far. One more story." He tugged playfully on one of her plaits. "In the sea fairy story you mentioned mermaids. Do you know a mermaid's tale?"

  She thought for a moment. "Aye. But it's a sad one."

  "Tell me. By the time you finish we'll be there and stop for dinner."

  "Very well." She sighed and shifted on the saddle, a diversion in itself. "In the Land-under-Waves live the mermaids, which we call Maids-of-the-Wave. They are lovely to look at, and their voices are sweet and melodic. Their lower bodies are shaped like the fishes and glitter like salmon in the sun. They have long, coppery hair, and on beautiful days they sit on the rocks and comb it." She paused. "Unlike me, they have combs."

  Jason laughed. "I'll buy you a comb before the day is out, I promise. And a Chase promise is not given lightly."

  "I shall hold you to that."

  He didn't doubt it.

  "On moonlit nights," she continued, "the Maids-of-the-Wave sometimes take off their tails and don pale blue gowns. They can walk on the land then, and they're fairer than any land-dweller woman."

  "Not fairer than you," Jason protested.

  She shook her head. "If you're attempting to flatter me, I warn it will get you nowhere."

  "You cannot fault me for trying."

  "Do you want to hear the story?"

  "Did I interrupt?" Behind her back, he grinned. "Pray, do go on."

  She cleared her throat. "One moonlit night, a handsome young farmer was walking along the cliffs when he heard the most beautiful voices raised in song. He looked down to see a company of fair women, all dressed in pale blue, dancing in a circle around one who was the fairest of the fair. Then he noticed nearby a pile of scaled tails, still wet and glistening in the moonlight. He crept down the rocks, took one, and ran home with it."

  Absently, Jason trailed a finger along the part in Emerald's hair.

  She looked up and back, bumping her head on his chin in the process. "What do you think you're doing?"

  "Did I do something?" Whatever had possessed him to do that, anyway? Irritated, he clenched his fist. "What happened next?"

  Sending one more puzzled look over her shoulder, she faced forward. "When the mermaids saw the man stealing away, they screamed and ran for their tails. Hurriedly they put them on and jumped into the sea. All except one, the fairest of the fair. Her tail was missing."

  "This is sad," Jason remarked, failing to hide the smile in his voice.

  "Hold your tongue," she admonished. "Now, the farmer locked the tail in a box and hid the key. Before long, someone came to his door and knocked on it. He opened it to find the most beautiful woman in the land. Tears were pouring from her big blue eyes—"

  Interrupting herself, she looked up. "That's the tallest spire I've ever seen," she said, sounding awed.

  "St. Wulfram's," he told her.

  A sight to see, the church seemed a combination of every period of Gothic architecture mixed with traces of Norman and possibly Saxon work. She gawked until he turned onto Grantham's busy High Street, a distinguished row of modern gray stone buildings interspersed with the occasional old, half-timbered Tudor.

  "Now, to find a place to eat," Jason said. "In the meantime, please do continue your tale. You cannot leave me hanging on the precipice of such tragedy."

  "Very amusing. Now, where was I?" She fussed at her skirts. "Oooh, look at that angel."

  The carved stone angel was brightly gilded, giving it the look of solid gold. It perched over the gateway of an inn called—appropriately enough—The Angel.

  "Whose heads are those?" she asked.

  Jason halted and squinted up at the corbel above the winged cherub. "King Edward the third," he decided. "So that must be his queen, Philippa of Hainault."

  She nodded thoughtfully. "I see you're not completely uneducated." Before he could protest that thinly disguised insult, she added, "Edward was brutal to the Scots."

  "Everyone was brutal in those days," he pointed out. "Edward was after revenge for Bannockburn."

  "He got it," she said dryly.

  "So this is what comes of educating women," Jason mused as he guided Chiron through the archway and into the courtyard at the rea
r.

  He helped her down and led her inside. The Angel's taproom had a fine timbered ceiling and an enormous stone hearth, but no fire this summer day. Since the weather was warm, Jason opted for a cold dinner of bread, cheese, and small pickled onions. He carried it to where Emerald had seated herself by a stone vaulted window.

  "There are so many people," she marveled, watching them pass by on horses, in carriages, and on foot.

  "Wait till you see London." He sliced the thick slab of cheddar. "So, what happened after the woman showed up?"

  "Pardon?" She dragged her gaze from the window.

  He handed her a piece of bread topped with cheese. "The mermaid."

  "Oh. The Maid-of-the Wave." She took a bite. "Well, when we left her she was standing there in her blue dress, greeting. I mean, crying."

  "Greet means to cry?"

  "Aye. And she said, 'Won't you have pity and return my tail, so I can go home to the Land-under-Waves?'"

  "Let me guess." He popped an onion into his mouth. "He couldn't stand to see the woman cry, so he returned her tail."

  "Nay." Her eyes danced, looking turquoise today. "Maybe that's what you would do. But not this young farmer. He thought she was so gentle and beautiful that he couldn't bear to let her go. He told her, 'What I have I will keep. But shed no tears, fairest of the fair, for you may stay with me and become my bride.'"

  She paused for a sip of The Angel's strong ale.

  "Did she marry him?" Jason asked.

  Cocking her head, she studied him. "Would you marry someone who kept you forcibly?"

  He nearly choked on his own ale. An uneasy silence stretched between them until he wiped his mouth and said, "So, what happened?"

  "She was a daftie—a fool. She walked away and returned to the sea, but without her tail she couldn't join her people. Instead of standing up for herself, in the morning she went back and agreed to be the man's bride. She begged him to be kind and never tell anyone who she was or how she came to be there, and he promised."

  "And they lived happily ever after?"

  "Nay. I told you it was a sad story." A faraway look in her eyes, she touched her emerald. "All the people of the village loved the Maid-of-the-Wave, but the man kept his promise and didn't tell them where she came from. They believed she was a princess, brought to them by the fairies."