by Webb, Peggy
He supposed faulty judgment was part of being a woman, but he didn't correct her. Telling her the truth would only complicate an already impossible situation.
"Lydia, my plan to send you home was not personal. I had your best interests at heart, just as I do now. You will not, you cannot leave my castle. Doing so would not only be foolish, it would seal your doom."
"Gee, I didn't know you cared."
The slight tremor in her voice belied her flippant remark. Suddenly he was trapped in the bright beam of her blue eyes, and the stillness in the room was absolute. Truth whispered through his mind and settled in his heart, heavy as the stone that bore Excalibur.
He stood up. "You will treat my castle as your own. Shadow will continue to guard and protect you, but you are free within the confines of wisdom."
She sucked in a sharp breath, but she didn't protest.
"You're an intelligent woman, Lydia. You can keep your possessions. All of them. But you must be wise and discreet in their use."
"Dragon . . . Thank you." She drew a deep, trembling breath. "I'll find a way to earn my keep. I won't be a burden to you."
"As you wish."
He left her swiftly, his intent to gain the door without looking back. But the pull of her was too great
She was still on the bed, head high, back stiff with purpose.
"Lydia ... I care."
He was halfway through the door when she called out, "Dragon, wait.
"I never wanted to leave," she said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lancelot returned with Guinevere, and a festive air permeated Camelot. An enormous Maypole was set up on the commons near the king's castle, and campsites sprang up like mushrooms along the road. Everybody would join in the wedding celebration of their beloved king, from the lowliest peasant to the wealthiest baron.
Dragon's castle bustled with preparation and excitement. Lydia, who had learned every hideaway in the castle in the week since Dragon's ill-fated attempt to send her home, escaped to the rose garden.
Kneeling, she began to fill her apron with red roses.
"Laird said I might find you hiding here."
Dragon's boots were planted wide in what Lydia called his take no prisoners stance. She tipped her head back so she could read his expression. But it was blank. Dragon had been like that all week, so perfectly controlled, so remote that she might as well have been a stranger.
"I'm not hiding."
Dragon let her lie slide. "We leave for Arthur's castle tomorrow."
"Bon voyage."
Dragon's lips twitched. God, how she'd missed his smile.
"You're going with me."
She stood up and in her excitement spilled her roses. They scattered around her like drops of blood. "You mean I'm going to get to see the wedding of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere?"
"Yes. Everyone in Camelot is going. It would not be safe to leave you here alone."
"Me! At the wedding of Arthur and Guinevere. I can't believe it." She did an impromptu jig around the roses, then suddenly stopped. "What will I wear?"
Dragon roared with laughter.
"That's not funny. Every woman in Camelot will be wearing her best finery."
"And so will you."
He took her hand and led her inside. On her bed was the dress every woman dreams about, the bodice encrusted with jewels, the skirt like spun silver. Beside it lay shoes cloaked in cloudlike white fur and covered with jewels sparkling in the sun that filtered through the window.
The dress was a magnificent addition to her already burgeoning wardrobe. Every morning when she awoke there was yet another exquisite silk dress spread at the foot of her bed.
"Where did you get all these beautiful clothes?"
"They belonged to my sister." Even if he hadn't used past tense, his face told its own story. She wasn't about to ask intrusive private questions, but Dragon explained. "She died in childbirth. The babe too. Camelot was fighting the French at that time, and Wilfred volunteered for the front lines. They are buried side by side."
Strange to think of Dragon as having family. It made him more real somehow, and not merely a romantic figure of myth and legend.
Lydia cupped his face. "I'm sorry."
They froze, and the moment became a prism, reflecting all the feelings that colored them. Lydia lost her breath, and, looking into Dragon's eyes, she almost drowned.
She moved her fingertips softly over his face, tracing the contours of love, trying to absorb him through her skin.
He threaded his fingers through her hair, and they became carved images of themselves, not Lydia and Dragon from different centuries, but man and woman united by the most powerful bond on earth.
Somewhere in the distance bells rang out from the tower of the abbey, and the sun tracked a path across the cool stone floor. Nothing moved, not even Shadow. Nothing stirred, not a breeze, not even a breath.
He stepped closer, close enough to kiss, and then the chasm of the centuries yawned between them. Dragon stepped back, breaking the spell, and Lydia wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly chilly.
"Be ready to leave at sunup."
He departed as abruptly as he had come, and Lydia stood among the scattered jewels, wondering how a man and a woman could be so close and yet each feel so alone.
Though the gulf of centuries separated them, Dragon had erected other barriers, equally impossible to cross. Lydia was truly trapped, a woman in limbo, belonging neither to her world nor to his.
She would be an outsider at the royal wedding, just as she was an outsider at Dragon's castle. She'd tried to make herself useful, but all she'd done was make his staff uncomfortable. A woman in silk dresses didn't belong in the kitchen. The only place she'd been comfortable was in the stables. Though the stable boys wouldn't let her do anything, at least they let her hang around and ask questions.
Lydia sat on the bed among her borrowed finery. Dragon's sister's dress. Where had she worn it? How old had she been when she died? And would she and the baby have lived if they'd had the benefit of twentieth- century medicine?
Probably.
A chill ran through Lydia. She'd been so caught up in the romance of Camelot that she'd forgotten the horrors of living without things she'd always taken for granted. Doctors. Hospitals. Penicillin.
Fingering the fine fabric of the dress, she pictured Dragon's sister lying in a pool of her own blood. So young. Too young to die.
Was that the only family he had? And what of Lydia's family? What was her mother doing now?
When Lydia traveled back in time, what had happened in California, in Mississippi?
Was time standing still? Did the clocks stop ticking, the faucets stop dripping, the automatic coffeemakers stop perking?
A desire to know overwhelmed her. A desire to see her mother became a pain she bore in the middle of her chest. Sitting on the edge of the bed filled with longing, Lydia thoughtlessly twisted the ring on her finger.
Wind rushed through the room, and she was sucked into the center of a powerful vortex, spinning, twisting, floating. Then as gentle as a feather she was set down. Her feet touched grass. She smelled the gardenia that bloomed by her mother's front porch. She heard crickets chirping in the blackjack oak in the front yard.
Rachel lay sleeping, her hair in pink foam curlers, her hand under her cheek, her face to the window.
"Mother," Lydia said, but Rachel didn't hear her.
Lydia let herself in the front door, and the soft glow from the night-light her mother always kept burning fell over her. With a shock she saw she was wearing a crimson silk dress. Her mother must not awaken, must not see her in medieval garb.
Lydia tiptoed through the house, touching the shiny surface of the antique dining room table, a doily crocheted by her grandmother, a picture of Rachel on her wedding day, a china dog Rachel had said Lydia's daddy sent on her fifth birthday.
She stepped into a path of moonlight, and the ruby eyes of the dragon on her finger glo
wed like hot coals. And suddenly Lydia knew. It was the ring that whirled her through time. But not the ring alone, for when she first came to Camelot she'd stood in Dragon's bedchamber, twisting and turning the silver dragon.
The catalyst was desire. Turning tie ring stirred up the magical elements that carried her through time, but it was Lydia's desire that added fuel for liftoff. Thinking back to the night she'd become a time traveler, she remembered how she'd felt reading about the love of Lancelot and Guinevere. She'd been by turns envious, moved to tears, and filled with longing.
Stung by Trent's rejection, transplanted to another state, wondering about her future, she'd been overwhelmed by her aloneness.
Dragon's face floated across her mind, and she felt his hand in her hair. Lydia sank to her knees overwhelmed once more, not by her sense of being one against the world but by her desire to be part of a pair. Lydia and Dragon. Together forever. In whichever world the fates tossed them.
Twisting the ring and wishing, she transcended time and space. The oceans were a mere dot of turquoise in the corner of her eye, the continents a flash of green and brown. History was a movie reel, not on fast forward but spinning backward.
Then her feet touched the forest floor and Lydia was running, panting, hand over her heart.
What if she'd landed in the wrong century, the wrong castle? What if she'd lost Dragon forever?
The forest was dense and dark, all the trees looked alike, and she was hopelessly lost. A moon hung low over the trees, casting eerie shadows in her path. Lydia wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. Were those stealthy footsteps? What was lurking around the next tree, the next rock, the next bend?
Lydia stuck out her chin and marched forward. She'd come too far, been through too much to let herself be paralyzed by fear.
A wisp of smoke drifted through the trees, a. tiny flicker of flame and the smell of roasting marshmallows. Marshmallows?
A whirlwind of stars caught Lydia up and then plopped her unceremoniously on a log beside a small campfire. Merlin grinned at her from underneath his conical hat.
"You discovered the secret?" he said.
"That hurt." Lydia rubbed her backside.
"Want a marshmallow?" Merlin offered her the confection on the end of a crooked twig.
She popped the plump sugar goodie into her mouth. "Did you ever think of asking a person to join you instead of jerking them off their feet and plopping them down on a hard log?"
"I'm the greatest magician of all time. I don't have to have manners. Where are yours? You didn't say thank you for the marshmallows. I had to go into the future to one of those odious things you call a grocery store to get them for you."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Merlin lapsed into one of his maddening silences, amusing himself by making the twigs on the ground dance in a circle around him. As much as Lydia enjoyed the show, she was impatient to get back to Dragon.
"Why did you bring me here?" she said.
"You brought yourself."
She reined in her temper. Time travel was stressful, and she wanted nothing more than to return to the castle and bed down between silk sheets, preferably in the arms of Dragon. But she couldn't afford to alienate practically the only friend she had in Camelot.
"I know I brought myself through the centuries." She touched the ring. "It was the dragon ring, plus my desire."
"Desire is the key. Desire makes you fly. Remember that. It's vital."
A small puff of smoke came out of the top of his hat, and his robes took on the translucence of a new moon. As usual, Merlin was vanishing before Lydia could fully grasp the purpose of their conversation.
"What do you mean, desire makes you fly?"
"You don't need the ring, Lydia. Desire alone will transport you through the centuries."
She had a sudden inspiration. "Can anybody travel through time merely by desiring to get to another century?"
"No. You've learned the secret. Others need the ring”.
His voice was faint, his body a mere shadow. Lydia could see through him.
"Wait. You said remembering was vital. Why is it vital?"
His wand cut through the air, and a shower of stars fell over her. Her feet lifted off the ground, and she glided through the forest as if she were on an airborne skateboard.
"What's going on? Where are you taking me now?"
"Always complaining." Merlin's voice was a mere echo in the empty forest. Her teeth jarred as her feet hit the ground.
"You don't have to get so huffy," she said.
"You wanted to walk back to the castle."
"I didn't say that. I don't even know which direction to go. I don't even know how far it is." Her only answer was an eerie silence. An owl swooped down from a tree directly overhead, enormous wings darkening her path.
"All right," she said. "I give up. Take me there."
"Say please."
"Please."
The invisible skateboard appeared once more, and she glided through the forest at breakneck speed, three feet off the ground. Lydia squeezed her eyes shut and didn't open them until she landed feet first on a cold stone floor.
She was in an enormous hallway with torches casting shadows against the walls. What if Merlin had decided to pay her back for her rudeness? What if she was in the wrong castle?
A small sound, a shadow, a movement. The wolf rounded the corner.
Relief flooded Lydia, and she knelt, hand on his ruff.
"Take me to Dragon."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lancelot's stallion was pure white, a sharp contrast to Dragon's ebony mount. In the king's box Guinevere leaned forward slightly, her face animated as she tied the royal colors to Lancelot's arm. He bowed before her, the future queen of Camelot, and when he stood the crowd roared its approval.
Dragon rode into the arena, his eyes only for the woman in red. Lydia. His flame. His love. She was sitting in the section reserved for knights and their ladies, flanked by Percival and Gawain. Dressed in red, her hair alight in the sun, she stood out in the crowd, not merely because of her coloring and her beauty but because of her independent spirit. She glowed with it and for a moment Dragon wished he'd left her behind, wished he'd left Laird and a security force to guard her. There was a foreignness in the way she carried herself, the way she entered boldly into discussions, her face alive with intelligence and wit.
Would the others see? Would they question?
Already there had been too many, especially from the other knights. Questions as well as good-natured teasing.
"You've been holding out on us." This from Percival.
"No wonder. Such incomparable beauty." Galahad was the speaker. "He was afraid I'd challenge him for the wench."
The explanation of rescuing a foreign maiden with amnesia satisfied them. But for how long?
Dragon rode straight to her, and she stood up, tall, elegant, as graceful as the willows bending before the spring breezes. Her eyes were stars on him, shining with the newness of what lay between them, bright with the knowledge of him and of what had passed in his bedchamber the night before.
An intruder, he'd thought, but it had been Lydia, silent as a moth, who stood still while he held the blade to her throat. And when a dark cloud moved to reveal a sliver of moonlight, he saw his enormous mistake.
"I could have killed you," he said, so full of fear and longing there was room for nothing else.
"But you didn't."
She turned in his arms, and it was right to mold her to his body, to fit his lips over hers. Nothing existed but the two of them and the passion that rode them hard and held them fast.
"We shouldn't," he murmured, even as his lips devoured hers.
"We must." Her lips like flame, her fingertips glowing coals that branded him. "I came across centuries to find you. Not once, but twice."
She had traveled through time again, as remarkable as it seemed. To Mississippi this time. And lest he doubt, she clutc
hed the evidence in her hand, a tiny silver-framed photograph of her mother.
"I had to see her, Dragon. I thought it was the ring that transported me, but it was the longing, too, the intensity of my yearning that took me there."
"But you came back."
"Yes. I came back." She lay upon his bed, her hands on the ribbons at her bodice. "I will always come back to you, Dragon, wherever you are, whatever century you are in."
She lifted her arms and he embraced her, knowing the rightness of the thing, accepting the miracle. Finally.
"I will always come back to you," she repeated.
And now he accepted her colors, flaming red. Another miracle. Dragon, who always rode alone, who allowed no woman to divert his attention, who placed duty and honor above all things, even family.
She bent to tie her colors, a silver medallion nestled in her cleavage, gleaming in the sunlight. He'd hung it around her neck the night before as she lay in his bed naked, her hair fanned out, her face like a rose.
"This belonged to my mother," he said, fastening the chain around her neck. "It was my father's wedding gift to her, and it is my pledge to you." He kissed the medallion, then her lips. "I will love, honor, cherish, and defend you all the days of my life." He kissed her once more. "No harm shall come to you as long as I live, Lydia. This I promise."
He pressed his face between her breasts, kissing the family crest on the medallion and her soft flesh underneath. His loins stirred powerfully once more, and he sealed the promise with a ritual as old as time.
And now as he stood before her in the arena, hundreds of people watching, he kissed the medallion once more, smelling the sweet fragrance of her skin, tasting her, wanting her. He could feel the stares of Percival and Gawain gawking at behavior so foreign to Dragon's nature.
Let them gawk, he thought. Let them see a man besotted, a man so in love be forgets everything except a woman with flame in her hair.
The crowd roared. Sunlight gleamed on metal. Anxious horses pranced and pawed, their hooves sending up clouds of dust.
"Let the joust begin!" Charles, the knight in charge of the games, handed blunted wooden lances to Dragon and Lancelot. No lethal sharp tips to draw blood. No possibility of wounding or killing nor of being wounded or killed. Today's joust was sport for the woman who would soon be queen, entertainment for the fair-haired maiden whose smile fell on Lancelot like sunshine.
