Mesmerized

by Candace Camp

“Yes, I suppose we are passionate about our “causes,” Olivia said, her voice thin with the effort of keeping it level and unconcerned. She carefully did not look at Stephen. “I am sorry. You must think I am foolish, to get so emotional about what is, after all, only a silly jest.”

  “No, indeed. I do not think you are foolish at all.” The warmth in his voice made Olivia turn her head to look at him in surprise. There was no levity in his face, only a sincere admiration that jolted her. “I think you are quite remarkable.”

  She glanced away quickly, feeling a flush rising up her throat. She was, she thought, hopelessly inept in such a situation. Kyria would have been able to take a compliment gracefully. All she could do, she thought, was blush and feel like an idiot.

  Fortunately, a woman was emerging from the doorway of the cottage they were about to pass, and at sight of them, she came forward to greet Stephen. By the time he was done introducing Olivia to his tenant’s wife and they had all commented on the loveliness of this August day, the awkward moment was past, and they were able to ride on in easy silence.

  “I will show you my favorite part of the estate,” St. Leger told her, turning his horse from the well-trodden path on which they had been riding. “It will be the perfect place to get off and try the lunch that Cook sent with us.”

  They struck out across the fields, stopping to unlatch a gate and pass through, a consideration for which Olivia was grateful, as she was sure that had he been alone, Stephen would merely have jumped the low fence, a feat she was sure she would not have been able to accomplish. She could still remember the anguish in the head groom’s voice as he had told her that she needed to help her horse over the obstacle, not fight him, and the gratitude she had felt when her father had said placidly, “Oh, what does it matter, Jenkins? You’d best stick with teaching Kyria and the boys. My Livvy’s a scholar, not a rider, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

  They entered the trees beyond the field, following a barely discernible path, and when they emerged from the wood, they were in a small meadow, slanting down slightly to a pond. A grove of trees lined one end of the pond, following its gentle curve. It was a scene of tranquility and beauty, and Olivia drew in her breath in a soft gasp of pleasure.

  “It’s beautiful!” she cried, pulling her horse to a stop, struck by a deep, intense emotion, which she could neither understand nor describe. It was as if, in some incredible, utterly illogical way, she knew this piece of land.

  “Do you like it?” Stephen turned to her, his eyes lingering on her face, lit now with an inner glow. “I’m glad. This has always been my favorite spot—where I like to come and think, or just sit.”

  “It’s wonderful,” Olivia agreed, urging her horse forward again.

  They rode to the trees at the edge of the pond and dismounted. Olivia looked around her, smiling. “I feel so peaceful here. So safe.”

  The words surprised her even as she spoke them. Whyever should she not feel safe? Yet she knew that a sense of safety was part of the feeling that she got from this place, and the sweetness of the emotion inside her was disturbed by a sudden sense of unease.

  Olivia pushed the thought away from her. She was being silly. This was simply a lovely tranquil place, and whatever connection she felt to it was nothing more than a normal attraction to a beautiful spot.

  Stephen took the hamper from the back of his horse and set it beside the pond, then spread a blanket on the ground for them to sit on. Cook had prepared a bountiful luncheon for them—an array of cold meats, cheeses and fruit, supplemented by thick slabs of dark bread spread with pale yellow butter—and they spent the next few minutes doing justice to her work.

  Afterward they sat in contented silence, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun on their backs, listening to the rustle of the leaves as the breeze moved them and the occasional song of a bird. It would be a wonderful place, Olivia thought, to sit and read, or even to curl up and doze in the sun, like a lazy cat. She would have to bring a book here another time. She caught herself on the thought. She would not be at Blackhope that long; she was here merely for a visit, and then she would return to her home.

  “It must have been nice, growing up here,” she commented.

  “Yes. Roderick was four years older than I, so when he went off to Eton, I was mostly alone. I used to like to ride to this pond and sit and read.”

  Olivia smiled at the echoing of her thoughts. “What sort of things did you read?”

  “Oh, tales of derring-do—grand adventure and mysterious happenings. Romantic nonsense, most of it. I was young and full of dreams.”

  “Is that why you went to America? To pursue adventure?”

  He shrugged, and his face closed down, the smile that had curved his lips vanishing. “I suppose. Mostly I wanted to get as far away from here as possible.”

  His answer puzzled her, and she would have questioned him about it, but Stephen went on before she could speak. “I wanted to make my fortune. Prove my worth. Typical ambitions of a younger son.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “To the West. That was the place to make one’s fortune, that was what everyone there said. I tried a few different places, different things, but I wound up in Colorado, silver mining.”

  “What was it like there?”

  “Harsh, cold, beautiful. The mountains are incredibly high and stark, the sky enormous. You cannot look at them without thinking of words such as ‘grandeur’ and ‘majestic’ and ‘sweeping.’ The land dwarfs you, and yet somehow it emboldens you, makes you think that anything is possible.”

  He shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “Sorry. I don’t usually go on about it so.”

  “It must have been difficult to leave it.”

  Stephen glanced at her, surprised. “It was. Most people don’t understand that. They think I must have been ecstatic to come home to England, to suddenly acquire the title and estate. I wasn’t. For a short while, I even thought about not returning. But I knew the estate would suffer. One cannot really manage effectively from thousands of miles away. And there were Mother and Belinda to consider. So in the end I sold out, and I came back here.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  He did not answer right away, considering her words. Finally he said, “No. I don’t regret it. It’s a different sort of life, but I suppose it is really the one I was born and bred for. No matter how beautiful the Rockies are, however challenging the land or the work, this is where I belong. Blackhope is my home.” A quick grin quirked up the corners of his mouth. “Even with all the lost spirits.”

  Olivia smiled back. “Do you think we shall have a repeat performance tonight? More words from the spirits?”

  “My guess would be no.” His face turned serious again. “I think our Madame Valenskaya will make Mother wait for a while. Bring her eagerness to a greater level. I think she will find it too enervating to go into a trance again, or she will declare the spirit guides unwilling to return to the house of a disbeliever. She wants Mother to be so impatient for word from Roderick that she will believe anything, no matter how implausible.”

  “No doubt you are right,” Olivia agreed with a sigh. “I feel so sorry for Lady St. Leger. It must be horrible to wait and hope like that.”

  “Yes.” Stephen’s mouth turned down grimly. “That’s why I intend to expose these charlatans as soon as we possibly can.”

  The pleasant mood of the afternoon was gone, chased away by thoughts of Madame Valenskaya and her fraudulent schemes. Stephen and Olivia turned away and began to pack up the remains of the food. He stood up and reached down a hand to Olivia to help her. She took it and rose to her feet.

  He did not release her hand immediately, but stood for a moment holding it. Olivia looked up into his face and found him gazing at her in a way that made her pulse speed up.

  “I am glad you came here,” he said. His eyes glinted silver in the day’s light.

  “I am, too,” Olivia found herself answering a little breathlessly.

/>   He bent closer to her, and her heart knocked frantically against her ribs. She closed her eyes, and then his lips were on hers, soft and lingering. Olivia’s fingers curled into her palms. She had never been kissed before, and she found that it was unlike anything she had imagined. His kiss deepened, and heat flooded her.

  Her hands came up. She wasn’t sure what she intended to do, but when her fingers came into contact with his jacket, they curled into the lapels and she held on fiercely. Stephen’s arms went around her, pulling her up into him, and Olivia rose onto her toes, pressing her lips against his. Glorious sensations radiated through her, and she trembled, eager and excited.

  At last he released her, and she slipped back down flat on her feet. She lifted her eyes to him, her mouth slightly open with astonishment. Stephen stared back at her, almost as stunned as she.

  “I—I—” He stepped back, his hands balling into fists. “I beg your pardon. I should not have done that.”

  Olivia wanted to protest his words, to tell him that she was quite glad that he had, but she caught herself. To say such a thing would not be at all ladylike. Indeed, what she had just done was doubtless not ladylike, either, and she suspected that her unusual upbringing was again at fault. So she swallowed her words and merely shook her head.

  “No, please, do not worry. It was—it was—”

  “Pray don’t think that I brought you out here to force my attentions on you,” Stephen went on stiffly, more in control of himself.

  “No, indeed, I do not,” Olivia assured him. She could think of no way to say what she truly felt without sounding like a forward hussy. Her insides were jumping about wildly, and she pressed her hand against her stomach as if to quiet them.

  Stephen stood for a moment, facing her. Olivia appeared soft and vulnerable, gazing at him with her huge dark eyes, her mouth still damp and a dark rose from his kiss. He felt like a cad for grabbing her and kissing her like that, yet he could not deny that, looking at her, he wanted to pull her into his arms once more and kiss her all over again.

  “I am sorry,” he repeated finally, and turned to fetch their horses.

  He packed the picnic hamper on his horse, then gave Olivia a leg up onto hers, both of them doing their best to pretend that the necessary contact between them did not exist. They rode back to the house feeling rather awkward, their infrequent words being directions as to where to turn or stilted attempts at polite chitchat, such as a query on Olivia’s part about a certain tree or Stephen pointing out a low stone wall that was reputed to have been standing since before the Conquest.

  Once they were back at the house, Olivia thanked him politely and went straightaway upstairs to her room. It was already midafternoon by the time they returned, so she decided not to try to do anything else, but to simply take a bath and get ready for the evening meal. Since she washed her hair, as well, she spent the next little while running through the tangles with a comb, then brushing out the long mane in front of the low fire.

  When her hair was almost dry, she rose and went to the bed and lay down on her side. She was a trifle tired, and her head was still reeling with thoughts of that afternoon. She smiled a little secretly to herself as she had done frequently since their picnic. She relived Stephen’s kiss inside her head. She wondered if he had really been sorry that he had done it. More than that, she wondered if it might ever happen again.

  As she watched the flames flicker up from the logs of the fireplace, the light seemed to dim, and the room before her subtly changed.

  A thick rug lay on the floor, but smaller and reddish in color, and it lay only in front of the fireplace, atop the bed of dried reeds that covered the floor. The fireplace, too, was different, made of large blocks of stone, the opening larger, the fire higher and smokier.Gone was the chair beside the fire where Olivia had sat to dry her hair, and gone, too, the low decorative mahogany table that lay before it. There now, just to the side of the rug, stood only a heavy wooden stool.

  A woman sat on the rug, her legs curled under her, running a brush through her long blond hair. Firelight flickered on her hair, turning the pale strands copper and gold. Olivia knew that she should be frightened to see a stranger sitting here in her room, but she was not. All she could feel was a sudden stunned amazement…and curiosity.

  She stared at the woman, who seemed sublimely unaware of her presence. Her face turned to the side, the woman stroked her hair in rhythmic movements as she hummed a tune beneath her breath. She was a pretty woman, with a squarish face, her cheekbones high and wide, and there was a faint indentation at the bottom of her chin, right in the middle, that gave her a piquant look. It was too dark to see the exact color of her eyes, though they seemed light. Her feet were shod in leather slippers, and on her body she wore a long, slender blue tunic that fell straight from her shoulders to her feet, skimming her hips. Beneath it she wore another, lighter dress of a beige color that showed in the neckline and along the deep-cut armholes of the side. Long sleeves fell to points on the backs of her hands, and at the top, the sleeves were tied to the armholes of the underdress. A belt of gold links encircled her body, just above her hips, fastening in the middle in front and falling down in a straight line to her thighs. Where it fastened, there were three links set with colored stones.

  A man came into Olivia’s vision, crossing the room to the woman. She turned her head at his approach, and a radiant smile broke across her face. She glanced behind him, then, the smile giving way to an anxious frown.

  “Do not worry, my love,” he said. “None saw me enter your quarters. Your name will not be sullied.”

  He wore a gray tunic over an undershirt of blue, and below that, leggings of the same color. Around his hips ran a wide leather belt, and hanging from the left side of it was a sword in a scabbard. His hair was longish and cut shaggily, a darker blond than the woman’s, almost brown, and there was a little bit of a curl to it.

  Standing behind the woman, he unbuckled his belt and laid the sword aside. Then he knelt and curled his arms around her, laying his head against hers. He kissed the top of her head, and she let out a little sigh and snuggled into him.

  “’Tis a sin, I know,” she said in a soft voice. “But I cannot help myself. Each day is black unless I see you. I cannot bear to be apart from you.”

  “’Tis the same with me.” His voice was a low rumble, and he nuzzled her neck. “I love you.”

  “And I love you. I cannot even confess my sins, for I cannot say that I repent.”

  They kissed, clinging to each other. His hand smoothed down her back and over her hips, and he pulled her closer to him. She turned, her arms going around his neck, pressing her body into his. With one arm around her, he eased her back to the floor.

  5

  Olivia jerked awake, her eyes flying open. For a moment she stared blindly in front of her. Then, slowly, she sat up, gazing around her at the room. A dream. She had been asleep and dreaming.

  She rubbed her hands over her face. She felt fuzzy and odd. What a peculiar dream! It had seemed so real, as if she had been watching a play, or real people. It had been, she thought, exceedingly odd for a dream. Usually she knew the people in her dreams—even if they did not look like themselves, she was aware of who they were. And she was usually the main participant in her dreams. She was late or running from some horror or doing some task, but it was always herself. But in this dream she had seen an unknown room and people who were strangers to her. She herself had not been in the dream except as an unseen watcher.

  The man and woman had been dressed like people from the Middle Ages. She paused, thinking about the woman’s dress. The early Middle Ages, she thought, around the time of King Henry II, for the woman’s dress made her think of Eleanor of Aquitaine. And though they had spoken English, their accents had been odd, the words stilted, and she had had trouble understanding what they said. She had once or twice dreamed about a different time or place, but on those occasions she had been reading about that time or place, or studyi
ng it in school, or Theo had written her about it. But she had read nothing about the time of Henry II in the recent past.

  Unbidden, the thought of an old Norman keep came into her mind—the castle she had thought she glimpsed as the carriage approached Blackhope. A shiver ran through her.

  She stood up, rubbing her arms to warm herself. What was the matter with her? She could not remember ever having seen something that didn’t exist, even for an instant. That, she told herself, was even odder than the dream. If she told anyone about it, they would think her as peculiar as her grandmother.

  There was a knock on the door, and Joan entered to help her dress for the evening. Olivia forced a smile onto her lips and determinedly put both the imagined castle and the dream out of her mind.

  That night at supper, much to Olivia’s surprise, Lady Pamela spoke to her. “I hear that you rode out with Stephen this afternoon, Lady Olivia. I hope you enjoyed your tour of our place.”

  Olivia noted that the woman made it sound as if the estate still somehow belonged to her. She smiled politely and said, “Yes, very much. Lord St. Leger told me a bit about his life in the United States, as well, which was quite interesting.”

  “Really?” Pamela arched one thin elegant brow as she looked at Stephen. “I am surprised you have never told us about it, Stephen.”

  “I doubted you would find it interesting, my lady,” he replied in a cool, formal voice.

  Pamela smiled at him. “I imagine you would be surprised what interests me. You must try me someday.”

  Stephen said nothing, merely picked up his wineglass and took a sip. Pamela turned her attention back to Olivia. “We are very glad that you came to visit, my lady. We have heard so much about your family.”

  There was a faint thread of amusement running through her voice that made it quite clear what she had heard about the Morelands.

  “Indeed?” Olivia said mildly.

  “Oh, yes,” Pamela continued, a cold light in her blue eyes. “The duchess is quite famous in society.”