Seize the Wind
Page 9
“Yes, my lady, you most certainly did.”
“There’s truly nothing to fear. You see, King Richard will be home quite soon now. Count Aryn has been most helpful in managing to give me the last bit of needed assistance to raise his ransom.”
“The king’s ransom—is paid!” Kate gasped.
“I think she’s going to be quite a bright girl, after all!” Eleanor told Aryn, smiling.
Then Kate began to laugh, herself. She fell to her knees, picking up the queen’s—the dowager queen’s—hem and placing a kiss against it. “Oh, my lady, I am ever so grateful!”
“Up, child!” Eleanor admonished. “You mustn’t be so grateful that such a horrid wrong has been righted at last.”
Even as she spoke, the castle’s round, waddling priest came hurrying out to the courtyard.
“I was told there was to be a wedding! Now I hear that the duke is dead. Which is to be, a wedding or a funeral?” he said with exasperation. He paused, seeing the duke’s body splayed upon the ground. “Gone to his maker!” There was no sadness in the priest’s tone. “A funeral, then.”
“A wedding first!” Eleanor said, clapping her hands together. “At my age and after all my years of strife, I do love a day that finishes with a happy ending! Sir Waylon!”
“Yes, my Lady Eleanor!”
“See to the disposal of Rousseau’s body for the moment. I do suppose we’ll have to behave like Christians later and see him properly buried. But for the moment, a wedding. That is…”
She looked at Kate and Aryn expectantly. He caught her hands, turning her to him. “Would you marry a rogue, my lady?”
She kicked him lightly. “You could have told me!”
“You could have told me!”
“Ah, yes! They’re quite ready for marital bliss!” Eleanor decreed.
“Will you?” Aryn persisted. “I am a poor man.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? Since I’m a duchess?”
“It wouldn’t matter who you were!” he assured her in the softest whisper.
She smiled. Touched his face. “I would know those eyes anywhere.”
“Shall we get to the ceremony?” Joshua suggested, clearing his throat.
* * *
The company surged into the small chapel. Everyone. From the dowager queen to the maids, Peter and his daughter, the rogues from the forest, the guards from the castle.
The priest read the ceremony. Kate gave her vows. To love, to cherish, to honor. Until death.
There was dancing at the castle as there had not been in years. There was feasting.
There was laughter.
Finally, late at night, Kate and Aryn came to the huge master chamber. She shivered, entering it.
Aryn was quickly behind her. His whisper was at her ear. “We needn’t live here. I have a home. It’s far more humble, but perhaps this place holds too many ghosts for you.”
She spun in his arms, shaking her head. “The ghosts are good!” she assured him. “I shivered because I might have been here with Phillippe. Because he had no right here. Because my parents were so filled with happiness, laughter, love…”
He raised her chin. Kissed her gently.
“We will fill it with love again,” he promised.
He swept her up, bearing her down upon the bed. Kisses seared her lips, her forehead, her cheeks. She touched him. His face. Over and over. Molding every feature into her heart and mind. His lips found hers again. Fingers fumbled with her clothing. His own was hastily strewn between kisses, touches and caresses.
“You were stealing all that time to help Eleanor raise King Richard’s ransom?” she said suddenly.
“Yes.” Distracted, he kissed the pulse at her throat. Palmed her breast, rotating his fingers upon the nipple. She gasped.
“Eleanor was the woman who came to your camp that night?” she inquired, breathless.
“Yes.”
His lips were against her ribs. His tongue teased them lightly. One by one. His hands…
She caught them both. “And your men?”
“Most came from my estate. Others from various nearby areas.” He pulled free. Touched her, stroked her, kissed the smoothness of her flesh…
She’d wanted more out of him. More of a confession, perhaps, or at least an admission that he’d played a dangerous game.
But she couldn’t quite remember what she’d wanted to say to him. Her body was filled with liquid fire. She was soaring, flying, trying to touch the moon, seize the very wind…
“You’re still a rogue!” she accused him.
“Indeed!” he said, and smiled. He rose above her. Touched her face. Made love to her. Passionately, urgently, tenderly.
Later, when the moon and sun were shifting in the heavens, he turned to her and asked, “You were saying?”
She laughed.
The laughter filled the room.
She shook her head.
“You’re still a rogue!” she whispered again. And curled against him.
Nothing else mattered for the moment.
After all, Queen Eleanor was their guest that night.
And the queen loved happy endings.
* * * * *
“Graham is a master at world building and her latest is a thrilling, dark and deadly tale of romantic suspense.”
—Booklist, starred review, on Haunted Destiny
Looking for more suspenseful reads from New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham? Don’t miss out on the New York Confidential series, packed with deadly intrigue, exhilarating romance and heart-pounding suspense:
Flawless
A Perfect Obsession
A Dangerous Game
A Lethal Legacy
“Intricate, fast-paced, and intense.” —Library Journal, starred review, on Flawless
And make sure to catch up on the complete Krewe of Hunters series, featuring the FBI’s elite team of paranormal investigators:
Phantom Evil
Heart of Evil
Sacred Evil
The Evil Inside
The Unseen
The Unholy
The Unspoken
The Uninvited
The Night is Watching
The Night Is Alive
The Night Is Forever
The Cursed
The Hexed
The Betrayed
The Silenced
The Forgotten
The Hidden
Haunted Destiny
Deadly Fate
Darkest Journey
Dying Breath
Dark Rites
Wicked Deeds
Fade to Black
Pale as Death
Echoes of Evil
“Exceptional character development and worldbuilding…suspenseful elements that will leave you guessing until the end.” —RT Book Reviews on Darkest Journey
Discover the electrifying Cafferty & Quinn series, where an antiques collector and a private investigator are drawn together in New Orleans as they investigate the city’s most unusual crimes:
Let the Dead Sleep
Waking the Dead
The Dead Play On
“Dark, dangerous and deadly! Graham has the uncanny ability to bring her books to life.”
—RT Book Reviews on Waking the Dead
Don’t miss other heart-racing stories from The Finnegan Connection mini-series:
Shadows in the Night
Out of the Darkness
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Coming soon from MIRA Books
PROLOGUE
Twenty Years Ago
Dallas ran, far from the house. He could hear his Aunt Betsy calling to him, but he needed to escape. Betsy was kind; she was trying. But she didn’t understand that sometimes, he needed to be alone, away from piano lessons, Little League, and all the things she tried to make him do to forget. He hated the house now. His father, who’d been given leave for the funeral, was back overseas, a lieutenant in the army—dousing his own grief in the deserts of the Middle East.
A ten-year-old boy didn’t forget that easily that he’d lost his mother—piano lessons didn’t ease the pain.
At least his aunt’s old house was far from Savannah—out past the old section and the new section, on the outskirts, in an area rife with hills and hammocks and streams. And the old cemetery.
Once upon a time, there had been a great plantation up on the hill, and near it, the remnants of the old church remained. He loved the ruins; he loved to go and wander around the remaining walls of the building, and down the stairs to the catacombs and then back up to the graveyard. He liked to read what he could on the old gravestones and tombs, and imagine the rest. He preferred one grave especially. It had belonged to Louis Falmouth, a soldier during the Revolution. Louis had become something of a friend for him—a made-up friend, he guessed—but he talked to the grave. He imagined Louis telling him fantastic tales about running with the Swamp Fox, a hero of the Revolution, a man who dared cross enemy lines, dodged Redcoat bullets, and brought desperately needed information to the American troops.
The sun was setting as he ran. At first, it shot glorious beauty across the sky. Then it created a purple and gray gloom, and a mist slowly settled on the ground.
Dallas wound through the overgrown bracken and brush, through the oaks, and toward the creek, right by the church. He paused at a lichen-covered weeping angel. She seemed exceptional lovely and sad in the growing foggy darkness.
“Hello, ma’am,” he said politely. He looked around; he was near Louis’s tomb, and all around him there was statuary, more angels guarding what had been family plots, the little gates and brick fences broken and jagged now, forgotten as the lives that had been lived. Death heads adorned many stones, and the mist made them seem to grin.
Bowing to the angel, he turned, and almost tripped over another old stone, one that was broken down beyond recognition of name, date, or any other identifying numbers or words. This one was beneath a giant statue, an avenging angel, with wings outspread, and for a moment, Dallas was afraid.
Soon it would be completely dark.
He steadied himself on a stone. “Excuse me, sir,” he said to the angel, for that one didn’t look sad or forlorn, but rather fierce. His imagination played tricks with him; the angel might come to life, begin to move. It seemed to stand against the mist and the coming night and the rising moon as if it were a warrior—ready to take on a young boy with the swipe of one wing.
“Here, this way! Over here!” a voice suddenly demanded.
Real? Imagined?
He turned, frightened and uneasy, but he ran toward the sound of the voice. In his haste, he tripped. He fell over a broken stone, flat down on the ground. He rolled to rise to his feet, but froze instead.
He was lying next to a body.
It was an old man, with worn clothing, a gray beard, time-marked face.
It wasn’t the body of the long-dead, nor a haunt of his imagination.
The man was bleeding.
“Sir!” Dallas cried, rolling to a knee by the man’s side. “Sir?”
But the bleeding man did not respond.
That was when he heard words come out of the mist—real words. “Son, what are you doing? Don’t just sit there—go for help.”
Dallas looked up in terror, certain that the avenging angel had indeed awakened.
But it was not a statue who had spoken.
In front of Dallas stood Louis Falmouth, hero of the Revolution, just as he’d been depicted in the book about the war at his aunt’s house: Beige breeches, cotton shirt, green vest, and earth-colored frockcoat, his brown hair tied back. He was stern as he looked at Dallas, and for a moment, the boy just stared, open-mouthed.
He had lost his mind, gone a little crazy, as the doctors had feared, after the attack on his mother had left her dead?
“Boy!” his hero said. “Move, now, get help. Those ruffians, the wretched crew that killed your mother, they did this to old Mr. Polk. It was a lark to steal his piddling belongings. Just as it was a lark to torment your mother. He may live. This man could live, and bring them to justice. Right this! Go, get help—now!”
Dallas stumbled to his feet. He stared, and blinked hard, but Louis Falmouth remained.
“Go!”
Dallas ran. As hard and as fast as he could to his aunt’s house.
He forced himself to be coherent, afraid no one would believe him, that no one would help.
At first, Aunt Betsy did not. She and her friend Michael looked at him with sympathy.
“I’m not seeing things because of Mom! I’m begging you—get help!”
He must have sounded sure; Aunt Betsy called 911 while Michael grabbed the first-aid kit and his shotgun and headed out with Dallas.
They ran back through the trees and the bracken, finally coming to the stones of the graveyard.
Dallas looked around; there was no sign of the Revolutionary War hero Louis Falmouth.
And he feared there would be no Mr. Polk, and then they would lock him up in some hospital for people gone crazy with grief.
But the old man was there, still down on the ground, bleeding from a deep wound on his leg.
Michael set to work with the emergency kit, ordering Dallas to help with a tourniquet, get the bleeding stopped.
EMTs arrived, and Mr. Polk was carried out on a stretcher to an ambulance parked on a nearby road.
“You did good, kid, you did good,” Michael told him, ruffling his hair. “It’s a miracle that you found that man. How the hell did you see him there, behind stones, with all that overgrown bracken and grass?”
Dallas started to answer—but he couldn’t tell the truth. “Just lucky, I guess.”
Mr. Polk lived. He went on to identify the three drifters who had beaten him to a pulp.
The same men who had attacked Dallas’s mother as she was out for a run one night, and had left her to die.
Dallas went back to the cemetery to thank Louis Falmouth, but he didn’t see his hero again.
In another three months, his father got his honorable discharge from the military and he and Dallas moved back to Fredericksburg, Virginia.
They began life anew. In time, life became something…almost normal. There was school for Dallas, the football team, and his dad’s new girlfriend and then wife, Susan. She was kind and decent, and rather than ask Dallas to forget his mom, she would ask him to talk about her.
But Dallas never stopped visiting graveyards when he needed some time for himself.
And he never stopped talking to the dead.
Discover how Dallas grows up to become an FBI agent,
and his strange talent helps solve a series of murders in Savannah.
THE SUMMONING
by Heather Graham.
Available May 28, 2019, from MIRA Books.
Copyright © 2019 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
ISBN-13: 9781488053306
Seize the Wind
First published in the anthology Renegades in 1995.
This edition published in 2019.
Copyright © 1995 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
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