Rare snow from early in the evening lay in a thin white layer, light as an eiderdown, over the ground, shimmering in the new light. Frost hung from the bare branches of the trees in his sadly overgrown and tangled garden, and a new snowfall drifted like magic from the skies. It was not yet thick; every flake. could be seen in its own individual perfection.
It was a breathlessly beautiful scene. Mark was reminded of a story his mother used to tell him and his brother and sister when they were small children. A tale of an ice princess, who was incredibly lovely but very, very lonely. She lived all alone in her palace made of winter, because no one understood her or her magic. They all shunned her. So she spent all her time creating snowflakes, no two alike, each a picture of cold perfection.
Thoughts of his family—his mother, and Charles and Edwina—far away in London, reminded him that it was very nearly Christmas.
Christmas. The holiday the ice princess and her snow minions—and his own mother—loved above all others. When had he last thought of it? Not for a very, very long time.
His mother always wrote to him at this time of year, of course, urging him to come home, to share the holiday with them. Yet how could he? How could he ruin this time of year for his family, the people he loved the most, by showing his face in their elegant drawing room? He did not belong around their pianoforte, singing Christmas ditties, or around their table with roasted goose and berry tarts.
Every time he was tempted to go back, he remembered the revulsion that swept over Elizabeth’s beautiful face when she first beheld him after the battle. He heard again her scream of despair, remembered how she had turned away.
No. He would not put his family through that. They deserved the perfect Christmas.
Mark pushed back his brocade sleeve and stared down at his left arm. By some miracle, it had been saved from the surgeons’ knives, but the skin was puckered, criss-crossed with scars and welts. In the sunlight, it was a strange, shell-pink color; in the moonlight, it was pale, disguised. The left side of his face was the same, scarred, marked forever by what had happened that day. He could usually hide from it, by being alone, by having no mirrors in his house except the tiny one above his shaving stool.
At night he was exposed for what he was: A living haunt.
Mark laughed roughly at the fanciful thought. He was so very rarely fanciful. “You are moon-mad, Captain Payne,” he muttered to himself. “Or perhaps bewitched? There are many curses floating about in Cornwall. One must have landed on you.”
He started to turn away, to reach for the bottle of brandy sitting on the bedside table, when some noise startled him. He swung back toward the window.
“What the devil was that?” he said out loud, peering into the night. It had sounded like some low cry or moan. Not a scream or shout; something beckoning, enticing. Like the ice princess’s lonely song.
There was nothing else. Only the silence of the snow-blanketed night. But Mark’s nerves still rang. Something was out there. He could sense it, just as he had once sensed enemy ships lurking in the sea fogs. He suddenly felt alert, alive, as he had not in months and months. He had to find whatever was in the night. He shrugged off his dressing gown and reached for the clothes he had carelessly piled on the chair before retiring. As he tied back his overlong dark hair and searched for his greatcoat, one thought reverberated in his mind.
He was moon-mad, indeed.
Chapter Three
Antoinette sat straight up in bed, gasping for air. She felt the edges of some tantalizing dream floating away from her, snatched away before she could grab onto it. What had she been dreaming? It dissipated like so much smoke, leaving her with only the remnant impressions of something unbearably sweet. The blankets fell away from her shoulders, and she shivered despite her long-sleeved muslin night rail. The cottage was chilly and dark, the scents of her dried herbs and flowered soaps heavy in the crisp air. Antoinette shrugged her thick braid back over her shoulder and collapsed against the piles of feather pillows. She closed her eyes and breathed in slowly until she felt her fevered blood slow in her veins.
The dream was completely gone, and she was all alone in her familiar cottage. The moonlight spilling from the mullioned windows cast a glow over her brightly colored silk quilts, the bottles and pots on her dressing table, the bundles of dried herbs suspended from the ceiling beams. She could see the snow falling out there—the first snow she had seen in a very long time.
Antoinette had always felt safe in the cottage. The whitewashed walls seemed to embrace her from the first day she saw them. But right now, in this quiet midnight, it seemed as if those very walls were closing about her. She needed air. She needed to talk to someone. She needed...
She needed her mother. Her mother would be able to help her decipher all the strange feelings that were swirling inside her of late. Antoinette had tried before to contact her mother but it had always been in vain. Maybe now, on this strange night, the winter solstice, it would work. Antoinette felt the magic in the snow dusted moonlight on her very fingertips.
She climbed down from the high bed, and without even lighting the lamp, pulled open the doors of the carved wardrobe. The moonlight fell on the array of gowns, cloaks, and robes hanging there, the bonnets and slippers and shawls arranged on the shelf. One silvery beam glistened on the sleeve of one of her robes.
Green. Emotional healing and growth, the Great Mother in her nurturing form. Perfect.
Antoinette drew the soft silk of the robe over her night rail and fastened the gold buttons up the front. Obver it she put on a warm wool cloak. As she slipped on her sturdiest half boots, she reached into a small box under the bed and pulled out her most cherished possession. The red leather binding of the book was worn to a satin smoothness by all the women’s hands that had touched it over the yes. Her mother. Her grandmother. Her great-grandmother, who had inscribed much of the ancient knowledge on its parchment pages.
Antoinette smoothed her palm over the book’s precious cover before placing it carefully in an oilskin pouch. She added candles, a flint, an array of herbs.
She was ready.
The night was colder than Antoinette expected. Cornwall was usually quite mild, at least compared to the rest of the freezing island of England, but not this night of rare snow. Her breath escaped into the air in tiny smoke-like puffs, and her boots crunched on the thin layer of moisture underfoot. New flakes, delicate as the lace many of the local villagers made, landed on the hood of her cloak and caught in her eyelashes and the braid of her hair. The sky had become strangely clear, though, stars blinking down at her like diamonds from between a wide break in the clouds.
She had no idea where she was going. She simply turned out of her garden gate and walked, letting her feet lead her where they would. She would not be surprised to discover she was still in her bed, dreaming. It was not like her to leave the safety of her house to go wandering alone in the night; especially since some villager on his way home might see her and carry the tale of her midnight ramblings back to his neighbors. People there were suspicious enough of her, despite the friendship of Cassie and her family, and of the vicar and his wife.
“Do not be silly, Antoinette,” she told herself, turning down a different pathway. “No one is fool enough to be out on such a night. No one but you.”
Indeed, it was silent. So silent she could almost hear the new snow falling on the ground. She heard no supernatural whispers, no one calling to her. Even the ghosts of Royce Castle were asleep, as all sensible people—human or spirit—should be.
Antoinette laughed softly. It felt a bit like when she was a child, and she and Cassie would slip out to go swimming in the ocean at night—exciting, a strange fluttering deep in her stomach. Only back then their environs had been considerably warmer.
Her laughter faded when she saw where her steps had led her. She was atop one of the steep, rocky cliffs that fell straight down into the roiling winter sea. She stared out over the water, mesmerized for an instant by
the waves and the sky.
She came to the shore often, of course. The rocky sand was a favorite picnic spot of the Leighton children, and the old smugglers’ caves there contained very strong ghostly vibrations. But she seldom came here at night, and never like this—all alone, in the snow and cold, atop the sharp cliffs.
She shivered, yet somehow this felt right. This was where she was meant to be, for this moment.
Tucking her woolen cloak beneath her knees, she knelt down on the ground and took her treasures out of the pouch. Candles—white, silver, purple, blue, gold, they were all neatly arrayed, protected by their glass globes. Antoinette lit them, and sprinkled thyme, lavender, meadowsweet, and dried rose petals in the snow around them. As she did this, she closed her eyes and focused all her thoughts toward the love of her mother, toward all her mother’s teachings. She rose and, at her feet, the ancient book fluttered open, the pages shuffling in the cold breeze.
“Mother of all days,” Antoinette called, “come to us this night, touch us with your presence. Bring me your wisdom, your peace, your power. Help me to find the right path.”
Help me to find my way out of this loneliness; she added silently, with every ounce of her being.
She held out her arms, and the hood of her cloak fell back. A new wind arose around her, sweeping at her skirts, skittering the candles’ flames, though they did not go out. Indeed, they seemed to glow even brighter.
The cord binding her braid fell and her hair blew free, the waist-length strands whipping across her face and throat. A warmth kindled deep inside her, growing hot and brighter.
Antoinette raised her arms higher, palms up to catch the moonlight. “Come to me,” she chanted. “Help me!”
She lurched a step forward, and another. She felt light, so very light, as if she could fly free of all her confusion
“No!” she heard a man shout. At first disoriented, she thought it was part of the spell. A strange part, one she had not conjured herself, but many times things happened she had not counted on when she was in a meditative state. She didn't have the powers of her mother. She closed her eyes tighter, trying to will the strange voice away.
Yet it came again, closer this time, more insistent. “No, miss! Please!”
Antoinette opened her eyes and spun around, seeking the source of that shout. The magic of the night dissipated, the wind faded to a mere cold embrace.
She turned too quickly, though. The soles of her boots slid on the coating of snow, and she felt them slipping beneath her. Almost as if time had slowed down, allowing her to see herself falling, she coasted backward. Her arms flailed, trying to grasp onto something, anything.
There was nothing behind her but empty air.
She fell toward the earth. The sky arched overhead, black and cold and void. Something hard struck at the back of her head-and then she saw nothing at all.
Oh, blast! He had killed her!
Mark ran from the ring of trees toward the edge of the sea cliff, his boots slipping on the new layer of snowfall. The woman lay there, so very still, a crumpled heap of silk and wool.
He dropped to his knees beside her just as the moon disappeared behind a veil of clouds, leaving them in deepest midnight shadows. The only light was from the flickering ring of candles, sheltered from the cold by glass globes. The scent of lavender and dried rose was sweet and rich—and strange, in the middle of winter.
Mark had no time to ponder such oddities as candles and flowers, though. His only thought, his entire being, was concentrated on the woman lying so still on the ground.
“I’m sorry I startled you,” he muttered. “Please don’t be dead.”
Very carefully, he bent down toward her, watching her for any sign of breath and life. He took her hand in his, and pressed his fingertips to her slender wrist. “Thank you,” he whispered, when he detected the thready hum of her pulse. Her chest rose in a steady, though shallow, rhythm.
So she was not dead, but not yet out of danger. Mark recalled how, on the second ship he sailed on, a cabin boy had been struck on the head by a falling bucket. The lad had remained unconscious for many days before dying, never once awakening. Head injuries were quite perilous and unpredictable.
He quickly stripped off his greatcoat and made a cushion of it on the ground. Slowly, gingerly, he moved her head onto its softness, probing gently for an injury. There was a small knot near the base of her neck, but none of the stickiness of blood.
He had been quite right all these years to resist his mother’s letters urging him to come home. Look what happened when he ventured outside his door! He was a menace to other people. A curse. Here he had merely meant to prevent the girl from throwing herself over the cliff, and instead he had nearly killed her.
He should go for help, he thought, as he reached for one of the woman’s candles and brought it closer. But where could he go? The nearest house after his own cottage was Royce Castle, and the woman who came in to keep house for him had said that the Leighton family had gone to Bath until after the New Year, and most of the servants were home in the village with their families. The physician was in the village, too, more than thirty minutes’ ride from here. Mark would just have to take care of her himself. He lifted up the candle so he could see her better, and gave a strangled gasp. It wasn’t merely that she was beautiful, though she certainly was, extremely so. It was that she was so completely unlike anyone he had ever seen before, and not at all what he would expect to find here in this remote corner of England.
She was more like something he would find in a dream, a fantasy of warm seas, waterfalls, and jasmine flowers. Maybe she was a dream, truly. This whole bizarre night was a dream.
His fingers tightened on her wrist. No, she was too warm, too solid to be a dream. Or a ghost.
The woman’s skin, though ashen at the moment, was a dark, burnished color, like smooth silk over high cheekbones and an aquiline nose. Her hair, spread around her on the snow, was a wild riot of thick, black waves. She was dressed unlike anyone else, too. Her dark cloak had fallen back to reveal a strange robe of green silk, embroidered in gold with exotic flowers and symbols, fastened up the front with gold buttonss. She was very tall. If she was standing, she would probably be about as tall as Mark’s own six foot three, yet she was slender as a reed.
“You must be an illusion,” he whispered to her. “What else would you be doing on this godforsaken shore?”
Then he remembered—the island witch. Of course. This must be she.
When Mark first joined the Navy at age fifteen, he was sent to the West Indies station, where he stayed for over five years. Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda. There he had seen many women like this one, dusky, willowy, impossibly lovely. He had never seen one to approach her aura of elegance, though. Even unconscious, she exuded a certain power surely unknown to any English lady. Or any other lady at all.
“Who are you?” he asked her. “How did you come to be here?”
And was she a witch? Mark was certainly not a man to put stock in village gossip. He had been the subject of it far too often himself. But something odd had been happening here this night. Look at her robe, the candles.
The necklace she wore. It was a heavy silver pendant, suspended on a long chain, etched in its center with a crescent moon image, surrounded by a circle of rough-cut gemstones. They glowed in the candlelight, seeming to entice him, to beckon him...
The tips of his fingers were grazing the cold silver, when she let out a soft moan. Her long fingers stirred and reached up toward her temple.
“You’re awake!” Mark shouted in jubilation, a relief unlike any he had ever known rising up in his heart. She was not dead, nor in an endless stupor. He hadn't killed her.
“Am I?” she whispered roughly. Her eyes opened, focusing up on him. They were wide, as black as the night around them, and as clear as if she was simply waking from the most refreshing of slumbers.
Her brows, as silken and arched as a raven’s wings, drew down slightly when sh
e saw him, as if puzzled. Too late, Mark realized he held the candle near to his face. His ruined face. It was sure to send this goddess back into her unreachable sleep to see that! And he hadn't put his gloves on, either. He hastily blew out the candle and cast it away into the snow.
She didn't scream or gasp or turn away, as other ladies often did. Nor did her expression dissolve into pity. She simply watched him, that tiny puzzled frown on her brow
Perhaps her wits were still addled from the fall. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice low and soft, touched with a French island lilt. She stared up at him warily, her slender body stiffening. “What happened to me? Are you a ghost?”
He swallowed hard past the sudden dryness in his throat. “No, I am not a ghost. Not yet. My name is Captain Mark Payne, madame,” he answered her, the words escaping before he could even catch them. Captain? He had not called himself by that title in many years. But there it was, the sound of it hanging in the air between them. “I fear you took a fall and hit your head. I thought you were about to jump off the cliff, and I called out to you. I fear I startled you. I’m sorry.”
“A fall?” Carefully, wincing a bit, she turned her head to see the sputtering candles, the scattering of herbs now being covered by the new snowfall. “I remember coming here now. Do you live nearby?”
“Yes. In Thornbush Cottage. I couldn't sleep, so I came out for a walk. I thought no one would be about.” She studied him very carefully, her dark eyes narrowed. He did not know what she saw there, but whatever it was obviously somewhat reassured her. She finally nodded, and said, “You saved me? Thank you very much.”
Mark could only nod brusquely, unable to take his gaze from her. She appeared to be waiting for him to say something. Her perfect stillness, her very aura of some unfathomable serenity, seemed to invite confidences of all sorts. Even from a man who had confided in no one, relied on no one, for so many long years.
Timeless Christmas Romance: Historical Romance Holiday Collection Page 26
