by Lynn Kurland
She woke the next morning, half expecting to see Richard standing over her, hands on his hips, ready to yell at her. But all she saw was Hamlet putting out the remains of the fire and gathering their gear. She got herself ready, then returned to the clearing to find Hamlet saddling their mounts.
“Lady Jessica,” he said, and by his tone of voice she knew what was to come.
“It’s for the best, Hamlet,” Jessica said firmly.
“Not that such a sacrifice isn’t a most romantic thing to do,” Hamlet said, “but I know my lord Richard and he will be mightily displeased with your actions.”
Jessica suspected mightily displeased was the understatement of the year. She had visions of Vesuvius.
“Just duck,” she advised. “He’ll understand.”
“Understand?” Hamlet mused. “Aye, he might. But he will not care for it.”
“It’s for the best,” Jessica repeated, more for herself than for him. She swung up into the saddle and started south. It was the best she could do direction-wise. She recognized a few of the landmarks she’d seen on their way to Artane, so she supposed they were on the right road. They would run into someone sooner or later who could hopefully verify that.
Jessica pushed Hamlet as fast as he would go, then finally decided she could walk as swiftly as he seemed to want to ride. After four days in the saddle, it didn’t sound like such a bad idea, so she dismounted and walked alongside her horse.
It was at that point that her day took a decided turn south.
She saw the man running toward her but it didn’t register that she should really get out of his way until she realized that he was running toward her. She turned and put her foot up in her makeshift stirrup, then felt the wind knocked out of her. She landed flat on her face with a very heavy weight on her back.
“Off, you ruffian!” Hamlet thundered.
“I’ll slit her throat,” the man snarled. “Stay where you are.”
“Lord Hugh,” Hamlet said, aghast. “What do you?”
Jessica closed her eyes and tried to ignore the feeling of a knife against her neck. Great. The very last person she wanted to see was Hugh de Galtres. She had very vivid memories of their last encounter and of Richard’s solving of that problem for her. She suspected Hugh felt he had some payback coming.
His weight came off her, but he hauled her up with his hand in her hair. Jessica stood with her head pulled uncomfortably back, a knife at her throat, and wished that she had tried to get home just a few hours earlier. Well, she’d learned her lesson about procrastination.
“She’s a faery,” Hugh said, sounding completely deranged. “She’s bewitched my brother.”
“Now, my lord,” Hamlet began.
“She has!” Hugh shouted. “And since the boy did not kill her, it falls to me to do it. I’ve the stomach for the deed.”
So Hugh had been behind the attack. Somehow Jessica just wasn’t surprised.
“I’ve no doubt you do have the stomach, my lord,” Hamlet said, “but surely there is a proper way to go about these things.”
Jessica looked at Hamlet with as much surprise as her uncomfortable position allowed. Great, now even her allies were going crazy. Hamlet hopped down from his horse and put up his sword.
“Let us reason together, my lord,” Hamlet said with a pleasant smile. “The slaying of a faery is not something to be taken lightly. What if you should go about it the wrong way and she come back to haunt you?”
Hugh’s fist tightened in Jessica’s hair and she winced. Hamlet was not being much help.
“Think you?” Hugh whispered. “Would she?”
Jessica found herself shaken vigorously.
“Would you?” Hugh demanded. “Would you haunt me?”
Jessica swallowed with difficulty. “I might.”
“She would,” Hamlet confirmed. “Especially if you slay her so near to a road, for then her spirit will continue to travel. ’Tis best that we move over to that field.”
Hugh seemed to consider this, then he gave Jessica another shake. “You came from the grass. Perhaps ’tis best you return to the grass.”
“Works for me,” she muttered, looking up and wishing she could see a star. Maybe it didn’t matter the time of day. Maybe it didn’t even matter the location. If she was lucky, she could send herself home by just the wishing.
If she wasn’t lucky, she would die.
The ground trembled as she was pushed off the road and she wondered if an earthquake would accompany her return trip. And then she heard a bellow that set her hair on end.
“Hugh!”
Jessica closed her eyes in relief at the familiar sound of that voice. The cavalry had come.
“Nay, brother,” Hugh said, dragging Jessica along with him. “’Tis for you I do this!”
Jessica soon found herself in the middle of the field with Hugh clutching her from behind and Richard glaring down at her from atop his horse. If she hadn’t known she was in such dire straits, she might have smiled at the ridiculousness of the scene they must have made.
“I wish,” Richard said curtly, “that everyone about me would cease to do things they think are best for me.” He glared at Jessica. “If you had not left, you would not find yourself here. And you,” he said, lifting his gaze to Hugh. “I hardly know where to begin with you. What is it you do here?”
“I came to release you from her spell,” Hugh said, pressing the knife against Jessica’s neck. “She’s a faery.”
“She is not a faery!” Richard exclaimed.
“Brother,” Hugh said patiently, “she has put you under a spell. You are hardly the one to judge such matters.”
And you are? Jessica wanted desperately to ask. Hugh continued to outline her supposed crimes but Jessica found it easier and easier to tune him out. All she could do was stare up at the man she loved more than life itself and wish that somehow, some way, things had been different. She gave him the most loving look she had in her.
He, however, did not return it. He looked like he wanted to kill her.
Nothing could have reassured her more that he loved her still.
Richard dismounted and Jessica wished immediately that he hadn’t. Hugh’s knife bit into her skin. Not deeply, but enough that Richard froze in place.
“Brother,” Richard said sternly, “put away your blade.”
Hugh spat over Jessica’s shoulder and it landed at Richard’s feet.
“I’ll need to purify you as well,” Hugh said, nodding so vigorously Jessica feared he would slit her throat in the process. “You’re very much under her spell.”
“You have that aright,” Richard muttered, then he held out his hands quickly. “I didn’t mean that, Hugh. Here, brother, let us speak together, just you and I. Release Jessica and come to me.”
Hugh shook his head again. “I need your aid, Richard. I’ve no gold and my peasants are in revolt. But you’ll not aid me until I’ve rid your hall of this pestilence.”
Jessica lifted one eyebrow. Pestilence? She’d been called many things, but that was possibly the most insulting.
“Hugh,” Richard said, taking a single step closer. He motioned for his men to surround Hugh, but Hugh shook his head.
“Keep them where I can see them,” Hugh said, drawing a bit more blood. “And you, brother, come no closer. ’Tis for your own safety. I’ve said my charms this morn and Fate has smiled upon me. It delivered this faery into my arms and gave me the skill to slay it. Now stand back and let me be about my business.”
“Hugh . . .”
Jessica had the feeling that there was only one way out of this and it wasn’t into Richard’s arms. She looked at Richard.
“I have to go.”
He shook his head. “Nay . . .”
“Richard,” she said, swallowing with difficulty, “even if I get out of this, where does it leave me? You have to do what the king wants. You don’t have a choice.”
“I always have a choice.”
“
Not if you intend to keep your home.”
“I don’t need my hall—”
“Yes, you do. I’m not going to be the cause of your losing it.”
He hesitated, and in that hesitation, she had her complete answer. She’d hit upon the truth of the matter and there was no denying it.
Richard shook his head. “It doesn’t matter—”
“Bespelled,” Hugh said fervently. “See you, brother? She has bespelled you! You’ve no thought for anything but her!”
Jessica closed her eyes and wished with all her might.
I want to go home.
It was a lie and she knew it, but she had no other choice.
Besides, she missed Godiva chocolate, Häagen-Dazs, indoor plumbing, and central heating. She missed glamour magazines, television, and obnoxious commercials. She missed her grand piano. She missed her comfortable bed. And, she actually did miss the subway in New York. Peace and quiet became irritating after a few months.
I love him. Please let me go home.
She felt something shudder. She opened her eyes and looked to her left.
She blinked.
A road. A house in the distance.
She looked to her right and there stood Richard still, surrounded by his men. Hugh still had his hand in her hair, but the knife had fallen away from her neck. Jessica spun away from him, but he seemingly gathered his wits and came after her, his arm raised, the knife glinting in the sunlight.
Jessica stumbled and fell backward.
“Jessica!”
She closed her eyes and waited for the pain. But it never came.
She opened her eyes.
She was in a field, much like the one she’d been in a split second before.
But she was alone.
38
Richard watched Hugh throw himself at Jessica and he thought his heart just might stop. But before he could leap across the distance and rescue his lady, he realized that his brother had fallen upon nothing.
Nothing but the winter grasses.
Jessica was gone.
Hugh jumped to his feet, then threw his head back and howled.
Richard looked at his men. To a man, they were making the sign of the cross and looking as if they’d just seen the jaws of Hell opening up before them with the singular intention of ingesting them whole. Richard actually couldn’t blame them. He’d believed Jessica, aye, but there was nothing like seeing something in truth to remove all doubt.
And then he realized what he’d seen.
She was gone.
He cried out and stumbled forward, his hands out-stretched.
“Jessica!”
He dropped to his knees. There was no mark where her feet had been, no bent blade of grass, no disturbed bit of dirt. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought he’d dreamed her.
Nay, the agony in his chest was a perfect reminder of just how well he’d known her.
He put his face in his hands and wept.
He knew his men were behind him, but he also knew they would not aid him. He’d trained them all too well. No one would touch him, no one would say anything, no one would offer comfort.
And the one person who consistently ignored all his fierce growls and snarls was hundreds of years away.
Where he couldn’t have reached her had he wanted to.
• • •
Hugh de Galtres stood several feet from his brother and trembled. He wasn’t a coward by nature, but he had just witnessed what he could only believe was magic. One moment Jessica had been standing there, the next she had disappeared.
It was true, then.
She was a faery.
Hugh ignored his brother kneeling there, weeping. Not even knowing that he had driven Richard to this humiliation was enough to bring Hugh from his stupor.
“You.”
The raw brutality of that voice, however, was.
Hugh came back to himself in time to see Richard heave himself to his feet. He backed away, but not quickly enough.
“You did this,” Richard rasped. “You bastard.”
Hugh couldn’t even defend himself. He was far too unnerved by what he’d just seen.
“The faery—”
He managed no words past that. Richard’s hands around his throat cut off both his words and his air.
“Go home,” Richard said, “speak no word. And think on how fortunate you are to still have your life.”
Hugh knew Richard was close to breaking his neck, so he closed his eyes in agreement and found himself quite suddenly sprawled on the ground. He took several deep breaths, indeed grateful that he was still alive to do so, then blurted out his most burning desire.
“My aid,” he gasped.
“You’ll have it,” Richard snarled. “But never let me see your sorry visage again. And never, ever say aught of this.”
Hugh doubted he would ever forget what he’d seen that day or how deeply it had disturbed him, but he also had the feeling that he wouldn’t be saying anything about it.
No one would have believed him.
But as he heaved himself to his feet, he couldn’t help but feel a bit vindicated. The creature had sprung up from the grass and he had been the one to force her home. In time perhaps Richard would even come to appreciate that and see Hugh rewarded properly for his deed.
Hugh looked at his brother and decided, however, that such a time was not likely to arrive in the near future. He slunk off as quickly as he could and prayed with all his might that Richard would make good on his promise of aid.
If not, all Hugh’s efforts on Richard’s behalf would have availed him nothing.
He gave the middle of the grassy field a wide berth, then turned his face homeward.
• • •
Richard gathered his thoughts and the shards of his heart and turned to face his men. All three—John, Godwin, and Hamlet—looked at him with wide eyes. If Richard had had the heart, he might have been amused. Three warriors who had seen most everything there was to see in the world, rendered speechless and wondering by a woman, no less.
“She was no faery,” Richard said hoarsely.
His men made no answer.
“I cannot explain her appearance, nor her disappearance,” Richard continued. “But of the latter we will say no more.”
His men nodded as one—slowly and without complete surety, but they made the motion. Richard mounted, waited for them to do the same, then made his way back to the road. He paused and considered returning to Artane.
He turned his horse sharply to the right. He would go home. He never should have left. If he’d never left Burwyck-on-the-Sea to rescue Hugh the first time, he never would have found Jessica. And if he’d refused to go to Artane, he never would have lost her.
But if he’d never had her, then his life would have remained empty, and what joy he would have missed!
Though at the moment, with the bleak emptiness of the rest of his mortal journey facing him, he couldn’t help but wonder if he might have been better off never to have known her, never to have loved her, and never to have lost her.
He closed his eyes and wept.
39
Jessica stared out the window as the plane started its descent through the clouds to the airport near Seattle. It was gloomy on the way down and it was even gloomier once they landed. The rain mirrored perfectly the bleakness in her heart. Normally she didn’t mind the rain. Now it looked too much like tears.
She closed her eyes and let herself think back on what had happened over the past two months. Once she’d been able to get a grip on her hysterics, she’d walked to the house she’d seen in the distance. She’d placed a call to Henry and found herself retrieved within hours. The faculty excursion was over, but he’d offered her hospitality anyway. She’d faced a few police questions, excused her absence by lying about a case of amnesia, then packed her bags. The last thing she’d wanted was to be anywhere near Hugh’s castle. She’d thanked Henry profusely for his help, then headed back
to New York.
Now it was almost hard to believe the events of the last two months had actually happened. Once she’d gotten back to New York, it felt as if she’d never left. Apparently time had passed, however, and she had found herself in a great deal of trouble over not having had her compositions ready on time. She’d thrown herself into her work, finishing the final movement of her symphony in less than a month. It had poured out of her from someplace deep inside, finished as she had never finished anything in her head before. It was almost as if she was doing nothing more than taking dictation from her soul.
And the first time she’d heard it rehearsed all the way through, she had wept. Her love for Richard had been in every note, every phrase, every sweeping arc of melody. She’d finally left the concert hall, blubbering almost past reason.
At least she’d thought it had been the symphony to do it to her. It could have been hormones.
Or the morning sickness.
That was the only thing that convinced her that her time in medieval England hadn’t been a dream. She was carrying Richard’s child, his baby, whom he would never know.
But even that had started to feel far too normal. So she’d bought herself a plane ticket to Seattle, excused herself from sitting in on a week’s worth of rehearsals of her piece, and hoped that being with her mother and grandmother would restore her sanity.
The plane landed without incident, but even the slight turbulence on the way down had Jessica grabbing for the airsickness bag. She managed to keep from throwing up until the other two people in her row had gotten up, but even then it wasn’t pretty for those around her.
By the time she made it to the gate, she was sobbing and ready to lie down and give up.
Her mother was there, waiting. Jessica figured there was no sense in stopping the sobs to say her hellos. She suspected her mother would understand.
Two hours later she was sitting in the kitchen of her parents’ house, watching her grandmother tat and listening to her mother explain Jessica’s sudden arrival to the next-door neighbor to whom her mother had been explaining things for as long as Jessica could remember. Hot potato soup with homemade bread was next and Jessica couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anything better.