by Nora Roberts
“The shirt wasn’t there. Julia claims to have an unerring eye for wardrobe, and I wanted to believe her. We decided you should be put on guard without going into specifics. I thought it best if you were wary of everyone. We decided that Julia would talk to you because you’d trust her more quickly than you’d trust me. I hadn’t done anything to warrant your trust.”
“She frightened me pretty successfully,” Autumn recalled. “I had nightmares.”
“I’m sorry. It seemed the best way at the time. We thought the film had been destroyed, but we didn’t want to take any chances.”
“She was telling Jacques that night, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah.” Lucas noted the faint annoyance in her tone. “That way there would have been three of us to look out for you.”
“I might have looked out for myself if I’d been told.”
“No, I don’t think so. Your face is a dead giveaway. That morning at breakfast when you started rambling about a fourth roll and remembered, everything showed in your eyes.”
“If I’d been prepared—”
“If you hadn’t been a damn fool and had gone with Julia, we could have kept you safe.”
“I wanted to think,” she began, angry at being kept in the dark.
“It was my fault.” Lucas held up a hand to stop her. “The whole thing’s been my doing. I should have handled things differently. You’d never have been hurt if I had.”
“No, Lucas.” Guilt swamped her when she remembered the look on his face after he had dragged her from the lake. “I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”
“Good God, Cat, don’t look at me like that. I can’t cope with it.” He turned away. “I’m doing my best to keep my word. I’ll get Robert; he’ll want to examine you.”
“Lucas.” She wasn’t going to let him walk out that door until he told her everything. “Why did you come here? And don’t tell me you came to Virginia to write. I know—I remember your habits.”
Lucas turned, but kept his hand on the knob. “I told you before, the other reason no longer exists. Leave it.”
He had retreated behind the cool, detached manner he used so well, but Autumn wasn’t going to be shoved aside. “This is my aunt’s inn, Lucas. Your coming here, however indirectly, started this chain of events. I have a right to know why you came.”
For several seconds, he stared at her, then his hands sought his pockets again. “All right,” he agreed. “I don’t suppose I have any right to pride after this, and you deserve to get in a few licks after the way I’ve treated you.” He came no closer, but his eyes locked hard on hers. “I came here because of you. Because I had to get you back or go crazy.”
“Me?” The pain was so sharp, Autumn laughed. She would not cry again. “Oh Lucas, please, do better.” She saw him flinch before he walked again to the window. “You tossed me out, remember? You didn’t want me then. You don’t want me now.”
“Didn’t want you!” He whirled, knocking over a vase and sending it crashing. The anger surrounding him was fierce and vivid. “You can’t even comprehend how much I wanted you, have wanted you all these years. I thought I’d lose my mind from wanting you.”
“No, I won’t listen to this.” Autumn turned away to lean against the bedpost. “I won’t listen.”
“You asked for it. Now you’ll listen.”
“You told me you didn’t want me,” she flung at him. “I never meant anything to you. You told me it was finished and shrugged your shoulders like it had been nothing all along. Nothing, nothing’s ever hurt me like the way you brushed me aside.”
“I know what I did.” The anger was gone from his voice to be replaced by strain. “I know the things I said to you while you stood there staring at me. I hated myself. I wanted you to scream, to rage, to make it easy for me to push you out. But you just stood there with tears falling down your face. I’ve never forgotten how you looked.”
Autumn pulled herself together and faced him again. “You said you didn’t want me. Why would you have said it if it weren’t true?”
“Because you terrified me.”
He said it so simply, she slumped down on the bed to stare at him. “Terrified you? I terrified you?”
“You don’t know what you did to me—all that sweetness, all that generosity. You never asked anything of me, and yet you asked everything.” He began to pace again. Autumn watched him in bewilderment. “You were an obsession, that’s what I told myself. If I sent you away, hurt you badly enough to make you go, I’d be cured. The more I had of you, the more I needed. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and curse you for not being there. Then I’d curse myself for needing you there. I had to get away from you. I couldn’t admit, not even to myself, that I loved you.”
“Loved me?” Autumn repeated the words dumbly. “You loved me?”
“Loved then, love now and for the rest of my life.” Lucas drew in a deep breath as if the words had left him shaken. “I wasn’t able to tell you. I wasn’t able to believe it.” He stopped pacing and looked at her. “I’ve kept close tabs on you these past three years. I found all sorts of excuses to do so. When I found out about the inn, and your connection with it, I began to fly out here off and on. Finally, I admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to make it without you. I mapped out a plan. I had it all worked out.” He gave her an ironic smile.
“Plan?” Autumn repeated. Her mind was still whirling.
“It was easy to plant the idea in Aunt Tabby’s head to write you and ask you to visit. Knowing you, I was sure you’d come without question. That was all I needed. I was so sure of myself. I thought all I’d have to do would be to issue the invitation, and you’d fall right back into my arms. Just like old times. I’d have you back, marry you before you sorted things out and pat myself on the back for being so damn clever.”
“Marry me?” Autumn’s brows flew up in astonishment.
“Once we were married,” Lucas went on as if she hadn’t interrupted, “I’d never have to worry about losing you again. I’d simply never give you a divorce no matter how you struggled. I deserved a good kick in the teeth, Cat, and you gave it to me. Instead of falling into my arms, you turned up your nose and told me to get lost. But that didn’t throw me off for long. No, you’d loved me once, and I’d make you love me again. I could deal with the anger, but the ice . . .
“I didn’t know I could be hurt that way. It was quite a shock. Seeing you again . . .” He paused and seemed to struggle for words. “It was torture, pure and simple, to be so close and not be able to have you. I wanted to tell you what you meant to me, then every time I got near you I’d behave like a maniac. The way you cringed from me yesterday, telling me not to hurt you again, I can’t tell you what that did to me.”
“Lucas—”
“You’d better let me finish,” he told her. “I’ll never be able to manage this again.” He reached for a cigarette, changed his mind, then continued. “Julia roasted me, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. The more you resisted, the worse I treated you. Every time I approached you, I ended up doing the wrong thing. That day, up in your room . . .” He stopped and Autumn watched the struggle on his face. “I nearly raped you. I was crazy with jealousy after seeing you and Anderson. When I saw you cry—I swore I’d never be responsible for putting that look on your face again.
“I’d come up that day, ready to beg, crawl, plead, whatever it took. When I saw you kissing him, something snapped. I started thinking about the men you’d been with these past three years. The men who’d have you again when I couldn’t.”
“I’ve never been with any man but you,” Autumn interrupted quietly.
Lucas’s expression changed from barely suppressed fury to confusion before he studied her face with his familiar intensity. “Why?”
“Because every time I started to, I remembered he wasn’t you.”
As if in pain, Lucas shut his eyes, then turned from her. “Cat, I’ve never done anything in my life to deserve you.”
/>
“No, you probably haven’t.” She rose from the bed to stand behind him. “Lucas, if you want me, tell me so, and tell me why. Ask me, Lucas. I want it spelled out.”
“All right.” He moved his shoulders as he turned back, but his eyes weren’t casual. “Cat . . .” He reached up to touch her cheek, then thrust the hand in his pocket. “I want you, desperately, because life isn’t even tolerable without you. I need you because you are, and always were, the best part of my life. I love you for reasons it would take hours to tell you. Take me back, please. Marry me.”
She wanted to throw herself into his arms, but held back. Don’t make it too easy on him. Julia’s words played back in her head. No, Lucas had had too much come too easily to him. Autumn smiled at him, but didn’t reach out.
“All right,” she said simply.
“All right?” He frowned, uncertain. “All right what?”
“I’ll marry you. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Yes, damn it, but—”
“The least you could do is kiss me, Lucas. It’s traditional.”
Lightly, he rested his hands on her shoulders. “Cat, I want you to be sure, because I’ll never be able to let go. If it’s gratitude, I’m desperate enough to take it. But I want you to think about what you’re doing.”
She tilted her head. “You did know I thought it was you with Helen on that film?”
“Cat, for God’s sake—”
“I went into the woods,” she continued mildly. “I was just about to expose that film when Steve found me. Lucas.” She inched closer. “Do you know how I feel about the sanctity of film?”
His breath came out in a small huff of relief as he lifted a hand to either side of her face. He grinned. “Yes. Yes, I do. Something about the eleventh commandment.”
“Thou shalt not expose unprocessed film. Now,”—she slid her arms up his back—“are you going to kiss me, or do I have to make you?”
Keep reading for an excerpt from the first book in The Cousins O’Dwyer Trilogy by Nora Roberts
DARK WITCH
Available from Berkley October 2013
Winter 1263
Near the shadow of the castle, deep in the green woods, Sorcha led her children through the gloom toward home. The two youngest rode the sturdy pony with Teagan, barely three, nodding with every plod. Weary, Sorcha thought, after the excitement of Imbolg, the bonfires, and the feasting.
“Mind your sister, Eamon.”
At five, Eamon’s minding was a quick poke to wake up his baby sister before he went back to nibbling on the bannocks his mother had baked that morning.
“Home in your bed soon,” Sorcha crooned when Teagan whined. “Home soon.”
She’d tarried too long in the clearing, she thought now. And though Imbolg celebrated the first stirrings in the womb of the Earth Mother, night fell too fast and hard in winter.
A bitter one it had been, crackling with icy winds and blowing snow and ice-tipped rain. The fog had lived all winter, creeping, crawling, curtaining sun and moon. Too often in that wind, in that fog, she’d heard her name called—a beckoning she refused to answer. Too often in that world of white and gray, she’d seen the dark.
She refused to truck with it.
Her man had begged her to take the children and stay with his fine while he waged his battles over that endless winter.
As the wife of the cennfine every door would open for her. And in her own right, for what and who she was, welcome would always be made.
But she needed her woods, her cabin, her place. She needed to be apart as much as she needed to breathe.
She would tend her own, always, her home and her hearth, her craft and her duties. And most of all, the precious children she and Daithi had made. She had no fear of the night.
She was known as the Dark Witch, and her power was great.
But just then she felt sorely a woman missing her man, yearning for the warmth of him, the fine, hard body pressed to hers in the cold and lonely dark.
What did she care for war? For the greed and ambitions of all the petty kings? She only wanted her man home safe and whole.
When he came home, they would make another baby, and she would feel that life inside her again. She mourned still the life she’d lost on a brutal black night when the first winter wind had blown through her woods like the sound of weeping.
How many had she healed? How many had she saved? And yet when the blood had poured from her, when that fragile life had flooded away, no magick, no offering, no bargain with the gods had saved it.
But then she knew, too well, healing others came more easily than healing self. And the gods as fickle as a giddy girl in May.
“Look! Look!” Brannaugh, her eldest at seven, danced off the hard path, with their big hound on her heels. “The blackthorn’s blooming! It’s a sign.”
She saw it now, the hint of those creamy white blossoms among the black, tangled branches. Her first bitter thought was while Brighid, the fertility-bringing goddess, blessed the earth, her own womb lay empty inside her.
Then she watched her girl, her first pride, sharp-eyed, pink-cheeked, spinning through the snow. She’d been blessed, Sorcha reminded herself. Three times blessed.
“It’s a sign, Ma.” Dark hair flying with every spin, Brannaugh lifted her face to the dimming light. “Of coming spring.”
“Aye, it’s that. A good sign.” As had been the gloomy day, as the old hag Cailleach couldn’t find firewood without the bright sun. So spring would come early, so the legend went.
The blackthorn bloomed bright, tempting the flowers to follow.
She saw the hope in her child’s eyes, as she’d seen it at the bonfire in other eyes, heard it in the voices. And Sorcha searched inside herself for that spark of hope.
But found only dread.
He would come again tonight—she could already sense him. Lurking, waiting, plotting. Inside, she thought, inside the cabin behind the bolted door, with her charms laid out to protect her babies. To protect herself.
She clucked to the pony to quicken his pace, whistled for the dog. “Come along now, Brannaugh, your sister’s all but asleep already.”
“Da comes home in the spring.”
Though her heart stayed heavy, Sorcha smiled and took Brannaugh’s hand. “He does that, home by Bealtaine, and we’ll have a great feast.”
“Can I see him tonight, with you? In the fire?”
“There’s much to do. The animals need tending before bed.”
“For a moment?” Brannaugh tipped her face back, her eyes, gray as smoke, pleading. “Just to see him for a moment, then I can dream he’s home again.”
As she would herself, Sorcha thought, and now her smile came from her heart. “For a moment, m’inion, when the work’s done.”
“And you take your medicine.”
Sorcha lifted her brows. “Will I then? Do I look to you as if I’m in need of it?”
“You’re still pale, Ma.” Brannaugh kept her voice beneath the wind.
“Just a wee bit tired, and you’re not to worry. Here now, hold on to your sister, Eamon! Alastar smells home, and she’s likely to fall off.”
“She rides better than Eamon, and me as well.”
“Aye, well, the horse is her talisman, but she’s near sleeping on his back.”
The path turned; the pony’s hooves rang on the frozen ground as he trotted toward the shed beside the cabin.
“Eamon, see to Alastar, an extra scoop of grain tonight. You had your fill, didn’t you?” she said as her boy began to mutter.
He grinned at her, handsome as a summer morning, and though he could hop down as quick as a rabbit, he held out his arms.
He’d always been one for a cuddle, Sorcha thought, hugging him as she lifted him down.
She didn’t have to tell Brannaugh to start her chores. The girl ran the house nearly as well as her mother. Sorcha took Teagan in her arms, murmuring, soothing, as she carried her into the cabin.
/> “It’s dreaming time, my darling.”
“I’m a pony, and I gallop all day.”
“Oh aye, the prettiest of ponies, and the fastest of all.”
The fire, down to embers after the hours away, barely held back the cold. As she carried the baby to bed, Sorcha held out a hand to the hearth. The flames leapt up, simmered over the ashes.
She tucked Teagan into the bunk, smoothed her hair—bright as sunlight like her father’s—and waited until her eyes—deep and dark