Magic In The Storm

by Meredith Bond

  “Here, take these,” she said, handing him her gold earrings. She reached around and unclasped her necklace and handed that to him as well. “You’ll need money in London. This is all I have.”

  Her gift touched him—maybe she did believe in him after all. Giving her a hug, he said, “Thank you.”

  <><><>

  Morgan led his horse, Apollo, to the furthest east edge of the forest. It was the direction he would need to take to get to London, so why not start there? It was also the closest to the main road, and furthest from the abbey. He would not ride across the border for fear of harming his horse. No, he would have to walk across and then call for him.

  He could just see the road through the thick trees. It beckoned to him, but still his fears crept through his mind. Could he do this? What if he couldn’t? He had not been out of the forest—not for six years. And before that he had never been off his brother’s estate. Not once in his entire life had he stepped off of Vallentyn property.

  Until now.

  He boldly stepped toward the edge of the forest, slipping around trees. He continued moving forward until his legs simply refused to go any further. He was only a short distance away from the border—but his feet simply would not move.

  His heart began to hammer in his chest.

  He would move! He would leave!

  Branches blocked his way, surrounding him like bars on a cage. Sweat trickled down his forehead, and prickled at his lower back too.

  Life waited for him beyond this forest. The answers to all of his questions. His destiny lay out there, waiting for him. He only needed to go out there and claim it. He only needed to escape.

  With great effort, he moved one foot forward a few inches. He stood steadfast, refusing to move back into the forest as his mind kept urging him to do. Taking a deep breath, he slowly moved his other foot forward. It was almost painful making his limbs to move, but he forced himself to stay with it.

  Once again, Morgan stopped to catch his breath. He closed his eyes and concentrated. He tried to move his foot. It only moved an inch and that was with a great deal of effort.

  Where were those new powers when he needed them?

  He had to get out of this forest! He was so close. There was only one last row of trees between him and freedom.

  The only way to gain his destiny was to seek it out himself. He had to take control over his own life. His foot moved another few inches.

  He was getting closer, but still the edge of the forest might have well been miles away.

  He had to be like Adriana. She knew what was important to her. She knew what she wanted more than anything else in this world and would do anything to attain it.

  He moved again, but it was getting increasingly harder. He stopped to catch his breath. Never had he moved so slowly in his life and yet he felt as if he were running mile after mile.

  He would be like her—he moved another inch. He would give up everything to get his powers, to attain his destiny... he stood, breathing heavily. He would do anything to find Adriana and get her back into his life.

  His foot moved forward again. He respected Adriana, admired her, and most importantly, she made him happy.

  He took another step forward.

  She made him happier than he had ever been in his life. She made him feel incredible things he had never experienced before.

  He took another step.

  He had to find her. He had to be with her again. If he could get to London, he would be able to discover why she had left so suddenly. If he had done anything wrong, anything to have hurt her... he would do whatever was in his power to make it up to her. But he had to see her. Had to talk to her. He couldn’t live another day without at least making an effort to be with her.

  His legs felt as if they weighed hundreds of pounds each. But he would make it, he told himself again and again. Slowly but surely, he would get out of this forest. Adriana, the woman who had changed his life, would be waiting for him. If only he could get to her.

  The moment his foot crossed the tree line onto the verge next to the road, a burst of flames shot from the ground and began to engulf his leg. With a wave of his hand he willed the fire to go out, just as he had done earlier in his cottage. It disappeared, leaving only a blackened singe mark on his boot. He shook his head in amazement as the magic worked so easily once again. How... why? No, that was for later.

  He looked behind him at the dense wall of the forest. A shot burst from his lungs. Laughter followed with a happiness he’d never in his life imagined. Only being with Adriana had ever felt this good. He had done it! He had walked out of the forest! He was free!

  Apollo joined him a moment later on the road heading east. Heading to London. Heading to Adriana.

  Fifteen

  Adriana did not waste a moment lying in bed. This morning she was finally going to get up and get back to work.

  Enough was enough. She had moped around Lord Devaux’s small London house, allowing the household to run itself with its usual efficiency, for the past three days while she had sat brooding over Morgan.

  She had done little else than think about that fateful, wonderful, horrible, embarrassing afternoon with Morgan. How could she... But no. She was not going to go through this yet again. Not today. Today, she was going to get to work, and get that man out of her mind once and for all.

  And she was going to be married. The thought still made her seethe with rage. But there had been nothing else she could have done. Lord Vallentyn wasn’t going to stand up to his mother, Lord Devaux wasn’t going to give up the marriage settlement Lady Vallentyn had promised him.

  And she’d had to get away from Morgan.

  If she hadn’t put a good distance between them, goodness knows what she might have done. She might have gone back, as she had been so very tempted to do. And once there, would she have been able to keep her hands from his hard, muscled body? Would she have not wanted him to touch her and make her feel... No! She must not think such things! There had been no choice. She had had to leave.

  And the only way Lord Devaux had agreed to leave quickly was for her to accept Lord Vallentyn’s marriage proposal. So she had.

  There was no other way, she told herself again, and again. She’d no choice in the matter—the alternative of losing her art was simply unacceptable.

  Lord Vallentyn would be kind, if weak, and hopefully wouldn’t bother her overmuch with his attentions the way Morgan had. He would certainly never make her feel the way Morgan had. No, she need have no worries about Lord Vallentyn making her feel so incredible, so amazingly...

  “Ugh!” Adriana shook her head vigorously, as if doing so would dislodge these unwanted thoughts. Hopping out of bed, she quickly washed and dressed with the assistance of her maid.

  There was a lot of work to do in preparation for her wedding. It was time she got started with it.

  Her companion, Henrietta, had been wonderfully understanding these past few days. After Adriana had informed her she didn’t wanted to talk about her time at Vallentyn, Henrietta had hardly asked her any more questions. Well, yes, she had tried to pry some information from her, but only at odd intervals and only one question at a time. And the moment Adriana had told her to stop, she had done so.

  Adriana made her way down to the breakfast parlor noting the sterile good taste of the house. Not a speck of dust littered a surface, not a hint of warmth permeated the walls, no smell dare linger. She had thought, when she was younger, to try to make the house a warmer place, more like the home of her childhood, but Lord Devaux had nipped that in the bud quickly. This was his house and its sole purpose was to further his position in Parliament. That did not lend itself to pretty decorations—not even flower arrangements on the hall table.

  As she reached out a hand to open the parlor door, she realized with a start that she hadn’t even asked Henrietta once about her time with her family while Adriana had been at Vallentyn. How dreadful! She really should have asked.

  Well, th
at was going to be corrected. In fact, it would be corrected right now.

  The sun was making its usual attempt at coming in through the long windows, but, as always, was stopped short by the tree that stood near the back of the house.

  Adriana sat down at the table across from Henrietta and gave her companion a big smile. “Good morning, Henrietta. You are looking very pretty today. Is that a new dress?”

  Henrietta stopped pouring milk into her tea and narrowed her already small brown eyes at Adriana. “Good morning,” she replied warily. She looked down at her plain gray dress, which, unfortunately, accented the gray that was beginning to streak through her brown hair. She then resumed preparing her tea, stealing looks in Adriana’s direction every so often.

  “No, it is an old dress, although I did add some new lace to it while I was away. Is everything all right this morning?” she asked, suspicion slowing her voice.

  “Yes. Perfectly all right. I have decided to stop moping and get to work. If I am going to marry Lord Vallentyn, I imagine I’ve got quite a lot to do before I can turn over the running of the house entirely to you and Mrs. MacAllister,” Adriana said, pouring out her own cup of hot chocolate from the pot the footman had just placed in front of her. She was about to take a sip when she stopped at a thought. “I wonder if Lord Devaux is going to keep Mrs. MacAllister on or require you to do everything?”

  Henrietta spread some jam onto her toast, still stealing odd glances at Adriana. “I don’t know if Lord Devaux will want me to stay on at all if you are not here. I suppose I shall have to inquire.”

  “He mentioned to me that he would be counting on you to take my place after I was married. But I hope he doesn’t expect you to do everything.”

  Henrietta carefully cut the toast in half and then asked, “Is there a date set for your wedding, then?”

  “No. But I imagine it can’t be too far off. Well, a year at most. But we will have to arrange for my trousseau and I don’t know what sort of arrangements there will be for the wedding itself. I don’t know what Lord Devaux and Lady Vallentyn might have in mind.”

  Adriana stood up from the table, suddenly feeling awkward sitting still. “I think I will go and see if I can have a word with Lord Devaux right now. Perhaps he can answer some of these questions before he leaves for Parliament today.”

  As Adriana reached the door, she turned back toward her companion. “Oh, I forgot to ask, how was your visit with your family?”

  “It was fine, thank you. My father has passed nearly all of his responsibilities on to my brother—his gout, you know.”

  Henrietta droned on another few minutes about her family, but Adriana didn’t hear a word.

  With the mention of responsibility, she remembered how Morgan had made himself responsible for all of the animals in the forest at Vallentyn. He worked so hard to keep them all safe and healthy. She wondered how he was faring with that one foal who still hadn’t fully recovered from his bout with the pox.

  “...but she seems to be doing remarkably well, considering.”

  “Good, I am so glad to hear it,” Adriana said, cutting into whatever it was Henrietta was saying. “Well, I’d better catch Lord Devaux before he leaves.”

  She loved Henrietta dearly, but today Adriana just didn’t seem to have the patience to listen to even the very little that Henrietta said.

  She walked quickly to the library, where her guardian could usually be found when he was home. A knock on the door elicited no response so she questioned the footman at the front door and found that she had indeed missed him, and only by fifteen minutes.

  It was all right, she could speak to him later. It certainly couldn’t hurt having the maids count the linen and ensure that everything was in good order, even though this had all been done just three months ago during their annual spring cleaning. Mrs. MacAllister took her orders without a word of complaint, and immediately set about turning out all of the linen chests.

  As Adriana watched and counted along with the maids, the white sheets reminded her forcefully of the coarse white linen that had covered Morgan’s bed. Or perhaps it was the smell. As the sheets were shifted back and forth, that clean smell of sunshine and fresh air filled the room.

  The same smell that had filled her senses when she had been laying with him. It was a wonderful fresh smell of the sheets mixed with the sweet musk of his hot, hard body as he had pressed against her. His hands cupping her breasts and playing with... “No!”

  “I’m sorry, Miss?” The maid who was sitting on the floor in front of her, stopped counting.

  Adriana felt her face heat and knew she must be blushing furiously. “Nothing. Nothing. I’m sorry, I was just thinking of something else.”

  She turned to Henrietta, who was overseeing another maid’s work as she counted out another stack of linens. “Henrietta, could you take over for me here? I... er, I need to attend to something else.”

  Adriana got up, leaving the room as quickly as possible, ignoring the strange looks she was sure both the maids and Henrietta were giving her. But as soon as she got to her own room, she realized where she needed to go.

  She turned and headed to the back stairs that led up to the attic and her painting studio. Here she would find solace. Here she would be able to rid her mind of that man, and the afternoon that would not stop haunting her.

  Closing the door behind her, she paused and took a deep breath of the closed, acrid–smelling room. There was no sweet smell of the outdoors here, only turpentine mixed with the smell of her paints, and a musty smell that had accumulated due to the windows not being opened during the weeks she had been away. There was no dappled sunlight struggling to make its way through the trees of the forest—the full sun blared through the window at the far end of the narrow room making the room so bright it was almost blinding.

  Yes, this was as far from Morgan as she could possibly get. Her thoughts would be safe from his intrusion here.

  After putting on her smock, she took out a fresh canvas and mixed her palette of paints. Each little puddle of color was bright against the plain wooden palette: blue, green, white, black and beige, a touch of yellow and red rounding it out.

  Taking her paint brush in hand, she closed her eyes for a moment, clearing her mind of all thoughts. Morgan, Lord Vallentyn, Kat, Lady Vallentyn, and Lord Devaux dissolved away. Her muscles relaxed.

  Her mind wandered the broad seas and fields of her imagination. She opened her eyes, dipping her brush into the paint, and allowed her imagination free rein.

  Freedom. That was what she longed for more than anything else. Freedom from her guardian. Freedom from having to marry. Freedom from having to play hostess to a bunch of stuffy, foul–smelling old gentlemen. To be free to do as she pleased, paint what and when she liked, not have to worry about running a household that wasn’t even hers. Freedom to go where she liked, to travel, to do whatever it was she wanted.

  Adriana did not pay any attention to what she painted. All she thought about was the day she would be free. It was a day, she knew in her rational mind, that might never come. But it was a day that lived in her heart, and in her dreams.

  She looked down at her palette and noticed she needed some more beige and white. A little more black wouldn’t hurt either, she thought, mixing the paints together and putting them onto the board she held in her hand as she painted.

  She turned back to her canvas and stopped. Those eyes. Those black, twinkling, merry eyes were staring back at her. Morgan’s eyes.

  She hadn’t even realized what she had been painting, but now, seeing those eyes staring at her she knew—she was painting Morgan.

  And not just Morgan as she had seen him so many times in the forest in his white shirt, buckskin breeches and scuffed old boots. No, this was Morgan as she had seen him by the river the day she had discovered him there playing with his dog. This Morgan wasn’t wearing his scuffed boots, this Morgan wasn’t wearing anything at all.

  His back was turned to her, and he wa
s looking at her over his shoulder. Adriana’s brush filled in some more details as if it had a mind of its own. The harsh red scars that crossed his muscled back. The dimples just above his buttocks. The curve of his raised eyebrow and the slight smile on his lips as he looked at her with a mixture of happiness and curiosity.

  But what caused Adriana’s heart to beat faster was that he looked like he was about to turn around. One of his broad shoulders dipped slightly as if he was about to move, about to turn and take a step toward her—to show himself to her in all of his naked glory.

  Adriana shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She felt hot and unable to keep still—just as she had when he’d touched her that afternoon. She had squirmed and rubbed herself against him. It had felt so good, and yet it wasn’t enough. She had wanted more. She had wanted him to touch her even more intimately as she touched him. So desperate was she in wanting to feel the velvety softness of his skin and the hard pulsing blood underneath that she could feel heat pooling in her most intimate parts.

  “Oh my!”

  Adriana jumped, pulling her paint brush away from the canvas just in time to save it from smearing a line across Morgan’s body.

  Henrietta was standing behind her with her hand covering mouth. Her face was bright pink. “Who... who is that? That isn’t Lord Vallentyn, is it?”

  Adriana couldn’t help but laugh, all the tension in her body pouring out as a picture of the slightly paunchy, nearly middle–aged man filled her mind’s eye. “No! Lord Vallentyn is much older, and not nearly so fit.”

  Henrietta advanced slowly into the room and toward Adriana and her painting. “So, who is that?” she asked once again, pointing at the canvas with a slightly shaking finger.

  Adriana bit her lip. Would she be able to tell Henrietta about Morgan? The two times she had attempted to speak with Kat about him she’d been unable to do so. She didn’t even want to attempt that again.