by Mason, Nina
Mental haze covered the tail of the thought. The creature, whatever she was, went on drinking. My limbs were growing weak. I could no longer wiggle my toes or make a fist.
I felt no pain. Euphoria had replaced my discomforts and concerns. Had I died and gone to heaven? While it felt like heaven, the stench of death and distant wailing aroused concerns I might be in hell instead. Fear sluiced through me. If I went to hell, I would not meet my father in Heaven. Nor my wife and child, when their ends came.
Mother Mary knelt beside my head and pulled me into her arms. Her breasts—large, firm, high, and as pale as fresh cream—were exposed.
Oh, aye. I was in Heaven, all right, but I would not blame God if he booted me out for gazing upon his sainted mother with lustful thoughts.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Blessed art thou amongst women
And blessed art thy beautiful paps
She took hold of my face and pulled me against her, coaxing me onto one of her wee rosy teat as if I were a drowsy bairn. I closed my lips round her nipple and sucked with all the zeal I could summon. A sea of black ink rose inside my mind and carried me away.
When I returned to myself, it was night. I was still under the tree, lying on a bed of pine straw. Cold air touched every part of me. I lifted my head to have a look around.
The White Woman was gone.
Had I imagined her? If so, how the devil had I ended up naked? My plaid, shirt, and coat were nowhere to be seen. Had looters stripped me, believing me dead? Maybe, but if scavengers had found me, why had they not taken my broadsword as well? The weapon was worth a vast deal more than my sorry garments.
Bewildered, I scratched my chin. Smooth skin rather than coarse whiskers greeted my fingertips, surprising me. Who had shaved my face? Not scavengers, surely. I sniffed my armpits, detecting none of their usual stink. My body, too, felt clean; and, saints be praised, my hair was louse-free for the first time in months.
Sitting up, I reached around to my back. There was no wound, no swelling, and no pain.
I blinked several times. Was I hallucinating?
The crunch of footsteps on dry leaves raised my inner shield. I started to scramble for cover, but abandoned the effort when I saw the raven-haired lass coming through the trees.
My missing clothing was draped over both her arms like a priest’s holy vestments.
“We have little time.” She knelt beside me. “Once you are the queen’s knight, you will be forbidden other partners.”
Queen? What queen? I opened his mouth to ask, but her question cut me off.
“By what name are you called, my lover?”
“MacDubh,” I croaked through my parched throat. “Heathcliff MacDubh.”
“I am Belphoebe.” She spread the plaid over me. “My sister, Amoret, is tending another not far from here. The rest of the wounded have been killed. Those who escaped were burned alive, shot, or hung. Any still on the moor have had their skulls bashed in by the butts of English rifles.”
Her disclosure scourged me to the bone. Struck dumb, I took a moment to recover my wits. “What of the prince? Has he been killed or captured?”
“Nay.” She kept her voice low. “He and some of his officers got away, but are being hunted as we speak.”
I swallowed hard, shut my eyes, and laid back. In the stories, those taken by the faeries did not come back for hundreds of years, if they came back at all.
A precious moment from the past came into my mind. My beloved Clara outstretched beneath me, both of us naked, my stubbled face perched atop the dome of her pregnant belly. We had just made love and I was saying my farewells to her and the bairn.
Chest constricting, I lifted my gaze to the sky. “Please, Heavenly Father, keep them safe…and let them know in some way how much I loved them.”
With tears in her eyes, Gwyn marked her place, and closed the thick novel—if, in fact, it was a work of fiction. She suspected it was a memoir, and had come to Scotland to meet the book’s reclusive author, who had become something of a fixation for her.
For years, she had been setting aside every spare penny she made as a game tester while doing all she could think of to get in touch with Sir Leith MacQuill, a Knight of the Thistle like the character he supposedly “created” in Knight of Cups.
To her bitter disappointment, all her letters and emails to him, his publisher, and his agent went unanswered. Then, while surfing the web for another avenue of access, she stumbled upon Castles and Cairns, a two-week excursion through the Scottish Highlands offering a brand-new feature: a night at Castle Glenarvon, Sir Leith’s otherwise inaccessible hermitage in Nairn.
Gwyn saw the tour as the answer to her prayers; a sign from God corroborating her purpose. Her friends on Facebook and in the Barstow Baronetcy of the Society for Creative Anachronism said she was obsessed and deluded, that she was setting herself up for disenchantment, and that she would be smarter to spend her savings on a game console upgrade or new role-playing costumes. But they didn’t know how strongly she felt her connection to Sir Leith…or how deeply she felt the futility of her life. Reading his book had ignited a spark in some deep inner place she hadn’t known was there before. Reading his book had brought her back from the dead.
Yes, she might be disappointed, but not half as disappointed as she would be in herself if she didn’t at least make the effort.
In the next seat, Mrs. Dowd was still knitting.
Click, click. Click, click.
With a shuddering sigh, Gwyn looked out at the darkening sky. A storm was brewing—not that she minded. She liked rainstorms, which were all too rare in the high desert wasteland that was Barstow, California.
Her life there had been a wasteland, too, but not anymore, dammit. Sir Leith was the knight in shining armor who would rescue her from the tower she’d locked herself inside to keep out the world. A tower built from the bricks of roleplaying games, re-enactments, and fantasy novels on a bedrock foundation of fear.
Inside the tower, she could be a kick-ass heroine, a sexually confident temptress, or the brave-but-sweet Baroness MacDubh, the SCA persona she created after reading Knight of Cups. It was a role she seemed born to play.
Outside the tower, she was a meek little mouse who was afraid to be touched or leave her trailer.
Was she aware how pathetic she was? Yes, painfully aware. She was almost thirty and, because of the things her foster father had done to her, she had never been in a real relationship or even out on a date.
She was ready to change that—the reason she had embarked on this valiant quest to meet Sir Leith. No, not just to meet him, but to give herself to him, body and soul. If things went as she hoped, she would come back a different person. Or, better yet, never come back at all.
Table of Contents
Books by Nina Mason
Knight of Wands
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
PART TWO
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Meet the Author
KNIGHT OF CUPS
Chapter 1
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