by Jill Gregory
“There will be peace across the land now—for a while,” he told her quietly, studying with joy the tender emotions that lit her face. “I have already sent troops to Morksbury to aid your own soldiers in defending the borders, though there is no longer any direct threat. You must consult with your sister in the coming days on how best to rule the kingdom from afar. But right now...”
Unable to control himself a moment longer, he bent his head and kissed her.
Hot hunger leaped from his body to hers, and it seemed to Brianne that their mouths ignited beneath that sparkling sun. Joy billowed up through Brianne’s heart. She clung to Ralf’s neck and kissed him with all the love glowing in her soul.
A cheer went up from the men below. There were shouts, laughter.
Ralf lifted his head, and the smile he gave her was full of glinting promise.
“These scoundrels have no respect. We will continue this royal discussion within the privacy of our bedchamber,” he said in a low, laughing tone.
“Oh, yes. Only... do hurry home, my lord,” Brianne urged, and Ralf threw back his head and laughed.
“You need rest,” he told her then, firmly. And smiled. “It is indeed time to go home.”
And despite the weariness that filled her, she felt buoyant and free as together they descended the hill. The men of Ralf’s troops knelt in respectful greeting as Ralf led her to his great black war-horse.
Suddenly, she noticed a still figure lying on a litter near a wagon, and paused, shooting Ralf a questioning gaze.
“A woman was found inside one of the tents—more than half dead.” He shook his head grimly. “We’ve done what we could for her but... Brianne!”
She was kneeling beside the litter a moment later, pressing a gentle hand to the woman’s bruised brow. Battered and ashen, with her limp brown hair matted with dirt and blood, the woman seemed scarcely to be breathing.
Tears welled in Brianne’s eyes as she gazed at the deathly still figure. That monster Eadric! She fought against her rage, blocking all such draining emotions from her mind. Instead, she focused on thoughts of healing, of soothing peace and health.
“Come back to us. Come back to us and be well,” Brianne murmured, and closed her eyes, letting the healing thoughts sing through her brain. She opened her eyes and traced her finger tenderly across the woman’s filthy, sunken cheeks.
She spoke aloud words of the fairy people, magical, musical words she had never known or spoken before. They sprang to her lips from some hidden well of knowledge that was entirely new to her.
“Brianne, it’s no use—” Ralf began, and then abruptly stopped.
The woman on the litter was stirring.
Her eyes inched open. A wheeze of breath gasped from her lungs.
“You are safe,” Brianne whispered, as those dazed, terrified eyes met hers. “No one will harm you now.”
A hint of color came into the woman’s cheeks, and as Brianne watched, her breathing steadied.
“I must have herbs and poultices to nurse her,” she told Ralf softly, rising, and he nodded with swift assent.
“There’s an inn not far from here. We’ll gather what we can and stay the night.”
They traveled at a steady but not too wearisome pace, making the journey to the inn well before nightfall.
There, under Brianne’s care, the woman revived enough to speak her name and drink some broth.
“She will live,” Brianne told Ralf later before the inn’s smoky fire. Wearily, she stifled a yawn. “And when she’s strong enough, you will return her to her village?”
“I will. Brianne, you’re exhausted. You must sleep.” He kissed her brow, tenderly and with concern. Much as he would have liked to make love to his bride at that very moment, he knew that she was spent from the ordeal of regaining her powers and of reaching across the sea to her sister. Besides, this rough, crowded inn was hardly the place...
Ralf was a patient man. He could wait for his enemy to march into his trap, and he could wait to woo his bride in their own handsomely appointed bedchamber...
She was so beautiful. And already asleep, her head nodding against his shoulder. He sighed. Tomorrow...
Brianne felt amazingly refreshed in the morning, and her patient was much improved as well, so it was with a light heart that she left the timbered little inn behind and emerged into the golden sunshine.
Ralf settled her gently in the saddle before him, just the way he had brought her home to Castle Kerric the first time.
The great horse set off across the sparkling fields of melting snow as a lark circled overhead, calling sweetly. “We will plan a celebratory feast,” Ralf told her. “And you shall send formal invitation to your sister and her husband to attend.”
Oh, to be with Emma again—and her baby!
“Wait until you see Owain—he has such a lovely fuzzy little head,” she mused. “Scarcely any hair at all.”
“Well, ours will all have great quantities of hair,” he assured her comfortably, dropping a kiss on the top of her fair head. “The babies born in my family have always possessed abundant curls.”
Brianne smiled as a vision came to her then, unbidden but lovely. She saw herself and Ralf and a child with dark wavy tufts of hair seated in the garden of Kerric, a garden she hadn’t actually seen yet, but which she sensed existed, flanked by summer flowers and a pond, with swans swimming in the center.
Because the scene was edged in pale mist shimmering with color, she knew it was from the future.
She smiled and leaned contentedly back against Ralf’s chest.
* * *
They arrived in Kerric late in the afternoon.
A lilac sunset tinged the sky as they approached the castle on the hill. As they clattered across the drawbridge, Brianne turned to smile at her husband.
“If tonight I hear the call of the wolf, I shall not be afraid,” she murmured.
“And if I hear you muttering spells to yourself, I will not be afraid.” He grinned.
“We don’t mutter spells,” Brianne protested. “And even if we did, it would take more than that to frighten you, my lord. I know you a little by now.”
“You will know me better by the morrow, Queen Brianne,” he promised, and smiling, Brianne leaned back once more against his chest.
She fingered the moonstone about her neck, reflecting on its plain blue surface. It was merely a stone now—decorative, smooth, and of a pretty hue, but no longer burning with power. She had absorbed all the power from it—and gradually she would learn every nuance of how to control it.
But there was another power she would explore in the days to come—a power of mystery and strength equal to those attributes of Sight, Healing, and Concealment which she now possessed. This was perhaps the most healing and wholesome and beautiful power of all.
The power of love.
“Yes,” she told Ralf, in response to his unspoken question, the question she sensed lay deep within his heart.
Startled, he stared at her as the war-horse pranced through the walled courtyard of the castle.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I do believe in fate—I believe you were destined to receive the moonstone years ago, and to hold it for me until the proper time. I believe that we were meant to come together, you and I, and that we will have a good and long and happy life.”
“I knew all that from the first moment I met you, Brianne,” Ralf informed her gravely. He kissed her gently.
“One glimpse into your eyes, and I knew that fate and good fortune had joined together to favor me. One needn’t be a sorcerer to know that. Now, I’ll tell you something else, my love. You have cast a powerful spell over me. And what I feel for you in my heart—against all thought, against all expectation—if that is not magic, after the lonely warrior’s life I have led, I don’t know what else it is.”
She turned in the saddle and kissed him, her lips clinging to his. “It’s the best kind of magic,” she whispered against his lips. “Oh,
Ralf, it is the kind to cherish the most. You can’t get it from a moonstone, or be born with it, or inherit it—you must find it for yourself. And we have done that—somehow, we both have done that. We’ve found it together.”
Gold and lilac light shimmered on the gray stone walls of Castle Kerric as the king and queen rode through the courtyard and knew with perfect certainty that they had both come safely home.
The End
An Excerpt—SAGE CREEK (A Lonesome Way Book)
Contemporary Romance
by Jill Gregory
Rafe Tanner.
He’d come out of nowhere. Protected her from getting knocked down, perhaps seriously hurt. She still felt shaken, thinking about what could have happened.
“You all right, Sophie?”
“I’m fine. He never touched me. I...” She couldn’t help the tiny shiver of reaction that swept over her now that it was over. “Thank you.”
It was a miracle she got the words out without stammering. Rafe Tanner could have that effect on a woman.
He was standing so close to her she could see the black irises of his midnight blue eyes, the solid outline of his jaw. In his charcoal T-shirt and jeans, with a sexy bit of five o’clock shadow across his chin, he was enough to make a woman swoon.
How was it possible he could look even sexier now than the last time she’d seen him when she was a fifteen year old in shorts and a tank top, shocking the hell out of him by kissing him in his pickup truck?
The intervening years had hardened him. An aura of toughness clung to his muscular six foot three inch frame. But there was something more than sinewy strength and magnetism now. A quiet maturity. Confidence. Very different from the cocky recklessness of the boy she’d daydreamed about night and day when she was twelve.
The next moment she noticed that his mouth—oh, God, that firm, sensual mouth—was curved upward in a hint of a smile.
And what was so amusing? As embarrassment swept through her, she wondered if he was remembering the last time he’d come to her rescue? That day on Squirrel Road. That stupid kiss.
She felt heat rush into her cheeks and hoped she wasn’t blushing. Her chin lifted. “I don’t usually need rescuing these days,” she said tightly.
Rafe’s smile widened. Now it reached his eyes. Damn it. He remembered. Or if he didn’t, she’d just reminded him.
“I’m just glad I was in the right place at the right time,” Rafe said, his voice easy. “We’d better move out of the way before we get trampled.”
He snagged her arm, and a jolt of electricity quivered through her skin where his hand touched it. He eased her back a few steps as a family of tourists barreled past them.
“Nothing like a little excitement to welcome you back to town, Sophie,” Deck said heartily beside them.
She hadn’t even noticed Lissie’s cousin before now, but once he spoke she immediately recognized him.
“I wouldn’t exactly call what just happened a welcome,” she replied with a rueful smile.
So he gets a smile, I get nothing. Rafe was partly amused and partly irritated. He heard Deck say something about going on ahead to hunt up a booth, but he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze or his attention away from Sophie McPhee long enough to respond.
The annoying little pest had transformed into a gorgeously sexy woman. Beneath the leather jacket she was wearing a silky coral tank top and low-cut jeans. Rafe had to quell an impulse to stare at her breasts and those enticingly rounded hips. The top of her head didn’t even reach his chin, but her face was upturned to his and he felt himself getting lost in smoky natural beauty, the tilt of a shapely nose, the glimmer of cool green eyes. He’d have bet a dozen of his best quarter horses that the strands of her honey-colored hair would feel like a silken river flowing through his fingers.
Good thing he’d given up his old ways, dedicated himself these days to being Ivy’s father. Because for the life of him, at the moment, his mind was a blank and he couldn’t come up with a single smooth, funny, seductively charming thing to say to her.
“Ivy told me about her shopping trip today,” he heard himself saying. Lame. “She said you were a big help.”
“Not really. Ivy didn’t need any help, she knew exactly what she wanted.”
“She’s a Tanner. We usually do.”
Sophie felt the pull of that slow, engaging grin. Was Rafe Tanner flirting with her?
No, that was crazy. It was all in her imagination.
Get a grip. After everything that’s happened the last thing you need is to think about a man. Any man.
But especially this man.
Not that she was thinking about Rafe. She was so over him. Still, no sane woman could help feeling a little light-headed when he was standing this close in all his handsome cowboy hotness...
An Excerpt—FOREVER AFTER
Historical Romance
by Jill Gregory
Returning to the road, Camilla shivered, her toes and fingers numb with cold. She hugged her arms around herself as she trudged on through the darkness. There would be another inn, up ahead somewhere, she told herself. Or maybe a deserted shed or cottage, she thought hopefully. She would find a place to rest.
She walked on and on, down one lonely lane, up another, vaguely searching for another inn. Her dazed mind and exhausted body cried out for sleep.
She must have fallen asleep on her feet. She never heard the chaise and four barreling down the narrow road, never had a chance to jump out of the way. Before she knew what was happening, the horses were bearing down on her in the darkness, the carriage with its gold emblazoned crest was careening toward her, and she had time to do no more than glance over her shoulder and scream before it ran her down.
* * *
The Earl of Westcott bent over the unconscious girl and felt for a pulse.
Alive. Thank God!
By some miracle he’d managed to swerve the team in time to avoid stampeding over her, but one of the wheels must have clipped the chit nevertheless, and knocked her cold.
Idiotic little fool. He grimaced. Why would any sane female be alone on the road at this hour—three o’clock in the morning—strolling like a ninny down Edgewood Lane, nearly killing him as well as herself?
The Earl’s eyes narrowed as he did a cursory examination of the slender, filthy creature in the muddied scullery clothes. She gave a soft moan as he shifted her in his arms, but her eyes didn’t open. From what he could gather, she was not seriously hurt, though her right foot was bent at an unnatural angle, and there was a nasty cut on her hand.
“Damned bad luck for both of us,” he muttered half to himself as he lifted her. She was nothing but skin and bones.
What a night. First there was that damned masquerade, then Marchfield, curse his eyes—and now this. His lips twisting, the Earl wondered what other little surprises Fate might hold in store for him before this night was over. The girl made no more sounds as he lifted her in his arms and placed her inside his coach. He covered her with his own velvet-lined cloak and slammed the door.
He never should have let himself get drunk tonight. Even though he was now stone-cold sober—had been for hours, he thought—he wondered if he might have discerned her sooner in the darkness if he’d had a bit less brandy warming his blood. It wasn’t like him to imbibe like that, to lose control—or to let Marchfield goad him the way he had. But it was done now. No use thinking backward, as Fader, his old groom used to say.
Then with no more time wasted he was back upon the seat, galloping the horses toward Westcott Park.
Not many moments later found him turning the team up the long, wide drive, galloping between stately columns of oaks that guarded his ancestral home like ghostly sentinels in the darkness. He peered ahead at the lights glowing softly from within the house. They were waiting up for him then, as he’d instructed, though he’d never anticipated being this late.
The chaise passed beneath a tall stone arch, curved around the long avenue lined with oaks, and d
rew up presently in a vast circular drive brilliantly lit with torches in expectation of his arrival.
Westcott Park rose grandly before him, the old weathered stone gleaming faintly buff in the torchlight, seeming to shine like the legendary castle of Camelot. But it was not a castle, as he had often pretended when he was a youth, it was merely a large, fine mansion in the classic mode, possessing a beautifully trimmed five-hundred-foot frontage and grounds that included a lake, maze, and gardens that were the pride of the countryside. The Earl scarcely gave the place a second glance. The Corinthian columns towering upward to the second story, the mullioned windows and graceful north and south wings, the sumptuous lawns and gardens, which made the estate such an impressive site to guests and neighbors alike, were as familiar to him as his own favorite riding coat, worn and comfortable and sturdy as time itself. Even old Durgess, when he hurried to the front entrance to greet his master, didn’t impress him, and Durgess had been chosen by Philip’s grandfather to impress. He was the loftiest of butlers, every bit as imposing as the Earl who had first hired him, and in all of his twenty-eight years, Philip had never once seen him smile.
“Durgess,” the Earl said casually as he jumped down from the coach and threw back the door, “if you will be so good as to send for Dr. Greves at once—there has been an accident. And I’ll need Mrs. Wyeth.”
The butler’s faded sea-blue eyes widened within their crepey lids as he watched his master lift an unconscious, dirty female in disgracefully torn and mud-caked clothing out of the silk-lined chaise.
Shock was something Durgess had thought he’d outgrown many years earlier, but apparently not, for ripples of it now tore through him as he saw his master’s fine evening jacket smeared with mud from the girl’s clothes, and he noticed that there was even a wisp of straw clinging to the Earl’s mud-spattered boots.
“Sir—if I may be of assistance...” he managed, after one moment of uncharacteristic speechlessness.
The Earl strode past him without a second glance. “I believe I have sufficient strength to carry this young woman upstairs on my own, Durgess. Ah, Mrs. Wyeth.” He addressed a tiny, mob-capped woman with graying brown hair and a pointed chin. “I will require your assistance upstairs. I assume my brother and his wife have arrived?”