“Everything related to Wyndon’s plan was wrong history, so all that should go away and leave what should have been.”
Together, they followed the pull of Richard’s intention to the Cottonian library. The stolen volume of the Croyland Chronicle rested with its fellows on a large shelf. So that, too, was done. And their time was running out.
They watched time flow past in Dover. Miranda’s real-world self carried trays and made beds and cleaned fireplaces. “I feel like a ghost,” she said, “watching this.”
“It’s strange,” he agreed. “You know, in your visions, I was the herald of day, but the title rightly belongs to you.”
“My vision didn’t lead us to the Chronicle, only to trouble.”
“That trouble forced me to learn to travel the afterworld. Without that, we’d never have restored the timeline. Because of you, we saved England from Wyndon’s darkness. You helped to defeat him and, if we’re reading the portal right, as I think we are, brought me salvation.”
He kissed her temple lightly. “That’s the same as a new day, and we did it together.”
“Together,” she murmured, savoring the word.
They watched events flow past. “One day blends into the next,” Miranda observed. “It’s difficult to tell what day this is, but I think we’re almost to the day of the hanging.”
She drew his head down to kiss him. “I love you. No matter what happens, some part of me always will.”
Long and deep and powerful, the kiss rolled through her. The strength of his body, the security of his arms, the passion in his kiss seared her heart. Somehow, she would imprint them on her soul.
Richard broke the kiss but held her tightly. “Remember Edmund’s saying about seers, A seer need not scry to See what is, what was, and what will be. If that’s true, your seer gift may help you remember.”
His lips brushed her hair, and he added, “Surely one of us will remember something about all this.”
“I hope so.”
Her real-world self sat in a cart that rolled toward the hanging tree. “It’s almost time,” she said.
His eyes reflected her pain. If he kissed her again, she wouldn’t have the strength to leave him.
She raised a hand to his face, only to have her fingers pass through him. His eyes widened as black spots danced in front of her eyes. The spots whirled into unrelieved blackness.
“I love you,” he cried, his voice sounding desperate but far away, and then there was nothing.
Chapter 32
Miranda stumbled backward. She fell against the inn’s cart. The driver, Elijah, leaned over her, his weathered face creased. “Miranda, are you ill?”
“No, just ... dizzy for a moment.” She clung to the cart’s side and shook her head to clear it. The world steadied, but strange images swirled through her mind. Men and dragons. Explosions. Knights.
Had she run mad?
The crowd was dispersing. Poor Mistress Smith’s body hung limply from the tree. At least her torment was over.
“You’re pale. Climb in and sit.” Elijah offered her a hand to climb into the cart. “We’d best get you back to the inn.”
“That sounds good.”
He clucked to the horse, and the cart lurched into motion. Miranda stared at the familiar countryside without truly seeing it. All during the drive, the face of a man ran through her mind. He had dark hair and deep blue eyes that changed from stern to happy to pained to loving. Lying between her thighs, he kissed her naked breasts.
Her cheeks warmed. Heat pooled in her lower body, and she pushed the image aside. Best to tend to her work and worry about dreams later.
They arrived at the inn during supper service. Customers flooded the common room. She and the other maids carried trays and fetched drinks and answered questions. She didn’t have time to worry about illusions.
As the meal service wound down, Miranda went out to the well for water. She had her hand on the windlass with the bucket nearly to the top when a man’s deep voice said, “Allow me.”
The voice was familiar. Miranda wheeled toward it. The tall, dark-haired man she’d daydreamed about stood in the twilight. But then he was gone.
She must’ve imagined him. Miranda rubbed her eyes, untied the bucket, and took the water into the inn.
Yet the man’s face haunted her. She seemed to remember him from somewhere, remembered talking to him. In the inn yard. By the old Roman lighthouse at Dover Castle.
But she’d never been to the castle. How could she recognize the lighthouse?
Later, as she climbed to the garret with Lucy, the images swirled through her mind. She rubbed her brow. She was probably tired, confusing Grandmother’s stories with life. Or distressed about the hanging today and dreaming up things that might’ve saved Agnes Smith.
Or saved Mother.
She undressed and climbed into her narrow bed. Sleep claimed her, and the mystery man walked in her dreams.
Rubbing her eyes, Miranda climbed out of bed. There was no use sleeping when dreams kept her from resting well, as they had for the past five nights. Last night’s had been particularly intense, of the mystery man wearing armor and battling a black dragon while she and another man helped him.
To put time to rights sprang into her mind as she dressed.
What did that mean?
Mother had said she possessed the seer gift but hadn’t been able to teach her much about it. Yet Miranda felt certain she could use a fire to scry—and where had she learned that word? Mother had never used it. The dreams a couple of nights ago, though, they’d been about learning to scry, learning from an older woman who was firm but kind.
All these dreams felt true, and her instincts had never steered her falsely. Then there was Mother’s advice never to ignore a dream of power.
Faint light showed in the garret window, but the sky outside was mostly dark. The other maids slept.
Miranda started toward the kitchen, feeling her way down the back stairs in the darkness. The inn was silent around her, the guests still abed.
As she neared the bottom, light and the sounds of voices spilled from the kitchen. The scents of roasting beef and fresh, yeasty bread wafted upward.
When she stepped into the big, warm room, Owen, the brown-haired scullery lad, sat at the long table, eating porridge. Around him, cooks kneaded dough and roasted meat and stewed vegetables to start the day.
Miranda dished up a bowl of porridge for herself and took it to the corner near the hearth, where she would be both warm and out of the way. Perched on a low stool, she studied the fire. Could she scry with all the activity around her? Even more important, could she truly do it at all, or had the strange dream been only that?
Slowly, drawing on a feeling that might’ve been instinct or memory, she fed power to the flames under the meat jack. When each flicker of the flame, each sizzle of grease dropping onto the logs, resonated in her head, she envisioned the face of the woman who’d been in last night’s dream.
A sixtyish woman with silvery hair in curls on either side of her face, sharp cheekbones, and keen, intelligent green eyes appeared in the flame. Wearing an oddly familiar, green dressing gown, she sat beside a hearth faced with beautiful blue-and-white tiles and ate a simple meal of meat, bread, and an oatcake.
This could be an illusion, but Miranda knew, as Mother had said she would, that it was real. This was happening now.
She swallowed a shout of exultation, and a name sprang to her mind, Arabella. Grandmère. Grandmother, but whose?
A face appeared in the flames, the mystery man’s, with deep blue eyes and chiseled features. Familiar.
Richard.
Miranda’s throat closed. Blinking back tears, fighting a strange mix of joy and uncertainty, she bowed her head over the porridge.
He was riding a black horse down a country lane, but where?
Flora, the cook, called, “You all right, Miranda? Somethin’ wrong with the porridge?”
“Everything’s quite
all right,” Miranda said, beaming up at the cook. “It’s wonderful, really.”
Flora blinked, probably not expecting such enthusiasm, but turned back to the bread she was kneading.
Spooning up porridge, Miranda looked again at the fire. Richard’s image had vanished while she was distracted, but summoning it again was simple. Trying for a wider view, she saw the tall man riding beside him, a man whose sun-lightened hair and gray eyes also evoked a name, Cabot.
Memories came like a flood—London, Whitehall, Jeremy and Patience and Robin—and she almost dropped the bowl. Reeling with the force of the memories, she steadied herself against the stone fireplace.
The more she saw in the flames, the more her confidence grew. These people were her kindred.
Then she saw herself in bed, making love to the dark-haired man, to Richard. To her husband.
The world seemed to shift out from under her. The room seemed to close in on her.
She set her bowl on the hearth and bolted, rushing into the corridor and out the back door into the cold, foggy morning. The chilly air felt sharp and clean after the crowded kitchen.
Another vision flashed over her sight, herself standing high above a crowd, a noose around her neck. Croyland echoed in her brain, and she pushed it aside.
What was happening? Whatever these visions were, they rang with the power of being real.
Richard’s face rose in her mind again, and love welled in her heart. She had to find him. He might know what was happening.
In one of her dreams, he’d said he was on the road from Portsmouth with Cabot when her dragon—whatever that meant—found him. Mayhap he was there now. Mayhap that was what she’d seen in her scrying this morning.
Wherever he was, he would return to London eventually. She’d Seen where he lived and knew how to find him there. While she didn’t have enough money for the London coach, even if she rode on top, she could probably buy cheaper passage with one of the wagoners who regularly stopped here. Master Warren would help her choose someone trustworthy, and her instincts would surely guide her.
In the meantime, she would see what had happened to their friends—and to the author of all that trouble, Lord Wyndon.
More memories rushed in, intimate and detailed. Richard touching her. Herself glorying in that.
Miranda swallowed hard and locked her shaking hands together. No man had ever touched her that way, but she knew those feelings. She remembered them.
What she had shared with Richard was real, and now she ached to see him again.
Yet the prospect made her hands cold and her stomach fluttery. Only a fool would assume that would go well. Her seer gift had aided her in remembering all that had happened, but as best she could determine, he wasn’t a seer.
What if he didn’t still love her? Worse, what if he didn’t even remember her?
“I don’t see why you want to come to Dover,” Cabot said as he and Richard walked their mounts down the Folkestone road. “If you’re trying to delay our return to London so you can miss the White Rose banquet, just say so. I’ll back you.”
“I haven’t been here in quite a while. I want to see it.” To find the explanation for his strange dreams and the eerie, inner compulsion that led him here. “You can go ahead and report to the Admiralty about your refit.”
“The Admiralty can wait a few days.”
The conversation seemed familiar, but it was unlike Cabot to make the Admiralty wait. “You’re unusually curious.”
“You’re unusually mercurial. I’d best come along in case you lose your wits altogether.”
The half-timbered building by the lane ahead also seemed familiar, though Richard had no memory of coming here before. The Golden Swan Inn, the sign hanging out front read. Richard nodded to it. “Let’s water the horses and eat.”
“Might as well,” Cabot said, and he turned Neptune to follow Zeus.
They rode through a short passage and into a wide inn yard. Galleries ran along the sides of the upper floor.
Four large wagons stood in the sunlit yard, their teams still hitched but wearing feed bags.
Opposite the entry, an open doorway spilled light and voices into the yard. That must be the public room.
Beside it, another passage led to a rear yard and a stable. They looked familiar. So did the well visible in the rear yard. Frowning, Richard dismounted.
“Richard?” Cabot leaned down from Neptune’s back.
A dark-haired, pox-scarred woman walked across the rear yard in the afternoon light. He knew her, but who was she?
For a closer look, he summoned power. Her homely disguise turned translucent, like a reflection in a window pane.
And he had done this before. With her. His mouth went dry.
Richard thrust his reins at Cabot. “Hold these.” Without waiting for a reply, he strode toward the far passage.
The woman knelt and patted a calico cat. With a last, smiling word to the animal, she rose and turned to the well.
Her eyes flicked toward him ... but not away. She froze in place, her face pale.
A name sprang into his head. “Miranda?”
Her cheeks flushed. With a gasp, she ran toward him.
He started to reach for her, but a flood of memories came with her, a jumble. Standing still, he tried to sort it. God’s feet, who was she?
She halted before him, the joy dying out of her eyes. Her disappointment echoed somewhere inside him.
What in blazes?
“You don’t remember,” she said quietly.
“I ... don’t know. I remember something, just ... It’s confusing.”
“Yes, it is.” She bit her lip, hands clenching in her skirt. “Did you dream of me?”
When he nodded, some of the wariness faded from her expression. She said, “You once told me, A seer need not scry to See what is, what was, and what will be. Do you remember that?”
“I ... almost,” he ground out. The memories were surging now. Rushing forward. “You’re a seer? You are. You’re ... ”
His wife?
How was that possible?
“Yes.” Cautiously, she reached a hand toward his face. She touched him, and awareness flooded from her into him, the rush of memories sorting themselves. They were things that had happened but should not have.
Yet here he was, with her.
Richard grinned. Yes, he thought. Oh, yes.
Yes, indeed, came back to him on exultant wings.
She flung herself into his arms and rained kisses over his face until he caught her mouth in a long, deep celebration.
This time, forever, he promised her silently.
Beaming, she pulled her head back to look up at him. “I love you. Always.” She laid her palm against his cheek.
“I love you, too.” He laughed down at her. “We’ll need to marry again. This time, we’ll do it in fine style.”
“I don’t care how it’s done, so long as we wed.” She locked her arms around his waist, and all the confusion of the past days fell away.
The slow clip-clop of hooves sounded behind Richard, and Cabot rode through the passageway on Neptune, leading Zeus.
With a bemused smile, Cabot said, “There must be a good tale to explain this.”
Miranda flashed Richard a mischievous look. “Good day, Captain Winfield. I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you again.”
“Again?” he repeated, frowning.
A man in rough work clothes hurried from the stable. “I can take your mounts, sirs.”
He must be an ostler. As Cabot dismounted and passed him the reins, the man asked, “Are ye staying the night, sirs?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Richard said, eyeing Miranda and feeling her happiness resonate between them.
“As ye like.” The ostler tugged his forelock and departed with the horses.
Keeping one arm around Miranda, Richard smiled at his perplexed friend. “Cabot, meet Mistress Miranda Willoughby, my once and future wife.”
Epilogue
Hawkstowe Manor, Cumberland
One year later
Miranda carefully lifted Robert Edmund Mainwaring, Viscount Ambleside, from his cradle. Smoothing her sleeping babe’s christening gown with one hand, she smiled up at Richard.
“A big day for our lad,” she told him.
“Yes.” He gently stroked the babe’s round cheek with one finger. “I want to protect him from everything. I hope we’ve done as we should, love.”
By having him at all, Richard meant. Miranda leaned into her husband’s side. “My Sight gives me no guidance on the future of the curse, but I have faith that all will be well. We’ll give him and any other babes we have a good life.”
She dropped her forehead to his shoulder for a moment. “What will be, will be. We must make the best of it.”
“As you’ve always done.” He squeezed her waist. What the portal had told them that last time had deepened his hope. It would have to be enough.
“I checked on Wyndon,” Richard said, lowering his voice. “Still no sign of his traveling the afterworld. Edmund is keeping an eye on him, too.”
The step-thump rhythm on the rush matting out in the hall signaled Grandmère’s approach. She walked with a cane now but was as energetic and interested in everything as ever.
And she was alive, a fact both Miranda and Richard cherished daily.
“Your guests are here,” Grandmère told them as she walked into the room. She smiled at the sleeping baby. “I sent them into the chapel, where they’re all waiting for the honored guest. Don’t be long. Jeremy should be ready for us by now. He seems very excited about performing the baptism.” She turned and made her way out of the room.
“We should go down,” Richard said. He offered Miranda his arm.
“Is Edmund here?” she asked.
“He was but left for the chapel.” Richard grinned. “He still hasn’t gotten over his delight at having our Robin bear his name, too.”
“It seemed only fitting,” Miranda said.
She and Richard walked together down the stairs and into the old Great Hall, where one of the four long tables was set with fine linen. They’d decided to keep the christening celebration small so they could have it here, in the place they both loved.
The Herald of Day Page 38