Once Upon a Star

by Nora Roberts

  He touched her, felt her hips shift up to meet his questing fingers. She was slick and ready, and he could no longer hold back. He took her boldly, lustily, as he sensed she wanted. Lily’s breath hitched in her throat. Their joining was as ruthlessly fierce and beautiful as the land around them. Elemental as the sun and wind, powerful as the pounding of the sea.

  When the moment came, intense almost beyond bearing, they rode it together, like hawks rising on the wind. Sensations poured through Lily, bright and dark, as he carried her up with him toward the sky. With every thrust her body arched to meet his, taking and demanding more. Then they were free-falling through space, and only his embrace kept her safe until they drifted gently back to earth.

  Later she lay cradled in his arms with her hair splayed out over his naked chest, like a shawl of spun gold. She curled into the warmth of his body, afraid to move or speak. Afraid he would melt away beneath her like the mist rising through the trees. It would storm soon. She could feel the excitement of it in the air.

  And what then?

  As Lily lifted her face and looked down at him, he shimmered like a mirage before her eyes; but he was real and solid in her arms. She could feel the steady thrum of his heart against her ribs. All the tension was gone from his face. He looked younger, and so handsome and radiant she felt her heart might break.

  He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “The sea gives and the sea takes away,” he said slowly. “I asked for a sign of forgiveness…and you came to me, out of the fog and mist. I thought it was a trick of fate. I was afraid to trust that you were real.” His hand closed on her bare breast. “But you are.”

  Leaning down, he kissed it, laved it with his tongue while she took in a deep, shuddering breath. No one had ever made love to her like this. She hadn’t known…hadn’t dreamed it could be so beautiful and so savage, so primal, yet so exquisitely tender. She kissed his shoulder, nipped the bronzed skin with its heady taste of salt and sweat and man.

  His mouth moved lower, grazing the cleft between her breasts, moving down along her ribs. He planted kisses down the length of her, over the soft curve of her hip and the gentle swell of her belly, tasting her as he went. His lips brought trails of fire down her thigh, all the way to the delicate arch of her foot. And then he started to work his way up.

  He bent his dark head and touched her with his mouth. She shivered beneath him, barely able to stand the deliciously intense sensations evoked by his darting tongue. A force was building in her, so hot and powerful she couldn’t contain it. Passion exploded through her, pouring like liquid flame along her limbs. She bucked and shuddered against him, and then her blood was a bright torrent of sparks, racing hotly through her veins, melting any last remnants of her reserve.

  He held her tightly until it was over, his hands cupping her possessively. When it was done she was deliciously weak and dizzy and spent. Her whole body seemed swollen with womanly response, ripe to bursting.

  “Did you like that, love?” he murmured against her temple, as he pressed his mouth against her hair. “I knew you would. You’ve a fire in you that matches mine. It can’t be quenched.” His mouth slid down the curve of her jaw. “It must be fed!”

  Before she could speak, he twisted around and pinned her with his weight and kissed her. Sweet languor flowed through her, filled her with delight. The flame of need ignited once again. Lord, how she wanted him. Wanted to ease whatever sorrows had haunted him and banish them forever. His hand moved between her legs, and she shivered in delight and anticipation. Every atom of her body longed for him.

  “Slowly this time,” he told her. “So that I can learn every inch of you, what you like and don’t like. So that I can match the heat of your passions with my own.”

  “Impossible.” She laughed against his shoulder. She was on fire with need for him, burning with a wild, sexual hunger. “But try.”

  He took his time, exploring her body as he had promised. Memorizing every intimate curve and texture, making love to her with his eyes and his hands. Bringing her to the crest once more through sensual anticipation and his own passionate will. His fingers plunged deep, and she arched up off the ground, in pleasure so intense she was mindless with it. Again and again he brought her there and over, until she clung to his wrist to make him stop.

  “Take me again,” she said huskily. “As hard and wild as you please.”

  And he did, riding her through the bright fields of passion until they were both gasping for air, locked in each other’s arms. Lily closed her eyes, inhaling the wonderful masculine scent of him, satiated and replete. She started to drift to sleep, lulled by the sounds of his breathing and the singing of the birds that had settled back in the trees.

  Then a metallic thunk carried from somewhere in the distance. Lily’s eyes flew open. Rees was still there. She could see his face alight with emotion as he gazed down at her, feel his weight pressing her down into the grass, the thrum of his heart beating in time to hers. But when she tried to tighten her embrace, her arms closed on empty air.

  She could still feel the pressure of his magnificent body, its radiant warmth, and the hard, protective circle of his arms about her shoulders; but the air shimmered, and she could see the wavery sky, the tremor of the high cirrus clouds through him, as if he were made of pebbled glass. In a moment he was gone, as if he’d never been.

  “No!” The cry was ripped from her throat. Lily didn’t want the dream to end. She couldn’t bear it.

  But as she sat up, the evidence was still there. The mark of his teeth on her skin. The taste of his mouth on hers. The sweet stickiness between her thighs. Even a few woolly threads of his sweater clinging to the bracken. But that was all.

  “Miss Kendall?”

  Lily heard her name called, and scrambled to cover herself. Dr. Landry! She pushed her skirt down and pulled up the straps of her bodice. Her breasts felt swollen and ached with tenderness from Rees’s kisses. She glanced around for her lace panties, but they were gone, heaven knew where.

  As she tried to loop her long hair back, Dr. Landry came around the line of stunted trees. “Ah, so it is you. Portia thought she’d spotted you out here earlier.”

  Lily wondered if he could see the wild beating of the pulse at her throat. “I came to bring her sandals back, and was seduced by the view.” Close enough, she told herself.

  “Yes, it’s quite splendid, isn’t it?” He leaned against the trunk. “Voices carry a long way. I thought I heard you talking to someone. Another tourist, perhaps.”

  Lily wrapped her arms around her shoulders to hide the red marks of Rees Tregarrick’s hands on her upper arms. “I was singing,” she said. That wasn’t entirely untrue.

  He leaned down and retrieved her fallen notebook. It fell open to her drawing, and Dr. Landry paused to examine it. “That’s very well done! Have you ever given thought to becoming an illustrator?”

  Lily shook her head. “It never crossed my mind. At any rate, it’s too late for me to change careers.”

  “It’s never too late,” he told her, handing over the notebook. “You have a true talent, Miss Kendall. Don’t dismiss it so lightly. I’m on my way to family gathering in St. Just. May I offer you a lift back to the village?”

  “No, thank you. After I return Portia’s shoes, I thought perhaps I’d take the tour.”

  “You’ll find it worth your while. Captain Tregarrick brought back some wonderful treasures from his trips abroad.”

  When she was gone, Dr. Landry turned away from the sparkling bay and stared out over the placid farmland behind Yearning Head, the fields green and gold between their low rock walls. Some of those same fields were ancient, had been tamed and tilled since the Bronze Age. What a contrast they made with the bay, where the sea and land met violently, locked in eternal conflict.

  Some people were like that restless seascape, mutable, shifting from moment to moment. Others were like the fields, neat and cultivated and all of a piece. Like Lily Kendall. At least on the surface.
But what was she really like? People wore so many masks these days, it was difficult to tell.

  Dr. Landry sighed. He was concerned about Miss Kendall, yet he couldn’t say why. She’d gotten over that knock on her head without any untoward effects as far as he could tell. She seemed perfectly normal and levelheaded. But beneath the most placid of landscapes, volcanoes sometimes came bursting up through the earth.

  He laughed at his wild fancy. “Too many National Geographic specials on the BBC,” he told himself. Lily Kendall would be just fine. Meanwhile, a wonderful dinner awaited him at a restaurant in St. Just.

  As he turned to make his way back to where he’d parked his battered mini, the wind blew across the headland, full of silent, urgent longings so keen that even a staid man of science could feel them. He stopped in his tracks.

  The sun shone bright around him, and the air seemed rich with the unmistakable scent of exotic blooms and recent lovemaking. Landry shook his head. “I’m imagining things,” he said.

  Jingling his keys, he took a few steps toward the car. Something crackled beneath his shoe. He looked down to see what it was: a wisp of torn lace, and a handful of drying leaves, looking as if they had been just been blown fresh from some autumn garden.

  6

  “THIS IS CATHERINE, the first Mrs. Tregarrick,” Portia said in her brisk, tour-guide mode. She’d set aside cataloguing the contents of various boxes from the attic to show Lily around. “The portrait was painted shortly before her death.”

  Lily was shocked. “She was very young!”

  “Eighteen years and two months.”

  She didn’t want to ask, but had to. “How did she die? Childbirth?”

  Portia looked uncomfortable. “I suppose you’ll have heard the gossip. Some people say she threw herself down the sea stairs carved into the cliff. Others say she was pushed.”

  “By whom?”

  “Her husband, of course. Captain Rees Tregarrick.”

  Lily gasped. “And do they say why?”

  Portia went on to another portrait, which showed Rees Tregarrick in formal attire. “Look at him. He was an adventurer. They say he wanted to live in the Sandwich Islands—Hawaii, one of your states now—but she refused to go.”

  Portia smiled up at his likeness and dimpled. “What a fool. If he wasn’t my own great-great-something grandfather, I’d have gone off with him in a trice.”

  Lily blinked. “You’re a descendant?”

  “Not of Catherine Tregarrick. Of his second marriage.”

  Again Lily felt that blow to her stomach. Two wives in your life, she said silently. Did you love them both?

  She looked up at his painting, and those lapis eyes seemed to bore into hers. There were the lips that had crushed her own, that had suckled her breasts and driven her half mad with desire. And those were the skilled hands that had stroked her flesh, alternately soothing and inflaming her. She would swear it on her life.

  I’m going insane, she thought with a sudden sense of panic. But her glance caught her trapped reflection in the mirror above the side table. Even with the strap of her dress in place, she could see the reddened place where his teeth had nipped. There was a small bruise on her inner arm where his thumb had pressed, and her body still tingled with satisfaction from his lovemaking.

  Somehow, under Yearning Head’s strange spell, Rees Tregarrick had crossed over from his time to hers and made love to her beneath the trees. She was as certain of it as she was of her own identity.

  Curiosity warred with jealousy that she knew was totally ridiculous. “Where is the portrait of the second Mrs. Tregarrick?”

  “None are known to exist,” Portia said wistfully. “Neither paintings nor photographs. I should have liked to have known how she looked. If we might share some family resemblance, you know.”

  Lily turned away. “The people in the village say this house is haunted. Is it Catherine Tregarrick who walks about, rattling her chains?”

  Portia looked offended. “There are two ghosts, although I’ve seen neither one. The first is a ‘woman in white’ who is seen up on the headland. The other is Captain Tregarrick himself. James saw him once, standing at the star window, looking out to sea. He said he looked terribly sad—and rather angry.”

  “Yes,” Lily murmured. “That is how I first saw him.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Um…” Lily recovered quickly. “When I saw his photograph in the study, I mean. Could I see the star window? It intrigues me.”

  “It’s really off-limits to visitors just now,” Portia said, “but since there is only you today…”

  She led Lily through a pair of wine velvet portieres and into another parlor. “This was the ladies’ parlor.” They went into a charming, sunlit room and finally up a flight of stairs. The window was in a turret at the very top.

  Lily was amazed. The star window was much larger than she’d thought. Taller and wider than the stained glass windows in St. Dunstan’s Church. It was a work of true genius. It gave the impression of being in three dimensions because of the masterful arrangement. The outer rectangle was formed of various shades of dark blue glass, the star inside composed of dozens of triangles of brilliant stained glass in bright yellow, shining gold, and rich, mellow amber. It was breathtaking, a magnificent work of art.

  “Why here, away from the main living area?” Lily asked. “Surely they would have enjoyed it more in a place they would pass by frequently.”

  “There used to be a triple lantern hanging in front of the star, to light it in the night. It was a beacon,” Portia explained, “a sign that could be seen far out at sea, welcoming Rees Tregarrick home. Guiding him to the harbor side of St. Petroc’s Cathedral—that’s what we call those sharp, toothy rocks that rise up out of nowhere past Yearning Head.”

  Lily remembered seeing the formation from the headland, protruding from the waters like a great granite claw.

  The colors of the window fell across Portia’s face. “On the day Catherine Tregarrick died, her husband’s ship had been expected to make harbor for several days. The man at the helm always looked for the star window. Steering between Yearning Head and Tregarrick’s Star, the pilot would know he was in safe waters, you see.”

  She turned to Lily. “For some reason the lamps were unlit that night. The pilot said the beacon at Star House went out suddenly, and he lost his bearings. Tregarrick’s Star was almost lost in the mist and rain. It came too close to St. Petroc’s Cathedral and was almost dashed to pieces on the sharp rocks. It nearly capsized when they brought her about. Two men were lost overboard, dashed against the rocks.”

  “How horrible!”

  “Yes, and senseless,” Portia added.

  “But why wasn’t the window lit up?”

  “No one knows. Perhaps the wind blew the flames out. Or a jealous rival might have paid someone to sabotage it. The competition for the China trade was fierce. The servants reported that Captain Tregarrick reached home the next morning in a terrible fury. He blamed Catherine for not making sure the Star Window was well lit. There was a frightful row. Catherine ran out of the house, with Captain Tregarrick hot on her heels. Later the servants heard a woman’s scream, and they ran out of the house. A fog had rolled in from the Atlantic. There was no sign Catherine or Rees Tregarrick. They’d ventured too near the cliffs, and weren’t found for some time.”

  Lily listened, appalled. So that was how he sustained his injury! “What happened then?” She was almost afraid to know.

  “Rees Tregarrick was on the sea-stairs with his leg badly broken and his face raked raw along one side…as if by a woman’s fingernails. Catherine was on the strand. By the time they reached her, she was beyond human help.”

  “How very sad.” Lily remembered the broken way Rees had uttered Catherine’s name. “How did they fall?”

  Portia looked away. “Captain Tregarrick claimed that his wife was suicidal. That she intended to jump from the headland, and that he tried to save her, but she fell
to her death. He fell in the struggle to aid her. With Catherine dead, of course, there was no one to say any different.”

  Something in the young woman’s voice arrested Lily. “I see. And so a taint was attached to his name.” She couldn’t believe that he had murdered his wife. “I don’t understand why he was blamed.”

  “It was an unhappy marriage,” Portia said. “He wanted her to go to sea with him, as was frequently the custom. Unlike the second Mrs. T., Catherine hated the sea, hated Cornwall. She refused.”

  “Then why did she marry him in the first place?”

  Portia laughed. “You’ve seen his portrait. Quite a man, I would say! Catherine was pretty and spoiled, and she set her cap for him. According to her diary, she was determined to make a splash in London society, and completely sure of her powers to persuade him to her will. Of course, his business brought them here.”

  “Quite a shock after London,” Lily said.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “He isn’t a murderer,” Lily said vehemently. “I am sure of it.”

  Portia slanted a look at her. “You’ve become his defender. Perhaps I should tell you the rest: Some say that Catherine was still clinging to life when they found her, bleeding and broken on the rocks. That she blamed her husband, and died with a curse on her lips.”

  Lily shrugged off the shiver she felt; but as they continued on the tour, she remembered Rees’s words, how he had begged Catherine for a sign of her forgiveness. It went against her every instinct; but the knowledge weighed on her like a pall of lead.

  They came upon James near the servants’ stair, humping a large trunk down the worn treads. Light gleamed dully from the tarnished brass studs and double locks. He set it down on the carpet, dusting his hands of the stray webs that clung to old leather.

  “This is the last of that lot beneath the north eaves. Shall I take it into your workroom?”