Love’s Magic

by Traci E Hall

  “You mistake me intentions, Lady Celestia,” Grainne Kat warbled. “I but fear for your safety. If you must open the tower, at least take Maude with ye. The Lady Esmerada knows her, and mayhap she can protect you from harm. She’s a hard worker, my Maude.”

  Celestia looked over her shoulder at Grainne Kat. “I have yet to see her lift a finger around here. She browbeats the servants, and I won’t have it.”

  When she turned back, Maude’s lower lip started to tremble, and two tears slipped like lovely pearls from her eyes. The woman even cried beautifully, Celestia thought with disgust.

  “Fine, Maude, come with me—I want that tower cleared today. Willy? Henry! Geoffrey!”

  “Yes, my lady?” Sir Geoffrey headed up the line of crimson-clad knights.

  Tilting her chin, she spoke calmly and precisely. “We continue with the tower. The servants are all dismissed, and I want a litter made to carry Grainne Kat back to her hut. I will not have my husband return to a keep filled with lunatics!”

  She made certain to look at each peasant before her, letting them know her words were final. Most looked shamed by their behavior. Beatrice scowled. “Geoffrey, pay each of them what we promised, but they are finished here.” Celestia paused. “Except for Sally. She can stay if she wants.”

  “Yes, my lady, I do want to stay,” she dipped a fast curtsy, missing the dark look Maude was giving her.

  “Sir Geoffrey, do you or any of the knights object to opening the tower?”

  The old knight shook his head, nay. Willy blurted, “No, my lady. I would slay any ghost for you.”

  Henry, not to be outdone, knelt and kissed her hand. “If there are ghastly apparitions to be found, I will save you, my lady!”

  The rest agreed, although Celestia ignored the whiteness around Bertram’s mouth, not wanting to call attention to his fear. “Let us finish this, then. Gather what you need, and Geoffrey, be kind when you let the servants go—but get them gone from here!”

  Later, Celestia was so exasperated that she took the pick from Bertram and tore the stone from the wall herself. “If there is a ghost, Bertram, you certainly could not hurt them with your axe. Do you understand?”

  He looked at the ground, his ears red. Maude stood over the crew as if she were the lady of Falcon Keep, and not Celestia.

  It didn’t help, Celestia admitted, that Maude looked fresh and lovely in a gown of green, while she wore an old brown tunic that was covered in dust and grime. She wiped at her brow.

  The memory of Nicholas holding her captive in front of the mirror, his eyes caressing her as thoroughly as his hands and words had, warmed away the chill of jealousy.

  For certes, the memories of her husband’s kisses downright warmed her from head to toe.

  She’d not had another vision, praise all the saints, but that left her with a belly full of worry. Petyr had gone after Nicholas, and surely he’d had time to talk him into returning home. Obviously her husband didn’t want to come. And poor Forrester, she’d sent the young knight on a fool’s errand, twisting her wild imagination into some kind of warning that Nicholas was with her brothers.

  Which meant Peregrine Castle.

  Nay, she sighed. She was losing her mind as well as her healing touch.

  She threw her weight behind the next swing of the pick—challenging one’s strength felt good. It was no wonder men exerted themselves beyond measure.

  “’Tis done, I say! There is plenty of room for us all to pass through without the wall falling down upon our heads.”

  Henry said, “But my lady, it will take just a bit more time for us to clear the rest of the debris. Your safety matters above all else.”

  Celestia looked at him, her blue eye opened wide as she squinted through the dust. “I’ll risk it.”

  “Lord Nicholas would not be happy,” he said, his arms crossed.

  “Lord Nicholas isn’t here, Henry, thank you. Do you smell that?” Apples. Spiced apples, from cider, or pie—it didn’t matter. Her stomach rumbled, and she had that immediate need to explore the top of the tower. Invisible fingers pushed her forward, and she found herself through the hole and up three stairs before Henry could stop her.

  Up and up she climbed the thin circular stairway, her hand against the stone wall so she’d keep her balance. Light filtered through the arrow slits that were everywhere. Had Lady Esmerada expected a siege?

  She remembered that Father Michael had said she’d prepared for the worst, poor woman.

  “I’m coming, Lady Esmerada, I’m coming.” She finally reached the only room in the tower. The door was closed. A large lock prevented her from pushing it open. The lock appeared old and somehow accusing. As if the lady were trapped inside, and not of her own accord.

  Celestia looked around for a key that would, mayhap, be hanging from a hook, but there was none. A chill went up her spine and she reached for the lock. Her fingers were not her own as she yanked down.

  The lock opened beneath her hand and spilled to the floor in a puddle of rust.

  Behind her, Maude screamed and pulled on Celestia’s dress. Tottering on the edge of a thin step, she couldn’t regain her balance, not with Maude clutching and pulling at her old tunic. The sound of cloth ripping echoed around her and she was falling. Down, down, and down. Her life flashed before her eyes as she hit each stone step, each curve of the sharp rock wall. Nicholas, she thought, Nicholas!

  Nicholas.

  Chapter

  Eighteen

  Nicholas thought he heard someone calling his name. Rousing himself from the light doze he was trapped in, he tried to answer back. “Celestia?”

  She said nothing more.

  He sat up from his prone position and hit his head on the short ceiling. Again. He blinked his eyes, but it remained dark as pitch. Shivering, he muttered, “God’s bones, not again.”

  The smell of horse’s dung assaulted his nostrils. He’d never dreamt of horse shit before. He stretched out his hands and touched rough wood. A wall? He traced the wooden planks, using his fingers to tell him what he couldn’t see but was beginning to suspect.

  This was no case of night terrors. He’d been captured.

  His sodding father, and Petyr, a betrayal he should have expected. His hands flew to his tunic, although he knew damned good and well that the relic was gone. His father had taken it with his fat, ringed hand. And then he’d had Nicholas bashed on the back of the head.

  How much more could his skull take? Sneaky bastards, hitting a man from behind.

  His father and Petyr, cohorts all along. And the rest of the knights now had the keep under their control. He was a fool, letting hope come between him and solid revenge. If he’d but entered his father’s castle with his sword singing, then it wouldn’t be him trapped in a dark cage.

  Damn it.

  He had nothing to offer Saint James, and nothing to give Celestia. He narrowed his eyes, letting them adjust to the blackness.

  His wife thought he’d deserted her to go on a pilgrimage to Spain. A worthwhile endeavor perhaps, but poorly timed, on his behalf. She had sent Petyr after him to keep him safe, and instead, it had been the perfect opportunity for Petyr to betray him.

  Celestia had made the shattered keep a home, with her commanding presence, her jingling slippers and her laughter.

  Then he thought of her all alone within those barren walls and he couldn’t breathe. What would be Celestia’s fate if Petyr and the baron killed him? Would they harm her in any way, or send her home to her family?

  He had to escape. It had taken a miracle, but he had learned to love again. They’d been right. Abbot Crispin, Father Michael, Celestia—he had been plugging his ears like a petulant boy. He’d been bloody stupid, and not seen Celestia for what she was. A gift from God himself.

  The rosary beneath his tunic warmed against his heart. He was done with self-pity. Nicholas would die before letting anything happen to Celestia, which meant he had to get out of this vermin-infested pit and find his sire. If
the baron were dead, then he would no longer have a hold over the Montehue family. That part of his original plan still held true.

  He whirled. “'Tia?” For certes, he knew he heard her calling him. The hair on the back of his neck rose. “Wait for me, I am coming,” he whispered in the dark. He had to get out of here.

  But where was he?

  He carefully got to his knees, ignoring the fact that insects and bugs crawled in the same space as he. He couldn’t let that make him crazy.

  Hooves clomping. Horse manure. Hay.

  He was in the stables, or some part of them. He whistled. Horses neighed. Where were they? Could he reach Brenin?

  Belly-crawling like a snake across the filthy floor, his eyes began to filter shadow from shape. Turning on his back, he looked up, and straw fell into his eye. Yes. He was below the stables, but this space was not deep enough to be used for anything other than storage.

  He looked around and identified bundles of hay and bags of oats. A pair of red, beady eyes blinked at him. Damn rat-infested hole. Breathing through flared nostrils, his mouth clamped tight, he moved forward, determined to find his way out if it were the last thing he ever did.

  As the hours passed, Nicholas could feel the familiar despair beckoning. He had been over every scrap of wood, both on the floor and the roof of his prison, but he couldn’t find a damn door. Not so much as a loose plank budged. His hands were bleeding and raw from trying to scratch and pull his way free.

  His old friend Useless threatened to visit, and Pathetic whispered how easy it would be to lie back and die in this hole.

  He wouldn’t give up. He hadn’t then, and he wouldn’t now.

  How long had he been belowground? His stomach rumbled, and his mouth thirsted. He had rested his eyes when they blurred and he couldn’t see, but he’d not given in to sleep.

  Nicholas fought for his sanity, for his very soul. He would not lose another piece of himself; there was nothing left to give. The rosary warmed against his heart and he did the one thing he hadn’t been able to do since his capture in Jerusalem.

  He got on his knees and prayed.

  His faith had taken a beating, and through his own stubbornness, he had pushed aside all help. Had he thought himself so godly, then, that he could not make mistakes? His pride had felled him, just as an axe could topple the tallest oak. His sin had not been his human fallibility—man was not perfect. His great sin had been his pride. Tears burned his throat. He had killed a woman, a woman who had drugged and raped him. The joy he had felt at her death had been the blessing of being alive. He had never killed for the sake of watching someone die. He choked on the bitter memories, but he looked at them and accepted them for what they were.

  His past.

  Nicholas wiped his eyes and took a cleansing breath. Leah had not stolen his worth. He had tried to bury the torture that had been done to him by opting not to feel at all. Unable to accept love, because he had been protecting his own shriveled heart.

  Bowing his head, he gave thanks, and pledged to live his life a better man. “But I need to get out of here first, Lord. I am open to any suggestions.”

  He heard a whistle in the dark, and Nicholas sat back in surprise.

  He looked around the dark hole in awe and whistled back.

  “Me lord Nicholas? Is that you?”

  “Yes, ‘tis I.”

  One eye peered between the small crack in the roof of Nicholas’s prison. “What are ye doin’ down there, me lord?”

  Nicholas growled. “I’ve been captured by the baron and Sir Petyr. Is that you, Forrester?”

  “Aye! Petyr, sir? Are ye sure?”

  Since Nicholas didn’t trust Forrester’s loyalty, he bit his tongue.

  Another voice piped up from above him. “Who ya talkin’ to?”

  Exhaling, Nicholas curled his fists in disappointment.

  “Nobody, boy, now mind yer own business.”

  Nicholas heard the thwack of a board hitting a man’s head, and dirt rained down upon him as Forrester’s heavy body hit the boards. A tiny golden bell fell from the besotted knight’s tunic.

  Another knight sent by Celestia?

  Nicholas was brought before his sire, his tunic stinking of manure.

  He nodded to Petyr, who sat to the baron’s left. Nicholas said nothing to the man who’d raped his mother and then abandoned her. Father Michael had clearly said that some deaths were meted out with earthly justice, and right now, he felt like the sword of God.

  The baron drank deeply, pointing to the jeweled case holding the finger bone of Saint James. It sat on a crystal pedestal above the baron’s plate. “You are to be commended on how quickly you found me the relic, Nicholas. Tell me—where was it? I tore that damnable keep apart. Do you have any idea what it’s like to lose something that belonged to a king? I hope you slit their throats.”

  Petyr chuckled. “No need to slit anybody’s throat. The old wise woman had it—I know not where she got it.”

  Nicholas answered, “Grainne Kat had it proudly displayed in her hut, velvet box and all. I don’t think she realized what it was she possessed.”

  “Grainne Kat? I have never heard that name before.”

  Petyr looked into his goblet rather than meet Nicholas’s angry glare, but Nicholas refused to let him go.

  “She looks as if she has lived in the woods for at least a hundred years.” Petyr sipped. “Pretty daughter, though. Did you know that the ten knights you sent ahead to the keep are all dead?”

  The baron paled beneath his drink-flushed cheeks. “Dead?”

  “Aye. Tortured, some of them. We found two in the castle, four in the shed, and four in the moat. We were even attacked on the way to the castle. Your son handled himself quite well.”

  The baron spluttered and slammed his goblet down on the table so hard that the silver bent. Nicholas stood still, relying on his soldier’s skills. His sire asked, “Why did you not send word?”

  Petyr slowly buttered a piece of bread. “How was I to do that? The other men accepted being loyal to Nicholas. Unless you made the same devil’s bargain with them as you did me.”

  “Nay! I but wanted the relic returned before any uncovered the ruse I’d played on King Richard.”

  Nicholas’s jaw hurt from clenching it so tight. If his sire wanted a reaction, he wasn’t going to get one. If he could but get that knife from the center of the table …

  Petyr sent Nicholas a mocking salute with his bread. “Nicholas wants to atone for his sins and take the holy object back to Spain. It seems his year of captivity furthered him from his faith, or some such thing.”

  The baron laughed, pointing at Nicholas with a rib bone. “Fool, ye spent too much time at the monastery with that sissy abbot. I should have had ye fostered here with me.”

  Nicholas could hold his tongue no more. He stepped forward but his father’s knights were there with their swords to hold him still. “Why didn’t you?”

  He patted his bulging belly. “I didn’t know if ye were my son, now did I? Yer slut of a mother was in love with Robbie MacIntosh, the Scottish rebel King Henry wanted slaughtered. He was dark, as I was dark. She, though beautiful, was dark. How was I to know, until ye got older?” The baron tapped his nose.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I didn’t have to look far. Abbot Crispin sent me a letter within months of your arrival.”

  Nicholas gulped, his jaw clenched. “You knew about me?”

  “Aye.” The baron laughed. “I paid a small stipend, and your mentor kept me apprised of your growth.”

  Betrayed by the abbot. “Hedging your bets, were you? You could watch me grow at the monastery, and interfere whenever it pleased you. Did you burn the monastery down?” Nicholas’s hands itched to get a hold of anything that he could stab the baron with.

  “Now, son—”

  “Don’t call me that,” Nicholas said in a controlled voice that didn’t match the boiling anger inside him.

  “I thought
the abbot might have the relic. And I wanted to know about you. He wasn’t cooperating. The fire was but a warning that burned out of control. I offered to build him a new one.”

  Nicholas bowed his head, knowing that his father didn’t see loss of life as something to fret over. He wanted to know about me; he was searching for something else to hold over my head. Controlling bastard.

  Petyr leaned forward, his eyes darting from Baron Peregrine to Nicholas. “What about the babe needed to end Esmerada’s curse? How are ye going to manage that?”

  The baron glared at Petyr. “Go and bring the healer to me,” he said carelessly. “Mayhap I can get a babe on the wench.”

  Nicholas could feel his gut jump to his throat, and a low growl escaped.

  “Nicholas doesn’t like that,” Petyr sat back, holding his goblet. “What sort of father would send his son to be murdered while on crusade?”

  The baron drew his knife. “Why are you asking questions, Petyr? You never needed answers before.”

  The knight swiped back his golden hair and smiled maliciously. “I find that I have a certain respect for Lord Nicholas. My conscience is telling me that I’ve made a mistake in selling him to you for a few paltry coins.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Did you plan my brother’s death, as well?”

  The baron wiped the beads of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “I could kill you, too, if you become greedy. Bernard thought too highly of himself. I can see that you, also, have a good opinion of your worth.”

  “You won’t avenge your brother’s death, Petyr?” Nicholas hoped that the two would snarl at each other, and give him an opportunity to kill them both.

  “Petyr! Why are we arguing?” The baron laid the knife on the table. “You have brought both my son and the relic to me. I have your gold in my chamber. It is a contract that will be paid in full.”

  Petyr narrowed his eyes. “Aye. Our devil’s bargain. I think that I will take my gold, plus ten percent for the death of my brother, and retire elsewhere. Methinks I would not enjoy my old age if I remained here in your service.”