Books by Nora Roberts

by Roberts, Nora

  “Drown in hell.” Sam’s voice echoed. “Die in the dark. Burn eternally with my woman’s mark. Your force is crushed by this vast sea.”

  “As we will,” Mia said, turning to him.

  “So mote it be.” He stepped back, drew her with him. “Come away from the edge, Mia.”

  “But it’s a lovely view.” She laughed, a full-throated, joyous sound and lifted her face to the sky, where stars burst out of the clouds. The moon sailed, a white ship on a calm sea. “God, what a feeling. You’ll have questions,” she said. “I need a minute first, with Nell and Ripley.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She walked down the cliffs and into the arms of her sisters.

  Later, she left the others in her kitchen and went out into the garden with Sam. “It may be hard for you to understand why I didn’t share everything I intended with you, with all of you. It wasn’t arrogance, it was—”

  The words clogged in her throat when he spun her into his arms, held her crushed against him.

  “Necessary,” she managed.

  “Just don’t talk for a minute. Just—Mia.” He buried his face in her hair, rocking, chanting soft words, wild words in Gaelic. Then just as abruptly, he yanked her away, gave her one hard shake. “Necessary, my ass. Necessary to rip the heart out of my chest? Do you know what it was like to see you standing on the edge of that cliff, with that thing coming at you?”

  “Yes.” She framed his face in her hands. “Yes. It was the only way, Sam. The only way I knew to be sure. To end it without harm to anyone.”

  “Answer me one question. Look straight at me when you answer it. Would you have sacrificed yourself?”

  “No.” When his eyes narrowed, she kept hers level. “Risking one’s life is different from sacrificing it. Did I risk it, yes, I did. Clearheadedly, because I’m a practical woman with a healthy appreciation for life. I risked it for the only real mother I’ve ever known. For this place and the people on it. For them,” she said, gesturing toward the house. “For the children to come from them. For you. For us. But I intended to live, and as you can see, I did.”

  “You planned to leave the circle that way. You planned to take it to the cliffs. Alone.”

  “It was meant to end there. I’d prepared in every way I knew how, considered every possibility. And still I missed one that you didn’t. When I looked down from the cliffs and saw that circle of light. . . . Sam.” Swamped with love, she leaned into him. “When I felt that strength, that love and faith sweeping up and into me, it was the greatest gift. Who knows what would have happened without it? You did that. By asking for help when I didn’t think of it.”

  “Islanders stick together. Spread the word to a few people—”

  “And word spreads to a few more,” she finished. “And they gathered around the cottage and in the woods tonight. All those hearts and minds turned toward me.”

  She pressed her hands between her breasts where that song still sang. “Strong magic. You have to understand,” she continued, easing back, “I couldn’t tell you, any of you. I couldn’t allow myself to open even that much, take the chance that what was in my own mind and heart would be read by what we were going to fight. I had to wait until everything was in place.”

  “I’m working on that, Mia, but this wasn’t your fight. It was ours.”

  “I wasn’t sure of that. I wanted to be, but I wasn’t sure until you stepped out of the circle in front of me. And what you felt for me . . . telling me you love me paled with feeling it burst out of you in that one moment. I knew you’d come after me. I knew then, without question, that we had to finish it together. I need to tell you . . .”

  She shook her head, stepped away from him until she was sure the words would be there. “I loved you once, so much. But my love was twined around my own needs and wants and wishes. A girl’s love, that has borders. When you were gone, I made myself lock that love away. I couldn’t survive with it alive inside me. Then you came back.”

  She turned to him. “It hurt to look at you. As I said, I’m a practical woman, and I dislike pain. I dealt with that. I wanted you, but I didn’t have to unlock that love to have you. So I thought.” She brushed his hair from his forehead. “So I wished. But the lock wouldn’t hold, and that love spilled out. It was different than it had been, but I didn’t see, didn’t want to see. Because looking hurt again. Every time you told me you loved me, it was a knife in my heart.”

  “Mia—”

  “No. I’ll finish. The night we sat out here in the garden, with the butterfly? Before you came I’d been trying to settle my mind, once and for all. To reason it all out, to prepare myself. You sat, and you smiled at me, and everything inside me shifted. As if it had only been waiting for that one moment, that one look. When you told me you loved me, it didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt at all. Do you know how it made me feel?”

  “No.” He skimmed his knuckles over her cheek. “Tell me.”

  “Happy. Down-in-the-gut happy. Sam.” She ran her hands down his arms, couldn’t stop touching him. “What I felt for you then, and now, and always will isn’t a girl’s love. It bloomed out of that, but it’s new. It doesn’t need fantasies or wishes. If you go—”

  “I’m not—”

  “If you go again, what I feel for you won’t change or be locked away. I had to know that, without a shadow of doubt. I’ll cherish it, and what we made together. I know you love me, and that’s enough.”

  “Do you think I’d leave you now?”

  “That’s not the point.” Flying on her own heart, she stepped back, turned in a circle. “The point is, I love you enough to let you go. That I won’t wonder or worry, or look at you with that shadow on my heart. I love you enough to be with you. To live with you. With no regrets, no conditions.”

  “Come here, will you? Right here,” he said pointing in front of him.

  She nodded and walked to him. “Close enough?”

  “Do you see these?” He lifted the chain so that the rings were in her line of vision.

  “What are they? They’re beautiful.” She reached out to touch, and her breath caught at the warmth and the light that pulsed from them. “Their rings,” she whispered. “Hers and his.”

  “I found his in that cave I told you about, in Ireland. And hers just a matter of days ago, here. In our cave. Can you see what’s carved on them, and inside them?”

  She traced her finger over the Celtic symbols and read, as her heart began to thud, the Gaelic inside the circles.

  He slid the chain over his head, took the smaller ring off. “This is yours.”

  All the power that still surged inside her seemed to pause. As if a million breaths were held. “Why are you giving it to me?”

  “Because he couldn’t keep the promise. But I will. I want to make it to you. I want you to make it to me. Now, and again when you marry me. And every day after that. I want to say it to you every time one of our children is born.”

  Her gaze flew up to his. “Children.”

  “I had a vision,” he began, and brushed the first tear away with his fingertip as it spilled down her cheek. “You were working in the garden in the very early spring. The leaves were just a green haze, and the sun was soft and yellow. When I came out to you, you stood up. You were so beautiful, Mia. More beautiful than I’ve ever seen you. You were full with our child. I put my hand on you, over it, and felt it move. Felt that life we’d made just . . . surge. So impatient to be born. I had no idea.”

  He took her face in his hands. “No idea what that would mean. No idea that I could want, so much, everything I saw and felt in that one slice of time. Make a life with me, Mia. Our life, and what comes from it.”

  “I thought the magic was done for the night. Yes.” She pressed her lips to his cheek. “Yes.” And to the other. “To everything,” she said, laughing now as her lips found his.

  He circled her once, then took her right hand. “That’s the wrong finger,” she told him.

  “You can’t w
ear it on the left until we’re married. Let’s be a little traditional. And since we are, though I think people who’ve been in love all their lives should have a very short engagement . . .”

  He opened his hand, and where her tear had lain was a slice of light. Grinning at her, he tossed it high, and stars fountained from it, raining down like little sparks of flame.

  “A symbol,” he said, plucking one of the lights from the air. “A promise. I’ll give you the stars, Mia.” Turning his hand over, he offered her a circle ringed with diamonds clear as water, bright as fire.

  “I’ll take them. And you. Oh, and you, Sam.” She held out her hand, absorbing the thrill as he slipped the pledge onto her finger. And there it glittered. “What magic we’ll make!”

  “Let’s start now.”

  Laughing with her, he lifted her off her feet and danced her around a garden bursting with flowers.

  And their stars shimmered brilliant against the dark.

  The Donovan Legacy

  --1 Captivated (08-1992)--

  Prologue

  She was born the night the Witch Tree fell. With the first breath she drew, she tasted the power-the richness of it, and the bitterness. Her birth was one more link in a chain that had spanned centuries, a chain that was often gilded with the sheen of folklore and legend. But when the chain was rubbed clean, it held fast, tempered by the strength of truth.

  There were other worlds, other places, where those first cries of birth were celebrated. Far beyond the sweeping vistas of the Monterey coast, where the child's lusty cry echoed through the old stone house, the new life was celebrated. In the secret places where magic still thrived-deep in the green hills of Ireland, on the windswept moors of Cornwall, deep in the caves of Wales, along the rocky coast of Brittany-that sweet song of life was welcomed.

  And the old tree, hunched and gnarled by its age and its marriage to the wind, was a quiet sacrifice.

  With its death, and a mother's willing pain, a new witch was born.

  Though the choice would be hers-a gift, after all, can be refused, treasured or ignored-it would remain as much a part of the child, and the woman she became, as the color of her eyes. For now she was only an infant, her sight still dim, her thoughts still half-formed, shaking angry fists in the air even as her father laughed and pressed his first kiss on her downy head.

  Her mother wept when the babe drank from her breast. Wept in joy and in sorrow. She knew already that she would have only this one girl child to celebrate the love and union she and her husband shared.

  She had looked, and she had seen.

  As she rocked the nursing child and sang an old song, she understood that there would be lessons to be taught, mistakes to be made. And she understood that one day-not so long from now, in the vast scope of lifetimes-her child would also look for love.

  She hoped that of all the gifts she would pass along, all the truths she would tell, the child would understand one, the vital one. That the purest magic is in the heart.

  CHAPTER 1

  There was a marker in the ground where the Witch Tree had stood. The people of Monterey and Carmel valued nature. Tourists often came to study the words on the marker, or simply to stand and look at the sculptured old trees, the rocky shoreline, the sunning harbor seals.

  Locals who had seen the tree for themselves, who remembered the day it had fallen, often mentioned the fact that Morgana Donovan had been born that night.

  Some said it was a sign, others shrugged and called it coincidence. Still more simply wondered. No one denied that it was excellent local color to have a self-proclaimed witch born hardly a stone's throw away from a tree with a reputation.

  Nash Kirkland considered it an amusing fact and an interesting hook. He spent a great deal of his time studying the supernatural. Vampires and werewolves and things that went bump in the night were a hell of a way to make a living. And he wouldn't have had it any other way.

  Not that he believed in goblins or ghoulies-or witches, if it came to that. Men didn't turn into bats or wolves at moonrise, the dead did not walk, and women didn't soar through the night on broomsticks. Except in the pages of a book, or in the flickering light and shadow of a movie screen.

  There, he was pleased to say, anything was possible.

  He was a sensible man who knew the value of illusions, and the importance of simple entertainment. He was also enough of a dreamer to conjure images out of the shades of folklore and superstition for the masses to enjoy.

  He'd fascinated the horror-film buff for seven years, starting with his first-and surprisingly successful-screenplay, Shape Shifter.

  The fact was, Nash loved seeing his imagination come to life on-screen. He wasn't above popping into the neighborhood movie theater and happily devouring popcorn while the audience caught their breath, stifled screams or covered their eyes.

  He delighted in knowing that the people who plunked down the price of a ticket to see one of his movies were going to get their money's worth of chills.

  He always researched carefully. While writing the gruesome and amusing Midnight Blood, he'd spent a week in Rumania interviewing a man who swore he was a direct descendant of Vlad, the Impaler-Count Dracula. Unfortunately, the count's descendant hadn't grown fangs or turned into a bat, but he had proven to possess a wealth of vampire lore and legend.

  It was such folktales that inspired Nash to spin a story-particularly when they were related by someone whose belief gave them punch.

  And people considered him weird, he thought, grinning to himself as he passed the entrance to Seventeen Mile Drive. Nash knew he was an ordinary, grounded-to-earth type. At least by California standards. He just made his living from illusion, from playing on basic fears and superstitions-and the pleasure people took in being scared silly. He figured his value to society was his ability to take the monster out of the closet and flash it on the silver screen in Technicolor, usually adding a few dashes of unapologetic sex and sly humor.

  Nash Kirkland could bring the bogeyman to life, turn the gentle Dr. Jekyll into the evil Mr. Hyde, or invoke the mummy's curse. All by putting words on paper. Maybe that was why he was a cynic. Oh, he enjoyed stories about the supernatural-but he, of all people, knew that was all they were. Stories. And he had a million of them.

  He hoped Morgana Donovan, Monterey's favorite witch, would help him create the next one. For the past few weeks, between unpacking and taking pleasure in his new home, trying his skill at golf-and finally giving it up as a lost cause-and simply treasuring the view from his balcony, Nash had felt the urge to tell a tale of witchcraft. If there was such a thing as fate, he figured, it had done him a favor by plunking him down only a short, pleasant drive from an expert.

  Whistling along with the car radio, he wondered what she'd be like. Turbaned or tasseled? Draped in black crepe? Or maybe she was some New Age fanatic who spoke only through Gargin, her channeler from Atlantis.

  Either way, he wouldn't mind a bit. It was the loonies in the world that gave life its flavor.

  He'd purposely avoided doing any extensive research on the witch. He wanted to form his own opinions and impressions, leaving his mind clear to start forming plot angles. All he knew was that she'd been born right here in Monterey, some twenty-eight years before, and she ran a successful shop that catered to people who were into crystals and herbs.

  He had to give her two thumbs-up for staying in her hometown. After less than a month as a resident of Monterey, he wondered how he could ever have lived anywhere else. And God knew, he thought as his angular face creased in a grimace, he'd already lived just about everywhere.

  Again, he had to thank his luck for making his scripts appealing to the masses. His imagination had made it possible for him to move away from the traffic and smog of L.A. to this priceless spot in northern California.

  It was barely March, but he had the top down on his Jag, and the bright, brisk breeze whipped through his dark blond hair. There was the smell of water-it was never far away he
re-of grass, neatly clipped, of the flowers that thrived in the mild climate.

  The sky was cloudless, a beautiful blue, his car was purring like a big, lean cat, he'd recently disentangled himself from a relationship that had been rushing downhill, and he was about to start a new project. As far as Nash was concerned, life was perfect.

  He spotted the shop. As he'd been told, it stood neatly on the corner, flanked by a boutique and a restaurant. The businesses were obviously doing well, as he had to park more than a block away. He didn't mind the walk. His long, jeans-clad legs ate up the sidewalk. He passed a group of tourists who were arguing over where to have lunch, a pencil-slim woman in fuchsia silk leading two Afghan hounds, and a businessman who strolled along chatting on his cellular phone.

  Nash loved California.

  He stopped outside the shop. The sign painted on the window simply read WICCA. He nodded, smiling to himself. He liked it. The Old English word for witch. It brought to mind images of bent old women, trundling through the villages to cast spells and remove warts.

  Exterior scene, day, he thought. The sky is murky with clouds, the wind rushes and howls. In a small, run-down village with broken fences and shuttered windows, a wrinkled old woman hurries down a dirt road, a heavy covered basket in her arms. A huge black raven screams as it glides by. With a flutter of wings, it stops to perch on a rusted gatepost. Bird and woman stare at each other. From somewhere in the distance comes a long, desperate scream.

  Nash lost the image when someone came out of the shop, turned and bumped into him.

  "Sorry," came the muffled apology.

  He simply nodded. Just as well, Nash thought. It wouldn't do to take the story too far until he'd talked to the expert. For now, what he wanted was to take a good look at her wares.

  The window display was impressive, he noted, and showed a flair for the dramatic. Deep blue velvet was draped over stands of various heights and widths so that it resembled a wide river with dark waterfalls. Floating over it were clusters of crystals, sparkling like magic in the morning sun. Some were as clear as glass, while others were of almost heartbreaking hues. Rose and aqua, royal purple, ink black. They were shaped like wands or castles or small, surrealistic cities.