Dreamspell

by Tamara Leigh

  He lowered his gaze over her. “You are injured?”

  No sooner did she follow his gaze to her bloodied skirt than he lunged, seized hold of the branch, and used it to haul her toward him.

  Kennedy let go, but not before he caught her arm. Handling her as if she were a child rather than a woman who topped out at five foot eight, Wynland lifted her off her feet and deposited her on his saddle between his thighs.

  She reached for his face. Unlike her hair, she hadn’t dreamed herself a set of long nails, and she fell short by the split second it took him to capture her wrist and grip it with the other.

  “Calm yourself!”

  She strained, kicked, bit—and got a mouthful of metal links that made her teeth peal with pain.

  “Cease, else I shall bind you hand and foot!”

  Before or after he killed her? She threw her head back and got a closer look at her version of Fulke Wynland. Not model material after all. As blue as his eyes were, his face was flawed. A scar split his left eyebrow, nose had a slight bend, and the jaw visible beneath his beard was mildly pocked as if from adolescent acne or a childhood illness. Handsome? Definitely not. Rugged? Beyond. Deadly? Ever so.

  Realizing her best hope was to catch him off guard, she forced herself to relax.

  Wynland gave a grunt of satisfaction, reached down, and yanked up her skirt.

  Horrified that her dream was taking a more lurid turn, she renewed her struggle.

  The horse snorted and danced around, but neither Kennedy nor the skittish animal turned Wynland from his intent. His large hand slid from her ankle to her calf to her knee.

  It was then she felt the draft and realized that, somewhere between reality and dream, she had lost her underwear.

  When his hand spanned her thigh, she opened her mouth to scream, but just as quickly as the assault began, it ended. He thrust her skirt down and smiled—if that wicked twist of his lips could be called a smile. “Worry not, my lady, I place too high a value on my health to risk it with you.”

  What, exactly, did he mean? That she was promiscuous? Diseased? Of course, she did portray a king’s mistress. . .

  “Whose blood if not yours?” Wynland asked.

  That was why he had touched her? She didn’t know the man’s name, only that he had rejected her as being his lady. She frowned. How was that? If she was Lady Lark, why had one of the players in this dream not recognized her?

  “Whose?” he growled.

  She shifted around to fully face Wynland. “What does it matter?”

  His lids narrowed. “A soldier—nay, a dozen—bled their last to defend you. What does it matter who they were? Who their wives and children are?”

  When he put it that way. . . But she wasn’t the villain, he was. Those men were dead because he had ordered it. Or done it himself. “Put me down.”

  “What befell your escort?”

  Why the pretense when he meant to kill her? Or did he? According to Mac’s book, no trace of Lady Lark was ever found. Had Wynland allowed her to live—for a while, at least?

  It’s a dream!

  Though she knew he was only smoke floating about her mind, she detested him for the sins of the man after whom she had fashioned him. “Why don’t you tell me what happened to my escort?” She was bold, and it felt good, so like her old self before this thing in her head pulled the life out from under her.

  Wynland’s face darkened. “You think I am responsible?”

  “If the shoe fits. . .”

  Confusion slipped through his anger. “What shoe?”

  One would think she had truly hopped back in time. If this was anything like what Mac experienced, no wonder he thought it was real. She only hoped that when she awakened she would remember the outlandish dream long enough to record it. “You don’t want me at Burnwood.”

  “Brynwood, and, nay, I do not. But I assure you, had I wished you dead, we would not be having this conversation.”

  Nothing came between him and what he wanted, including his nephews. The deaths those little boys had suffered incited Kennedy further. “Just goes to show that if you want something done right, do it yourself.”

  He puller her closer. “If you have anything else to say to me, my lady, you would do well to choose your words carefully.”

  His hands on her, thighs on either side of her, and breath on her face, were almost enough to make her believe he was real. Only a figment. He holds no more power over you than the next dream.

  “Do you understand?”

  “What is there not to understand?”

  He stared at her, then released her arms and turned her forward. Before she could gulp down the view from atop the horse, he gripped an arm around her waist and spurred the animal through the trees.

  She was riding sidesaddle. How much worse could it get? Though she tried to shut out memories of her last horse ride, she remembered exactly how bad it could get. She squeezed her eyes closed. Where was Wynland taking her? And if murder was on his mind, why the stay of execution? No one would hear if she cried out—

  He wasn’t alone. The thundering of hooves had surely been of many riders, meaning others could have seen her flight. Fortunate for her, unfortunate for Wynland.

  She opened her eyes. Trees sped by at breakneck blur, the forest floor rose and fell, shafts of sunlight blinded.

  She retreated behind her lids again and was all the more aware of the hard body at her back and the muscled arm against her abdomen, the sensation so real she felt the beat of Wynland’s heart through his armor. She chalked it up to it being a long time since she had been in a man’s arms, which was more her fault than her ex-husband’s. Graham would have held her if she had let him, but the marriage had coughed its last long before the onset of her illness. Kennedy Huntworth was no more—not that she had gone by her married name. At the urging of Graham’s mother, she had retained her maiden name for “professional purposes.” In the end, it had worked out for the best. Or was it the worst?

  Wynland dragged his horse to a halt, and a grateful Kennedy opened her eyes, only to wish she hadn’t.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He had returned her to the gore, the smell of butchery. Add to that twenty armored men who moved among the dead, impervious to the horror, it should have awakened her in a cold sweat. Instead, the dream gripped her more fiercely.

  One of the soldiers, a man who aspired to just over five feet, stepped from the upset wagon. Like several of the others, but unlike Wynland, he wore a white sleeveless shirt over his armor, the breast embroidered with a green shield dissected by a black cross. Perched on the shield was something like a dragon.

  The man shook his head. “All dead, my lord.”

  Kennedy searched out the one who had spoken of the medallion. He stared wide, but he had seen his last living day.

  “Thieves?’ Wynland asked.

  The soldier strained his neck to look up at him. “’Twould appear so, my lord. The king’s men have been stripped of armor and weaponry, their horses taken and, excepting a trunk beneath the wagon, all of the lady’s belongings are gone.”

  “You have searched the attackers’ bodies?”

  “There are none to search, my lord. More, the ground is bloodied only where the king’s men lie.”

  Kennedy felt Wynland’s disbelief. He probably hadn’t expected his hitmen to fare so well against the king’s soldiers. How convenient for him.

  “’Tis like nothing I have seen,” the soldier said. “As if—”

  “—they knew their attackers,” Wynland finished, then more gruffly, “Is that how ‘twas, Lady Lark?”

  His charade was for the benefit of his men, but as much as she wanted to set the fools right, she knew it was a battle best left for when Wynland wasn’t so near. She looked over her shoulder. “I don’t recall.”

  His left eyebrow arched on either side of the scar, forming a sinister M. “Do you not?”

  “I. . .hit my head.” She rubbed a spot above her right ear.
<
br />   “You were attacked?”

  Kennedy feigned offense. “You ask that with all this carnage?”

  “I ask it when none but you survived.”

  It was strange, but this was a dream. “My injury occurred when the wagon overturned.” She pointed at it.

  “You were in that wagon?”

  Apparently not. A carriage, then? She didn’t see one, though that didn’t mean there hadn’t been a carriage prior to the attack. What about a horse? Had ladies in this age travelled on the beasts?

  “Lady Lark?”

  She sighed. “Yes, that wagon.”

  “Regardless of what you are, have been, or nevermore will be to the king,” Wynland bit, “’tis difficult to believe Edward would have so little regard for the woman he chose to care for my nephews that he sent her to Brynwood in a baggage wagon.”

  Kennedy shrugged. “I’m not a horse person.”

  His regard sharpened as if he saw Kennedy Plain past Lady Lark. Then, with one fluid move, he swung out of the saddle and dropped to the ground. Tall as a smoggy Los Angeles day was long, he strode toward the wagon.

  That was it? He was going to leave her sidesaddle on an animal that surely sensed her fear? However, as much as she wanted to call him back and ask for help in dismounting, pride wouldn’t allow it. Nor the possibility of escape.

  She eyed the horse. Surely she need only nudge it with her heels? Though she hated the idea, she had nothing to lose but the fast-fading memory she would have upon awakening. She grabbed the saddle horn and swung a leg over the other side of the horse. When the long dress fought her, making a good case for riding sidesaddle, she hitched up the skirt, scooted back, and reached her feet to the stirrups. She was on the tall side, but Wynland’s legs outdistanced hers.

  The stirrups weren’t necessary, were they? She lifted the reins and jabbed her heels into the horse’s sides. Nothing. She snapped the reins, dug her heels deeper. The horse shifted its weight. She leaned forward. “Come on, big guy, show me how it’s done.”

  The horse tossed its massive head and issued a snort suggestive of laughter.

  “You are thinking of leaving?”

  Kennedy looked around and saw Wynland approach at a leisurely pace indicative of the confidence he placed in his trusty steed.

  He halted alongside her. “He answers only to me.”

  Kennedy straightened. “I had to try.”

  He lowered his gaze down her leg. “The king may enjoy such brazen displays, Lady Lark, but you are at Sinwell and such behavior will not be tolerated.”

  She looked down her leg and did a double-take, though not because of any sort of indecency. The shoes that had served so poorly during her flight from Wynland were pointed and three inches too long, just like the ones illustrated in The Sins of the Earl of Sinwell. So that was where her imagination had gone to outfit her. . .

  “Cover yourself,” Wynland ordered.

  She glanced at him, then looked down again. Above the shoe, a thick sock pooled around her ankle. Higher, a stretch of bare calf was visible. She could use a shave, but she was hardly brazen. Certainly not by twenty-first century standards. The prude! She reached down and tugged the hem of her skirt, but it was no use. In straddling the horse, there wasn’t enough material to cover her legs.

  She shrugged. “I tried.”

  Wynland scowled and thrust something at her. “Your veil and circlet, I presume.”

  Air trembled through the white gossamer, sunlight ignited red and blue jewels set in the gold wire band he called a circlet. Remembering how she had lost them, Kennedy glanced at the soldier. His eyes were no longer open. Had Wynland closed them?

  “I am curious as to how the king’s man came to be in possession of these,” Wynland said.

  She took them. “I was trying to help him.” She tried, but failed, to put images of the encounter from her mind.

  “Continue.”

  She pulled the veil through her fingers. “And I removed them.”

  “For what purpose?”

  She draped the veil over her upswept hair and settled the circlet over it.

  His lids narrowed again. “Clearly, you are unaccustomed to such manner of headdress, my lady. Tell me of your maid.”

  Lady Lark had one?

  “Surely you did not set out from London without one.”

  “I. . .yes, I had one.”

  “Where is she?”

  Kennedy looked past Wynland, but searched no further than the nearest fallen solder, a man far from whole. She swept her gaze back to blue.

  “Thirteen lie dead,” Wynland said, “but none amongst them is a woman. What befell your maid?”

  “I must not have brought her with me after all.”

  His teeth snapped. “You wish me to believe the king not only set you upon the road in a wagon, but did not have a maid accompany you?”

  He thought her a flake or a liar—or disoriented. Falling back on her feigned injury, she touched her head. “I’m not thinking straight right now.”

  Clouds stormed his eyes. “You fear the wrong one.”

  So he thought she played dumb because of her distrust of him. That would work. “Do I?”

  A humorless rumble rose from him. “You think you have no enemies, Lady Lark? A woman who tried to displace the grasping Alice Perrers?”

  Though Mac’s book had speculated that the king’s favored mistress might have been responsible for Lady Lark being sent from court, there the speculation ended. Had this Perrers woman taken it a step further? A possibility, but Kennedy thought it was more likely Wynland’s attempt to throw her off his scent.

  “How convenient you were in the neighborhood and able to come to my aid so quickly,” she hazarded.

  With what sounded like an obscenity, though she had never heard the word, he caught her wrist. “Neither I, nor my men, were near when this happened. A villager brought tale of the attack to Brynwood.”

  As she looked into his anger, she had the feeling it cost him dearly to defend himself. Odd he should feel the need to do so with a woman for whom he had such low regard. Of course, Lady Lark was the king’s mistress. He wouldn’t want Edward gunning for him.

  He released her and put a foot in a stirrup. Like rain on a metal roof, his armor rang against the quiet of the forest as he swung up behind her.

  Expecting him to try to turn her back to sidesaddle, Kennedy clamped her thighs against the horse. However, Wynland put an arm on either side of her, took the reins, and guided his horse to where his men gathered near the wagon.

  Kennedy was disturbed by the looks that came her way, from surprise to lewd appreciation to affront.

  “Sir George,” Wynland called.

  The man stepped forward. “My lord?”

  “Divide your men and search the demesne. I want the murdering thieves found.”

  Tempted to tell the man to look no further than his lord, Kennedy bit her tongue.

  “After I have delivered the lady to Brynwood, I will return with more men.”

  How stilted Wynland’s speech sounded. A few contractions here and there would go a long way to remedying the problem.

  As Sir George returned to his men, Kennedy was surprised to discover that none of them was any more familiar than Wynland. Odd. Where had she seen these faces that she would unknowingly store them in her memory? And what about their voices? Though, on occasion, she had been around British accents, these weren’t quite the same.

  Mac had said he didn’t know the people in his dreams. Though Kennedy hadn’t achieved his level of sleep deprivation, she guessed this was analogous to what he had experienced.

  Oh, please, let me remember just one tenth of this when I wake! Unfortunately, the likelihood of doing so was hampered by the fact she hadn’t hooked up to the EEG. If she had, the alarm rigged to awaken her following REM sleep would have facilitated her recall. Now she was dependent on luck.

  “Gain your mount, Squire James,” Wynland called.

  Kenned
y saw a young man hasten from the gathering and swing into his saddle. He also wore a sleeveless shirt, but it bore a beast that was half-eagle, half-lion. Why two different coat of arms? Did the eagle-lion belong to Wynland, the dragon to his deceased brother?

  Wynland guided his horse through the maze of dead and, once clear, fastened an arm around Kennedy and let the animal run.

  Kennedy watched as they passed from forest to open meadow. To the edge in the distance, lush vegetation filled the eye and was capped by skies so blue that the cirrus streaking it could not dampen its radiance. Blankets of wildflowers undulated color amid greater green, towering trees stood sentinel over the bordering forest, sheep dotted a hill like a thousand tiny clouds come to ground. And the scent? Like a hundred Carolina mornings rolled into one. How incredibly removed it was from the glass, concrete, and metal that sprouted from Los Angeles, the smog that burned her eyes. But nothing prepared her for the fairy tale edifice that jagged the sky. Gait by gait, its white walls grew to immense proportions, beat by beat, its spires sharpened. Brynwood Spire.

  Built on a hill, the castle stood guard over a walled city jutting to the left. Black on green flags flapped from spires, sunlight on armor flashed silver atop the walls, and from the center of the castle arose a building with towers in each corner. Although the structure should have appeared out of place against the pristine countryside, it seemed as much a part of the scenery as the grass and trees. Storybook perfect—except for the two little boys murdered within those walls.

  Kennedy pondered the man who held her. How could he order the deaths of innocent children? It was evil. To have lived during the Middle Ages must have been to live a nightmare. She couldn’t imagine—

  Couldn’t she? This was a dream, every crumb fallen from things and people forgotten in some deep crack in her memory.

  As Wynland guided his horse onto a forty-foot span of bridge raised above a rushing river, Kennedy remembered the young man who had trailed them throughout the ride, and only because of the clatter of hooves that joined theirs.

  A soldier was at the far end of the bridge, motionless until they were nearly upon him. His gaze on Wynland, he said with a deferential nod, “All is quiet, my lord.”