by Tamara Leigh
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“What are you reading, Nedy?”
Kennedy dropped the cover on her journal and looked to her mother who crossed the living room with a cup and saucer in each hand. “Just some old notes.” Actually, they were new, a record of the sleep to which she had succumbed four days ago, and which had cost her the deficit that would have sooner returned her to her research. Still, the twelve hours of seemingly dreamless sleep had refreshed her—not that she wasn’t again reduced to trembling and fumbling with this current cycle numbering eighty hours.
“Not that research of yours, I hope.”
Kennedy crossed her fingers. “No.” She stepped forward and winced at her precarious balance that was compounded by the pounding in her skull. So much for painkillers.
“Nedy?”
She knew from the ache shimmering in her mother’s eyes that her infirmity was felt. “Is that tea, Mom?”
The cups rattled. “Y-yes. Come sit down.” She placed the saucers on the sofa table.
Amazed at how much concentration it took to cover the short distance, Kennedy lowered to the sofa beside her mother and reached for the tea. Now if she could just get the cup to her lips without scalding herself. Fortunately, the contents were only passing hot, her mother having anticipated she might spill. Funny how tuned in she was to her daughter’s condition, yet in breath denied its severity.
Kennedy sipped down half her tea and carefully set her cup on the table.
“You’re looking better,” Laurel said.
If it wasn’t such a pitiful lie, Kennedy might have laughed. No matter how ill she became—and she couldn’t get much worse—her mother would cling to hope that would prove a painful pill when she donned black to say farewell.
Kennedy eased her mother’s cup from her fingers and set it aside. “No”—she took Laurel’s hands in hers—“I don’t look better, Mom.”
“Of course you do. There’s color in your cheeks—”
“There’s not. You have to stop pretending that what’s happening isn’t. It is, and there’s nothing you, I, or the doctors can do.”
“Nonsense. The chemotherapy—”
“I told you I’m not taking it any more. It wasn’t helping.”
Her mother’s hands shook. “Maybe you should try again.”
“No.”
“It’s mind over body, Nedy.”
Patience. “I wish it were that simple, but it’s not. You have to accept what is happening and prepare yourself.”
Laurel jumped up. “God is not going to take you from me. He wouldn’t be so cruel.”
Kennedy curled her fingers into her palms. “I’m dying, Mom.”
“Cancer doesn’t run in my family—or your father’s. Heart disease, yes, but not cancer.”
“It doesn’t always run in families.” Kennedy started to stand, but it was too much effort. “Sometimes something just goes wrong.”
“My prayers will be answered.”
“Look at me, Mom.” Kennedy pulled the knit cap from her head.
Laurel met her gaze and quickly looked away.
Kennedy reached to her. “Sit with me.”
Laurel gripped Kennedy’s hand and lowered beside her.
“Mom, it’s important—”
“What an interesting man that Fulke Wynland was.”
Her attempt to change the subject nearly worked. For a split second, Kennedy swept back to the man she had left behind, longed for his touch—
She wasn’t going to think about him. He didn’t exist. But how did her mother know about him? The book. Laurel had borrowed it. “He was interesting, but we’re not talking about him. We’re talking about you and me.”
“I’d rather not.”
As much as Kennedy wanted to prepare her mother for the inevitable, the desperate pleading in Laurel’s eyes made her sigh. “All right. Later.”
Her mother settled back and patted her lap. “Like old times?”
Old times when, as a child, Kennedy had laid her head in her mother’s lap and they had whiled away the bedtime hour with talk. The memory warmed Kennedy, shunting aside her worry over Laurel’s denial. She could almost feel her mother’s fingers tugging at her curls, winding them around her fingers. But nevermore.
Kennedy eased her legs onto the sofa and laid her head in her mother’s lap.
Laurel curved a hand over her daughter’s bare scalp. “My baby.”
“My mom.” Kennedy closed her eyes and remembered how it had felt to be a child, safe in her mother’s arms.
“Graham told me he came to see you.”
She should have known they would talk. “Yes, he did.”
“And?”
Kennedy opened her eyes. “He wishes things could have turned out differently for us.”
Sorrow etched her mother’s mouth. “Oh, Nedy, was the divorce really necessary?”
“It was. Now he’s free and I’m. . .” What? A short-lived divorcee?
“He loves you, you know.”
That wasn’t enough. With the exception of marrying a woman his mother disapproved of, in everything he bent to Celia, excusing his actions with reminders of how fragile and broken she was over her husband’s death, allowing her to dictate the terms of his marriage. Bit by bit Kennedy had been pushed to the back of a long bus until she was more roommate than wife. Even when she was first diagnosed with the tumor, little had changed.
Bitterness swept her as she remembered a conversation overheard between Graham and his mother on the night he had told her of Kennedy’s illness. Eager to leave Celia’s grand home, Kennedy had gone in search of Graham. As she passed the study, she had heard his voice, but before she could announce herself, Celia’s words rang clearly to the hallway.
“Better widowed than divorced, I suppose,” she said so matter-of-factly Kennedy had felt as if a knife had been put through her.
And all Graham had said was, “Mother!”
Kennedy had finally accepted what she had known for some time—her marriage was over. In spite of Graham’s protests, she had filed for divorce.
She sighed away the pain and felt herself begin to drift. She really should get up. . .
“Do you think Fulke Wynland did it?’ Laurel asked.
Though grateful to be pulled back from the edge, Kennedy couldn’t bring herself to sit up. “Did what?”
“Murdered his nephews?”
Not the Fulke Wynland she knew, but they weren’t talking about a dream. “The evidence points to him.”
“That’s what the author contends, but I don’t believe it.”
Kennedy yawned. She should hook up to the EEG, but not until her mother left. “If not Wynland, who?”
“Lady Jaspar, for one.”
That awakened Kennedy. The Sins of the Earl of Sinwell hadn’t mentioned Jaspar. Had it? Wasn’t the woman a product of Kennedy’s dreaming mind? Or maybe the book had mentioned her and she had forgotten. Her mind was falling apart nearly as fast as the rest of her.
“I think he may have been framed, that the woman who passed herself off as Lady Lark was involved.”
Kennedy felt as if trampled. “What woman?”
“I don’t know her name. No one does, only that she suddenly disappeared and was never seen again, which led Wynland’s men to pronounce her a witch.” She frowned. “I thought you said you read the book.”
Mac’s words about the story changing following his travel into it returned to Kennedy. Impossible. “I skimmed it. You’re finished with it?”
“No, but as much as I hate to read, I couldn’t help but peek ahead.”
“And?”
“Poor Wynland, an earl for a day then arrested and hanged for murders he likely didn’t commit. But surely you know that.”
Surely she did. “Yes, of course.” In spite of the shock her mother had delivered, fatigue pulled Kennedy deeper into the sofa. On a stack of Bibles she would attest to Fulke Wynland having come out of the mess smelling like roses—that
the deaths of his nephews had earned him the title of earl, not the noose. Had she completely lost it?
“Are you all right, Kennedy?”
“I’m fine. How far along are you in the book?”
“About three-quarters. You know, where Wynland meets up with the king’s men who have come to investigate the attack on Lady Lark.”
Kennedy didn’t know. “The details are a little fuzzy.”
“Well, the king’s men weren’t pleased to learn of Lady Lark’s disappearance—rather, the impostor’s, though they didn’t yet realize that’s what she was.”
“Go on.”
“They accompanied Wynland in his search for his nephews.” Laurel shrugged. “That’s as far as we’ve gotten. Would you like the book back?”
“Yes—when you’re finished with it.” Or maybe she didn’t want it back, for it would only prove how much she had deteriorated. Obviously, her mother wasn’t the only one suffering from denial.
Nowhere to go but sleep, Kennedy dropped her lids and stared into the darkness. Forget the EEG, forget her research. She was too far gone to gather reliable data. It was over. All she had left was her dreams. That acknowledgment let Fulke in again. She saw him, his ravaged face lit with a smile.
As she relaxed deeper into her mother’s lap, she felt his arms come around her and lift her. His breath was on her face, then his mouth on her mouth.
She sighed. Though on occasion she’d had dreams so captivating she had hit the snooze button to pull herself back into them, this went beyond that. More than anything, she longed to return to Fulke—the dream of him, the fantasy, whatever he was—and savor their time together for as long as she had left. Her heart tugged, forcing her to admit that which firmly placed her among the ranks of the mad: she was in love with a dream.
Now the question was whether or not she could dream Fulke one last time. If so, where would the dream take her? Her sinking mind dabbled with the possibilities, pondered what had happened after the king’s men joined Fulke’s search for John and Harold, and carried her away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Even if I now saw you only once,
I would long for you through worlds, worlds.
~ Izumi Shikibu
Still nothing of Crosley, Fulke brooded as he sighted the deer over the arrow’s shaft. Still nothing of Lark. That made him flinch. Cursing the distraction, he sighted his prey a second time. This night, his men would have meat.
The deer—or Bambi, as Lark called it—stepped into twilight and snuffled amid the fallen leaves.
Sight. Steady. Relea—
The crackle of leaves brought the deer’s head up, and it hurtled away.
Cursing what was likely a rodent come between him and his prey, Fulke swung the bow around, followed, and released. At the moment before the arrow gained its mark, a movement to the left caused the deer to veer and the arrow to plow the ground.
Fulke reached over his shoulder, pulled another arrow, nocked it. It was too late for the deer, but there might still be meat. He searched the wood, from amongst the shadows of waning day picked out the movement responsible for his loss. Too large for a rodent. A boar?
String pulled to his cheek, he was rewarded when the animal stepped from behind a screen of bramble. The arrow was a breath from flight when Fulke recognized the one he had thought never to see again.
Clad in Jaspar’s dark dress, a color that had nearly delivered her unto death, she halted. “Don’t shoot. It’s only me.”
Only Lark, and lovelier than he remembered. He lowered his bow. She was back, reappearing as if touched by sorcery as his men claimed, as if come out of the mist and into a dream as she claimed. Where had she been? More, how had she—
“Good timing, hmm?” She retrieved the arrow that had missed the deer and resumed her advance.
Eyes filled with the woman he had been unable to shut out, heart hammering, Fulke forsook the mystery of her disappearance. For now, all that mattered was that she had come back to him.
Before she took the last step to his side, he could smell her scent—fresh and clean—and feel the space between them as if it were capable of being held. Lacking the voice to speak her name, he fixed on her face.
She extended the arrow. “This might come in handy later.”
His fingers brushed hers as he took it, the brief contact tightening his body.
She smiled. “Miss me?”
As he would miss his heart were it torn from him.
Kennedy searched Fulke’s eyes and saw in them the answer he denied his breath. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Emboldened by regrets that had haunted her these past days, she stepped near, reached her arms around his neck, and pressed her mouth to his.
He dropped the bow and crushed her to him. His beard rasping her face, he kissed her, drinking from her as a man thirsting for water.
Kennedy had no other thought but for him. Only with Fulke did she feel alive, and if tomorrow she died, this one day would be enough to last an eternity.
He swung her into his arms, carried her to a place between the trees that was still warmed by the recently departed sunlight, and lowered her to a bed of grass.
The smell of earth beneath her, Kennedy turned to face him as he lay down beside her. “Dream with me, Fulke.” She slid fingers through the tawny hair across his brow. “Even if only for this moment.”
“’Tis not a dream.”
She pressed fingers to his lips. “Never question a gift.”
“You are saying you wish to be one with me, Lark?”
Pained by another’s name on his lips, she longed to hear him speak her own name. But did it matter? They were together, and that was enough, because Lady Lark and Kennedy Plain were worlds apart.
“I want to be here with you, but you should know that I was never the king’s mistress.”
“Then what were you to him?”
Now was the time to set him straight. The problem was, she wasn’t certain she was Lark’s maid. But that wasn’t all. As in her world where the rich rarely hobnobbed with the poor—except for photo ops—here social castes most often dictated one’s circle of friends. “Edward and I are friends. That is all.”
His jagged eyebrow rose. “You are friends with a man such as he?” Beneath a sky nearing twilight, he picked a leaf from her hair. “I do not think so, but in time you will tell me exactly what you are to him.”
That she was a fraud? Only if her deception came to light, and it was not likely as this was surely her last journey into the dream. When she awakened—if she awakened—she would not be coming back. As much as she longed to succumb to Mac’s fantasy, she still had enough lucidity about her to know Fulke was all in her mind.
“There is something I wish to tell you,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I would marry you, Lark.”
Lark, not her maid. But Kennedy was determined to live for the moment. She smiled. “You’ve changed your mind about me.”
“Just as you did about me.”
“Why? Because I was not Edward’s mistress?”
“Forsooth, I am pleased he did not know you, but ere you disappeared again, I determined I would wed you.” A frown displaced the tenderness with which he regarded her. “Where have you been? How did you escape my men? And, pray, do not tell me you dreamed yourself away.”
“Then I won’t. You found Sir Arthur and your nephews at Glenmar?”
For a moment, she didn’t think he would let her off so easily, but her question provoked him. “Nay.” His faced turned stony. “They were impostors, a man and his sons hired by your friend, Sir Arthur, to wander Sinwell in his name.”
As much as Kennedy hated Fulke’s transformation, she was relieved he wasn’t pushing to know where she had gone. He had not killed the knight, but there was a catch. If the dream was staying true, it was only a matter of time before the confrontation. In fact, Sir Arthur was probably at Farfallow now. How much longer before he and Fulke met over swords?
“How can you not know?” There remained a harsh edge to his voice.
She ventured a teasing smile. “Time got away from me.”
Questioning softened his face. “Six days you have been gone.”
Six days! That would place them near the two week mark cited in the book. Hopefully, the author had been off in his estimation of how long it had taken Fulke to catch up with Sir Arthur.
“Now I would know where you have been.”
Kennedy laid a hand on his jaw. “Why can’t we just enjoy the time we have together?”
“How much time is that?”
“I don’t know.”
He searched her face, then released a harsh breath. “My men say you are a witch, but methinks it more likely you are simply mad.”
This was a dream, plain and simple, but too far out there for him to entertain. “As I don’t care to go up in a puff of smoke, I’ll have to plead madness.”
The admission, if it could be called that, seemed to pain him. “You are not at all like my sister, Marion.”
What had sweet, vulnerable Marion to do with anything? “I don’t understand.”
“She also suffers a malady of the mind.”
Kennedy remembered her encounter with the woman. Off-key, perhaps, but mad? It was possible, but from what she had seen, the only thing Marion suffered from was a domineering mother. “Are you sure?”
“Thrice betrothed and thrice returned ere vows were spoken. She has fits.”
Unable to reconcile the image with the woman she had met, Kennedy said, “Perhaps she just doesn’t care to marry.”
Instantly, Fulke pulled back from the darkness of Marion’s madness. “If ‘tis true you are mad, still it does not explain how you escaped and where you have been for nearly a sennight.”