Once Upon a Kiss

by Nora Roberts

  “What was her fault, Marguerite?” she asked gently.

  “The war, of course. They were fighting over her. If she hadn’t come here that day there never would have been a war. But how was she to know?” Marguerite’s faded eyes fixed themselves on Erinn’s face. “She didn’t mean any harm,” she sighed. “My lady always meant to go back to Marlbury, she swore to me she did, and I believed her.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that you know what started the war? The war between Marlbury and Bordmoor? How can this be, Marguerite?” Erinn breathed, her heartbeat quickening. “Even my father claims not to know.”

  “Maybe he knows and maybe he doesn’t. No one spoke of it, not ever.” The old woman peered up at Tynon now, her eyes glimmering with sorrow. “Your great-grandfather wouldn’t allow any whispers, not a word said against her. That was to his credit. But some knew. Some heard rumors. And I saw. I saw the whole thing. I was the only one.”

  For a long moment Tynon could only stare at her in amazement. Then he stepped closer. “What did you see, Marguerite? The time for secrecy is past. I must know.”

  She stared into his eyes, her own seeming to glow suddenly from within. They grew keener, sharper, and yet they held an unmistakable fondness for the tall young duke whose family she had served for nearly one hundred years.

  “What did I see? Ah, my lord, I saw exactly what I saw today when I first came into this room.” Her voice quavered. She glanced back and forth between the two young people before her, then leaned wearily back upon the settle.

  “I saw a kiss.”

  8

  ERINN’S HEART BEGAN to race. She rose and stood beside Tynon, gripping his hand as the old servant continued to speak, her voice so low and raspy it was almost as if she were speaking to herself.

  “I came upon them by accident. I wasn’t spying, not intentionally,” she murmured with a shake of her head. “She and Dugal were in a chamber—near the gallery, it was—and they were kissing. Their arms were wrapped around each other—ah, so sweetly. Oh, the picture they made!” Marguerite’s gnarled hands lifted toward her heart, resting upon her thin chest. “She loved him, you see, had loved him since she was a girl. It wasn’t her fault that her family had arranged for her to be married to King Leiff of Marlbury. What was she to do?” She gazed imploringly at Tynon and Erinn, then went on before either of them could say a word.

  “Leiff and Dugal were friends in those days. They lived upon neighboring lands and often hunted together. That day, only three days before King Leiff and Lady Olivia were to be wed, your great-grandfather”—she flicked another glance at Tynon, whose expression was unfathomable, though he gripped Erinn’s hand tightly—“invited Leiff and Olivia and the entire court of Marlbury to a banquet in honor of their wedding. If he hadn’t…ah, if only he hadn’t, everything might have been different.”

  “How?” Erinn asked as Marguerite lapsed into a dejected silence. “What happened at the banquet?”

  “Something terrible. Something that changed the course of the next hundred years.” Marguerite spoke heavily. She was no longer looking at either Erinn or Tynon. She was looking toward a spot near the window, seeing something neither of them could see. “During the course of the evening, Olivia and Dugal slipped away together,” she said sadly. “To say their last farewells. She was going to honor her parents’ wishes and marry a man she didn’t love, but she wanted one last moment with the man she did love. Just one moment. Was that so terrible?” She sent Tynon a pleading look, and then her gaze swept to Erinn, who was listening in amazement.

  “No,” Erinn whispered. “No, it wasn’t terrible.” She tried to imagine how it had been for the dark-haired Olivia, loving one man, about to be bound in marriage to another.

  “What happened to her? To them?” she asked softly.

  “A horrible thing. They were discovered. I came upon them from a connecting chamber, nearly stumbled into them, but I saw them in time and ducked behind the curtain of the anteroom. I ought to have left, but I…I couldn’t. I was a mere child then, sent on an errand by my mother, but when I saw them locked in each other’s arms, I forgot everything else. And she was weeping. My poor pretty lady was weeping. But then, before I could back away, before they could draw apart, King Leiff himself came upon them.”

  Marguerite was trembling now, and her voice was so low they had to strain to hear it. “I believe he must have come to love her as well in the days before their marriage, or else it was just pride that ripped through him and brought the black rage upon him. He was a prideful man. He drew his sword, and the next moment Duke Dugal drew his, and they fought, fought nearly to their death, as Olivia stood screaming. Soldiers from both lands rushed in. Ah, there was such confusion, such blood and mayhem as you’ve never seen. But King Leiff and his company were at last driven from the keep. And only Lady Olivia stayed.”

  Marguerite hugged her arms around herself. “She stayed with Dugal, for Leiff had vowed to kill her for committing treason against him, and Dugal would not let her go. That was the start of it, the start of the war. The hatred of those two men grew over the years, and the battles grew fiercer. They were determined to destroy each other. And my sweet Olivia,” she murmured sadly, “she wept for all the blood and all the dead. She felt the cause of it rested all upon her shoulders. Now she was free to marry the man she loved, and she did marry him, but she had brought dishonor to her family, and war to both kingdoms, and death and suffering to many. I still hear her weeping, my poor pretty lady.”

  The old woman peered at Erinn, tears now glistening like diamonds in her eyes. “Aye, at night when the wind is calm, I hear her. And sometimes I catch a glimpse of her in the looking glass. She can’t rest, methinks, ’til the war is over. I wish she might.”

  There was a long silence as she finished the tale and sank back with a shudder upon the settle.

  “I wish she might rest, too.” Erinn spoke very quietly. She glanced at Tynon, and he moved closer to her and slid his arms around her waist, pulling her near to him.

  Marguerite looked at them both, then lifted her hands helplessly. “One hundred years of war. How will it end?” she asked in despair.

  Tynon turned to Erinn. Her heart leaped as she saw the glinting determination in his eyes, the resolute set of his jaw.

  “How indeed,” she whispered, trying to search her thoughts for a solution. But he shook his head.

  Slowly, he brought his mouth down to hers, and his lips brushed hers with tenderness, a tenderness that never failed to surprise her in a man so fierce.

  “I swear to you, Erinn,” Tynon muttered for her ears alone. “This war will end. I will see to it. It will end here and now, the same way it began. With a kiss.”

  He came to her when the castle was asleep. The moment he rapped softly upon the door she knew it was he, knew even before she saw him. He slipped into her chamber without a word, and Erinn ran to him and tilted her face up to his.

  “It took you long enough, my lord duke.” But her smile was warm and for him alone.

  “After being locked out of my keep for more days than I care to count, I had matters to attend to, my princess.” He grinned. “But now my work is done, at least for the night. And it’s time to pursue matters of a different nature—more pleasant ones.”

  As he spoke, his gaze ran admiringly over her slender figure, clad in a delicate nightshift that a maidservant had brought to her. It was of softest white linen and floated loosely down to her dainty ankles. Her hair was unbound, free, flowing pale as the moonlight that glimmered upon her fine-boned face. Her eyes glowed up at him, filled with hope and a kind of hunger that sent heat surging through his loins.

  “Far more pleasant ones,” Tynon muttered and caught her to him with single-minded impatience. So beautiful was she that she took his breath away. As she threw her arms around him, he knew only that the past be damned. Nothing would stand in the way of his having her.

  “Kiss me again, Tynon, for I’m starving,” Erinn brea
thed, blushing when he chuckled. She clutched him close, stood on tiptoe, and stretched her mouth up toward his. Perhaps she should have been shocked by her boldness, she reflected dizzily as his mouth crushed down upon hers, but she wasn’t. She didn’t care. She knew only that his kisses felt right, that they felt wonderful. They were everything she could have ever wished for, and so was he.

  Except that he was a llachlander.

  But as he kissed her, as his arms tightened around her, she knew with a certainty that none of that mattered. And it would never matter again. There had been too much death, too much pain, too much grief between their kingdoms. Tynon was right. It was time to put a stop to it.

  They must put a stop to it.

  Somehow.

  They kissed in the moonlight that bathed the room, long, needy kisses that left her gasping and weak. And wanting—wanting more.

  “Stay with me tonight.” The words spilled out urgently against his lips and she thrilled at the hard tremble that ran through him.

  “Only try to make me leave, princess,” he breathed in her ear.

  “That’s the last thing I want you to do. The very last thing.” She touched his jaw, that strong jaw that was rough now with a day’s worth of stubble, which only served to emphasize the rugged beauty of his face. His eyes gleamed down at her, making her heart race.

  “Tynon, how did this happen to us? How did we come to feel this way for each other? How did kissing you, touching you, being with you, come to feel so right?” Erinn asked wonderingly.

  His hands slid down her body, caressing the curve of her breasts, the tiny waist, the lushness of sweetly rounded hips. Heat and need roared in his blood and began to pound relentlessly in his temples. “The same way it came to happen for Dugal and Olivia one hundred years ago,” he said huskily.

  “Yes, like Dugal and Olivia.” Erinn nodded. “I know now, oh, how I know what they must have felt, what they must have gone through.”

  Tynon’s hands gripped her shoulders suddenly, and his eyes darkened. “I’ve learned all too well that death can come quickly in this world, and so can grief. And so, it seems, can love,” he said softly, staring into the piquant face that stole his breath away. “Love apparently has the power to come where it is least looked for and least expected. Yet it comes. It comes like a storm.”

  Love. A thrill shot through her. Love. She smiled. “So…you love me?” It was a whisper, a whisper that held a world of hope and yearning in the single word. But there was also a glimmer, a mere glimmer of doubt that clouded those magnificent eyes, and he knew suddenly that she needed to hear the words.

  And he needed to say them.

  “I love you, Erinn. More than life. More than this keep,” he added with a hoarse laugh. “More than the llachlands. I love you and want you, and I swear to you, I will have you no matter what I have to do for us to be together.”

  “I’ll hold you to that, my lord duke.” She clung to him, shaking, and as she laid her head against his powerful shoulder, lightning seemed to flow between their bodies, and she felt all of the warmth and fire and strength of him sear her, and seem to penetrate her very soul.

  “Because I love you, too. Though there is so much in our way, and I can’t see how we’re going to overcome it—”

  “Don’t speak of it tonight.” He cupped her chin and stared into her eyes, his own intent. “Tonight is just for us. Tonight the world will go away, and there will be you, Erinn, and me, and this chamber. Just for tonight.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, tenderly wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down to her, sweeping her lips against his with a need that could no longer be contained. He was right. Tonight was theirs.

  “Just us, Tynon.” The words were a promise. “Just for tonight.”

  And so it was.

  As the moonlight gilded the reed-scented chamber, they undressed one another and explored one another with joy and with need. There was no need for words, no need for thought or for questions. There were only the princess, in every way set free, and the man who had first come to her in a vision. There was only fire and passion and tenderness such as neither of them had ever known, and there was pleasure deeper and wilder than the sea.

  They tossed and rocked upon the velvet-covered bed, as the stars burned in the sky. She found what it was like to touch and kiss that magnificent bare chest that had so mesmerized her before, and Tynon took his time discovering all the soft, sleek places of her glorious body. When he loved her breasts, and stroked her thighs, Erinn moaned with delight in a most satisfactory way, and when she touched her fingers and her lips to his flesh, he thought he would explode with madness.

  Their kisses came from the heart, and their lovemaking came from the soul, and Erinn felt not a wisp of fear as Tynon of Bordmoor touched her as no man had ever touched her and surged inside her to make them one. Their bodies burned with a savage fire, but there was tenderness in every kiss, in every touch. Still, the need took its toll, in sweat and in desperation. In urgency and in speed. Locked together as one, they climbed hard and fast past desire, past heat and naked want, to a joyous fulfillment that rocked through them like thunder. When the thunder died down and the lightning subsided, they were left spent, breathless and shuddering. Their bodies sheened with sweat, they clung to each other, breathing in the air of love and of night and of discovery sweeter than the most delectable wine.

  They lay entwined thus all through the night, holding each other as if they might never hold each other again, and just before a topaz sun peeked through the sky they made love once again, even more tenderly than before and far more slowly, listening to their hearts beating as one.

  And Erinn held her midnight-haired warrior and stroked the thick silk of his hair. She thought of Dugal and Olivia—and wished that she knew a spell that would make the night last forever and would eternally banish the sun.

  9

  IN THE END, they did it Erinn’s way, despite Tynon’s misgivings. He wanted to ride openly to the gates of Marlbury Castle—only the two of them—but she insisted they go in through the secret passage, the one known only to the royal family and the captain of the guard.

  “This is far easier than the way you came in last time,” she told him as they made their way through the secret tunnels that ran beneath the castle. Suddenly she stopped short and turned to him in the dense blackness that was lit only by a single torch. “Which reminds me, how did you come in last time? Past the moat and the gate and the guards, all the way to the gardens undetected?”

  He grinned in the darkness, the dancing gold torchlight illuminating the sharp planes of his face. “You don’t want to know.” Low laughter rumbled softly as he steered her ahead of him. “Let’s just say it wasn’t as simple as this.”

  “You must agree that this is much better than riding up to the gate and having them take you prisoner before the blink of an eye,” she whispered back, her feet padding softly along the dank, twisting corridor.

  “Aye, so far, my love.” Tynon tried to keep the dryness from his tone. This wasn’t going to be easy. Whatever influence Erinn thought she might have over her father, he fully expected to be taken prisoner one way or another, but if it pleased her to get them to her father’s chamber before anyone else discovered his presence and clapped him in irons, so be it.

  Whatever happened, he and Erinn would have to find a way to overcome all of King Vort’s suspicions and hostility. He wasn’t about to let the finest thing that had ever happened to his life slip through his fingers because one hundred years ago his great-grandfather had indulged in what he believed was one last kiss with the woman he loved.

  “I think this is the last turn.” Erinn rounded the corner and peered ahead as Tynon held the torch aloft. “Yes, there’s the secret door. It opens into the anteroom of my father’s chamber. Ban, his chamberlain, sleeps there.”

  Her voice, even to her own ears, now sounded less than steady. She was afraid, deeply afraid, but not for herself. For Tynon. Pe
rhaps they should have found another way—but this was her way. Direct and honest. She would appeal to her father, make him see the truth, and with him behind her, behind both her and Tynon, they could then convince Braden and Cadur that there was no cause to continue battling Bordmoor. No cause to bring death and fear and suffering to the people of both lands.

  “Afraid, my love?” Tynon spoke softly in her ear as she hesitated at the door, summoning her courage.

  She turned and gazed up into those keen eyes. “My only fear is of losing you,” she whispered.

  With his free arm, he pulled her close. “You won’t. If I have to fight my way out with you at my side, I will—and take you back to Bordmoor—where you’ll stay with me for the rest of our lives. No one will come between us, Erinn, I swear it.”

  “And I swear I will come with you if…if we cannot make them see.”

  But he recognized the grief shimmering in her eyes. And he knew it would slowly kill her if she were cut off from her father and brothers, if she were thought a traitor to her home. That was the fate that had befallen Olivia, and as he stared down at the brave golden-haired woman who stood on tiptoe to press her lips to his, he vowed he would never let it befall his lovely Erinn.

  “Don’t worry, my love. It won’t come to that.”

  He knew it sounded like a vow, and he meant it that way.

  She kissed him again, a soft, urgent kiss that made him feel he could slay a hundred men with a thrust of his sword, and then she pulled away abruptly and pushed open the door.

  King Vort was snoring in the adjoining bedchamber as they crept into the anteroom. Ban, the chamberlain, jerked awake, his eyes going wide as he stared at the shadowy figures near the foot of his bed, yet even as he opened his mouth to shout, Tynon’s fist slammed into his round, fleshy face, and he slumped back, as if he’d never awakened from sleep.

  Her heart thumping, Erinn stared in dismay at the kindly servant, and would have taken a step toward him, but Tynon held firm to her arm and drew her along.