by Kathryn Le Veque, Suzan Tisdale, Eliza Knight, Cynthia Wright, Christi Caldwell, Eva Devon
“Yes I am.” That wasn’t a lie. She really was interested in his family and her trip and notes would go into her sources.
“Sir Eryx and Lady Frederica have nothing to do with your dissertation.”
“Their tomb is beautiful, though. I couldn’t help looking at it. Anyone would.”
“Yes. It is,” he agreed. “But you said something. Right before you hit your head.”
“I did?” she asked, widening her eyes, desperate to appear totally innocent.
He leaned back slightly and arched a black brow. “You said something was missing.”
This was the moment. She could keep on lying. Maybe make her excuses and hit the road before he started looking at her like she was a total lunatic. But then she thought about months and months of sleepless nights. Of dreams of a sword and a ring and the pain. The dreams were always full of pain and longing.
She swallowed and lifted her chin. “Well, something is missing isn’t it?”
He leaned back and put the ice back in the bowl. He stared at her. “Pictures of the crypt have never been taken.”
“And?” she prompted wondering what he was insinuating.
“Did you speak with someone? Who’d visited here?”
He was so calm, so cool it took everything she had not to jump up from the couch and protest that she wasn’t some sort of con artist.
“I’m not making it up,” she defended.
“I’m not saying you are. I’m trying to find out how you know about the sword since you’ve never been here before.”
She looked away. Great. How was she going to explain this?
“I—I—” She licked her lips, closing her eyes. She didn’t really want to think about the dreams right now. But wasn’t that why she was here? To get rid of them?
“Mac, just say it.”
“I’ve been having dreams.”
He blinked, his face growing stony. “Dreams?”
“Yes.” She squared her shoulders. She could do this. She could tell him the truth and not feel like she should shrink into the Axminster rug.
“You see,” she began. “I keep having dreams about castles and a sword. The sword appears again and again.”
He was silent for a long moment. “Well, no doubt you’ve been watching too much Braveheart or the Medieval dramas you Americans are so fond of. Broadswords—”
“It’s not a broadsword,” she said flatly. She slid to the side, trying to give herself some room to maneuver. She should just go. He clearly thought she was crazy or worse, someone who had stalked his family.
“What is it then? A katana like in Highlander?” he mocked.
She narrowed her eyes. “No. Thanks for your time, Lord Reign.”
She pushed herself up from the sofa then stopped. She stared down at him. A welcome change given all the peering down his nose he’d been doing.
She started for the door. She’d find answers. She had to. But clearly she wouldn’t find them here. Not when he had no intention of listening to her. She couldn’t blame him. Not really. But just before she made it to the door, she glanced back.
“It’s a Gladius,” she said.
Just as she was about to make a dignified exit, he crossed the room in what seemed like two strides and grabbed her wrist.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he gritted.
Her heart slammed in her chest. It was like an electric shock, the feel of his bare hand on her skin. “Back to Newcastle. To do research since there are no answers here.”
“No,” he said softly, his voice a gentle rumble. “You’re not.”
“No?” she asked, stunned by the breathiness of her own voice. She should be frightened by his sudden intensity but the last few months of her life had been bizarrely intense. Actually, his sudden response felt just right.
He shook his head slowly, his dark hair brushing his chiseled jaw. His stony look softened. “You’re going to stay here and rest. . . And tell me about your dreams.”
* * *
James savored the feel of her soft skin beneath his hand. By rights, he should dislike this woman. She wasn’t simply an academic. She was here to stir up frightening memories, and. . . Perhaps to awaken the curse he’d tried so hard to bury.
He was a rational man. He’d studied philosophy at St. Andrews. But he was also a believer in Occam’s Razor. The most obvious solution was the likeliest. And given the nature of the sword, if this woman claimed to have seen it in her dreams. . . She had.
It would be the seemingly logical thing to assume she was a con, but he knew better. The sword had brought catastrophe to his family again and again. If she truly had been seeing the sword, he was going to listen to her.
“So,” he said gently, “You’ve seen the Gladius? That’s not a good thing, Mac.”
She bit her lower lip, turning it a delicious pink. “I haven’t slept for months. Not well. I never thought the dreams were a foreteller of good things.”
“That’s why you’re here.” He laughed. “All those emails about your admiration for my family, for Shakespeare, for those long dead people. It was all just an in.”
She frowned. “No. It wasn’t. I am studying the War of the Roses. I do admire your family. And I do care about all those dead in those horrific battles. But I’m here because your castle also kept showing up in my dreams. It’s been there in many forms but I started seeing it again and again. I looked at hundreds of castles online until I found yours. Somehow I knew the answers were here. But I don’t understand. . .”
“Yes?” he prompted.
It had been blurry but she’d seen the Gladius embedded in stone, in a dark place. It had taken her a month to realize it was a grave. “I clearly saw the sword here.”
“It was here until five years ago.”
“In the crypt?”
“My father placed it at the base of Sir Eryx and Lady Frederica’s tomb.” He smiled sadly. “He thought that would do it.”
“Do what?” she asked. The sudden change in Reign’s demeanor was palpable. Cool, controlled, and powerful, there was a sudden darkness to him. A layer of unending grief.
“End the curse,” he said simply.
“Curse?” she echoed.
“The sword is bad luck, Mac. It always has been. Even Sir Eryx and Lady Frederica thought so. It’s in the castle history. And if you’re dreaming about the Gladius, I don’t envy you.”
She shook her head. “Look, this is all crazy. It has to be right? Maybe what you said is true. I talked to someone about your castle in passing. That’s how I’ve been dreaming. . .”
“Do you believe that?” he challenged.
Mac drew in a long breath. “No. I don’t. So, what happened to your father?”
He held her gaze, dark eyes going as empty as twin caves. “He was killed in an IRA car bomb five days after the sword was placed in the crypt.”
“Oh my God.” Immediately, sympathy seemed to deepen the blue of her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
His father had been a peaceful man, a man deeply invested in making peace in Ireland. The de Reynes had always held estates in the North of the Emerald Isle. “I spent a lot of my boyhood just north of Belfast.”
Antrim was one of the most beautiful counties in the world and yet it had known so much blood. Sometimes it seemed like the Isles had been bathed in the blood of men’s sins. From their desire to conquer, annihilate, and destroy. Northern England had been like that once. A beautiful land, bathed in the blood of his ancestors.
That’s the sort of past that the sword came from. Older even, because the Gladius had been forged in the fires of the Roman conquerors. And once it had been discovered. . . Well, it had been destroying since.
James let his grip slide and he stood, gazing toward the windows. “My father felt the sword in a way that is hard to explain. He said it was cursed. It was fickle, sometimes allowing for good, but more often than not, causing pain. He said there were too many stories about it to ignore. That the sword, like the people of
Ireland, needed peace.”
Mac frowned. “That’s a romantic notion.”
James laughed dryly. “It’s only romantic if it’s a story. My family has been trying to get rid of that damned Gladius for centuries.”
“Where is it now?” she asked.
“It’s hidden,” he said tightly. Wishing he had tied an anchor to it and sank it to the bottom of the sea. He hadn’t, but he’d done as much as he could. “I don’t want that damned thing to ever see the light of day.”
“But what if your father was right?” Mac suggested gently. “What if the sword does need peace”
“Are you listening to yourself?” he scoffed. He’d given up on peace some time ago.
“I’m sorry. You’re right.” She smiled tightly, almost apologetically. “This is all a bit much, isn’t it?”
He scowled. A bit much? His parents had died. And even though it was just a deep-seated feeling that their deaths were linked to the sword, James would have preferred never to mention the Gladius again. Maybe, if he never saw it or talked about it again, it wouldn’t touch him. . . But. . . It didn’t matter how illogical, James couldn’t shake the mad belief that the sword would hurt his family again and again. After all, that’s what swords did. They cut. They stabbed. They killed. And this sword’s blood thirst had no end.
Chapter Four
Mac stared at the impossibly handsome man still on his knees, clutching her wrist, in the middle of one of the most elaborate rooms she’d been in in her entire life and suddenly she was certain that she’d, much like Alice, fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole.
Her entire life had been one long, hard fight toward her dreams. Always keeping her head down. Always doing what had to be done to get the grades, the scholarships, the jobs to pay the rent. Theater had been what gave her life magic. And it had all been because of Isabel. Isabel had picked her up from that group home, taken her away, and slowly introduced her to a sort of belonging that she’d never thought possible.
The theater was her family. As much of a family as she could ever hope for.
Isabel had given her love and purpose and a home. It was the greatest gift she’d ever known. But she’d always been different and no matter how much time had passed, she’d always felt a little less shiny that the other kids. Nothing, no matter how loving Isabel was, could change the fact that Mac’s parents hadn’t wanted her.
Still, she’d known stability for a long time. Something she craved like an addict needed his drug.
Standing here, she remembered what it was like at five years old to be absolutely and utterly confused by her situation and surroundings.
A cursed sword?
Car bombs?
Centuries of misfortune because of a Gladius?
Now that she’d finally spoken aloud and he hadn’t laughed her back to the USA, she was suddenly feeling panic but also relief. She’d begun to fear she was crazy. Genuinely crazy. It was a fear for orphans, not knowing family history. What if her mother or father had been delusional? Crazy? Manic? With Lord Reign gazing up at her, not mocking her she knew she wasn’t.
“So now what?” she asked, having no idea herself what direction her life was about to take.
“Now, you stay the night,” he said, that delicious voice of his ridiculously confident. “It’s going to get dark momentarily. The roads are dangerous and I want to hear more. Besides,” a sly smile curved his lips. “You must be tired.”
She narrowed her eyes. “If that’s some sort of joke about my dreams, it’s a bad one.”
He shook his head. “Do forgive me. My family has always had a rather dark sense of humor. Come. I’ll see to it you have a room and then we’ll have dinner.”
Dinner with Lord Reign and a night in a castle?
Any other woman would be dying of happiness. She, on the other hand, had a dangerous suspicion her life was about to become strange as hell. As if it had been normal these past several months.
He stood, towering over her again, but this time with a little less arrogance.
Oh, he was still ridiculously male and totally confident. And he still looked like he belonged to another time, but now, it was as if he’d let a little bit of his guard down. Just enough for her to finally see the boy inside him.
The boy that had lost his father to terrorists.
A dangerous part of her wanted to ask if he thought that was worse. After all, she didn’t have parents to miss. Oh, she missed them. She’d longed for them night after night for years. Fantasy after fantasy had been created. She still had them sometimes. It was impossible not to hope that one day she’d get an email, a phone call, or a knock on the door and be told it had all been a horrible mistake and that her parents desperately loved her and needed her in their lives.
James had loved his father very much. That had been absolutely clear in his voice and the shadows in his eyes as he’d spoken of him.
Was it better to never know one’s parents or lose them in such a brutal way?
She grimaced, glad he couldn’t see her face. She was thinking pointless thoughts. Drawing in a long breath, she lifted her chin and forced herself to think of how lucky she was to be here at all, even if it was for such a strange endeavor.
He strode down the wide hallway, his six foot plus, muscled body dwarfed by the magnitude of the arched ceiling.
The ache at her temple was now just barely a dull throb. She lifted a hand to touch it then winced. Oh God. She had to look like a total mess. She bit back a groan. Great. Just great.
Here she was in the presence of the most beautiful man she’d ever met and she had a band aid on her head and probably looked like a disaster walking.
Maybe it was a silly, but any red-blooded woman around a man like Lord Reign couldn’t help but think about. . . Okay maybe some could, but as he strode before her, Mac couldn’t help but savor the view.
He was the kind of man women fantasized about to distract themselves from their real lives. James Reign was too good to be true.
Then again, maybe he was just too good for her. Mac rolled her eyes at herself. She didn’t really mean that. She was as good as anyone. But surely lords married ladies even today. And her studio apartment wasn’t exactly a match for his sprawling estate. And her genealogy. . .
They were different.
It was as simple as that.
“Ms. O’Neil, I can feel your eyes burning into my back.”
She jumped. God, his voice was penetrating. And had he really felt the intensity of her thoughts?
Clearing her throat, she swung her gaze to the ceiling and decided that studying medieval architecture was much wiser than studying him.
He turned down another hall and then they were going up a wide set of stairs.
But that’s not what stopped her in her tracks.
Studying the ceiling, as her newly reformed self had insisted she do, she’d seen something that had knocked her for a loop.
The frescoed ceiling was massive. It stretched a good hundred feet. She’d seen similar pictures of Chatsworth House. But the painting above was not the typical. It was that of a medieval knight bearing two swords, one a broadsword and one a Gladius before a beautiful woman gowned in crimson.
Beside the knight stood another man who looked vaguely demonic. They were surrounded by other knights and ladies.
James stopped. “It’s beautiful isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“You see the swords?” He sounded so casual about the incredible piece of artwork.
She nodded, unable to tear her gaze away from the painting.
“It was done in the late Tudor period. A relative had gone mad. Something surrounding the sword and someone thought it would be a good idea to immortalize the Gladius in art. My family is full of brilliant ideas, you see.”
She swung her gaze back to him. “Your father wasn’t the first one to try to end the curse?”
He gave her a wry smile. “No.”
“Is that S
ir Eryx and Lady Frederica?” she asked, looking back up, drawn to the beautiful couple.
“Yes. The sword began with them, you see. Sir Eryx found it. It’s a rather remarkable tale. One to be told by the fireside over a glass of brandy.”
She nodded, realizing he wasn’t going to tell her now.
In fact, he was halfway up the first flight of stairs, unfazed by her gaping.
She ran to catch up.
“This is the Georgian wing and the wing we do the most living in,” he said as though such things were totally common.
It was light and airy, full of space and light, unlike the other part of the castle they had been in. She wanted to stop and look out the windows that seemed to take up an entire wall of the castle, but he was ascending and he didn’t really seem in the mood to play tour guide.
She couldn’t blame him. It seemed she’d brought up the past and its dark memories.
As he led her down another hall, she was shocked to realize the light was dimming outside, spilling soft yellow and purple onto the dark blue and gold carpet beneath their feet.
It couldn’t be that late could it?
He stopped in front of a door. “You can rest here. Dinner will be in an hour. I’m sure you’re famished.”
Her stomached growled in response.
He laughed. “Ms. O’Neil, there are some biscuits in a jar by the bed if you can’t bear to wait.”
She knew, just absolutely knew, she was blushing crimson red. It was a burden of being a redhead. “Thanks.”
With that she grabbed the handle and pushed the door open.
He slipped his hand around her free one. “If you need anything just press the button by the fire.”
She swallowed. God. Why did just the touch of his hand render her speechless? Why did some deep part of her want to throw herself into his arms like she was made to be there? It was a stupid thought.
His obsidian eyes stared into hers, searching. “There’s something about you,” he said so softly. He leaned down, his hard mouth softening. “Something. . .”
He paused.
Her heart raced. He was going to kiss her!
She licked her lower lip, nervously. “Yes?”