Authors: Once Upon A Kiss
A heartbeat later, one of the men hauling the lead ship faltered, then fell into the blue of the sea.
He did not stand again. The end of the rope he had held trailed away into the waves, his alarmed partner missed a step before boldly surging forward again.
The men on the walls of Dunhelm cheered boisterously. Bard’s forces launched a volley of arrows that fell far short of the stone walls. Aurelia felt a surge of victory before her sire’s voice boomed across the ramparts.
“Aurelia!”
Too late Aurelia realized that the accuracy of the shot betrayed her hand.
All eyes pivoted to Aurelia when Hekod spotted her and glared dangerously. Aurelia stubbornly held her ground. Hekod muttered a curse, then pushed aside warrior and mercenary as he carved a path along the wall to his errant daughter.
And Aurelia knew she would not have another chance to fire a shot. She had to make this fleeting moment count! The men around her murmured in dismay, but Aurelia quickly fitted another arrow and lifted her crossbow to aim once more.
She squinted and adjusted her sight on the second man in the sea. He had taken an uneven gait, presumably to foil her efforts. Precious moments passed before Aurelia was satisfied with her aim.
Just as she was about to let the shot fly, heavy hands landed on her shoulders. Aurelia jumped and lost her sight, her fingers fumbled with the arrow.
Pain burned in her left thumb. The sensation was hot enough to bring tears to her eyes.
“Aurelia!” Hekod cried out in dismay.
In that instant, a curious glow swirled around Aurelia. Everything around her seemed enveloped in shimmering silver, distant and unworldly. Aurelia herself felt buoyed by nothingness in a most unnatural way. It was as though she had been surrounded by a glittering fog.
Gods and goddesses! What was happening to her?
Aurelia glanced to her father, only to find him as ethereal as all else around her. His anger was gone, dissipated as quickly as it burned bright, and now his features were lined with concern.
“The prophecy!” he murmured hoarsely and his grip tightened on her shoulders. “It was true, after all!”
Aurelia tried to laugh at such foolishness but failed. The swirling gossamer haze had eclipsed the pain so thoroughly that Aurelia felt as unsubstantial as a morning mist. In fact, she tingled lightly all over. Aurelia had the strange sense that if her father let go of her shoulders, she would swept away to forever in the blink of an eye.
“It is only the loss of the blood that ails me,” she managed to say. Aurelia frowned, feeling as though the cloud had numbed her reason as well. Had she felt so odd when wounded before?
Hekod lifted his daughter’s wounded hand, his great paw gently cradling Aurelia’s much smaller fingers. “But, Aurelia, there is no blood.”
No blood? There must be!
But when Aurelia looked at her hand, she saw that Hekod was right. The arrow had fallen away, leaving behind no more than a gaping hole in Aurelia’s left thumb.
Right in the middle of the whorl, just as the prophecy made so long ago had clearly declared. And her very fingers sparkled against her father’s lined palm, as though she was wrought of something other than flesh and blood.
Aurelia blinked, unable to accept the evidence before her own eyes. The prophecy was a lie, after all!
But before Aurelia could argue, the whirling iridescent cocoon surrounded her and caressed her, lifted her so high that she could not even feel the weight of her father’s hands, let alone see the troubled blue of his eyes.
She could not leave him! She would not leave him!
But Aurelia was to have no choice. She faintly heard the clash of steel on steel, she struggled to join the fight to defend Dunhelm, but felt herself swept away. She could see nothing but thousands of shimmering lights dancing all around her.
And then Aurelia knew no more.
* * *
Dunhelm Castle
March - present day
The thorny brambles had no chance.
The hedge clippers Baird had borrowed from the groundskeeper were fiercely sharp and he wielded them with characteristic determination. The brambles, though, refused to surrender without a fight. Baird had never seen brambles grow so big, so tangled or so robust.
They must be ancient, like everything else at Dunhelm Castle.
Another massive thorn bit at him and Baird cursed under his breath. No wonder the groundskeeper had refused to clear this corner! Talorc could blame local superstition but the truth was that he was just avoiding a miserable job.
It was raining this morning, as it had rained every day since his arrival at his new holding, but the light drizzle didn’t bother Baird. He was getting used to Scotland’s wide variety of rains, as well as the national refusal to let poor weather change plans for the day. After all, the skies could change in the blink of an eye.
What wasn’t changing was the way Baird felt at Dunhelm, and he wasn’t having an easy time getting used to that. He felt as though nothing else mattered in the world except Dunhelm and his being here.
Baird felt at home in the old ruins.
For a man who had never had a home, who had been certain he never wanted one, and who had always made a point of not settling anywhere for any length of time, this was more than unusual.
It was downright weird.
Baird meant to put a stop to Dunhelm’s strange effect on him, and he was going to do it today.
Dunhelm Castle - or what remained of it - occupied a jagged point of an island dropped into the misty gray of the North Sea. Although the grass was as level as a bowling lawn where Baird worked, rocky cliffs fell unevenly to the crashing sea beyond the encircling stone walls. There was a beach on the east side of the peninsula, though the wind was cold enough to flay the skin of anyone foolish enough to swim there.
All around Baird were the walls, the crumbled ruins that once had been towers and halls and kitchens. The wind from the west whistled through the ruins, and at dusk, the castle seemed alive with whispers of forgotten times. Baird did not consider himself an imaginative man, but Dunhelm seemed to pulse with the heartbeats of all the people who had lived here over the millennia.
He wondered whether it was the age of the place that entranced him. Certainly, he had never owned anything a thousand years old. And he couldn’t think of any other reason why one sight of Dunhelm had been enough for him to make his decision. It was almost as though he recognized the castle from some long-forgotten dream.
But that would have been irrational and Baird Beauforte was a supremely logical man.
All the same, from that very first glance, Baird had known that this was the property for Beauforte Resorts to establish its toehold in the European market. He told himself that this was finely honed instinct at work, an understanding of the market based on years of experience. A logical recognition of opportunity.
But even to Baird’s own ears, that claim was beginning to ring hollow.
One thing was for sure - Baird had never felt such satisfaction in signing his name to the contract that would make a property his own.
It was good that he was so committed to this place, for Dunhelm was the largest renovation Beauforte Resorts had ever undertaken.
And by far the most expensive.
But all the costs of restoration would be worth it. Dunhelm would be spectacular, the crown jewel of the Beauforte chain. Already the main circular tower rose restored behind Baird and the restaurant at the top - with its panoramic view - was being roughed in.
The massive wrought iron double gates Baird had commissioned had been installed just the day before. They were the perfect accent to the long stone wall that marked the perimeter of the property and cut the peninsula off from the rest of the world. The Beauforte Resort logo was forged into the gates and dramatically silhouetted against the sky before the approaching visitor.
The work was a bit behind schedule, but Baird’s vision of Dunhelm was taking shape. There was no reason why he shouldn’t leave this job in the capable hands of his staff, as usual.
Except that he couldn’t bring himself to leave Dunhelm.
Even worse, he wasn’t sure why.
This tangled mound of briars had aroused Baird’s curiosity from his first tour of the property. His interest was only strengthened by Talorc’s and every other local workman’s refusal to go near the briars.
Not one to back away from a challenge, especially with no reason other than superstition to do so, Baird had taken the task of cutting back the thorns himself.
He was sure that revealing Dunhelm’s every hidden corner to the pale sunlight would loosen the place’s hold over him. After all, this was the last part of the estate still hidden away. And he had always liked to solve puzzles.
That must be at the root of his fascination with this place. Once he cleared the thorns, Baird was sure that all mysteries would be solved. Then Dunhelm’s grip over him would vanish.
Every fallen bough fed his conviction. Baird had to conquer these thorns, and he had to do it today.
* * *
Baird had worked up a good sweat when the briars reluctantly parted to reveal a flat stone on the ground before him.
It was just a stone but he had a strange certainty that it was a step. Baird hacked with renewed vigor, smiling to himself with satisfaction when a second step was revealed.
He was right! There was a secret in this corner and he was about to uncover it.
Although the briars seemed to be suddenly more resistant to his efforts, nothing could have stopped Baird now. The rain fell like a protective mist all around him, a light fog hiding the other workers from view. The mist even seemed to muffle the sounds of construction.
It was as though he was alone in the world. No stranger to that feeling, Baird shoved up his sleeves, and methodically sliced back the stubborn growth.
The steps appeared before him, one after the other, descending into the earth. Baird, hot on the heels of solving a mystery, worked his way down them, his anticipation rising with every minute.
What could be down here? Who had made the steps? And why?
On the eighth smoothly fitted flagstone step, the brambles became thinner. It was chilly down here, the shadows of the walls on either side embracing him coldly.
Just a little further and he would know.
“Baird? You down there?”
Baird jumped at the sound of the familiar voice. He wiped a hand across his brow and felt the exhaustion in his muscles for the first time. How long had he been at this? Baird turned back and spied Julian’s silhouette against the gray sky.
“Down here, Julian.”
“Down there?” Baird could imagine the grimace his words earned and almost laughed. Julian and his damned shoes. “Won’t you come back up?”
“Nope. Got to finish.” Baird bent back to his task, Julian’s muttered curse not low enough to be inaudible.
He was probably meant to hear it.
“I don’t know why you had to have this place,” Julian muttered as he trudged down the stairs. “It needs more work than any other property we looked at, and it’s miles from London. No one will come all this way, especially since all it does is rain!”
“They’ll come.” Baird’s voice was low with conviction. “They always come to Beauforte properties.”
“‘Every guest is royalty to us’ and all that,” Julian echoed the firm’s motto. “But all the same, this is a miserable place.”
Baird caught a glimpse of Julian’s Italian leather loafers, their patina looking somewhat the worse for wear. Typically, the lawyer was dressed to the nines. Julian would never abandon his suit and tie, even in the most inclement weather.
But Julian was too much of a California child to ever completely succumb to the conservativeness of business dress. Though he wore a suit and tie, the boldly cut Armani suit was of a grayed eggplant shade, the tie a brilliant yellow.
Julian had only recently allowed his signature blond ponytail to be lopped off - after a young, attractive woman had joked that he was compensating for the increasing baldness on the top of his head by growing what hair he had overly long.
The ponytail had not survived the hour.
Forty could strike a man hard, even one so trim, well-groomed and successful as Julian.
Baird, on the other hand, had taken to jeans and Gore-Tex within hours of arrival here. It was true it had rained in some way or another every single day, but he loved all the myriad shades of blue and green mirrored in the shifting sea, not to mention the clouds drifting above it.
Baird’s newfound attraction to the sea was odd, really, given that he had been raised in the southwest, far from a sea of any kind.
“I think it’s beautiful,” Baird said mildly, earning a scathing glance from Beauforte’s legal counsel.
Julian snorted. “Beautiful. Far from it.”
“Just look at the sea. It’s quite a soothing place.”
“Ha! I don’t have to look any further than my own stomach. This is no place for a vegetarian. No country that willfully murders innocent vegetables could be beautiful!”
Baird had to grin despite himself. An ardent vegetarian, Julian should have become accustomed by now to having culinary adventures whenever he ventured far from a city’s bright lights. “It’s not that bad.”
“Oh, yeah? Last night in that horrible dark pub in town - you know the one - the only vegetables they could give me was this heap of something called clapshot.” Julian flung out his hands in exasperation. “Clapshot! Even the name is horrible! What the hell is clapshot?”
“You should know.” Baird returned to his clipping with a philosophical shrug, more than used to Julian’s monologues on the subject of food. “You’re the one who ate it.”
“I did not!” Julian grimaced. “It was orange and lumpy, like it had been put through a blender or something. Baby food.”
Baird grunted as he conquered a particularly thick vine and cast it aside, only to find another right behind it. A more whimsical man might have thought the briars were deliberately blocking his way. “Could be neeps and tatties together in one.”