Dreamspell (43 page)

“Where are you, Nedy?”

She inhaled another breath from the floorboards and winced. Her throat burned, brain was turning to mush, and she felt as if she were floating away.
I
am
floating away!
It was the final pull, and it meant to steal her from Fulke.

“Nedy!”

“I’m here!” It came out weak, made her painfully aware that if she didn’t succumb to the pull, the smoke would finish the job. The pull growing more insistent with each creep of her body across the floor, she continued forward.

“Go away,” she pleaded. “Please, go away.”

She touched legs, but not of a human. Head reeling, she groped a chair leg upward and, in the seat, found who she was looking for—until it registered that the thigh beneath her hand belonged to a man. And when he moaned, she knew. Not Lady Lark but Mac who had sat beside the boys’ bed, the past having been altered by his release from the tower.

“Mac!” Her voice sounded distant, her limbs felt disjointed. “You have to”—a cough barked from her—“get out of here.”

He moaned again.

“Nedy!” Fulke shouted.

“Here!” Though she was losing feeling in her arms, she wound them around Mac, heaved, and landed on her back with him on top.

“What. . .?” Mac rasped like a rusted up gear.

Somewhere in the room, something fell heavily and was met by a leap of flame.

Kennedy shoved Mac off of her, crawled to his head, and positioned herself to drag him down the cleared path.

The pull yanked, determined to return her to her death.

I’m not going!
But then, why was she drifting away from herself? “No!” she cried and, keeping as low as possible, gripped Mac beneath the arms and pulled.

“Nedy.” Fulke was on his hands and knees beside her.

Though she knew he held her arm, his hand on her felt whisper light. She was losing the battle, about to slip through his fingers.

“We must—” He hacked and began pulling her from beside the bed.

She longed to throw herself in his arms, to cling to him, but she couldn’t. “Not without. . .Mac.”

“What?” Disbelief stilled him, urgency moved him. He felt past her and found Mac’s inert form. He pushed her. “Go toward the light!”

She peered through the smoke. There was no mistaking the fire to the right, nor its intensifying heat that plastered her gown to her skin. But directly ahead, a light slashed side to side. Fixing on the voices beyond the room, she lowered her head and sipped tainted air. It was then she felt the pain stir behind her eyes and knew it was the tumor.

“Go, Nedy!” Fulke shouted across the yawning years.

She was leaving him. “Please, God, not now that I have found him.”

As her arms and legs sprawled beneath her, she was pulled opposite. Up. . .up. . . Then suddenly forward, bumping against another figure. Mac? Was Fulke dragging her too? Not that she could stay. . .

Her heart broke, spilling its aching contents. The dream was gone. Or would soon be. All was lost.

“Nedy!” Fulke’s voice echoed as if from across a deep canyon. “I have you. You’re safe.”

He could still see her? Was holding her? It seemed so, but as she was nearly outside herself, the rest of her would follow.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, then whimpered as pain tore through her head.

“Open your eyes! I will not lose you.”

He seemed nearer. Was that his breath on her face?

“Fight it, Nedy!”

She longed to, but how? It was strong, would split her in two before letting her go. Another pain splintered her skull, bringing with it a strong sense of her mother’s presence.

“Nedy!”

She thought it was Laurel’s voice, but couldn’t be certain. She hurt so bad.

“It’s all right for you to go, baby. Jack’s here with me.”

Kennedy felt divided, in both places at once and yet neither.

“I’ll be fine,” Laurel said softly.

“Mom. . .” Kennedy squeezed the hand in hers—whosever it was.

“I love you, Nedy.”

She sighed, and the tearing in her head went out on her breath. No more hurt.
Thank you, God.

“Nedy!”

Fulke was still here? She reached herself backward, strained to feel him, to hear him.

“Do not leave me!”

Moisture fell to her cheek. Tears? For her?
Fight it!
she commanded the shallow breath in her lungs, the ebbing of her heart, the slowing of her mind, the weakening of her limbs.
So much to live for. Claw your way back.

Claw she did, refusing to yield to the ease of death. She would go on—in another time, another place, but she would live. She would be the wife she longed to be, would stand beside Fulke and be his partner in life. She would make children with him, love them as she had been loved, teach them, see them grow to adulthood, hold their children. And Fulke would be at her side until she died a very old woman.

Voices. At first they were murmurs, but they grew louder and anxious, and somewhere she heard coughing and the sound of children crying. The boys? Soothing words spoken by Lady Marion. Mac’s gruff speech.

Then breath. Kennedy gasped, filling her lungs with wonderfully cool air. Arms were around her. Fulke’s face was near, his breath mingling with the smoke that clung to their bodies. Yet the pervasive scent was not repugnant, for it meant more than fire. It meant she was back.

“Look at me, Nedy.”

It was as if her lids were sealed, but she forced them open. “Fulke,” she croaked as his shadow-deepened face came into focus.

A smile lifted his mouth. “Aye.”

Night was behind him, she realized as she caught torch light in his moist eyes—eyes that wept for her. She stared into them, warmed herself by their fire, and found herself there. She touched his bearded jaw. “I—” She turned her face away and coughed.

Fulke pulled her to sitting and thumped her back. When the coughing subsided, he eased her against his shoulder and pressed a skin of wine to her lips.

Nothing had ever tasted so good. As the moisture wet her mouth, she looked to the keep at Fulke’s back. He had carried her outside, away from the smoke and fire that billowed from the third floor. Out of harm’s way. Back to life—a life that would be so beautiful.

“Enough?” he asked when the last drop slid over her bottom lip.

She nodded. “Are John and—”

“The physician and Lady Lark are with them. They are frightened, but look to be well. Methinks Crosley will soon recover.” He nodded to the left.

Kennedy peered beyond him, startled at the number of men and women who ran past toting buckets of water. Hard to overlook, especially with the excited din they raised as they rushed up the stairs to the keep, but until that moment they had existed only as white noise.

Mac was propped against the wall of the keep ten feet away. He sat in a circle of pulsing light cast by an overhead torch. Marion was beside him.

He grinned weakly. “You made it.”

“I did, didn’t I?”

“I knew you could do it.”

She looked beside him to where the physician knelt alongside John and Harold. The little boys were wide awake. Though their sooty faces were tracked with tears, each clutched to his chest what looked to be an assortment of action figures.

“You saved them,” Fulke spoke into her hair.

She tilted her face up to his. “Not without you. And Mac. It all began with him.”

Regret rose on Fulke’s face. “I was wrong in believing of him as I did.”

“As he was wrong about you. But neither of you could have known.”

He swept the hair back from her face. “I am a stubborn man. Can you make of me something more?”

She smiled. “I don’t want to change you. The man who told me he loved me is the only one I want. You.”

He lowered his mouth to hers. The kiss was short, but breathless. “As you are all I want, Kennedy Plain.”

For the first time, he had used her uncut name. It sounded odd, as if it belonged to someone else. “Why did you call me Kennedy?”

“’Tis your name, is it not?”

“It is.”

“Then surely I ought to use it?”

“I prefer Nedy.” Not only had there been warmth and love attached to the familiar name by which her mother had called her since childhood, but the words of love that would nevermore be carved into stone had been for a woman known to him by that name. That was who she was.

“‘Tis as I shall call you, then,” Fulke said.

A shadow fell over them. “My lord?”

Tensing, Fulke looked up at the physician. “John and Harold?”

“They are fortunate. Neither they, nor Sir Arthur, ought to suffer any lasting ill.”

“You would examine Lady Nedy now?” Fulke asked.

Lady. She was a lady. His lady.

“Aye, my lord.”

Fulke looked to her. “I must needs leave you, though ‘twill be for a short time only.”

Her joy wavered. “Where are you going?”

“To assist with the fire.”

And if she lost him to it? “Fulke—”

He pressed fingers to her lips. “I vow no ill will befall me.”

Surely, having come this far, they would not now lose one another? She tried to smile. “I will hold you to that.”

He kissed her again. “Rest, Nedy.” He eased her off his lap and against the wall. “I shall come to you as soon as ‘tis done.”

Their hands touched, then he strode to the boys, spoke softly to them, and folded them into his chest. “I see you are fond of your soldiers,” he said as he drew back.

John looked at his handfuls, then to Harold’s. “Ever so. You do not mind that Sir Arthur allowed us to sleep with them?”

“I do not. Indeed, I am most grateful to him.” Fulke glanced at Mac, straightened. “I shall return soon.” He bounded up the steps.

Kennedy dropped her head back against the wall and looked heavenward. “I do not know why You did it, but I thank You for another chance.”

I
t was some minutes before Kennedy’s presence roused Fulke. When he finally he lifted his head, his gaze was pained as if he remembered that other past in which she had come to him. “You are well?” he asked as he rose from the ashes.

She smiled. “More than well.”

He crossed to where she stood in the doorway and lifted her hands in his. “I had hoped you would sleep the day through.”

She might have, but the absence of his arms that had carried her to bed hours earlier had brought her to the gutted room. Searching his beloved face that contrasted sharply with the devastation behind him, she said, “I missed you.”

His thumbs caressed the backs of her hands beneath the sleeves of her robe. “I am sorry, but I had to come back here.”

“Why?”

“’Twill not surprise you, but I have seen this before.” He turned and drew her into the room. “I have stood amid this ruin, though then I grieved.”

Kennedy reveled in his warmth at her side. “It’s in the past. Leave it there.”

He surveyed the room, lingered on the hearth, and settled his gaze on the place where the bed had stood. “Aye, that is where it belongs.”

Kennedy stepped in front of him. “I love you, Fulke.”

He brushed his mouth across hers. “I love you, Nedy.”

She beamed inside and out. In spite of their surroundings, she was touched by mischief. “And just how much do you love me, my lord?”

He raised his bent eyebrow, but when he spoke, it was with grave seriousness. “I would die for thee, Nedy Plain. A thousand times, I would die for thee.”

EPILOGUE

Los Angeles, California

I
t wasn’t possible. Still, she could dream as Nedy had done and find solace in the impossible.

Laurel caressed the page of the final entry. Though she had promised to read the journal, she hadn’t until now, certain it would contain a poignant farewell sure to shred her threadbare heart. But today, a month after Nedy’s death, she had braved it. Such a struggle it had been to make sense of the words, at first because of her reading impediment, but then because what Nedy had written offered too much hope for so little return.

Fresh tears threatening, Laurel looked to the boxes that held her daughter’s possessions. There weren’t many, but they filled the modest foyer of the home she had made with Jack. Eventually—not today, not tomorrow, not next week—a place would be found for them.

Laurel stifled a sob. She longed for this unbelievable tale of a second chance to be true, ached for Nedy’s promise that a sign would be forthcoming.

She hugged the journal to her. What harm to believe—?

No. Denial would get her nowhere. Nedy was gone. This terrible grieving wasn’t fair to anyone, especially Jack who deserved better than a woman who couldn’t speak without her voice cracking, whose eyes were more pink than green, and who spent more hours in bed than out of it. It was time to begin letting go. Time to live, even if only for the memory of her daughter to fill the hole blown through her. She stood taller, put her shoulders back, and considered the journal. She would pack it away with the rest of the belongings.