Immortal Surrender (31 page)

Parry met thrust, slice met the flat defensive blade. The angry song of clashing steel ricocheted off the walls. The sound of his own heavy pants filled Farran’s ears. Sweat broke over his body, and the heavy weight of his weapon settled into his shoulder.

With lightning speed, Caradoc thrust his blade at Farran’s chest in a potentially devastating blow. Farran grunted as his broadsword took the impact. He managed little more than defensive parries as Caradoc drove again and again, quickly outmaneuvering Farran.

Caradoc struck down on Farran’s blade, lifted his sword, and struck again. Then in a surprisingly agile maneuver, he attacked from the opposite side. Farran blocked the strike, but a stumble left him wide open. Caradoc moved in. Victor raised his sword, brought it down hard, and knocked Farran’s weapon to the floor.

Color filled Caradoc’s cheeks as he drew in a sharp breath and snapped, “She is not Brighid!”

Stunned, Farran came to a standstill. His empty hand closed in a fist, and he lowered it to his side. As the truth passed between them, Farran clenched his jaw. He bent to retrieve his sword, but Caradoc kicked it aside.

“Do you forget I was there? Do you think I do not know what poisons you against her?” Caradoc sheathed his sword, but challenged with a piercing gaze. “’Tis your fear Azazel takes advantage of. Your heartbreak he twists to his favor. You let him win each time you turn away from her.”

All the raw, unchecked emotion Farran had closeted away burst forth, and he dropped his head into his hands with an anguished moan. He curled his fingers against his scalp, hating himself for the weakness he could not hide.

The press of a pommel against his stomach brought his head up. He glanced down to find his sword extended in offering. Silently he accepted and sheathed the weapon. When he looked to Caradoc once more, his brother’s expression no longer held accusation. Instead, Farran found compassion.

Caradoc gestured at the floor, then assumed a seat. “She is your
seraph,
Farran.”

“I know,” he said, exhaling as he dropped to sit across from Caradoc. He looked above the sandy brown head at the stark white wall beyond. “It shames me, brother. I failed in duty because I did not wish to leave her side.”

“You feel—there is no shame in that. ’Tis when you try to cease what the Almighty intends, it eats at you like a canker. Brighid was a whore whose father sought to get her out of his hair. Noelle is naught like that vile bitch. No devilry lurks behind the eyes that follow you. And indeed, they do follow you. They look for you when you are not present. Ask Anne, for she told me the same.”

Did they? He had been so consumed with the terror of his past, Farran could not answer. Instead, he hung his head. “I do not know how to believe in goodness, Caradoc.”

“Then do not. Trust in the Almighty’s plan. He brought you here. Carried you through the loss of your son. Allow yourself to feel. Anne tells me Noelle is pure. She is your gift. Your salvation. ’Tis time you embraced your fate before you drive us all mad with your morose moods.”

Frowning, Farran shifted against the uncomfortable twist in his gut. He did not know how to respond. No words existed. His chest felt tight, his throat dry. What Caradoc suggested terrified him more than a proposal to stand toe to toe with a dark knight. In a battle with a fallen brother, he knew what to expect—his soul would fail. He would die. But when it came to Noelle, he could predict naught.

A streak of rebellion snatched at opportunity, and Farran sought to cloak his discomfort by turning the discussion in his favor. “You are one to talk. You ran from Isabelle. Her mortality you could not face. The pain of losing her plagues you now.”

Caradoc’s earnest expression flickered with sorrow before his eyes took on a harsh light. “Indeed, you are right. But you do not find me living in the past, do you, brother?”

He stood with effort, grimacing at the ache in his bones. He clapped a hand on Farran’s shoulder, his gaze fixed on the distant doors. “I leave you to your thoughts. But, my friend, I urge you. Do not make the same mistakes as I.”

With purposeful steps and a firm shut of the door, Caradoc left. Yet the weight of his words lingered long after the sound of his boots disappeared down the hall. Farran reeled from their impact. His head spun. His hands trembled.

CHAPTER 28

Noelle chewed on a fingernail as she paced in front of the chrome laboratory equipment. It hummed and ticked in ominous harmony with the whirring of her mind. She still couldn’t explain how it managed to work at such an incredible rate of speed, but after sampling a shard of a cracked wooden bowl that she’d dated earlier this year for Gabriel and discovering the same results, she couldn’t doubt the equipment’s accuracy. Now, in minutes, the readout for the strange wood would drift into the printer’s tray. She knew what it would say—the same things it had said the first three times she’d run the test. The same data it spit out yesterday.

She cast an anxious glance at the curved wooden slat. Sadly, she didn’t care. The rote activity of repeated testing kept her busy. Helped to soothe the agitation Farran left behind.

She told herself the reason she couldn’t keep him off her mind was because he’d introduced her to what it meant to be a woman. That this ridiculous giddy feeling had nothing to do with caring about the man and everything to do with the by-product of a release of oxytocin. Like mothers who experienced the rush on the birth of their child, orgasm saturated her with hormones and led her false.

All scientific fact. Yet every bit of it a bald-faced lie.

Waking to an empty bed had left her more cold and empty than the night he’d brought her out of the snow. Why had he left? Where had he gone?

Why did she care?

A soprano beep signaled the counter had finished, and Noelle wandered to the printer. She picked up the printout, but didn’t bother to scan the columns. Tossing the paper aside, she pressed her palms to her temples and grimaced. She could read it a hundred times and never make sense of all the conflicting data. The only concise fact—the cedar/poplar plank was an anomaly to all she understood.

She went to the shelves for something less complicated, less threatening. Scanning the tall stacks of artifacts, she spied a handful of broken pottery bits that bore a striking resemblance to the Celt marks on the Beaker bowl in her room. As she gingerly picked up the shards, they left behind a powdery residue. So fragile had the particles become, they nearly disintegrated in her palm.

Careful not to jostle them unnecessarily, Noelle returned all but one to their resting place on the shelf. Airtight canisters—that’s what Gabriel needed here. If he intended to preserve some of these things much longer, he’d have to make the investment.

She took the solitary piece to her worktable. With the press of a stylus, she split the half-dollar piece in two. Both portions crumbled, making the work ahead easier. She prepped one sample for beta counting of the carbon-14 decay. The other she set aside to chemically analyze while the gas counter measured the first.

Absorbed in the process, her mind strayed from Farran for the first time all day. She added the chemicals to clean the carbonates, then set the vial aside. While she waited, she divided the remaining sample into five small subsets, each to fit a different test.

Enraptured by her love for her work and the insatiable curiosity of her mind, Noelle lost track of time. Before she had time to stop and consider why Farran had left her to wake alone, she stood before the gigantic maze of metal tubing awaiting the final result, while her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten all day.

Excitement set her pulse into a staccato beat, and she gnawed on her fingernail once more. Chemical data revealed the pottery shared a similar composition to the one in her room. Right down to the faint copper residue. The hand-carved patterns were so eerily alike she couldn’t help but hope. If the two were related … Her heart jumped into her throat at the prospect. Not one, but two Beaker artifacts would cross her path.

The printer went off and she dove for the printout. As she scanned the graphical representation, she let out a bit of the breath she’d been holding:
archaeological age: 1900–1800
B.C
.

She whipped around on a gasp as the door opened. But when Farran stepped inside, her breathlessness gave way to an excited squeal. She rushed across the room, flung her arms around his neck, and threw herself into his startled embrace. “Farran, you’ll never believe what I’ve found!”

*   *   *

Farran staggered backward under the force of Noelle’s elation. He caught himself before he stumbled, yet nothing would curb the enormity of feeling that swept through his veins on hearing her joy. Could it be she had missed him?

The possibility swelled his heart to intolerable limits. Instinctively he sought to block the sensation and stiffened. If he allowed himself to believe …

Allow yourself to feel.

Caradoc’s suggestion bellowed like a horn, and Farran swallowed hard. He released the vise of logic. Cast it aside to embrace the heady pleasure of Noelle’s soft body molding against his. He wound his arms around her waist and held her close as he nuzzled the side of her neck. “What have you found that has kept you from joining me for supper?”

She wriggled free, to his dismay. With a smile bright enough to rival the moon’s silver light, she waved a piece of paper in her hand. “It’s a Beaker!”

He peered at her with a perplexed frown. But as he opened his mouth to speak, she caught him by the hand and dragged him to the tall shelves on the far side of the room. There she nearly bounced in place as she pointed at a handful of broken shards of clay.

“Beaker pottery. A Neolithic society—the first to bury their dead in graves. They introduced Britain to metal. But there’s no archaeological evidence to prove they used the tools themselves. Their pottery is distinctive, loaded with sigils and intricate designs.”

Though her words came out in a mad rush that only served to further scatter his disorganized thoughts, her smile warmed him from the inside out. Behind her glasses, her eyes blazed with excitement. And the constant motion of her hands stirred an equal thrill in him. As he studied her, slowly processing her explanation, he found himself fascinated by what drove her to such joy. Save for the men who craved the thrill of battle, he had never met someone so enchanted with her work.

He glanced around, noting for the first time the intricate labyrinth of metal tubing and canisters that connected to a cylindrical chamber. Aye, though he had witnessed the equipment before, he now saw it through her eyes. Compelled by the deep-rooted need to understand what stirred her passion, he gestured at the device. “Tell me of this? How you discover the age of these artifacts?”

She blinked. For a moment, he feared she would refuse. He knew not why it mattered, but the possibility left him holding his breath. He wanted to know. Needed to understand.

At the nodding of her head, his anxiety dissipated. She gave him a shy smile, then tugged on his arm to draw him closer to her tools. “Everything has a carbon footprint. It comes from an unstable isotope, carbon 14, which is formed by the earth’s atmosphere when cosmic neutrons hit nitrogen 14.”

She spit the foreign terms out so quickly, Farran’s eyes widened. Saints’ blood, he had not realized she was versed in multiple languages.

Her soft chuckle sent heat to his cheeks. Nay, he was wrong. The light in her eyes laughed at him. He shifted, suddenly uncomfortable with his age.

“I’m sorry.” Rising to tiptoe, she placed a kiss on his cheek. “All you need to know is everything living has carbon 14. When an object dies, carbon 14 is frozen, more or less, within it. To find it, we take samples, combust them, then pass them through chemicals. The process gives off a gas, which this machine analyzes and counts the particles.” She tapped the cylinder. “This is a gas proportional counter. It can give a rudimentary age, but my lab uses the accelerator mass spectrometry method, which destroys less of the sample artifact and determines age by passing liquid carbon through light refractors.”

He listened as she walked him through the process. Now and then, when she sensed his lack of understanding, she backtracked to clarify the scientific terms that flowed so smoothly from her tongue. The confident scientist who emerged in the place of the shy, modest woman he had put to bed the night before captivated him. She hesitated not. Carried herself with grace as she maneuvered him around the room. And her zeal for her work was naught less than catching. Before he realized what had happened, he found himself asking questions, encouraging her to tell him more. Anything that would keep her face aglow with excitement and those mesmerizing eyes shining bright.

And by the saints, she excited him. With every hard beat of his heart, heat flowed through his veins. The slight touch of her hand when she set it absently on his arm drove him to distraction. Her voice caressed, until he could not take another moment of its silken feel. As she led him past the end of the table, he dragged her to a stop. Gathering her in his arms, he crushed her against his chest. Her mouth dropped open in surprise, and Farran used the moment to his full advantage.

He backed her into the wall and pressed his body along the length of hers. He braced his hands on the hard stone at her shoulders, dipped his head, and captured her mouth. She offered no resistance as he nudged her lips apart and indulged in her sweet flavor. The kiss was hot, full of all the relentless yearning that coursed through him like a tidal wave. Where their bodies met, heat ebbed and flowed between them. And the subtle undulation of her hips swelled his cock to painful limits.

He dropped his hands to her waist to still the restless pursuit of her body. If she did not cease, he would take her here. Against the wall. Oblivious to the unlocked door and unconcerned with the fact anyone might stumble upon them. But his hands acted on their own accord. His fingers dug into her hips, drawing her close even as he pressed her flat to the stone. His body knew what it wanted, and he was helpless against it.