Love's Magic (4 page)

“Besides having to overcome the fact that people want to know if I am a witch, you mean?”

“You are mocking me.”

“Of course.” She stood and collected their bowls, setting them on the counter next to a bunch of dried herbs, and sending him a shy smile over her shoulder.

Lord Riddleton must have been a dunce. “I have been too long from polite company.”

“‘Tis no matter. It is time for another tisane, lavender and—”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

She put a hand on her hip. He was learning she did that when she wanted her way. “I do. ‘Tis late.”

God’s bones, he was an inconsiderate oaf. She had been playing nurse to him, his chest tightened, for three days.

She looked at the covers on the table. “Let me shake them out. Oh! My grandmother took in one of my father’s tunics for you.” She quickly grabbed a folded garment and handed it to him.

“You did not do it?”

“I can mend bones, but clothing is beyond me. Unless you want a ragged hem?” Celestia piled the dishes into a bucket of water, quickly cleaning them and then setting them to dry. Next, she mixed the tisane.

Raised in a monastery, he was hardly a judge on womanly character. He knew nuns, and he knew whores. Celestia was neither. Was that why she fascinated him?

Nicholas slipped the fine fabric over his head, noting the way she deliberately kept her back turned, granting him privacy, despite the fact that she had seen him naked already. His heart warmed. She made him
feel
… a dangerous thing for a man with revenge on his mind.

“Before you go to bed, my lady, could you tell me what you know about the baron?”

She paused before nodding. “But I do not know much.”

It was important that he know his enemy, Nicholas thought. “Please.”

“He is our liege lord.”

“I also swore fealty to him,” Nicholas interrupted gruffly.

“How is it you never met him?”

“I promised a blood oath through his head knight. Not Petyr, but another Montgomery. He was killed.” In Tripoli. “Enough about that—do I really have his looks?” Nicholas rubbed the scars on his wrists bitterly.

“Very much in the face. Your body,” she blushed, “is slimmer.”

While he’d been starving and nauseous, the baron most likely dined on creamed trout and fruit pies. Nicholas tightened his jaw.

“I have twin brothers. They are being fostered at his estate on the Scottish border. Peregrine Castle. It is a fine opportunity for them.” She folded her hands in her lap, and he sensed that she was being overly careful with her words.

Why? she wondered.

“Is he a cruel man?”

She sucked her lower lip between her teeth, and Nicholas’s belly clenched with a sensual hunger.

“My brothers do not complain, not much. But they are not the best of writers. They’re only twelve, and they’ve been with the baron for less than a year.”

“How many siblings do you have?”

“I am the oldest, then next is Galiana, and then the twins, and then Ela.”

He remembered the youngest girl on the stairs. “They all have red hair? Except you.”

Sighing, she twiddled her thumbs. She wondered if he would find Galiana more to his taste; most men did, especially when comparing the two. “Aye, ‘tis the truth. Well, except the boys, they have blond hair, like our father. And they are tall—everybody is, except for me.”

He realized that this bothered her. “There is nothing wrong with being short.”

Her lower lip trembled.

“Is there? Something I do not know about. Can you not ride a horse? Or climb a tree—well, you are a young lady and probably don’t climb trees, so are you upset because,” he looked around the room and noticed all of the footstools, “you have to use a footstool to reach the highest shelves?”

Covering her mouth with her hand, she teased back, “I challenge you to a horse race, sir. And as for climbing trees? How else do you get the choicest apples? I am not afraid of heights, as Gali is. It simply would be
nice
to be tall.”

“You must admit it, though,” he pressured. “There is nothing wrong with being short.”

She rolled her eyes. “I will admit to nothing, except that we have gotten quite off topic.” Feigning a yawn, she stood and said, “I have to sleep. May I trust that you will not try to sneak off before morn? We have guards around the perimeter, and you might accidentally get shot by an archer.” Smiling, she added, “You’ve no breeches, and your legs are as white as milk. They’d think you a ghost.”

“You were looking at my legs?” Nicholas pretended to be shocked. She’d seen all of him, including his scars, and hadn’t run away. Lady Celestia was made of stern stuff. “You would protect me?” His body tensed with an unidentifiable emotion.

“Sleep, Sir Nicholas,” she said with a giggle and a wave as she went up the stairs. “No one will harm you here.”

Setting the cup on the counter, he knew it was time to leave.

He got as far as the stables before getting caught.

It was her youngest sister’s snoring that woke her, and Celestia did not even mind. The three days of nursing Nicholas back to health had taken all her energies, but the solution to her problem had come to her in a dream.

She had to protect her family and marry Sir Nicholas so that her brothers would not come to harm. Running away would only cause her family worry, not to mention that if she was to directly disobey her liege lord, her family could lose their lands and be outcast. The needs of the many most definitely outweighed her own need to be happy.

Except …

What if she spoke to Sir Nicholas before he found out that they were to wed, and what if she assured him that they could get an annulment once they pleaded their case to the baron in person? The baron could not refuse his own son, not face to face. Could he?

For certes, she’d not stand in the way.

And if she could speak to Nicholas privately, he would not have the chance to reject her in public. Celestia shoved the covers back, setting her bare feet on the wooden floor.

“‘Tia? What ails ye? You look green.”

Shoving her arms through her robe, Celestia realized that green must be the color of remembered humiliation. “Go back to sleep, Ela. You can’t have slept well, since you kept me awake most of the night.”

Her sister sat up, her bright red hair exploding from her long braids in wispy curls. She rubbed her eyes. “Sir Nicholas has a gray aura, something I have not seen before. It is too dangerous for you to wed him. Tell Father you cannot do it, please, ‘Tia?”

Unsettled by her sister’s announcement, Celestia expelled a loud breath. “You know that I have no choice.” She crossed her arms defensively. “Why are you in my bed, anyway? What is the matter with yours?”

“I am afraid for you,” Ela said, her lower lip trembling and her green eyes brimming with tears.

“Oh, shhh, now, don’t cry.” Celestia sat back on the edge of her bed, pulling her sister into a hug. “I am a powerful healer,” she said in a storyteller’s voice, “what is a gray aura to one such as me, eh?” She laughed, tickling Ela until the tears dried.

“I will miss you,” Ela said, climbing from the mussed covers.

“Miss me?” Celestia repeated, a shard of ice lodging in her chest.

Galiana threw open the door to Celestia’s room and marched inside, followed by a line of five serfs. One carried a bathing tub, one carried two pails of hot water, another carried two pails of cool water, one carried breakfast, and the last carried a huge basket of oils and lotions that Galiana had made.

“Quick, ‘Tia. Ye must bathe and dress, sleepyhead. We’ve all been up since dawn, except you two. Were you crying, Ela? No matter. Go to Gram, she has your dress laid out, you’ll carry the flowers.”

“Flowers?” Celestia asked, the cold traveling through her blood.

Galiana would not meet her eyes. “You’re getting married.”

Celestia’s knees gave out. “Now?” she squeaked, sinking to the floor in a puddle of boneless nerves. “But I … Nicholas doesn’t even know, and I was going …”

Clapping her hands, Gali dismissed everyone and shut the door behind them, Ela included.

Taking a seat on the floor next to her sister, Galiana said softly, “Nicholas knows.”

Heart beating rapidly, Celestia burned to ask how. “If I am to be married right now, he must have agreed to it.”

Gali covered Celestia’s hand with hers. “Aye.”

Apprehension was thick in the air, and Celestia bowed her head. “Tell me. The truth, please.”

“Nicholas tried to escape the manor last eve, but Sir Petyr caught him at the stables.”

“He is not well enough to travel!”

Galiana, her brow smoothly plucked, said with exasperation, “Well or no, Sir Petyr told him of your betrothal.”

Celestia whispered, “He can’t have been pleased.” Remembering the way Lord Riddleton had renounced their betrothal over breakfast in the hall, she cringed at what Sir Nicholas might have said.

The moment of silence stretched into two and finally Gali spoke, “He was not happy. And when he found out that Sir Petyr was the baron’s man and not hired by Abbot Crispin, well …”

“Just say it!” Her stomach was a giant knot of tension. “He hates me for keeping him from Spain.”

“He punched Sir Petyr in the nose,” Galiana said with admiration.

“No!”

“It didn’t even bleed, but Nicholas promised him it would be worse once he regained his strength.”

Groaning, Celestia asked, “So how did Sir Petyr coerce Nicholas to agree to the wedding?”

“Your life.”

She put her hand to her throat. “What?”

“Sir Petyr reminded Sir Nicholas that you had saved his life, and that he owed you a personal boon.”

“I never thought of that, why, then I can simply say that I do not wish to wed. ‘Tis perfect!” Celestia started to rise.

Pulling her sister back down, Galiana shook her head. “Sir Petyr said that the boon to be granted was wedding you, to save you from being stoned as a witch.”

Celestia felt the blood drain from her face and the cold expanded to every inch of her body. “What?”

“The baron says if you two are not wed by sundown on this date, he will have you accused by the bishop, and put to death.”

Celestia raced out of her bedchamber, as if chased by the hounds of hell, to the one place that always gave her solace. Her herb garden. How dare the baron threaten her with witchcraft? She had never treated the man in her life. So far as she was aware, nobody in their family had.

And, of course, Sir Nicholas, told that he owed her his life, would comply. Despite the first impression he’d given, she surmised that he was a decent, if haunted, man.

She’d easily evaded her mother in the chaos of the family upheaval and slipped out through the rear kitchen into her private garden, hoping to find the strength she knew she would need to continue this farce.

Celestia wiped bitter, angry tears from her eyes and made her way to the wooden bench her father had made. Her gifts were blessed by God, and had nothing to do with the devil. She was able to destroy a black tumor with the focused energy in her fingertips. She could turn a breech babe, saving both mother and child in the process, with little to no pain. Never accepting coin, she helped whomever, serf or peasant or lord, because it was her duty to heal.

Damn the baron.

She plucked a wild rose blossom from the bush and crushed its fragrant petals between her fingers. What was she to do? She tossed the broken bloom to the ground and choked back a sob.

Gali had told her that Sir Petyr had produced a special marriage license, and when her parents had argued that food and drink would need to be prepared, Sir Petyr had said they’d hunt, then they’d produced casks of burgundy as a gift from the baron. Lord Robert had stabbed at his breakfast meat, intent on killing something, by God.

And as for Sir Nicholas?

Galiana said that he’d been pale. Stunned by circumstances, yet steady. It seemed they were both trapped in a snare, not of their own making, she thought with a twist of her mouth. But why? If she knew the answer, mayhap she could find a way around it.
Married.
She’d never thought that marriage would be hers to embrace. She rather thought she’d be similar to her Aunt Nan in Wales and live a single life. An old crone in a waddle hut filled with drying herbs and cats.

She was startled from her reverie by a loud thrashing behind her in the bushes. She reached for her eating dagger and jumped to her feet. A lost deer? A wild boar? Panic loomed.

Her garden was rectangular in shape and walled in by fragrant bushes and manicured hedges. The entrance to the kitchen was too far away to run to for safety, and running would only attract the deadly beast’s attention. She planted her feet as she had been taught and held her knife out in preparation.

A dark shape came crashing through the rosebushes and tripped over the bench.

Celestia relaxed at once. Wild boars didn’t curse fluently in what sounded like Arabic. “Sir Nicholas.” Her tone was dry as she stared down at him. His face was covered in scratches from the rosebushes, and his sleeve was torn. She watched his cheeks color as he stood and brushed away the dirt and leaves from his tunic.