Maybe this time, p.21
Maybe This Time, page 21
“It was worse than horrible. You made me cook.”
“And sew,” he reminded her, pausing to pat his stomach. His lips curled ever so slightly. “According to Margar, you did well at both—eventually.”
She clamped her jaw shut and glared at him. “Do I still know how to use a sword?”
“We are still in this time, Angel.”
She whipped around, but Prophet caught her and lifted her into his arms.
“You are still my wife, too. Do you require another lesson in humility?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she said from between her teeth.
He smiled and nuzzled her neck. “I would.”
“Put me down, you overgrown pain in the—”
“Don’t say it, love.” Laughing, he set her on her feet and stretched out on the bed. “Come, be loving to your husband. Soon, we must leave.”
Alyssa’s heartstrings gave an unexpected jerk. “Leave? Oh God, you mean we’ve got to go to another place?” She grabbed up a bunch of the nubby quilt and squeezed it. “I won’t do it. Do you hear me? I won’t do it.”
“You will. Now, cease your nervous chatter and come love me. My arms wait.”
“After the way you’ve treated me?” She rolled her eyes back. “You’ve got to be kidding. I do have a little pride left—no thanks to you, I might add.”
“Alyssa.” His eyes held a warning. “Remember pleasure. Remember your words to me. No anger has the value of loving. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said, scooting toward him on the bed, her anger leaving as quickly as it had come. “I remember.”
“Do you no longer care for me, because you know I am Prophet?”
The look in his eyes scorched her soul. “I don’t know what I feel. I’m confused. And that’s the truth. I think—”
“What?” he prodded.
“I care for Kevan. And I think I might just care a little for you, too. Though only heaven knows why.”
He smiled and held open his arms. “Then come, Angel. Love both of us, for we are one and the same.”
LYING IN THE prophet’s arms, Alyssa snuggled to him and let out a satisfied sigh. Kevan Buchannan might hold her heart, but Prophet had claimed her soul.
He brushed her eyelids with his lips. “Have you decided?”
“Decided what?” His scent filled her nostrils and she played with the hair on his chest, curling it around her fingertip.
“Do you care for me as much as you care for Kevan?”
Toying with the amulet at his neck, Alyssa felt it vibrate and looked up. “Prophet, it glows!”
“Aye,” he said, untangling himself from her and standing. “Come.”
“You have a thing about saying that, you know.” She sat up, watched him rise and reach for his plaid. “Where are we going? I’m not going to leave here yet.” She slid off the mattress and tugged on her chemise, then followed him. “I mean it.”
He stopped and turned around. She plowed into his back and almost fell down. When he had her steady, he smiled down at her.
“Don’t you dare call me clumsy, or I may get that sword anyway.”
“You followed before you asked where we were going?”
“Yes,” she answered, not understanding the importance. “So?”
“So, this pleases me.” He bent down and gave her a quick kiss. “Come, there is someone I want you to meet.”
“Your grace,” Prophet called out.
The old man from the wood appeared before her. Alyssa gasped. He did have eyes! Both were flat and colorless, but she couldn’t see clean through them. Her knees shook and she clung to Prophet’s arm.
“Angel, this is his grace, the Elder of the Council of Perfection.”
Not sure what to do, Alyssa bowed her head.
“You are the Prophet’s Lady?”
Alyssa looked at Prophet. “I—”
“She is,” Prophet said.
“I asked your woman, Prophet,” the Elder said not unkindly.
Alyssa swallowed hard. “I am. You’re Kevan’s angel.”
The Elder smiled. “Not quite, but angel will suffice.” He rubbed his long white beard. “The Council is most pleased with your progress. You have learned much in this level.”
“You mean it’s all true. Everything Prophet said about the negative impulse imbalance, and—and—going back?”
“You doubt my word?” Kevan asked her.
That her remark hadn’t pleased him was an understatement. She looped their arms and stroked the back of his forearm with her thumb. “No, darling,” she said, looking up at him. “I don’t doubt you. Not really. It’s just—”
“Hard to accept?” the Elder suggested.
Alyssa nodded.
“It is of no consequence,” the Elder said.
Alyssa shot Prophet a murderous look. “Now I know where you got that.”
Prophet smiled down at her.
“Child,” the Elder said. “Tell me what you’ve learned in this level.”
Alyssa let go of Prophet’s arm and paced a short path before the window, organizing her thoughts. Neither the Elder nor Prophet rushed her. Sensing the importance of her answers, she was grateful for that. “Well, back in the twelfth century, when a woman didn’t follow her husband’s rule, she got her socks knocked off.”
The Elder gave her a puzzled look.
“Discipline,” Kevan interpreted.
“Ah.” The Elder cleared his throat and asked, “And was the punishment just?”
Heat seared her face and Alyssa looked down at the floor. “It was, your grace.”
“Fine,” he said, sounding pleased. “Is there anything else you learned?”
“Oh, yes,” Alyssa assured him. “I learned to cook and to sew, and . . . Never mind. The rest isn’t important.”
“What is it, child?”
Prophet stepped into her path, took her hand, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Speak your heart.”
The look in his eyes confirmed her feeling that this conversation with the Elder was extremely important. Trembling, Alyssa held on to Prophet’s hand for support. “During the battle everyone worked together. We defended the keep by blending the ways of men and women. The broom was as valuable as the sword. Without both, I think we would have failed.”
“So, what does this mean to you?” the Elder asked.
“Both deeds—no,” she paused and looked deep into Prophet’s eyes. “No. All deeds hold value. One depends on the other. Kevan, God love his heart and protect his stomach, depended on me to feed and clothe him. I depended on him for strength and for protection.” She wrinkled her brow. “Yet, when threatened, he depended on me to protect his people.” She turned to look at the Elder. “See what I mean?”
“I do,” the Elder said, then studied her through those odd eyes of his. “And did you come to care for Kevan?”
“Yes, I did,” she confessed. “Marriage to him wasn’t always pleasant. At times, Kevan could be, er, difficult. But there was something very special about being in his care. Something almost, I don’t know . . . magical.”
“And so it should be,” the Elder said. “Tell me, child. Do you feel this same magic for Prophet?”
Prophet’s hand grew rigid on hers. She didn’t dare risk a glance at him. He’d said to speak her heart, and she intended to. “Prophet is Kevan. How could I not care for him?” She gave the Elder a shaky smile. “But my feelings for Prophet are different, too.”
“How do they differ?” the Elder asked.
“I’d rather not explain, your grace.” She looked up at him and felt heat flood her face. “A woman must be allowed to keep a little of her pride.”
“Pride,” the Elder repeated, casting a pointed look at Prophet.
Prophet groaned. “Not—”
The Elder silenced Prophet with a stare, then spoke to Alyssa. “Yes, my dear, you do have an abundance of that.”
Alyssa looked at Prophet and, when she looked back, the Elder was gone. Her heartbeat tripped, then sped. “Did I say something wrong?”
Prophet cupped her face in his hands. “No, love.”
He had that look in his eye. He was about to leave her. Her heart wrenched and she shook. “Prophet?”
“Yes, Angel.” He drew her hand to his mouth and pressed her fingers firmly to his lips, pain etching his face. “It is time.”
“No!” she cried, slumping against him. “I don’t want to go. Can’t we just stay here?”
He stroked her face, his voice gruff with emotion. “Kiss me goodbye, love, for when we next meet, you’ll not know me.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs. “And you? Will you know me?”
“No, Angel, I will not.”
It was inevitable, they had no choice. Tears burned her eyes. “Kiss me now, then,” she said raggedly, feeling as though everything good in her life was being snatched away from her. “I don’t think I can bear this parting. I’ll surely die.”
He dipped forward and took her mouth in a kiss rife with desperation, rife with hunger and sorrow and fear. Kevan and Prophet melded, became one in her mind, and Alyssa told him all she felt for him with her kiss.
He breathed against her lips, “I love you, Angel.”
Fourteen
England, 1800s
“MILADY?”
The fire in the bedchamber grate crackled and hissed. Lady Alyssa Cameron looked up from her needlework. “Good morning, Meg.”
As she passed Alyssa a cup of chocolate, her abigail’s expression wrinkled into a frown. “You still look a bit undone.”
After three and a half weeks abed with the fever, Alyssa still felt a bit undone. “You worry about me far too much. I’m better. Really.”
Sniffing, Meg moved to the bed and fluffed the pillows none too gently. “I still think that cork-brain doctor should have bled you. Everyone knows you have to let the fever out.”
“I wouldn’t let him,” Alyssa reminded her, though when she’d refused the doctor, Meg had been in attendance. Dear Meg was always in attendance.
Meg pulled a shawl from the closet and draped it over Alyssa’s shoulders. “Then the doctor should have sent you to Bath.”
“I refused that, too. Maybe I should have taken the waters, but—”
“But the truth is you didn’t feel well enough to make the journey, and you know it, milady,” Meg chided her. “Now ain’t it?”
The trip to Bath from London wasn’t an arduous one. But in mid-January, when a person was already indisposed, the journey could be as lethal as the fever. “I’m fine now,” Alyssa said, ignoring her question. “Besides, no doctor or waters anywhere could match the care you gave me right here at home. And that’s the truth of it.”
“You ain’t fine,” Meg contradicted her. “You’re weak as a kitten.”
“Meg, for pity’s sake. I’m not that fragile.”
Muttering, Meg tidied the room, and Alyssa let her gaze drift to her bedroom window. The weather was gray, overcast, and dreary. Much like her mood. Meg was right. She was weak as a kitten. Her inactivity had left her too much time to think, and if that wasn’t enough to gloom a body nothing was.
A loud clash sent her gaze darting toward the fireplace.
Still muttering under her breath, Meg lifted the poker and stabbed at the logs. Sparks spewed like a fireworks display at Vauxhall Gardens.
Alyssa flinched. The fire required no attention. She eyed her abigail warily and discovered she was in a full-fledged twitter. “All right, Meg. What’s wrong?”
“When you’ve finished your chocolate, his lordship is wanting you down in the library.”
A knot of unease formed in Alyssa’s stomach. Meg, who always spoke with the frank and direct honesty of a child, hadn’t glanced her way once. Something was most definitely amiss. Something most serious. The knot in Alyssa’s stomach grew larger, tighter, but she forced herself to remain calm, to delicately investigate. “How is my father?”
“I haven’t actually seen his lordship, Milady.”
Meg still didn’t look her way, but color flooded her profiled cheek. That was all the answer Alyssa needed. Her father, John Cameron, earl of Bradbury, was either in his altitudes or cup-shot.
Her thoughts reverted to that October morning. Had it been just months ago? It seemed lifetimes had passed since her father had come home dazed, his clothes splattered with blood.
Shivers crept up her backbone. No, she refused to dwell on that nightmarish morning, or on the endless night preceding it. And especially not on what had come afterward. Quickly, she stood up. “I’ll go at once.”
Wearing a worried look, Meg left the chamber.
Alyssa frowned. She and Meg were very near the same age, and, with conditions being what they were at Cameron House, she’d never bothered to demand Meg hold her tongue. Partly because only God could enforce such a demand, but more so because she depended on Meg’s forthright manner. Her silence indicated how deeply she was troubled, and that caused Alyssa grave worry.
Setting her needlework aside, Alyssa smoothed the folds of her lavender muslin skirt. If her father had been foxed and now suffered the after effects, the rest of the inhabitants in his establishment were suffering as well.
She shut her eyes for a scant second, refrained from asking God yet again why He’d taken her dear mother, and instead prayed her father would develop an affection for some suitable lady of the ton. Then she stiffened her spine and quit her chamber.
From the grand staircase, she saw Burns leaving the library. One look at her father’s butler had shivers streaking up her spine and racing across her shoulders. Usually placid-faced and imperturbable, that worthy frowned until his black brows slashed an angry bar across his forehead.
Her father was cup-shot, she predicted, feeling more than a little resentment. Why must he be in this condition now? Why must he call her now, when she felt far from well and unable to hold her own in a confrontation with him?
She tapped on the library door, and heard him bid her to enter. Her knees weakened and her stomach fluttered. “Please, God,” she whispered, “let him know what he’s about.” She walked in and shut the door behind her.
Seated at his big desk, he attempted a smile. It seemed more like a grimace. “Ah, Alyssa.”
“Good morning, Father.” He still wore last night’s evening clothes and the stench of soured port reeked from him, making her knees grow weaker still.
“Sit down, my dear.”
She eased onto a burgundy leather, wing-back chair and studied him. What she saw did nothing to dispel her growing concern. Though he squinted, his quizzing glass did not mask his red-streaked eye. It mirrored its dull, exposed mate. His cravat, limp and smudged with dirt, sagged. With a sinking feeling, she considered the whole of his appearance. Disheveled. Disreputable. She homed in on his expression. Disturbed?
Alyssa trembled. She couldn’t forget the last time he’d wandered around throughout the night. The sight of the clothes he’d worn home then; crumpled, bloodied. His ordering Burns to set fire to them in the library grate. Nor could she forget the Lord Chancellor’s discreet inquiries that had come afterward, her father’s black rage and the express orders he’d issued forbidding that the subject be mentioned again.
“I hope you are feeling well.”
His voice sounded relaxed, but tension lined his face, crackled in the crisp air between them.
“Much better, thank you.”
“Good. Good.”
His expression eased, yet he fidgeted with his timepiece. Something more than the after effect of over-imbibing was amiss, and, God, how she feared learning what. Her temples began to throb. “Meg said you wished to speak with me.”
His fair skin flushed. “Because of your illness, I didn’t bother you with this matter. However, I can wait no longer.”
“Father, how intriguing you sound.”
“Intrigue is not my intention,” he assured her, not quite meeting her eyes. “I was waiting for the proper moment. Now that you’ve recovered, well . . . Well, I must inform you posthaste.” He cleared his throat. “You’ve received an offer of marriage from a most suitable young man—and I have accepted it.”
Her ears had failed her. They must have! “You accepted?”
Her father raised his hand. “Now, before you lie low in a swoon—”
“I do not swoon, Father.”
“Nevertheless, I’ll hear no objections. Your betrothed is a wealthy member of the ton, his looks are all the crack to members of your sex, and, most importantly, I have accepted him.”
“But—But you gave me your word. You promised I could choose my own husband.” She held herself rigid to stave off despair. “How could you do this, Father?”
He sent her a hard, flat look that warned her his temper was held on short ribbons. “You are twenty-two, long past marriageable age. I’ve permitted you to reject suitor after suitor for frivolous reasons, but the time has come to see to your future. And the time has long since passed for you to take your place in society as a married woman.”
“Who is this man?” She feared she knew. And she also knew she must be prepared to play her part in the coming charade. God grant her strength.
“Lord Innes.”
She smothered a small gasp. Though she expected it, hearing the name shocked her dizzy. But, in His mercy, her Creator answered her prayer, and she burst into laughter. It almost rang true to her own ears. “Oh, Father. You had me going with this Banbury tale. But your ruse is up. You’d never approve a match with a high-flyer.” She paused to dab at her eyes with a lacy hanky, then still smiling, asked, “Shall I tell you where you erred?” Quickly, before he could interrupt, she continued. “Lord Innes visits White’s nightly. Why, I’d be more a widow than a wife. Any other man would have been far more believable, I would say.”
While her merry laughter again filled the room, she gauged her father’s response. Finding it lacking, she added, “How very clever of you, Father, to amuse me out of my tiresome ennui.”
“I am not relieving you of boredom.” John Cameron stood up behind his desk, his hands curled into fists. “Nor will I permit you to speak of your betrothed in such a disrespectful manner.”
