Shana Abe (26 page)

A
valon slept with her hair cushioned behind her, beneath her, creating the illusion of silken sheets, waves of shimmering pale blonde so intricately colored as to appear unreal—ivory and white and silver blended as one.

The dawn light couldn’t disguise her beauty, the delicate dark brows, thick, long eyelashes at rest. Lips slightly parted. Marcus hated to wake her. He could have rocked back and lived in this moment, but he was becoming used to this sensation, a suspension of everything as a tribute to her, a vision to sustain him through the most desolate of hours.

But the day was coming, and what he had in mind meant they had to leave soon.

“Avalon,” he said softly, and put his hand on her shoulder.

She gave a little frown and sighed but otherwise didn’t stir.

“Avalon,” he said again, slightly louder.

Like a pantheress she sprung out of the pallet, grabbed his arm and twisted it around before he could react, pulling him off balance before her.

“Avalon!”

Now her hair was even more splendid than before, the heavy locks sliding and bouncing around them both, covering his arm and her hand where she held him. She looked up at him and her eyes widened, as if she only now realized what had happened. His arm was released, she walked backward and off the other side of the pallet, staring at him.

“You shouldn’t wake me like that.” Her voice was husky with sleep.

“Obviously,” he replied, rubbing his arm.

She looked around, bewildered, then back at him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I come with an invitation,” he replied.

Her eyes got wider.

“Not that kind,” he said hastily. “An invitation to go fishing.”

“Fishing?” The frown reappeared, her battle stance melted into a softer confusion. She rubbed one hand across her eyes. “Now?”

“Yes.”

“No, thank you. I’m rather tired. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Come, my lady. You are made of hardier stuff than this.”

She gave him a disgruntled look. “Go away.”

“It will be a glorious day, the sunrise has already begun, do you see it? This is the best time to tickle fish.”

“My lord, I have no interest in tickling. All I wish to do now is rest.”

“All right.” He stepped back from her, lifting up his hands in supplication. “I didn’t want to have to do this, but I fear you have forced my hand.”

The wariness returned to her tenfold, the warrior maid watched him acutely. She looked no more deadly than a fairy-tale creature, half wish, half dream—a serious deception, he knew.

“I make this my boon,” he said. “You must come with me.”

“What! I owe you no boon!”

He gave her his most engaging smile. “I believe you do. It would be most dishonorable for you to deny me.”

“As you did me?” she suggested dryly.

“But we all know you are far more the lady than I am the gentleman. Therefore, you must come.”

He saw a smile fight its way past the straight line of her lips, pressed tight together to hold it back.

“I know a special place,” he said, enticing. “Fish as big as a man.”

“A man!” she burst out, the smile coming forth. “Indeed!”

“Won’t you come?”

“But I’m tired,” she said, shaking her head.

“This will invigorate you. Come with me.”

Without meaning to, the shade of his voice changed, grew deeper, giving away the fact that what he wanted from her was more complex than what he appeared to be offering. She heard the difference, he knew she did by the way her smile vanished completely, replaced with a look that left him a little short of breath.

“All right,” she said. “I will.”

She dressed much more quickly than he would have thought a woman could have or would have, especially since she had no maid to aid her. He waited out in the hallway only a few minutes before she emerged from her chamber, tartan in place, hair neatly plaited back.

She looked up at him, where he slouched against the wall, and he came forward and gave her a bow, silent. Together they walked out past the great hall, where many still slept on the benches, to the bailey, where he had put the rods aside for them.

There were people stirring, preparing for the new day against the stained-glass sky of morning. They called out greetings to the laird and the bride as they made
their way to the gate, and then past it, down a path he recalled from boyhood. Marcus hoped the enclave in the stream still existed. For that matter, he hoped the stream still existed. He had not been fishing since before he left to join Trygve’s household.

Avalon walked lightly beside him, carrying her own rod, allowing him to shoulder everything else, since he had insisted. There was a part of him that wanted to prove to her he was a gentleman, despite his previous actions, despite every indication to the contrary.

He wanted, Marcus realized, for her to like him. It was a humble thing, perhaps even piteous, but still true. And it was the real motive for awakening her this fine morning. He just wanted to spend time with her. He wanted to watch her laugh.

These past days had been a torment to him. He could not forget what occurred between them in the ruined gatehouse. He could not forget her response to him, nor his to her. She was a drug to him, he had to have more of her, and in some many-folded corner of him, he honestly didn’t know how it was going to end. He needed her, plainly much more than she would ever need him. It made him the weaker, when he had to be the stronger.

What agony not to make love to her right then in the gatehouse, when he had her in the cradle of the grass, holding him, kissing him, wanting him back. Perhaps it had been the first truly gentlemanly thing he had ever done, denying himself the exquisiteness of Avalon, when all he really wanted was her, all of her, forever.

In the forest the young light shone on her in rosy gold, dazzling against the trees and grass and ferns. Her gait was graceful and natural, unaffected by the fashionable
constraints of most noblewomen’s tiny steps. Her skin looked dewy, her eyes lilac bright. She was driving him mad.

And that was his greatest fear. There was something else about her—something apart from her extraordinary beauty—which was born of the curse, and brought forth his own darkness. Her gift was a thousand times greater than whatever meager portion he possessed, yet it intensified his own, and he was having his old nightmares.

He had managed to forget about Damascus for so long. Or at least he thought he had. Whenever it came back to him he focused instead on the orange grove in Spain in that hidden village. It had been fragrant and colorful, warm, and as far from the nightmare as anything else he had ever seen. The trees had been tall, with perfect pointed leaves, white flowers, great orange globes bowing the branches down.

He tried to remember the taste of one of those blood oranges. Whenever Damascus filtered up to his memory he thought instead of the flesh of that exotic fruit, succulent and tangy, sweet and cool on his tongue.

And now Avalon had come, and with her this mixed blessing of the curse; he dreamed of Damascus again, and even the sweet oranges were not taking it away.

Last night.… He couldn’t remember most of it. But he did know the nightmare had swooped down and scooped him up in its fist, had dropped him back into the desert, with the thirst. Marcus had not had a dream that intense for years.

But an angel had come and rescued him. She had looked like Avalon, she had untied the ropes that bound
him and offered him water, offered it freely, with no deceptive words to halt the flow of it, no tricks. And the nightmare had been banished after that.

This morning his first thoughts had been of her. His first instinct had been to find her, to see her, to spend time with her. And—a miracle—she had agreed to his hastily constructed plan. Fishing had been the only thing he could think of that would legitimately require him to go wake her up, because he simply couldn’t wait until breakfast before looking upon her. Magical Avalon.

She walked beside him now, unaware of the havoc she was wreaking upon his every hour. She had trusted him enough to follow him, and surely that was a most excellent sign.

They had to be nearly at the stream. Either that, or they were lost. Marcus wasn’t sure which it was.

But no, he heard the water now, still a sound that brought a thrill to his veins after long years of being where water was always scarce, and streams practically nonexistent.

Now the path was evident to him, even though it was so overgrown it could easily have been missed. He felt a lightening of his spirit as they traced the old, familiar route, Avalon here with him, quiet but not somber, just thoughtful, as she usually was.

“Over here,” he said, breaking into her thoughts, pointing to a secluded hollow, a nest of soft moss and grass surrounded by pines, the stream lapping at the rocks on its banks.

He held back the branches for her, allowing her to go first, then followed, and the branches snapped back, obscuring them from view.

Avalon stood in the center of the moss, looking around.

“I don’t believe,” she said, “you will find a fish as big as even my hand, much less the size of a whole man, in this creek.”

“Who knows?” Marcus began to set down his rod, the basket of food, the blanket he carried. “It’s said that still waters may be very deep.”

She walked over to the stream, looked down at its mirrored surface, smooth here in the elbow next to the hollow, more rapid farther out.

“It’s very pretty,” she admitted.

Marcus felt a flush of gladness at her words; a casual compliment, true, but still the first he had ever had from her.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said.

The blanket was hardly needed; the moss was dry, the stones were not sharp, but he spread it out anyway near the water’s edge, then brought out the basket that held their breakfast.

She watched him unpack the food from her perch on the creekside. He was meticulous and neat, setting everything out in a certain order. Avalon could not help but admire the way he moved, the way the light flattered him. The way his eyes picked up the hue of the sky. The way the tartan looked on him.

She caught herself with a mental shake, then went back to gazing out at the water. Yes, he was handsome. That was a fact she must learn to accept. He did not fit the mold her imagination had cast him in years back. Marcus himself had shattered that concept right away, and from there only rebuilt the image, improving
it, making it shine in her mind until it blinded all else. But there was so much more to him than just his physical attractiveness.

He had spirit, depth. And now she knew, whether she wanted to or not, that he had a soul. That this soul had been through great pain, and this survival of the spirit had shaped in the man the most appealing aspect of all. He had been wounded, and he had recovered. There was compassion in him, something so lacking in his father. Even the snake in him was the result of compassion gone awry. It was a bittersweet, noble trait.

Marcus glanced up and caught her looking sideways and back at him, lost in her own thoughts. He stood.

“Would you like a tart?”

“Thank you.” She took it out of habit, reacting to his polite tone with her own mannerly response, and for a moment felt silly doing it. But when their fingers brushed he grinned at her, boyish and open, and she had to smile back.

The water moving over the river stones made a pleasant sound, mingling with the occasional song of a bird.

They ate in silence, both standing, facing the water. When he was done Marcus went back and took up one of the rods, then found the bait he had brought for it. Avalon examined it curiously.

“Feathers? You think to catch fish with a bit of feathers and string?”

He didn’t look up from his work, hooking the strange item securely on the line.

“I told you we would be tickling the fish, my lady.”

When he was done with both lines they cast out. The
swell of the current caught the lines and dragged them downstream, masking them with glittering sunlight.

She didn’t know how long they stood there, and then sat on the blanket, each quiet. But as the sun climbed higher, turning the sky to its brilliant azure, at last she had to ask him a question.

“My lord?”

“Marcus,” he corrected.

Avalon watched a dragonfly skim the steady surface of the creek, soon joined by another in a weaving dance.

“Marcus. I wonder if you know what has become of a woman of your clan. Her name was Zeva.”

“Zeva.” He closed his eyes, remembering. “She was my father’s chatelaine, wasn’t she?”

“She kept house at the village where I stayed.”

“I believe she died about three years ago. That was what I heard.”

“Oh.” Avalon fought to curb the disappointment at his words, even though the answer was what she had expected. If Zeva had lived, she would have come forward by now.

“Why?” Marcus asked her.

She gave a halfhearted shrug. “I just wondered. She was my friend.”

He gave her a sharp look. “I can find out the details, should you like.”

“No, thank you. I know enough.”

Too much death. Why was it that all of her childhood was tainted with death, and everyone who had mattered to her was dead? Yet she still lived, much like Luedella had, an outcast in her own way, not fitting in anywhere.

The day had lost some of its sparkle, even though the
hollow was just as pretty as it had been before. Avalon reached into the folds of the tartan at her waist and withdrew Hanoch’s note.

“I found something written in your father’s hand last night,” she said, staring down at it. Marcus’s attention had not wavered from her, but now she felt it focus even more keenly, a close scrutiny. The paper was dry and old between her fingers, folded in half now to hide the damning words. Without looking at him she held it out, allowing him to take it.

He read it quickly, once, then again.

“Bryce,” he said, and there was wrath in his tone.

“I think so,” she replied. “The woman I was visiting that night at the inn at Trayleigh, she told me the same thing. That Bryce had bought the Picts.”