Draycott Eternal: What Dreams May ComeSeason of Wishes Page 7

  Ten minutes later, steam twisted around Gray’s head. Lulled by the warm water, she shifted idly, stirring the crystal waters and watching mist rise in frothy white plumes.

  For some reason the drifting shapes made her think of the moat, shimmering with heat beneath the noonday sun.

  Glowing silver beneath the rising moon.

  At midnight.

  Jerking up with a start, Gray seized a bar of hand-milled lavender soap and scrubbed her arms with a ferocity that bordered on pain.

  And still, the words lingered, haunting her.

  At midnight. By the witch’s pool…

  “I won’t go, do you hear?” Scowling, she rinsed off the white suds, wishing she could brush away the nagging voice with equal ease.

  If you dare.

  Muttering, Gray slid low in the heated water. Yes, let the bloody man wait in vain! She would just sit here and soak in sweet contented peace.

  She stifled a yawn. Plumes of steam drifted up, twisted, enveloped her.

  ONCE MORE THE BEACON FIRESwere lit.

  The Lady of Draycotte watched numbly, clutching her shawl closer about her shoulders while the wind keened across the half-finished south tower.

  Far below, dim laughter echoed up from the great hall, where her jailers sat to their ale, busy with belching and toasting.

  If only Draycotte’s lord would return! If only she could be wrapped in his strong arms once more, safe and secure.

  But he did not come. And here she remained, a prisoner surrounded by vengeful, cold-eyed spies.

  Without warning, the first pain came. Sudden and racking, it bent her over double, made her clutch blindly at her swollen belly.

  No, it could not be! Not so soon.

  But nature had different plans, it seemed. Another spasm ripped through her and she slid down along the granite wall, her lips locked against the pain.

  Something was wrong, very wrong. The child was not due for almost a month yet!

  Too late she remembered the broth they’d forced on her at dinner. It had tasted odd, heavy with herbs and something else that left a faint, metallic taste.

  Poison?

  Slowly she slid to her knees. A terrible roaring filled her head. Wildly she clutched at her middle, where already the first terrible convulsions had begun.

  She had promised him she would wait! She must be waiting for him when he returned.

  There by the silver-black glade when he came riding across the lush green Draycotte fields.

  Tears wet her cheeks as she struggled to rise. Blindly, she felt for the wall’s reassuring bulk, even as her head throbbed with the malignant fury of a thousand war drums.

  And then, as if from a vast distance, she saw a blurring shadow detach from the ragged edge of the south tower.

  “Dear God, is that you, my love? Are you c-come back to me at last?”

  But the torchlight danced lower, playing over flat, sullen eyes. Over thin, cruel lips.

  Not the man she wished to see at all.

  “No!” she cried, inching back along the cold stone.

  The sullen eyes tightened; hard lips curved to an ugly smile. And the man in the darkness was still smiling as the Lady Anne fell senseless to the parapet’s cold granite floor.

  Except that Anne was not her real name, not to those who knew her best.

  Back in her native Brittany, where she’d spent twenty summers before being summoned to Draycotte, she was called Griza. Griza for the iron tones of the wintry seas she loved. Griza for her velvet eyes the color of a cooing dove.

  Griza.

  Gray.

  A BELL WAS CHIMING over the hills when Gray awoke.

  She shook her head, fighting her way up through angry dreams, feeling the clutch of terror and something else she ought to remember but could not.

  Wind rushed into the room playing through her unbound hair, sending steam up in ragged eddies. Goose bumps broke out on her chest, across her shoulders, along her neck, where it rose above the warm water.

  If you dare, Gray Mackenzie. The words echoed through her head.

  “Forget it! Just forget it!”

  Scowling, she sloshed from the tub and wrenched a towel embroidered with intertwined dragons around her trembling body.

  The room beyond was silent, just as it should have been. Yet when Gray looked at the great gilt mirror on the wall, she saw it wore a light haze of steam.

  And there in the mist hung a faint mark.

  The lush, perfect outline of a densely petaled rose.

  And beneath it hung three words, traced by the same phantom hand.

  If you dare.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FURY CRACKLED THROUGH HER.

  In its raw showering force Gray felt the long years of denial and regret burn away. Never again would she hide or give way to her fear. She would go or not go, but it would be by her choice and no one else’s!

  “Oh, yes, I dare! I dare, do you hear?”

  Damp towel clutched to her chest, she turned, searching for her robe, only to find it was no longer on the chair where she’d left it.

  Muttering furiously, she stalked to the mahogany dresser across from the bed and flung open the top drawer.

  Her eyes widened in disbelief.

  She opened drawer after drawer, all with the same result.

  Empty, absolutely empty. She hadn’t a stitch of clothing left! “You loathsome, despicable—”

  Only then did Gray notice that the French doors were open, their silken curtains fluttering in the breeze.

  And the door of the heavy oaken armoire was also ajar. Grabbing a chair and holding it before her, Gray stalked closer.

  “Come out, you miserable—”

  The door creaked open.

  But it was only a cat, slipping like a gray shadow across the polished floor.

  White with rage, Gray pounded to the armoire and flung open its doors.

  Inside hung a film of white lace.

  Film was the only word to describe the gown’s white froth, as thin and fine as thistledown.

  Low-necked and long-sleeved it hung, cut of alençon lace so sheer it might have been worked of faery webs. And at the bodice, caught between lacings of silk ribbon, hung a perfect centifolia rose.

  Without quite knowing why she did it, Gray ran her hands across the cloud-soft fabric, delighting in its exquisite textures. As she did, she had a sudden impression of a similar dress from an age long gone. A dress such as a great lady might have worn in the privacy of her chamber.

  To entrance and delight the man she loved.

  With a sigh, Gray closed her eyes, enveloped in a fantasy which quickly progressed to something more. Suddenly she was flooded with images so real that they verged on being memories.

  Memories of hard hands that loosed a filigree girdle and slipped a line of lacing free. Memories of calloused fingers that eased a froth of white lace over restless, heated skin.

  And then a woman’s breath hissing out in a sigh while she ran her fingers over taut male flesh.

  Gray froze.

  Dear God, it was her breath she heard. Her fingers she felt!

  White-faced, she stood before the armoire, her heart pounding at the savage force of the images exploding through her. And as Gray stared at the exquisite gown, she had a shattering vision of lovers from a distant age who met at midnight beneath a climbing rose.

  Lace parted over flushed skin. There in the quiet of midnight two dreamers strained close, twining urgent limbs and restless fingers as they pledged a love that could not die or ever be forgotten.

  A love to light the coldest night.

  A love that would last beyond the bounds of time or space or hope itself.

  With a choked cry Gray stumbled back from the armoire, staring at the white gown in shock and bewilderment. Her breath came wild and ragged as a thousand questions churned up inside her.

  But there was only one way she would have any answers. That was at the witch’s pool.

&nbs
p; At midnight.

  AS THE MOON ROSE over the dark, wooded hills a car glided from the highway and slipped along the narrow graveled drive that led to Draycott Abbey.

  It was a nondescript car, of no striking color or make. A car that moved slowly, careful not to invite attention or comment.

  Just like its driver.

  At the first turning the headlights dimmed. Carefully the car inched onto the grass and came to rest behind a copse of beech and oak.

  Abruptly the twin beams disappeared. Darkness closed over the landscape once more.

  Only now it was a restless, fitful thing.

  A BOAT WAS WAITING for Gray at the edge of the moat.

  The bloody man thought of everything, didn’t he?

  Frowning, she tugged her shawl about her shoulders, trying to cover the elegant wisp of lace that had been her only choice of clothing. But with every movement the sheer fabric clung and teased her skin, as light as a lover’s fingers, making it impossible to forget the sensual images that had flooded over her earlier that night.

  Images? Or were they memories?

  Memories of herself and a man with slate-gray eyes? A man she barely knew and certainly did not like?

  With fingers oddly unsteady, Gray untied the frayed rope and cast off in silence, feeling the night press wary and watchful around her.

  Almost as if it were waiting.

  Through the steam the boat glided, parting the strange shifting shapes that eddied upward as she passed.

  It was like entering another world, Gray thought, a world resembling the normal world but not quite the same.

  A world where magic lived and dreams were real.

  In silence she glided on, the only sound the faint splosh of her pole. And then the far bank was before her, and with it the narrow reeded channel that led to the pool.

  The witch’s pool.

  At midnight. If you dare.

  Gray’s lips tensed. Oh, yes, she dared! She only wished it hadn’t taken her this long in her life to realize it.

  As her foot touched the fern-soft shore, a bell began to chime, far away across the forested hills.

  Twelve times it rang, and then once more.

  Beyond a thick screen of reeds, Gray glimpsed the little glade that Marston had spoken of. And at its center, circled by yew, rowan and beech, heated water shone silver in the moonlight.

  But glade and pool were empty.

  Gray wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or irritated by that fact. What was she doing here, anyway? Especially dressed in this wretched, ridiculous, beautiful dress!

  She heard the step only an instant before he loomed up beside her, dressed all in black with a soft shirt that clung to his broad shoulders.

  For long, tense moments he did not move, his eyes probing her flushed face. “You came.” And then, simply, “I’m…glad.”

  “Of c-course I came!” Gray snapped. “How could I ignore such diabolical messages?”

  The next moment she bit back a cry. Looking down, she saw blood pool up on her fingers, where she clutched her forgotten rose.

  His rose.

  At her cry the wind seemed to swirl around her, shaking the rowan boughs and roiling the silver surface of the pool.

  She heard him smother an oath. “You’ve hurt yourself.” His voice was low, rough.

  Pure heat. Just like the hands that circled her wrist a second later.

  Before she could draw a ragged breath in protest, his lips covered her finger, tugging gently.

  Gray shivered, fighting his sensory onslaught. But even as she struggled, she had a vision of his lips sliding higher, foraging hungrily over a thousand aching pleasure points.

  “D-don’t!” she cried, jerking free and stumbling away from him.

  He did not seem to hear. His eyes glittered, lit with inner fires. Slowly his hand rose.

  Gray flinched as she watched the rock-hard arm ascend.

  Memories flooded over her, memories of Matt and all his twisted games, memories of the fear that she could never quite escape, even now.

  With a shriek, wind gusted through the glade, sending dead leaves and fallen twigs skittering up in a dark circle. With the whirling wind came a chill so fierce that it caught at Gray’s breath.

  And in its wake came a raw, inchoate anger. A black regret.

  A savage, wordless longing.

  Suddenly Gray saw that Adrian’s hand was stayed, his fingers rigid. Her eyes widened as she realized they were trembling slightly.

  “Don’t move, Gray Mackenzie.” His eyes narrowed, smoky with desire. Dark with unnameable secrets.

  Very gently, he reached past her and plucked a great white moth from her hair. The pale wings fluttered against his long fingers, open and closed, open and closed. Then the insect sailed back into the darkness.

  Adrian’s face hardened. “Next time you might not be so lucky. Did my warning mean nothing to you?”

  “I can take care of myself!”

  “Can you?” One black brow rose to a commanding point. “Are you so sure of that, Gray Mackenzie?”

  “Of course I am!” Gray glared up at his shadowed features.

  “I only wish I could say the same.” His voice was low, raw. “But when I’m near you as I am now, thinking is the very last thing on my mind.”

  Gray could only stare, her breath coming fast and jerky. A vein began to pulse at his forehead, and somehow she could not drag her eyes away from it.

  She wondered what it would feel like to touch that tiny throbbing inch of skin, to ease her lips close and touch his ragged pulse. To tease a moan from his hard, chiseled lips.

  Gasping, she forced down her unruly imagination and summoned up her anger instead. She pulled her shawl tighter across her lace-clad chest. “You broke into my room! You drew in my sketchbook!”

  “How do you know it was I?”

  For a moment, Gray faltered before his unblinking gaze. She had no proof, of course. But outside of Marston who else was at the abbey?

  “Did you view me at these infamies perhaps?”

  “Of course I didn’t. You’re far too clever for that.”

  “Ah, if you thought that, you’d be right, Gray Mackenzie. But come, name me my other sins. On your lips…” Adrian’s dark gaze fell to her trembling mouth. “On your lips, my sweet, they sound almost like virtues.”

  “I’m not your sweet!” Shoving her hands onto her hips, Gray called up her fury as armor against his caressing look. “And you—you took my clothes, you arrogant snake!”

  Adrian’s lips curved faintly. “They are merely hidden, I assure you. And that gown looks utterly ravishing, if I may say so.”

  “No, you may not say so! Who are you to leave me notes, to interrogate me? To meddle in my affairs?”

  The dark eyes glittered. “Affairs? Now there’s an interesting word.”

  Gray ignored his innuendo, ignored his mocking smile. Angrily, she seized a gossamer bit of lace at her hem. “And then you left me nothing to wear but this—this thing!”

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” His voice was dark and smooth as the night. “Especially with you filling it, my love.”

  As he spoke, a breeze tugged softly at Gray’s hair and brushed the fine lace until it clung to the aching swell of her breast and thigh.

  So sweet. So soft. Like a lover’s touch.

  Would his hands feel just as good?

  She shivered, fury forgotten as a new heat began to build inside her. A rich, insidious heat such as she hadn’t known for years.

  For centuries?

  “I’m not your love! I’m not your anything!”

  “Then why did you come?”

  Gray’s heart pounded wildly. “Because I had no choice. Not after all those sneaking messages you left me! And because I had something to tell you.” With trembling fingers, she clutched at her shawl, trying to quell the creeping heat that grew stronger every second. “S-stay out of my room, do you hear? Stay out of my sketchbook! Most of all, stay out o
f my life!”

  “What about your heart, Gray Mackenzie?”

  Gray’s breath caught at his dark, rough words. “What has my heart got to do with anything?”

  The black-clad figure before her did not move. His eyes were all smoke and heat. Dark with an infinity of need, they roamed her face, missing nothing of her trembling response. “Everything, I should imagine. Because I want you, Gray Mackenzie. I want you very badly.”

  His voice dropped to a husky, intimate whisper. “And tonight, stubborn one, tonight I’m going to have you.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  GRAY BLINKED, SUDDENLY DIZZY. Suddenly hungry.

  For things she could not even name.

  She stumbled backward, her hands tensed atop her heaving chest. “You’re—you’re crazy, do you know that?”

  “I’ve little doubt of it.” Adrian took a step closer.

  “Stay away from me.”

  His eyes glittered. He moved again.

  “Stop it! You don’t—you can’t possibly be serious about this!”

  “No? Why not, Gray Mackenzie?” His voice was dark, compelling. Utterly ruthless.

  Gray tugged desperately at her shawl. “Because you—you just can’t!”

  “Why not?” he repeated, softly this time.

  “Because—because you don’t know me. Not the slightest thing about me.”

  He was close enough to touch her now, but he did not. He only stared down at her, his eyes dark with the hunger of hundreds of wasted years.

  Thousands of lonely nights.

  “I know you’ve a temper to match that glorious auburn hair of yours. I know you snore quite impudently when you sleep.” He gave her the ghost of a smile. “Marriages have been built on less familiarity than that.”

  Mine certainly was, Gray thought bitterly.

  “So enlighten me, if you will. Why can’t I want you? Tell me all the reasons. Tell me that my pulse isn’t racing painfully right now. And that yours isn’t racing just the same,” he added huskily.

  Gray swallowed, fighting for control. “Because you—you just can’t!”

  His eyes never left her face, harsh with need and something else Gray couldn’t quite make out. “Why? The truth, remember?”