Page 35

T wenty-nine

C HASE TIGHTENED HIS arms around the warm body curved against his. This was the way he wanted to start every morning for the rest of his life.

Morning? His eyes popped open to confirm what his brain already knew. The beginnings of a new day edged the shutters in hazy purple.

“Shit,” he grumbled, sliding his arm out from underneath his sleeping beauty.

Arm retrieved, he bent his head to nibble on her earlobe, instantly realizing the error of his ways as his body jumped to life. There were so many things he wanted to do at this moment.

One, really. One thing he wanted to do at this moment. But time was not his ally today.

“Wake up, Christy. We have to get out of here. We have a big day ahead of us.”

A very big day, though between all the sharing and . . . well, sharing they’d done last night, he still hadn’t broken the really important news to her this morning.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” he encouraged, sweeping the curtain of dark hair from her face. “We’ve got to get you back to your tower before the Tinklers get there.”

“What?” Christiana rolled to her back, her eyes tightly shut. “My mind is too heavy with the need for sleep. I canna . . .”

He jostled her shoulder as her words trailed off. “Up. Now. I know you’re exhausted, but we have to get out of here.”

“Out of here?” She focused on him through narrowly squinted eyes, blinking as her wits came to her. “We’re in the keep? Oh, fie, how did we let this happen?”

“I think we both have a pretty good idea of how it happened.” He dropped a quick kiss on her forehead as he rolled over her and hit the cold stone floor with his feet.

“What did you say about Tinklers?” She’d pushed up on one elbow, clutching the blanket to her breasts.

He spared a thought to forgetting everything in favor of returning to her bed, but good sense prevailed. It was his only choice if he wanted to make sure waking up with her in his arms was to be more than a onetime thing.

And that was exactly what he wanted.

“Hall and I made arrangements with them to get Bridget away from Tordenet. When they come for her, you’re going with them.”

“I’ve no seen that on any of Skuld’s paths.”

“Then Skuld needs to get herself some new paths, because this is the way we’re handling it. My mind’s made up. You’re leaving this place this very morning. With the Tinklers. It’ll be a twofer when they deliver Bridget back to Malcolm’s protection.”

“I dinna think what you plan is possible, Chase. That’s no the way of it.

” She tipped her head to the side, reminding him of a teacher lecturing a disappointing student.

“The Norns weave the tapestry of our lives. Skuld may well offer choices, but only those she’s already woven for us, no the ones we make up for ourselves. ”

“Is that so?” he asked, pulling open the curtains on all sides of the bed to allow the morning’s light to reach her.

He didn’t have time for the luxury of this debate.

The purple haze peeking around the shutters had already lightened to a battleship gray.

“Then that must be one crazy-ass tapestry your Norns are weaving, what with your Faerie friend popping me out of the twenty-first century to drop me here.”

She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, obviously struggling with some internal debate.

“No,” she said at last. “It is what it is. We’ve none of us a way around it. Neither god nor Mortal is exempt from the work of the Norns.”

“Okay then, no problem. Since we’re neither god nor Mortal, but Faerie.” He reached for her hand and pulled her from the bed, not letting go until her feet were on the floor. “Let me ask you a question. Did you see this happening between us in any of your visions?”

“No,” she said quietly.

“Well, I saw it. From the moment I met you, I knew we would be together. It’s my path.

Now quit arguing with me and get dressed.

The way I see it, it’s probably best if we aren’t spotted coming out of the garden together.

So you can go back the way we came, and I’ll go out the regular way, through the door. ”

Confined spaces were not his preference. Not when they could be avoided.

“The garden’s no the place for me, either, this time of morning. I’ll use a different exit from the passageways. Through the kitchen’s storage rooms would likely be best, once the cooks have had time to finish collecting what they need to prepare for their day.”

“As long as you hurry. We don’t want you missing your ride. You be careful, okay?”

He grinned at her and started for the door, turning back after only a few steps to take her in his arms for a proper parting kiss. She molded to him, her lips every bit as wonderful this morning as they had been the night before.

At last he pulled away from her to say good-bye. The words that popped out of his mouth surprised even him.

“I love you.”

Leaving her standing there, the blanket all that separated him from those enticing curves, was harder than almost anything he’d done before.

“Won’t be long,” he promised himself under his breath as he stepped into the hallway.

He loved her. Not just her body or having sex with her; he actually loved her .

Where that knowledge had come from or when it had penetrated his thick head, he had no idea.

But it was the absolute truth. He’d never been one to say a thing he didn’t mean, and to his core he knew that he’d never meant anything more than those words he’d just uttered.

He loved her. And thanks to the Faeries, he would get to spend the rest of his life with her.

Visions of her popping into the kitchen out of some mystery hole in a storage closet filled his thoughts as he made his way through the back halls and down the stairs, until he stood on the bottom step in the main entry hall of Tordenet.

“Here, now! Where do you think yer going?” Cook stood in the entryway to the great hall, a cloth-covered basket on her hip. “What are you doing here at this hour?”

“Kitchen,” Chase blurted out, the first word that came into his mind upon seeing the cook. “I’m starving this morning.” Not too far off the mark, come to think of it.

“Get back to yer kitchens, Cook. I’ll see to him.

” Ulfr descended the staircase at the back of the hallway, his arm around a smaller figure whose features remained hidden in the recesses of a heavy cloak.

“And as for you, Noble, you’ll wait for the morning meal like everyone else.

Or in yer case, you’ll eat what’s in yer pack as you ride. ”

Chase dipped his head respectfully, grateful he’d made it this far unnoticed, considering how many people apparently wandered the halls at this hour.

“Whatever you say, Captain. But it’s a damn shame a man can’t find some bread or fruit or something fit to put in his belly around here.”

His stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly. He really was hungry, having missed his evening meal in favor of something much more appealing.

“It’s yer arse, no yer belly, what will get the workout this day.

Even now Artur assembles the men to accompany us to the Sinclair.

So be off with you. It’s time you were readying yer mount for the ride.

We leave as soon as I see this one home.

” Ulfr growled the last, shoving his companion ahead of him.

The woman gasped as a cold burst of wind buffeted her at the open doorway, tossing the hood of her cloak back.

Chase recognized her as one of the servers he’d seen in the great hall at mealtime, a small, dark-haired woman who, from the back, he’d more than once confused with Christiana.

No confusing her now, not with her eyes swollen shut and blood oozing from the cuts to her lower lip.

“What happened to you?”

“Best you move along and forget what you’ve seen here,” Ulfr warned quietly, pulling the hood back up over the woman’s head. “This concerns none but our laird.”

Torquil had done that to her?

Walking back to the barracks, Chase sent a silent thanks to the Fae that he’d soon have Christiana out of this place, even as his mind scrambled to figure out some way to make the beast who ruled this castle pay for what he’d done to that poor woman.

H E’D SAID HE loved her.

Christiana bent to the floor to retrieve her chemise and dropped it over her head.

I love you. He’d said those very words not five minutes past.

Neither her physical exhaustion nor her concern over Chase’s obvious lack of belief in the power of the Norns could steal this joy from her. She wouldn’t allow it.

Instead, she’d consider how to keep him safe in spite of his erroneous belief that he could control what was to come. The future was woven and could not be undone. She was confident in that knowledge, though the memory of the gaping hole she’d seen in the distance did trouble her a little.

What if, as Chase claimed, the Faerie’s interference had changed everything?

“No,” she whispered aloud, crossing the room to pick up her overdress.

She couldn’t lose faith now. It was much more likely that the alternative Chase had devised was waiting there in Skuld’s world, a path already woven, simply obscured by the Mysts.

With a sharp snap of the cloth, she shook the overdress in an effort to eliminate a few of the wrinkles caused by the garment’s lying in a crumpled heap upon the floor.

“Worth every wrinkle,” she murmured, a smile returning to her lips.

She would not waste her energy on this worry. It could all be resolved easily enough when next she traveled to Skuld’s world.

A glance at the deep gray light around the shutters assured her the morning’s sun hadn’t yet pushed its way above the horizon.

Even now the cook’s helpers would be buzzing about the storage rooms, like bees at a hive, gathering all the ingredients for the morning meal.

She had a good half hour or more before she could slip unseen through that exit.

Plenty of time to spread the blanket back over the bed so it wouldn’t be obvious anyone had been here. Plenty of time to lie down for a moment or two, just to rest her eyes while she held to her breast the pillow that still carried Chase’s scent.