Claire Delacroix (32 page)

What if the rest of the prophecy was true? Aurelia blinked in astonishment.

Could Baird be her one true love?

Aurelia pulled back and eyed at the sodden mess she had made of Baird’s plaid chemise, well aware of his gaze fixed upon her. Her heart skipped a beat. “I have ruined your chemise,” she tried to jest.

He pretended to examine the dampness, then flicked a twinkling glance to her. “I’m not made of sugar - I won’t melt.”

The sparkle in his eye was nearly her undoing and Aurelia caught her breath. She dropped her gaze and saw that her hand had somehow been captured by his own.

He stroked his thumb across the back of her hand as though he was unaware of the caress he made. “Better?” he asked, his voice a soft rumble in her ear.

Aurelia tingled from head to toe. She blinked the last of her tears back and nodded vigorously, not trusting herself to speak.

It was not enough for her companion. Gentle fingers tipped up her chin until she was forced to meet the compassion in his eyes. “I understand that it must be hard to lose your father.”

If he was not Bard, then his father had not been Erc, and his father had not been drowned leaving Dunhelm. When Aurelia stripped away all of her assumptions, she realized that she knew very little about the man before her.

“You said you never had a father.”

Baird shook his head, his gaze flicking away for only a moment. “But I always imagined what it would be like to have one.” His thumb moved across her hand once more and his smile was thin. “Kids have such active imaginations.”

And Aurelia caught a glimpse of pain in his eyes.

“You must have been very close to your father to be so affected by losing him,” he said quickly.

Aurelia’s gaze misted with tears again. “I was.” Her voice broke. “Oh, yes, I was.” A lone tear fell and splashed against his hand. “We had only each other after my mother and brother died.”

Baird touched her cheek. “It’s all right if you need to cry.”

“No.” Aurelia straightened and wiped away an errant tear. She eyed her companion, seizing on the tale of his own misfortune to forget her own. “If you had no sire, then you must have known your mother?”

Baird’s expression turned sad and his voice hardened. “No. Neither of them stayed around any longer than they needed to.” He flicked a bright glance to her, then his gaze skittered away. “Apparently, she didn’t even know his name.”

“And you did not ask her?”

Baird shrugged with indifference, though Aurelia knew he cared deeply about this matter. “I never knew her. She delivered me, then left the hospital without a word. They tried to hunt her down to have her sign the forms. I sure as hell wasn’t going to go looking for her.”

“She abandoned you!”

Baird’s green eyes were sober. “That’s one way of putting it.”

Aurelia was outraged that any woman would treat her child so poorly. “Then who saw you raised?”

His lips twisted. “The good state of New Mexico.”

“A state cannot raise a child!”

“A state has no choice when the mother has not released her child for adoption.” His expression turned grim. “It’s the law.”

“Well, it certainly is a poor one. You should demand the king change it.”

“Well,” Baird shrugged again. “They had lots of foster parents to take me in. I went from one to the next and the next.”

Fourteen foster parents he had claimed the other day. This was unheard of! “Did none of them permit you to stay? Were you not entrusted to their care?”

“Oh, they were good to me in their own way.” He looked to their entangled hands. “But most of them wanted to foster a child they could ultimately adopt and that wasn’t me.” He grimaced. “Courtesy of my mother.”

“Your dame served you poorly,” Aurelia said tightly. “And your sire no better. You should hunt them down and force a reckoning for their misdeeds.”

Baird’s gaze blazed into hers for a long moment and Aurelia could not draw a breath into her lungs.

Then he pushed to his feet and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Well, I turned out all right, I guess, so it’s all water under the bridge.” He shrugged. “Being alone isn’t so bad. You get used to it after a while.”

It was so obviously a lie he made to himself that Aurelia did not know what to say.

Baird cleared his throat and Aurelia guessed that he was not a man who easily talked of matters so close to the heart. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.” He turned and might have left, but Aurelia bounced to her feet. She felt even more guilty about how poorly she had treated him after hearing this tale.

“Wait!”

Baird pivoted slowly and Aurelia suddenly felt very nervous.

“I owe you an apology,” she admitted softly, holding up her hand when he might have interrupted her. “I have had harsh words - and even harsher thoughts - for you when you did not deserve them.”

Baird said nothing.

Aurelia took a deep shuddering breath and forced herself to continue, though it was not easy. “My only excuse is that I believed you to be another man, a man who committed grave wrongs against my family.”

Baird arched a dark brow. “The notorious Bard, son of Erc the Destroyer.”

Aurelia sighed and rubbed her temple. “Yes. You must understand that he is most evil, and when I though you were he, I - I...”

Her words faltered, but Baird stepped back to her side. “It’s all right. It was an honest mistake.” The heat of his finger landed against her lips. “You don’t have to say any more.”

Indeed, what she desired needed no words. And if he was not Bard, son of Erc, then there was no reason to deny this man’s powerful effect upon her.

This was the man who had awakened her.

This was the man destined to take her to wife. He had come for her exactly as had been decreed. Aurelia felt as though she was seeing the man before her clearly for the first time.

Baird might not be a warrior in the way Aurelia knew, but he was a man she was proud to take to husband all the same. He was honorable and clever, gallant to a fault, both tender and strong. He made her laugh and held her when she cried, she felt safe in his presence and cherished beneath his caress.

Her father would have liked him well. Confronted with her destiny and finding naught to protest, Aurelia stretched to her toes and kissed Baird Beauforte full on the lips.

* * *

Chapter Twenty

Baird awakened to the sound of rain drumming against the window. He tucked a dozing Aurelia tighter against his side and watched the dark clouds roll across the horizon.

All was right in his world. Not only had he found Aurelia, not only had he proven himself to her, but she had somehow surmounted her fears and faced the reality of her father’s demise. Her protective illusions had fallen away like scales from her eyes and she was whole and healthy again.

Everything was going to be fine.

He still couldn’t explain the weird dreams that had plagued him since coming to Dunhelm, but it didn’t matter any more. Baird only knew that he felt more complete than he ever had before.

And this was just the beginning.

The old king’s love from Baird’s last dream resonated in his heart. Baird had never experienced love like that, but now he had a benchmark to measure his own feelings against. So, the dream had helped him, really. This was all new ground to him, but for Aurelia’s sake, Baird was going to give it his best shot.

He knew somehow that Aurelia was the woman for him - a woman with so many intriguing puzzles he would never figure her out completely - and if nothing else, Baird was learning to listen to those weird gut instincts.

He bent and brushed his lips across Aurelia’s forehead, smiling as her eyelids fluttered open. Her small hand landed on his chest in a proprietary way that filled his heart to bursting.

“Sleep well?” he asked, letting his thumb caress the soft sweep of her shoulder.

“Mmm,” Aurelia nestled against him. “But I’m hungry.”

Baird laughed out loud. “It figures, princess.”

She looked up at him with twinkling eyes. “I like how young you look when you laugh.”

“Will you give it a rest? I’m not that old!”

A wicked glint lit her sapphire eyes. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-four.”

Aurelia waved off this confession. “A mere babe.”

The comment piqued Baird’s curiosity because he was sure she was younger than him. “And how old are you?”

“What year is it again?” When Baird told her, Aurelia made a great show of counting it out on her fingers. “By nearest reckoning, eleven hundred and ninety-eight.”

Baird blinked, but Aurelia wasn’t joking.

His heart sank to his toes. She was supposed to be over all of that! Baird’s vision of a glowing future disappeared in a puff of smoke.

She couldn’t still be nuts.

Baird swallowed his trepidation, rolled to brace himself over Aurelia and cupped her shoulders in his hands, carefully choosing his words. “Princess, I thought you understood that your father is dead,” he said gently.

She smiled. “I do.”

Baird was encouraged. “Then, you don’t have to pretend to be someone out of a history book any more. Right?”

“There is no need to pretend anything. I now know the truth.”

“Great. Do you know who you are?”

Aurelia snorted. “I always knew who I was. I am the Princess Aurelia, daughter of Hekod the Fifth, King of Dunhelm and Lord of Fyordskar over the sea.”

Baird blinked. “But...”

Aurelia interrupted him cheerfully. “But what I did not know was that the prophecy of my birth - one which I always believed to be nonsense - has come true.” Aurelia offered her thumb as proof. “I did indeed prick my thumb in the middle of the whorl and I did indeed sleep until my true love - you - awakened me.”

Baird took a deep breath. “Princess, you can’t be twelve hundred years old.” He borrowed Julian’s comment, but left out the sarcasm. “You would be very dead by now.”

Aurelia arched a skeptical brow. “Do I look dead to you?” Baird could only shake his head. Her eyes darkened and she rolled her hips mischievously beneath him. “And do I feel dead, Baird Beauforte?”

Baird bounced out of bed, not trusting his body to remain impartial in this debate, and shoved a hand through his hair. “Aurelia! This is serious!”

“And I am serious, make no mistake.”

She was.

Baird swallowed. “Are you saying that you really are Ursilla’s story, after all?”

“Of course not!” Aurelia propped herself up on her elbows, her golden hair tumbling across the pillows. To his amazement, her gaze was perfectly clear.

She was convinced of her thinking, even if he wasn’t.

“My tale must have been the inspiration for Ursilla’s story.” Her lips twisted. “Trust me, there were none who ever called me Gemdelovely Gemdelee and lived to tell of it. What a woeful excuse for a name!” She rolled her eyes, but Baird didn’t share her amusement.

He frowned at his toes, unsure how to proceed.

“You came to me! You are the one,” Aurelia insisted in a weird echo of Luan’s certainty. “You are the one who came to awaken me. It’s all true. Can you not see? It makes perfect sense!”

“Not to me,” Baird said stubbornly. “It doesn’t make any damn sense at all.”

“Baird, you must face the truth. We are destined to be together, just as in Ursilla’s tale. You have come and awakened me from a long slumber and now our fates are tied together.”

“Aurelia, that doesn’t make any sense. That’s crazy talk.”

“I am not crazy.”

“Right.” Baird heard the undercurrent of panic in his own voice. A part of him found her argument dangerously seductive, but Baird wasn’t going to listen to that.

Oh, he could pick ‘em, that was for sure.

He jabbed a finger through the air at her. “If you’re twelve hundred years old, then how can you speak and understand plain old English? Nobody spoke that here then.”

She couldn’t refute that!

But Aurelia did.

“I have the gift of tongues,” she asserted without hesitation. She folded her arms across her chest and tossed her hair. “Once I heard you and Julian talk, I could understand and converse in your tongue.”

“Well, that’s handy if you’re going to sleep for ten or twelve centuries!” Baird shoved a hand through his hair. “Aurelia, listen to what you’re saying!”

His voice hardened with determination. “Do you not remember that I spoke to you in the Pictish tongue first? Then I tried Gaelic and Briton and finally Latin, but to no avail.”

She smiled, obviously to reassure him. His gut urged him to believe her - which make Baird just as crazy as Aurelia was.

It was time to get the hell out of here.

Baird snatched up his jeans and fought to get into them as he backed away from the bed. “Look, maybe we can get you some help around here. We’ll find someone you can talk to about losing your father. It could straighten things out in your mind.”

Baird stuffed his arms into his shirt and made for the door.

Aurelia’s words, so low with disappointment, brought him to a halt. “You do not believe me.”

Baird sighed. He turned back to face her, not liking that he was responsible for the disappointment in her eyes.

But he couldn’t lie to her. “Would you believe me if this was the other way around?”

Aurelia frowned thoughtfully. “No,” she admitted softly, then chewed her lip as she studied him. “How could I prove this to you?”

“You can’t.” Baird heard his own frustration. “No one lives for twelve hundred years. It’s that simple.” Baird rubbed his temple and had no idea how to make all of this come right. “Look, Aurelia, I’ve got work to do. Can we talk about this later?”

Though what they would talk about, Baird had no idea. Her disappointment was tangible, but Baird determinedly marched out of the room.

A couple of hours wasn’t going to evict the last of Aurelia’s delusions. On the other hand, her strange conviction had done nothing to diminish Baird’s feelings for her. What could he do?

Believe that she had just had a twelve hundred year snooze?

Right.

* * *

Baird strode impatiently down the hall. Aurelia might turn him inside out, she might be sexy, funny and cute, smart as a whip, she might give him fantasies of a perfect future together unlike anything he’d ever imagined, but she was flat out nuts.