Knights (34 page)

“Yes,” Dane replied after a moment’s hesitation. “For if I said no, you would surely set out on your own.”

Gloriana offered her husband a feeble smile. She was in the tower room with Kenbrook standing before her, solid and real. She could kiss him if she wanted,
touch him whenever she chose, pick an argument just to hear his voice. How foolish to waste even a moment dreading things that might never occur.

“You are right, my lord,” she said, mocking him in dulcet tones, making a little curtsy. “I shall visit the lady Elaina whether you attend me or not. How discerning of you to know that without prompting.”

Dane rolled his eyes and gestured toward the doors, which Maxen and the others had left agape. Grabbing up a cloak, Gloriana led the way over the threshold.

Kenbrook’s horse, Peleus, was tethered in the courtyard. Dane saddled the beast, while Gloriana watched, then he mounted and bent to hand her up behind him. A moment later, they were clattering over the cobblestones toward the gate.

Clinging to Dane, Gloriana assessed the landscape or what she could see of it in the light of the trifling moon. How odd it was to think that there was not just one Kenbrook Hall, or one Hadleigh Castle, but many—perhaps an uncountable number—laid one on top of the other like layers of parchment. Perhaps each new moment was a world in its own right, separate and whole.

It was past comprehending.

Full darkness had fallen by the time they reached the abbey wall, and there were few lamps burning inside, for the good sisters retired early and rose before the birds to make their prayers. Still, when Dane called out, the hinges of the great gate creaked, and they were admitted.

Sister Margaret stood in the courtyard, clad as always in a rough gown and plain slippers. Her hair was covered by a wimple, her face upturned in curiosity. “Where is Elaina?” Dane asked, dismounting and lifting Gloriana down after him. Although the mistress
of Kenbrook Hall had worn a hooded cloak on the short journey, she made no effort to disguise her identity from the abbess. The woman was shrewd, and any attempt to deceive her would surely prove fruitless.

Sister Margaret’s hands were folded modestly in front of her, and she inclined her head to acknowledge Gloriana before replying to Dane’s question. “She lies abed, and dying.”

Gloriana had visited Elaina many times over the years, of course, and she needed no direction. She simply set off for the walled garden, for Elaina’s tiny cell of a chamber opened onto it. Dane, leaving Peleus with his reins dangling, followed her.

They found the lady Elaina lying on a narrow cot beneath an uncovered window. One candle flickered on a table, sending shards of moving light over her unbound hair, which trailed over the blankets to her feet. She stared forlornly at the ceiling, her hands folded upon her chest as if she’d been laid out for burial.

One nun kept a vigil, seated on a three-legged stool beside the bed and offering a litany for the salvation of her ladyship’s soul. At a nod from Sister Margaret, the younger woman rose and slipped out.

“And yet I was not summoned!” Dane charged, moving to Elaina’s side, crouching on the cold stone to look into that still face. “This woman is my brother’s widow and thus my charge.”

“What could you have done?” the elderly nun responded calmly.

Dane’s eyes were fierce as he looked back at the abbess, the fingers of his right hand intertwined with Elaina’s limp ones. “I might have made my peace, madam.” He turned his attention again to the unmoving form upon the bed—an aging but still beautiful
fairy-tale princess under an evil spell. “I might have told my lady sister I was sorry for so very many things I did and did not do.”

“I trust my lady knows that yours is a repentant heart,” Sister Margaret said peacefully, and turned to leave Dane and Gloriana alone with Elaina in that humblest of cells.

Gloriana took the stool, drawing it up close, laying a gentle hand to Elaina’s forehead. Her flesh felt cool, like wax. “Oh, Elaina,” she whispered. “Must you leave this life so soon?”

Dane got to his feet and went to stand at the window. He did not speak, but there was no need of that, for Gloriana knew perfectly well what he was thinking—he blamed himself, however indirect his guilt might be, for this decline of Elaina’s. If not for Edward’s death and the grief that had weakened Gareth in the face of an illness …

Elaina stirred slightly and then opened her eyes. Gloriana leaned close, but she was not heartened, for she knew too well that the dying often rally briefly just before they pass over. She had seen the phenomenon before when dear Edwenna had succumbed to the fever.

“Dane!” Gloriana whispered.

An almost translucent light shone in Elaina’s exquisite face. She groped for Gloriana’s hand, and her fingers tightened around it with surprising strength.

“Gareth—is dead,” she said.

Gloriana nodded, willing herself not to weep. “Yes, dearest, I know.”

“You—could change everything—bring my husband back—and poor Edward—”

A chill spun itself along the length of Gloriana’s spine. She did not say such things weren’t possible,
did not dare to look at Dane. It still stung, the knowledge that she had not been able to return to the thirteenth century in time to avert Edward’s death, if not Gareth’s.

Elaina’s strange, bright gaze groped for and finally grasped Kenbrook, who had moved away from the window. He stood just behind Gloriana now, so close that she could feel the warmth and substance of him.

“Dane,” Elaina said softly, slowly, measuring her words out one precious breath at a time. “Did Gareth tell you the truth, before—before he died? That you are indeed the rightful heir to Hadleigh Castle, despite your bastardy?”

Gloriana was stunned, but Dane’s voice was quiet and even when he responded. “Yes, milady—he told me long ago, on the day I was knighted.”

Elaina lay silent for a while and very still. Her thin eyelids fluttered against her cheeks, and it was plain that she was gathering her strength.

“Forgive me,” Dane said. He bent and placed the lightest of kisses upon the lady’s alabaster forehead.

“There is naught to acquit you of,” Elaina said, without opening her eyes. “Go now, in peace, I pray you, that I might bid Gloriana a private farewell.”

Gloriana held tightly to her friend’s hand, raised it to her face, and rested her forehead against those fragile knuckles, no longer able to hold her tears in check. Dane touched Gloriana’s shoulder, then moved away, closing the door of the minuscule chamber softly behind him.

Elaina immediately opened her eyes, and her voice, while reedy and thin, was at the same time steadfast. “Hear me well, Gloriana,” she said. “It is vital that you heed what I tell you now.”

Gloriana raised her tear-streaked face in surprise and waited, speechless, for the other woman to go on.

Lady Hadleigh echoed Dane’s plea of a few minutes before. “Forgive me,” she said, with effort. “I might have shared your burden—I never told you—” When she paused, Gloriana gave her a sip of water from the wooden cup on the windowsill above the cot. “I knew the truth of what happened to you, Gloriana, though I think you forgot over the years that I was there when you crossed over. It was I who summoned you here.”

Gloriana was nearly as dry-throated as Elaina had been, so great was her shock. It was not the fact of Elaina’s presence that surprised her, for she vaguely recalled that, despite Edwenna’s assiduous efforts to make her forget. No, it was the lady’s confession that she had not only led Gloriana through the fated gate, but beckoned her to it in the first place.

“How could this be?”

Elaina’s smile was fleeting and ethereal. “I practiced the old religion,” she said. “Ah—you are my witness! Lightning did not strike me for my blasphemous words—nor did the roof crumble over our heads. I have always had powers, Gloriana, far beyond those people spoke of, and I took up the practice of magic when I was but a child.” She stopped and took a few more sips of water from the cup Gloriana held to her lips. “Good magic—it was always good magic—but of course it had to be a secret.”

“Did Gareth know?”

Sadness moved like a shadow in Elaina’s gleaming eyes. “It was one of the reasons why he put me from him. He never understood.”

“You said you summoned me here. What did you mean?”

“I saw your world, as if through a thin curtain. I
always have. Then I began to see you, specifically, in my dreams. You were such an unhappy child, yet so beautiful and so brilliant. Then, one day, there you were, on the other side of the gate, apart from the other children and clutching your little doll as though it were your only friend. You seemed too full of sorrows, for one so small. So I called to you and held out my hand. When you heard me, saw me, I knew you were capable of crossing over. You were so wretchedly sad in that other place, so alone. I wanted you for my own—I had never given Gareth a child—but I knew even then that I could not keep you. My husband had already spread the word that I was mad, to keep me from those who claimed I was the mistress of Satan.”

Gloriana shivered. She remembered that sunny twentieth-century afternoon, remembered it clearly. She had come to Kenbrook Hall with a group of other children, from Briarwood School, where her battling parents had left her, and she had known Mommy and Daddy weren’t coming back for her ever, that they neither loved nor wanted her.

“So you gave me to Edwenna to raise.”

Elaina nodded. “Yes. She was a good woman, the wool merchant’s wife, with the means to care for you properly. I knew she would love you without reservation.”

Gloriana bit her lower lip. She still grieved for her foster mother, longing for Edwenna’s humor and uncomplicated affection, her unwavering devotion and infinite patience. “I do not wish to go back to that other world, ever,” she said.

“But you must,” Elaina said. “It is fated.”

After suppressing an urge to put her hands over her ears, Gloriana shook her head. “I cannot—will not
leave my husband—my heart’s home is with him. Besides, I am with child.”

“More is required of you, Gloriana.”

“No,” Gloriana protested, rising awkwardly, upsetting the stool in her distress. “No—I can do nothing more—”

“It is decided,” Elaina said, and it seemed to Gloriana that Lady Hadleigh had grown smaller somehow in those few minutes since Sister Margaret had ushered them to the door of this room. “You returned too late. You must go back, and try again.”

Gloriana was not only upset, she was baffled. It wasn’t as if she could travel back and forth through time at will, after all. Not consciously, at least. She had been desperate to come home to Dane and the thirteenth century, but in the end it had happened accidentally. Before she could voice any further misgivings, Elaina sighed, like a child settling into a warm bed to sleep.

“You will be called back to your own time,” she said, her eyes closing, her voice dreamlike, growing fainter, more whispery, with every word.

Gloriana went to the door and called softly to Dane, and when he came in with Sister Margaret and the three of them had stationed themselves about Elaina’s bed, Lady Hadleigh sighed again, very deeply, and died.

Sister Margaret covered the white, peaceful face with a thin coverlet, then slipped out of the room. Gloriana turned and flung herself into Dane’s arms, and he held her until her trembling had ceased. Then, grimly, they went out.

After services that would be held in the private chapel at Hadleigh Castle on the morrow or that of the day to follow, Elaina would be buried beside her
husband. In the meantime, she belonged there in the abbey, where she had lived out the last days of her life.

Dane led Gloriana to Peleus, who waited patiently in the main courtyard, and lifted her into the saddle before mounting behind her. The ride to Kenbrook Hall was passed in a daze, and when they reached the tower room, Dane awakened Judith and sent her out to sleep in the passage.

She went without protest—indeed it would not have occurred to her to argue—carrying her bundle of woolen blankets with her.

When she was gone, Dane and Gloriana lay down on the bed together in all their clothes and held each other close. They were silent for a long time, and then Gloriana spoke.

“You are truly the heir to Hadleigh Castle, as well as Kenbrook Hall?”

Dane let out a long, raspy breath and tightened his arm around her, as if he feared she might slip away.

“Yes,” he said.

“And Gareth was your father, not your brother?”

Dane sounded weary. “Yes,” he repeated. “My mother was fifteen, and a delicate girl. She perished in childbirth, as many women do.” He held Gloriana a little closer, no doubt thinking of their own babe, nestled within her, and all the perils inherent in bearing a child.

“But why was it a secret—that Gareth sired you?”

“My mother, Julian, was Merrymont’s youngest sister,” Dane explained, after considering the matter in silence for a while. “She met Gareth by accident one day, when she was out riding and had escaped her retinue of attendants. They were taken with each other, were Gareth and Julian, but their sires were
sworn enemies and both knew a marriage between them would be impossible. In fact, I doubt that either of them ever expected to be together longer than the length of a summer. I was conceived, and a great furor was raised, of course. Gareth claimed to be the father of Julian’s babe, but the lady herself denied even the merest acquaintance with him. When I was born, and my mother died, Merrymont, Julian’s guardian as well as her brother, was wild with grief. He threatened to kill me in retribution for the girl’s untimely death. A nurse bore me away in the night and brought me to Gareth, at Hadleigh Castle. My grandfather declared me to be his second son, and my grandmother evidently supported his claim.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gloriana asked.

“Because it didn’t matter,” he replied. He brushed her temples with his lips. “Sleep now, sweeting—tomorrow will be a difficult day.”

Gloriana was grateful for Dane’s embrace, even though it was nearly bone-crushing, because she needed to he close to him. She grieved for Elaina, but she was also haunted by what Lady Hadleigh had predicted.