Mystic Rider (42 page)

Lissandra stood alone, watching from the edge of the jungle.

“She is so strong,” Chantal said in admiration. “I’d be in a
fit of hysterics if you left me to lead the island all alone.”

“She’s not alone, but she’s lonely,” Ian acknowledged. “Your
father will keep the Council in line so she need not roar at them. But she
needs a partner as much as I do.”

Chantal wrapped her arm around her husband. “You need a
keeper to prevent you from diving headfirst into trouble. Lissandra needs
someone to take up the burden of power and allow her to be the spirit of peace
she’s meant to be.”

She was aware of Ian’s sharp look, but she resisted
returning it. Instead, she waved her hand in farewell to the woman on shore.

“Spirit of peace? Lissandra?” Ian asked in disbelief.

Uncertainly, as if not accustomed to a friendly exchange,
Lissandra waved back.

Satisfied, Chantal smiled up at her omnipotent husband. “She
is strong because she must be, not because she wants to be. Come along, now,
let’s see if Trystan has gathered enough food to feed your babe. Surely he
knows by now that a pregnant woman must be fed regularly. I wish he’d brought
Mariel on this journey.”

Ian laughed. “He knew he would have to surrender his cabin
to us. You don’t really think I’d wait until we reached England to celebrate
our glorious adventure?”

She cast him a coquettish glance over her shoulder. “Oh, is
that what you think? Perhaps it’s time for your lessons to begin.”

With that, she lifted her skirt and ran for the
companionway.

Whistling leisurely, Ian arrived at the stairs before she
did. Looking sufficiently rakish in loose shirt and breeches, his dark hair
streaming down his back, he hauled her into his arms and carried her down to
the captain’s cabin.

“Consider yourself kidnapped and ravished by a pirate
captain,” he warned. “You will be a ruined woman by the time we land in
England.”

Chantal laughed. “Ruin me as you will, my pirate, and I will
rule your ship before we land!”

Above, Trystan and Kiernan exchanged glances and snickered.

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” Trystan sang as he
signaled his sailors to cast off.

On his way once more to track the elusive chalice, Kiernan
leaned over the rail and waved to the lonely figure who slipped back into the
woods. But Lissandra failed to see him.

There was always tomorrow.

Much of the period of time recorded in this book contained
terrible coincidences or events incited by master manipulators who have no
place in a story that is, after all, about one couple and not an entire
revolution. In addition, European politics and geography prior to the
Napoleonic Wars were drastically different from those of modern times, so for
the purposes of my story, I have oversimplified some aspects of history.

For readers interested in knowing more, I recommend
beginning with Christopher Hibbert’s
The
Days of the French Revolution
. For further references or questions, I would
be delighted to hear from you at
www.patriciarice.com
or you can stop by my blog at
www.patriciarice.blogspot.com
.

Mystic Rider

Mystic Isle Book 2

Patricia Rice

Book View Café Publishing Cooperative Edition March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61138-362-1
Copyright © 2008 Patricia Rice

First published by Penguin Putnam, Onyx, New York, July 2008

Production team:
Proofreader: Lisa Waters;
Ebook Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre

Cover illustration © Hot Damn Designs

Cover design by Kim Killion

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
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This
is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real
locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents
are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual
events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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With several million books in print and New York Times and
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romance’s hottest authors. Her emotionally-charged contemporary and historical
romances have won numerous awards, including the RT Book Reviews Reviewers
Choice and Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been honored as Romance
Writers of America RITA® finalists in the historical, regency and contemporary
categories.

A firm believer in happily-ever-after, Patricia Rice is
married to her high school sweetheart and has two children. A native of
Kentucky and New York, a past resident of North Carolina and Missouri, she
currently resides in Southern California, and now does accounting only for
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The cart Lissandra rode in rattled over a barren hill,
crossed a ridge, and descended into a forested valley. A smudge
of smoke hovered over the treetops below, blocking the scenic view.

Her heart skipped a beat. For the first time in four years,
she could
feel
Murdoch’s presence. He’d
been part of her life since childhood. No matter how much her memories hurt, no
matter what people told her, she couldn’t stifle this unwarranted longing to
see him again. The man Ian had described had lost the laughter in his eyes and
become a fountain of hostility. Had he grown worse since Ian had left him
nearly two years ago?

She was about to find out. He was down there somewhere,
although the dynamic life force that had so fascinated her since childhood was
oddly banked.

Considering the lightning and explosive fireworks he’d set
off to cause her father’s death, the smoke shrouding the forest did not bode
well. The horrific memory shredded her thin confidence.

“The village is through the forest, near a lake,” the driver
told her as he clicked his mule past a tumble of boulders that looked as if the
gods had heaved them there in a Herculean tantrum. “It is usually a pretty
picture this time of year.”

At the bottom of the hill, the driver rolled the cart off
the main road and took a meandering dirt lane through scorched fields, skirting
the still-smoldering forest.

“It is a miracle anyone survived the fire,” the driver said.
“Lightning struck the woods that terrible day. We’ve had a dry spring, and the
sparks set fire to the weeds and spread to the wheat straw that our young men
hadn’t been home to plow. The flames carried across the fields, then leaped to
the roofs. They lost only one bedridden old woman. They would have lost more
had it not been for the stranger.”

Lissandra sensed the presence that
ought
to be Murdoch. But his essence seemed to be a mere cinder of
the white-hot heat she remembered. Or perhaps, she thought acidly, he’d burned
out his rage on a village. That would be typical of the dangerous man he’d
become. She had no illusion that the
lightning
had natural origins, not with Murdoch in the vicinity.

“What stranger?” she asked, if only to prove her theory.

“He gives us no name, so the priest calls him Abel. Old
women call him a saint, but they are romantic fools. I call a man who is strong
and skilled enough to drive off half a dozen thieves a warrior, not a saint. He
was only passing through, but those he saved claim he single-handedly fought a
troop of deserting thieves before the storm struck. They went on, but he stayed
to fight the fire, and now he is helping the village rebuild.”

Murdoch.
It had to
be Murdoch, although she could make little sense of his actions. With his
gifts, he could have ruled all France. Was she wrong and the spirits had
not
descended on him? If so, what must
she do?

As the old mule ambled around a bend, Lissandra calmed her
growing panic by admiring a row of sunflowers emerging along the edge of a
field sprouting new green wheat where smoke still smoldered. How could life
return so quickly to the scorched earth?

It couldn’t.
Unless an
Aelynn Agrarian lived here.
Murdoch had never shown any talent in that
direction — although he did have destructive earth skills. Had he found an
Agrarian Crossbreed here? One who might be responsible for the rapid new
growth? Had he found a Crossbreed wife, as Ian and Trystan had? Lissandra
clasped her fingers tighter and focused on doing her duty.

She’d told the driver that her husband had taken ill along
this road, and she required a man to drive her from town to town so she might
seek him. If Murdoch was married, a public encounter could prove embarrassing. “Where
do those who were burned out live now?” she inquired to prevent her thoughts
from straying.

“Most share the cottages that survived the fire. Others live
among the ruins.” The driver shrugged. “We are too poor to own land, and these
days, who knows who is responsible for repairing the houses? Our landlords have
fled France. Our so-called leaders argue in Paris, telling us we must pay
tithes to a church that no longer exists and rents to a government that cannot
help us. They send deputies from the Tribunal to make certain we do not
complain as we pay. Good Bretons rise up in arms against the patriotic Guards,
but here, in this village” — he shrugged again — “we simply wish a roof over our
heads.”