Twilight of a Queen (10 page)

“No, child, only very worried for you.”

Meg nodded glumly. “I realize my visions are considered strange, even here on Faire Isle. Carole Moreau is afraid for me, too. She says if I keep meddling with the crystal, the other women will start to believe I am evil as my mother was.”

“No one could possibly think that.” Jane brushed her knuckles down the back of Meg’s cheek. Meg had never been a robust girl and it struck her that Meg was looking paler and thinner, even more than she had been last autumn.

“I am more worried by what these visions are doing to you. It is as though they are putting shadows into your mind.”

“The shadows are already there.” Meg rubbed her temple hard, grinding her fingers into her skin. “No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get them out.”

Jane closed her hand over Meg’s fingers to still the rough gesture before Meg actually hurt herself. Ariane would be so much better able to guide and council Meg. But for some reason, the one Meg always chose to confide in was Jane. The girl’s trust both moved and overwhelmed Jane.

“Have you been having the vision about that dark cat again?” Jane asked.

“Dark cats, dark storms, dark queens, dark everything.
And none of it clear. All I am sure of is that there is some trouble coming, some darkness that will stain even the peace of Faire—”

A piercing cry cut off what Meg had been about to say. Jane ducked, thinking they were about to be swooped by one of the strident gulls who inhabited this side of the island. Then she realized the cry had come from behind them.

Seraphine raced after them, half-tripping over the sodden hem of her gown. Her usual confidence appeared shaken, a spot of color high on each cheek. The girl drew up beside them, clutching her side and gasping for breath.

“Seraphine, what is it?” Meg asked.

“Are you hurt?” Jane placed one hand on the girl’s shoulder, but Seraphine shook it off.

“No, not me.
Him.”
The girl panted. “I—I found a dead man back there in the cove.”

Jane and Meg exchanged a stunned glance. Jane was the first to recover.

“Show me,” she said.

Seraphine gave a jerky nod. She turned and raced back down the beach. Despite being winded, the girl’s long strides propelled her forward. Jane had difficulty keeping pace, Meg lagging even farther behind.

Seraphine leapt down the rocks with a recklessness that caused Jane to call out a warning. Seraphine ignored her, disappearing from view. Jane slowed enough to scramble down the rough ledge more cautiously. A twisted ankle would render her of service to no one.

When she reached the shore, she found Seraphine standing over a black-clad figure sprawled in the sand,
the dark clothing stark against the white glare of the sun upon the rocks.

Hastening to Seraphine’s side, Jane saw that the recumbent figure was indeed a man. Where he had come from, how he came to be washed up in this isolated cove, Jane could not begin to imagine. One of his arms was stretched out as though he had struggled to find purchase among the rocks from the battering of the sea. The same sea that now crept higher up the shore, the hungry tide threatening to return and drag him back into the ocean’s maw.

“Is he still breathing?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think to check. I—I—”

Jane knelt down. The man was sprawled on his stomach, his head turned to one side. She brushed aside a tangle of dark wet hair, feeling for a pulse at the base of his throat.

His skin felt so cold. But as she pressed her fingertips deeper, she detected a faint throb.

“He’s still alive.” Jane glanced up and was relieved to see Meg had caught up with them, the younger girl hovering just behind Seraphine.

“Help me to turn him over,” Jane urged the girls. Seraphine sprang into action, but Meg simply stood there and stared.

He was not a large man, but his inert weight made him heavy and awkward. With Seraphine’s help, Jane managed to shift him over onto his back. His right arm flopped at an impossible angle, a shard of bone piercing through the fabric of his sleeve.

Seraphine gasped and drew back, clapping her hand to her mouth, looking as though she was going to be sick.

“What—what should we do?”

It was rare that Jane ever heard Seraphine Remy at a loss, but before she could reply, she realized that the girl was not asking her.

Seraphine appealed to Meg. “What do we need to do, Meg? You have learned the most from Ariane about the setting of bones.”

Meg didn’t reply. The girl remained frozen in a way that was most unlike her. Usually when anyone was ill or injured, Meg was the first to leap in and offer help, so competent for one so young.

And help of some sort was desperately needed. The next surge of tide crept in closer, lapping at the heels of the stranger’s worn leather boots.

“His broken arm is the least of this poor man’s problems,” Jane told Seraphine. “If we don’t get him up out of this cove, he is going to drown. One of us is going to have to race back to the others for help. And it had best be you. You are by far the fastest.”

Seraphine nodded, looking relieved to find some action she could take. Plucking up the hem of her skirts, she tore off running.

Jane bent over the man, brushing sand from his cheek, caressing his hair back from his brow. She found a lump just above his temple and realized he had sustained a head injury. When her fingertips grazed the swelling, Jane thought she heard the stranger issue a low groan.

“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?” She regarded the man hopefully. But there was no response.

“We must leave him alone, Jane.” Meg spoke up at last. “Let the sea take him back again.”

Jane shot a startled glance up at the girl, astonished by her words. Meg clutched her crystal orb with both hands, her face white, her eyes glazed, her breeze-tossed hair appearing like a dark halo.

“He’s dangerous. He’ll only bring trouble.”

“Meg, how could you possibly know that?”

“He is a stranger. That’s what strangers do,” Meg intoned in such an odd voice, Jane shrank involuntarily from the man she had been hovering over.

Was this another of Meg’s unnerving predictions or merely the fears of a young girl who had known too much turmoil in her brief life, pursued by witch-hunters, assassins, and the malice of a powerful queen? Small wonder that the girl would be wary of strangers, and this one had a rather alarming aspect.

Jane had no idea who this man might be, but she would have wagered what little she owned that he was no local fisherman tossed from his skiff during yesterday’s storm.

He had the hard face of a man who had lived a hard life, the wind, rain, and blazing sun beaten into his very bones. His shirt, open at the neck, revealed the crease of a white scar as though his throat had been slit during the course of some fierce battle. Not the sign of a peaceful man.

But even if he proved to be the spawn of the devil, Jane could not simply abandon him to his fate. She had to try to help him. It was the right thing to do. And despite his harsh appearance, there was something gentler, more sensitive about the curve of his mouth.

His mouth
.

Jane’s breath caught as she recalled some healing
magic she had watched the Lady of Faire Isle perform upon a nearly drowned girl. Ariane had fastened her lips over that of the girl and breathed her own essence into the child, reviving her. The Kiss of Life, she had called it.

If the man could be roused, supported to his feet, it would make his rescue so much easier. Had Meg learned how to perform this magic?

But one look in Meg’s direction told Jane she could expect no help from that quarter even if she could soothe the girl’s fears or snap Meg out of her strange trance. Having issued her warning, Meg had backed farther away.

Another wave broke closer, this time splashing over the man’s ankles. Oh, where was Seraphine? Had she even made it back to the village by now?

Jane had little choice but to attempt the Kiss of Life herself. She regarded the man doubtfully for a moment, then tried to copy what Ariane had done. She inserted her fingers into his mouth, prying his lips apart, seeking to clear away any obstruction. All she felt was the rough warmth of his tongue, the contact intrusive and disturbingly intimate.

Her cheeks burned. Before she could question the wisdom of what she was about to do, Jane drew in a deep breath. She bent closer and sealed his mouth with her own. She had barely exhaled her first breath when the man startled her, his eyes flying wide open. She stared straight into depths the color of an angry, storm-ridden sea.

Jane reared back, her heart thudding. But she could not be half so shaken as he, poor man. He groaned, peering groggily up at her. Recovering herself, Jane sought to reassure him.

“Everything is all right, sir. I am here to help you and more aid is coming.” At least, she hoped it was.

It didn’t occur to Jane that she was addressing him in English, until he blinked and muttered something in French. Even then his words made no sense.

“Witch or … mermaid.”

“I beg your pardon, monsieur?” Jane replied in his own language, uncertain if she had misheard him or the poor man was delirious with pain.

He moistened his lips and repeated again. “Witch or mermaid … are you a witch or a … mermaid?”

“Neither,” Jane stammered. “I am an Englishwoman.”

He responded with a choked laugh before lapsing back into unconsciousness.

X
AVIER SANK DEEPER INTO THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA
. Some part of his mind urged him to fight, thrust his head above the waves before he drowned. But he could sense the pain nudging at him like the snout of a hungry shark, waiting to devour him should he strike for the surface. Far better that he remain where he was, drifting through the soothing darkness of the ocean.

If only she would let him. But his mermaid bathed his face and chafed his wrists, her siren voice calling to him.
“Monsieur? Monsieur, please come back to me. You must try.”

Xavier forced his eyes open to narrow slits and focused on the person hovering over him, a woman with sun-kissed blond hair tumbled about her face, her eyes gentle, her
mouth tender. The mermaid that had coaxed him back to life. As he felt the first throb of pain, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to kiss her or kill her.

He groaned and tried to turn away, retreat back into the darkness, but she braced her hand beneath his head and raised him, pressing a cup to his lips.

“Please, monsieur. You must try. Drink this.”

His tongue felt so thick and parched, he obeyed, taking a greedy swallow, only to sputter and choke. Whatever poison she fed him, it tasted viler than his shaman’s brew. But unlike the magical elixir that guided him into a seductive trance, this evil potion revived his senses, made him acutely aware of the throbbing hulk that was his body.

Xavier groaned and swore. Christ, what the hell had happened to him? He felt as if he had single-handedly taken on a press-gang of burly ruffians armed with cudgels and lost. Pain … pain that stemmed mostly from his right arm, a hot burning pain that throbbed up into his shoulder and across his chest, seeming to radiate into every pore of his being.

But there was worse. As his vision cleared, he was horrified to realize that his ship had been invaded by…
women
. He was lost in a sea of skirts, some like his mermaid gathered close to his bed, still others crowding in the doorway of his cabin, or gawking at him through the window.

The women came in all range of sizes and ages from the little towhead who stared at him while sucking her thumb to the wizened beldame squinting and clicking her gums. They spoke amongst themselves, their voices sounding to him as shrill as a flock of seagulls circling his pounding head.

“Look. He’s coming round at last.”

“Give him another swig of that restorative tea, m’dear.”

“Who is he? Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know. He just appears to have been tossed up from the sea.”

“The sea never left anything that prime at my door. Only dead fish and seaweed.”

“All right, enough!” A tall, haughty-looking blonde elbowed her way through the press, regarding her companions scornfully. “Anyone would think you’d never seen a man before. Clear off and give the wretch room to breathe.”

“Who died and made you queen, Seraphine Remy?” the toothless old woman huffed.

Her indignation was echoed by the others, the clatter making Xavier want to clap his hands to his ears. Except that he seemed unable to move his right arm.

His mermaid leapt into the fray, holding up her hands for silence. “Ladies, Seraphine is right. This poor man needs his wounds attended to, quiet and rest. Please, I beg you, retire. There will be time enough for your questions later.”

Her low reasonable voice achieved what the haughty girl’s commands could not. The women retreated, even the tall blonde leading away the thumb-sucking child. Xavier was left in blessed silence, alone with his mermaid.

He would have breathed a sigh of relief as his rescuer stole back to his side. But even that threatened to hurt like hell. And as his gaze darted about the room, he no longer felt relieved at all.

He was not, as he had supposed, ensconced in his cabin
aboard the
Miribelle
. He lay on a cot, surrounded by unfamiliar whitewashed stone walls, the furnishings sparse but decidedly feminine, a spinning wheel, a workbasket, the hint of a petticoat peeking out from a wardrobe chest.

Memories burst behind his eyes, like painful flashes of lightning. The storm, the
Miribelle
hurling him from her decks. The cold dash of the sea. Fighting to keep his head above the angry waves, gain his bearings in the darkness. Swimming toward shore, so tired, muscles aching. Resisting the longing to give in, sink below the surface. The tide tumbling him, driving him toward the rocks. Clawing desperately for purchase, almost gaining his feet, hit hard by another wave. Pain … incredible pain. On his feet again, staggering, falling. More pain. And then … nothing.