The Lady Of The Storm Part 2

Today's events had destroyed all of her diligent subterfuge.

"Where do I take him, Will? He's heavy."

He snapped his mouth shut and led her to Old Man Hugh's cottage, which already held several other wounded men. Cecily laid the blacksmith down on a clean pallet just beyond the doorway, her muscles trembling with relief as she settled him. Despite everything, she felt hesitant to leave him. What if he'd lost so much blood he'd never manage to wake up?

She broke another habit she'd developed to protect herself. She looked into his face.

Merciful heavens. Cecily stroked his thick white hair off his brow. The pale strands lacked the sparkle of silver that marked the elven lords, but it only made him appear more human. Made his beauty more real. The sculpted cheekbones, the perfectly formed nose and chin. His skin also lacked the paleness attributed to the pure elven-a light golden color that, along with his ordinary-shaped eyes, betrayed his more human blood.

But he'd inherited entirely too much of the elven beauty for any woman to be unaffected by the mere sight of him.

Cecily had been but nine years old when Giles had come to apprentice to the old blacksmith. At the age of fifteen, Giles had already reached his manhood, while she had been nothing but a scrawny child. Within a few years Giles had taken over the forge and seduced half the maidens in the village.

And like all the rest, Cecily had imagined herself in love with him.

She could not look into his eyes without feeling as if she'd swoon, so she had avoided his gaze. His mere presence left her breathless, heart hammering and palms sweating, so she could not gather the nerve to speak to him. But she took to hanging out about the smithy with all the rest of the young girls, until Giles lost patience and shooed them away.

She'd fought with her best friend, Becca, over who loved him the most. The stupid girl thought she did, and that argument had strained their friends.h.i.+p.

Cecily might have continued to moon after him in quiet adoration if she hadn't accidentally stumbled across him on the beach one night.

She'd managed to hide most of her peculiar elven traits. She felt grateful she hadn't inherited the pale locks that were a telltale sign of the blood. Indeed, her black hair helped, and she took to wearing it long over her forehead to hide her freakishly large eyes. She had even managed to suppress her magic until she almost forgot she had it.

All in the attempt to erase the memory of the knowledge that her magic could kill.

But she could not fight the attraction for the ocean. She longed for it like a flower longs for the sun. So she took to the water at night, to swim with the dolphins and become one with the waves. And she'd stumbled across Giles and his lover, their bodies entwined at the edge of the tide, the moonlight highlighting the muscles in Giles's back and shoulders... in his shapely legs... in his firm b.u.t.tocks... as he moved atop the woman beneath him. Cecily stared in wonder at the beauty of his face when he arched his back and moaned, his eyes closed in some sort of bliss.

Even the mere thought of how she'd reacted years ago made her face heat with shame now.

For she should have been frightened, or appalled, or even disgusted. She'd never seen such a sight before. She had only a girlish inkling of what went on between a man and a woman when they were alone together, much of it involving kissing.

She had not believed Will when he'd told her it was much like what sheep did.

So witnessing the act should have sent her running in the other direction. Instead, she watched. And studied. And tingled in places she'd never thought of before.

And longed to be that woman beneath him.

Cecily had gone to bed that night, touching herself in those new places of interest, imagining his hands upon her body.

And her determination had grown beyond her shyness.

When her body had finally developed enough curves that she felt the admiring glances of the village boys and a sense of the power she could wield with just a sway of her hips, she had snuck into his private rooms behind the smithy and waited for him.

She could still remember the way he looked when he entered his bedroom. The way he smelled. He must have just come from his bath-another habit of his that marked him as an oddity in the village-for he smelled of spring water and soap, and his naked chest gleamed from scrubbing. His pale hair still dripped sparkling droplets of water about his shoulders and down his back. He wore nothing but his drawers, wet and plastered to his body.

Cecily stared in fascination at what they revealed, forgetting for the moment her rehea.r.s.ed seduction.

But she must have made some noise, for he swung round toward the bed, his eyes narrowed, and he groaned, "Not again."

The firelight played across the smooth planes of his chest, the ridged curves in his stomach. He had little body hair marring that expanse, just a bit in the center of his chest, creating a light line straight down into his drawers.

"Lud, woman. Are you married?"

Cecily blinked. Of course, in the dim light he hadn't recognized her. "No."

A sigh. "Widowed, perhaps?"

"Um, no."

"Known for offering your favors freely?"

"Certainly not!"

He strode toward the bed and ripped the covers off her. "Then, my dear, I'm afraid I have to ask you to leave."

Cecily squeaked and tried to cover herself with her hands. She had disrobed, hoping the sight of her new curves would be more than he could resist. But, fie, he hadn't even given her a chance to appear... tempting.

Something flickered in his eyes as they traveled over her body, but his face froze into a sort of dispa.s.sionate boredom. "Get dressed. Before I do something we shall both regret."

"But... but..." Cecily tried to gather her wits. He didn't understand. He thought she was some foolish girl who didn't know what she was about. Who wanted to use him for his good looks, and nothing more. "But I love you," she managed to whisper. There, she'd done it. Confessed her secret longings, let him know that she desired him beyond what his other lovers surely did.

He dropped the bedcovering, took a step backward. His voice, when he spoke, sounded oddly breathless. "Yes, yes. I'm sure you do. Now, be a good girl and get dressed."

Cecily rose to her knees. He just didn't understand and this might be her one and only chance to tell him. She had to explain, and then surely he would fall into her arms as she had dreamed. Unlike Becca, Cecily would have the boldness to take what she wanted. And she had never wanted anything more than she wanted Giles Beaumont.

So despite the heat in her face, she confessed her heart. "You think I'm like all the other girls, don't you? But, Giles, I'm not. None of them are worthy of you. Not a one of them will cherish you the way I do. I am your soul mate, and ours will be a greater love than you can possibly imagine. You just don't know it yet. You just need..."

He'd stepped closer again, his hand reaching out to her face as if her words had somehow cast a spell over him, and he couldn't stop himself. His handsome features had softened; his eyes glazed with some emotion Cecily couldn't identify, yet somehow understood.

She suppressed a grin of victory.

But his fingers halted mere inches from her face, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed them back as if the thought of touching her might burn him as easily as molten metal. He shook his head, water droplets spraying her skin like tiny spears of ice. And then he laughed. "Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Why, I'm..." She could not say her name, for the meaning of his words slowly drifted past the intensity of her feelings. How could he not know her? She loitered in the forge every day. She knew his every habit. What he liked to eat, how the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the way he would grow silent when angered.

And he couldn't even recall her name?

He hadn't noticed her among the bevy of his admirers. She hadn't been worthy of his notice.

A humiliation unlike anything she had ever known before suffused her. She had confessed an infatuation that was entirely one-sided. Hers. She gathered up her clothing and backed out of the room, her pa.s.sion turning into a rage that threatened to overwhelm her. She ran before the control over her magic slipped beyond redemption.

And learned that love could fool. That pa.s.sion could blind. And that...

Will cleared his throat from the doorway of Old Man Hugh's cottage. Cecily untangled her fingers from the blacksmith's hair. How long had she been sitting here staring at him? Revisiting memories she'd thought she had managed to bury years ago?

She attempted to rise but Giles's eyelids suddenly flew open and he grasped her hand. "Must leave... keep you safe."

His big hand felt so warm, her fingers dwarfed in his. Something ran through her, a frisson of feeling similar to what she had felt all those years ago. She should never have allowed that old memory to resurface with such excruciating detail.

And yet, she now realized he had lied to her. That night, he had known who she was. He had used those words to hurt her, to discourage the childish infatuation she'd felt for him. But his laughter had been genuine, of that she could be sure. For he had been a.s.signed to protect the Rebellion's tool, had never truly seen her as a person. And what a lark the tool had turned out to be!

Cecily twisted her hand from his and near growled her next words. "I told you, I'm not going anywhere with you."

But his eyes had already rolled back into his head.

Will stood frozen in the doorway, his brown gaze flicking from her to Giles. "What is going on between the two of ye?"

"Nothing." Cecily stepped over to his side and took his hand, so much smaller in comparison to the blacksmith's. "Father asked him to watch over me while he was away; that's all. Although why he would choose such an oaf is beyond my ability to comprehend."

Will bristled. "Thomas should have asked me. He knows how I feel about ye."

Cecily could not explain to him about the Rebellion. About who her true father was. For then she would have to explain about the night she'd escaped the clutches of an elven lord. And how even as a child, she had killed more than a hundred men in the process. Today had been bad enough.

"I don't need anyone to watch over me, Will."

"Aye," he replied as he led her across the village square. "Ye've proven that, well enough."

She caught some inflection in his voice, perhaps a bit of the betrayal he'd mentioned, but chose to ignore it. She would just have to work twice as hard to make the villagers forget what she'd done here today. It would take a bit longer for them to forget this incident. But she had every confidence they would. She would not give up her life here so easily. She had worked too hard for it.

"Do ye wish me to help bury her?" whispered Will.

Cecily realized she'd stopped beside her mother's body. What was she doing here lying in the dirt? Mother hated to get dirty.

"Yes," she replied. "Let me fetch a blanket, Will."

Before he could respond, Cecily dropped his hand and ran to their little cottage on the outskirts of the village. Thomas had built it close to the ocean, for he knew his daughter couldn't bear to be far from the waves. The thatch had been burned along with most of the south wall, and it reeked of smoke when she entered it.

Cecily opened the cedar trunk that sat at the foot of her mother's bed. She pulled out the quilt she had so painstakingly sewed many a night, dreaming of when it would be spread on her marriage bed, the beam of Will's smile as she proudly displayed the work she had done for him. She had pieced the blue-and-green cloth in a pattern of waves, with dolphins leaping from between the curls, and then overlaid the entire piece with tiny st.i.tches of even more waves.

Mother had professed it to be the most beautiful quilt she'd ever seen.

Her poor mother could not sew. Indeed, it appeared she had no skills whatsoever, and Cecily often wondered what grand house she had lived in that she couldn't manage to do anything for herself. But feared to ask about their life before they'd come to the village.

Cecily took to domestic life like she took to the sea. She had but to watch a quilting circle once to learn to sew. She cooked all of their meals, inventing her own dishes to tempt her mother's delicate appet.i.te. She tended the finest garden in the village, her vegetables and herbs always growing large and fine. She spun her own thread, wove her own cloth, and made her dresses from hand-drawn designs that Father would bring from London.

Cecily glanced around their little cottage, her gaze picking out the many things she'd created to make it a home. From the curtains at the windows to the seash.e.l.ls filled with flowers, the room spoke more of her tastes than her parents'. Mother professed time and again that she didn't understand where Cecily had acquired such a gift for peasant life. Father only smiled and patted her hand in sympathy. And then winked at Cecily.

Father. What would he do when he came home? He adored Mother.

Cecily curled the blanket under her arm and ran back down to the village clearing, hopping over the small streams and rivulets that laced the land. Will stood patiently where she had left him.

Cecily laid out the blanket, and Will helped her place Mother in the middle of it. She brushed the dirt from her mother's hair and dress, then carefully folded the quilt around her. "There now. This will protect her."

Will nodded, as if what she said made any sense at all, and picked up Mother, following the line of villagers out to the small cemetery. Too many of their own would be buried today.

The plot stood on a small knoll, the driest place near the village. The elven lord of Dewhame had changed the land with his magic: springs spouted from meadow and wood, ponds softened any lowland, rivers and streams flowed in a wild profusion across the landscape.

Cecily knew that although the sovereignty of Dewhame had always been green, it had lacked the wealth of water the Imperial Lord Breden of Dewhame had created with his magic. Since the liquid nourished her very soul, she could not regret the change in the landscape, despite her adopted father mourning about how England had looked before the invasion.

Cecily dug the grave herself, until it grew too deep for her to get out of, and then Will helped her up and took over the task. Other than the weeping of the women, the villagers went about the burying of their dead with quiet grief.

Although many offered their sympathy to one another, not a one spoke a word of comfort to Cecily. She tried not to be hurt. Hadn't she lived among them for years? Hadn't she tended their families when one of them grew ill? Hadn't she brought them gifts from the ocean to sell at market to help them through the winter? Surely her display of magic had not made them forget she was still one of them.

She had frightened them. Their fear would lessen when they realized she hadn't changed. That she was the same girl, despite carrying too much of the elven blood.

Cecily sat at her mother's side, watching the hole growing ever deeper, her chest tightening until she could scarcely breathe. If she allowed Will to place her mother in the grave, it would all become real. Oh, her head knew very well that her mother had died, but her heart had not acknowledged it yet. She could not allow it, or surely she would splinter into a thousand pieces, never to be whole again.

"Cecily?"

She stared up through the branches of the old elm tree, watching the sunlight filter through the leaves. If she didn't answer Will, he might go away. She could not put her mother into the ground. She could not. Then it would be final. And she would never hear her mother's laugh again, or feel the softness of her arms enfold her, or know the joy of her words of praise when she thought Cecily had done something particularly clever.

She couldn't do this.

Will tried to take up the blanket. Cecily frowned at him, picked up her mother herself. She felt so slight. So frail.

Will jumped down into the hole and lifted up his arms. Cecily carefully handed Mother to him, and when Will crawled back out and made to cover her with dirt, Cecily grabbed his arm.

"Wait."

And she flew down the small rise, into the meadow, gathering as many flowers as her arms could hold, and then took them back to shower down around her mother.

"This will make it bearable for her, Will."

He only nodded, and followed her on her next trip, this time partway into the woods, gathering violets and wild roses and b.u.t.tercups. Then he followed her back toward the ocean, and they gathered knotgra.s.s and sea holly and the small yellow flowers that grew along the cliffs.

By the time they returned, most of the villagers had finished their burials and left. The few who remained kept their eyes averted from Cecily's.

Will began to shovel the dirt onto their mound of flowers.

"Wait," she panted, and raced back home, stripping her garden bare of any plants that had managed to flower, gathering the honeysuckle she'd cultivated near the front of the cottage, until she could barely see past the blooms in her arms.

When she'd dropped them down into the hole, the combined perfume of the blooms made her head spin. But she nodded at Will, who had waited with infinite patience for her to return. The sun started to set while he shoveled, and this time she joined him, until they laid the last clump of earth atop the grave.

"She will like being surrounded by the flowers."

"Aye. Ye did right, Cecily."

He took her hand, and they stood for a moment without saying a word. Mother knew what lay in her heart, without her having to say it over her... place of rest.

Will escorted her back to her empty cottage, placing his cheek against hers in farewell. "Are ye sure ye will be all right by yerself?"

Cecily nodded. "I can't stay at your place, Will. It wouldn't be proper."

He flushed. "I was thinking of Becca. Surely ye can stay with her a time?"

She should have known Will would never suggest anything improper. But even if Becca would welcome her, Cecily knew her friend's family would not. They had always stared at her odd eyes with suspicion, despite everything she'd done to endear them to her.

"No, Will. This is my home. I just hope it doesn't rain tonight."