Memories of the Heart (2 page)

Ceri couldn't fail to recognize Mab's clipped emphasis on the term
hero
as disdain for the subject of her affections. She loved her grandmother and was loath to disappoint the woman who was also the only mother she had ever known since the woman who'd given her life (one of Mab's twin daughters) had died in performing that deed.

Having been nearly the sole recipient of all Mab's doting attention for almost two decades, Ceri knew that her grandmother would never consider any man a mate worthy of her, leaving it impossible for her to make a choice the older woman would find pleasing or even remotely acceptable.

Ceri had initially wasted little care on the matter since she had no interest in any of the Welsh males that she knew. Their fear of her grandmother's uncanny abilities had long ago established an invisible wall around Ceri, and their foolish fear left them less than admirable in her eyes. Only Lord Tal had inspired Ceri to dream of love. Only the Norman earl who could never, would never be hers save for that promised touch of Gran Mab's magic.

By watching the light of resolve chase shadows across Ceri's remarkably expressive face, Mab could almost read the maid's thoughts.

“Humph,” Mab faintly muttered dissatisfaction with her gosling's unwise infatuation as, in a signal of her plans, she bent to hoist and shoulder a heavy satchel. The sturdy homespun bag was filled with mysterious potions and ointments along with packets holding many of the secret ingredients needful to brew other remedies or wield the arcane arts.

“I go to treat the injuries of our noble guests,” Mab flatly announced her intentions. “But upon my return 'tis you who will go to watch over and tend their needs. So, bind your hair and await prepared to undertake that task.”

*   *   *

Softened by the hazy edges of a dream, the bright spring dawn seemed to hold a gentle promise of joys to come. Birds sang from the green shadows of dense woodland on either side of a path down which three hunters urged their mounts.

Abruptly—yet with the unnaturally slow motion of a nightmare—the morn's brisk air was sliced by a brief, deadly rain of arrows.

Reacting with strange sluggishness, Tal glanced toward his companions in time to see Cedric slump and slide lifeless from his horse. Then, above the thudding of his heart, he heard Alan's anguished cry even as searing pain struck his own thigh.

Tal ignored the shaft protruding from his leg and the well of blood oozing up about its buried, razor-sharp tip. Twisting around, he gazed back over his shoulder and realized that while he and his knights had been targeted, their young squires remained unharmed. Riding some distance behind, the youths whipped their horses forward even as the forest's gloom closed in on Tal whose dark lashes fell to suddenly pale cheeks as he plummeted from his destrier.…

An unmeasured time passed while Tal valiantly fought his way up through thick, formless mists toward a distant brightness that beckoned like daylight at the portal of one of the many dark caverns he'd explored as a child. Tal struggled against unnatural lethargy, trying to force heavy eyelids to rise despite the leaden weight that seemed to have sealed them closed.

Was he to be eternally caught in this peculiar dream of pleasant joys shattered by pain and betrayal? Even memories of the dream assault left a bitter taste of gall on Tal's tongue. Writhing, he cried out against the vile fantasy.

Then a delightful sense of well-being gently flooded through Tal. Had he truly died during some vile and inexplicable assault in the midst of his own lands? Was he lying safe on celestial shores? Had the acrid gloom of that wretched deed been banished by the sunshine of heaven?

While gently brushing a lock of black hair from a burning brow delicate fingers attempted to soothe the furrows of distress away. Ceri gasped on unexpectedly meeting a bold pair of brown velvet eyes at so close a range for the first time.

Speak you fool,
Ceri berated herself for going mute and forced a smile despite the fact that she couldn't think of a plausible subject or even a single intelligible word to say. She had only just taken her grandmother's place to care for these wounded warriors and was disgusted to find herself woefully ill-prepared for this potent personal contact.

This visual impact was even more devastating than the discovery that years of assisting her grandmother in treating wounds and ailments had done nothing to inure her against the shock of being alone with the incredible Norman lord. Aye, although it was common practice to sleep in the nude, this situation putting her in seeming intimacy with the stunning man only haphazardly covered by a bedfur was vastly different.

Tal gazed up into what he'd no doubt was the bright source of sweet peace—gentle green eyes that glowed with amazing silver lights from the face of a delicate, dark-haired beauty. Clearly here was an angel, confirmation that indeed this must be heaven. Not until he turned his head and shifted attention to their surroundings did a stabbing pain strike to cloud his initial certainty with doubt.

Hadn't the priests promised that in paradise all God's saved children would dwell in grand palaces? This small, dark hut filled with the thick smoke and pungent odor of a peat fire wasn't even a fine home, far less a palace.…

With that acknowledgment came acceptance of the unpleasant fact that the assault responsible for laying him here had been not a bleak dream but a far gloomier and even less comprehensible reality.

Tal's glance returned to the dark angel. She remained and again offered a smile of uncommon sweetness. Aye, an angel she was, Tal reassured himself as he slid back into the comforting clouds of slumber's drifting mists.

Gazing enthralled at the focus of so many fantasies now near, Ceri's emotions tumbled in wild chaos. Her pulses still leaped from the stunning power of their visual contact while shame for her muteness battled with relief for this reprieve to regain her composure. She must muster her resources to stand better prepared when next he awoke … assuming he would return to consciousness soon.

A sudden and cheerless realization struck Ceri. Gran Mab had promised that her potion would see the knight on the pallet near the door remain lost in healing sleep until he again rested in Castle Westbourne, but she had failed to promise that no such limitations would bedevil Prince Tal.

*   *   *

Shielded by the shadows in Castle Westbourne's deserted stables, two men confronted each other. One was tall and thickly built, the other much shorter and so painfully thin that they were not easily recognized as brothers.

“I want no part of your intrigues,” Sir Ulrich coldly stated in a tone so sharp it would cut any but the toughest of hides … like the thick skin which made his brother Simeon impervious to even the most vicious verbal jabs.

“Your loyalty is commendable, brother.” Simeon's words dripped with an insincerity curdled by the acid of sarcasm.

“Already have I given you my decision,” the larger and older brother sternly reminded the younger. With this statement Ulrich moved a step forward, an action calculated to intimidate the other as easily as he had for decades.

Simeon refused to retreat and in a fine show of indifference gave narrow shoulders a slight shrug. At the same time his already thin lips flattened into the single fierce line that exposed a lifelong and lingering contempt for this constant and always resented arbiter of too many family disagreements.

“'Tis one you've no choice but to accept,” Ulrich continued with the same patronizing air ever guaranteed to irritate Simeon. “Accept it as unalterable and be grateful that I have not whispered of your treachery in the ears of those who might demand from you a deadly price.”

“The conflict that divides us is no nearer a resolution today than it was a decade past. Stephen rules while Gloucester relentlessly fights to see his sister Matilda claim the throne their father promised, so—” Simeon sneered this scornful response to the hollow threat he knew Ulrich would never risk taking for fear of stalling his own grand ambitions. “Beware, brother, elsewise
you,
not I, may be the one who pays that deadly price.”

Ulrich disdainfully grunted as his fraternal protagonist's gaunt form turned and slipped into the waiting anonymity of a moonless night.

Chapter 2

“Shhh—” Ceri leaned forward to again gently brush a swathe of black hair from her patient's broad brow. She then laid across that bared surface the cool solace of a neatly folded cloth cooled in icy stream water.

Lord Tal had been caught in the throes of a clearly disagreeable dream … again. But that should be no surprise after he'd been so foully attacked deep within the presumed safety of his own lands.

The majority of Ceri's concern was for her patient's fever which unaccountably continued despite the faithful administration of Gran Mab's potent brews. But she ruefully admitted herself prey to both growing regret and a twinge of shame earned by the selfishness of that emotion.

Tal's injury and its treatment had already stolen precious hours from the gift of time in his company, a gift severely limited at the outset by circumstances beyond control.

More than an entire day had passed since Gran Mab posted Ceri to tend the injuries of their lord and his knight. She was satisfied by the older woman's assurance that Sir Alan would not awaken from a healing sleep induced by herbal potions until he rested within the bailey walls of Castle Westbourne. But Ceri was thoroughly disheartened by the fact that Tal, too, had remained lost to right senses save for the few brief moments when she'd stood by his side and he gazed into her eyes.

A small suspicion nibbled ever more insistently at the edges of Ceri's composure. Although the mere fact that she allowed the question to form struck her with guilty fear of disloyalty, she couldn't help but wonder—was this Gran Mab's clever ploy to both grant and deny an earnest plea? Aye, as promised, Ceri was here and alone with her hero … but he was unconscious.

When dispatching Ceri to undertake this task, Gran Mab had given the girl two tiny pottery crocks filled with healing elixirs—one meant for Tal and the other for Sir Alan. Glancing toward these items, Ceri silently reviewed her grandmother's simple instructions.

Into every mug of water that either of her two patients drank, she was to put a single drop of healing potion from their respective crocks. Although the potions were of different consistencies and hues, were the effects of both the same? Was the thin, pale green liquid in Tal's intended to induce the same peaceful sleep as the thick, brown syrup in Sir Alan's?

Perhaps Tal's continuing sleep was the penance she must pay for the vivid imagination which too often lured her into escaping a mundane life by dwelling in sweet fantasies. After all, her grandmother affectionately called her a moonling, claimed she was fated to be one by the fact that her mother had spent the night before her birth sleeping in a meadow beneath the light of a full moon.

“Are you an angel?” There was a gentle amusement in the dark velvet voice to match the speaker's wry half-smile. He looked straight into the gentle concern of a gaze the same silvery green as the wind-turned leaves of birch tree.

“Nay,” Ceri gasped, startled by words naming her something far different from the image in her own thoughts. But after an instant's reflection his question faintly curled soft lips upward and sent a warm tint of pleasure to brighten her ivory cheeks with a wild rose hue.

“Alas—” While tumbling as a bemused captive of his devastating smile, this breathless response tripped off Ceri's tongue with amazing ease. “I am all too human.”

Fearing he would think her no more than a simpering fool unable to put any sensible thought into words, Ceri briskly turned her attention to the mundane chore of restoring a soothing chill to the cloth between her hands and his brow.

As she again dipped the small square into her basin of cool springwater a most uncomfortable possibility threatened to steal her delight in Tal's company. In the deepest recesses of a too tender heart, Ceri feared his compliments were merely the product of her grandmother's spell. Aye, it was more than a possibility. It was a strong likelihood, one that promptly soured her sweet dreams. What honest joy could there be in tricking false emotions from him?

Tal rescued his lovely attendant's fingers from the imminent danger of frostbite amid a basin of plainly frigid water and firmly clasped them in the warmth of his much larger hands.

“Leastways,” he implored with all the considerable charm at his command, “tell me your name so that I'll know who to credit for my recovery?”

Still thunderstruck by the wrong she'd set into motion by forcing this incredible man to play a pivotal role in her fraudulent pageant of love, Ceri fought to squeak out an answer.

“My name is Ceridwen but my grandmother, the wise woman of Llechu whose home I share, most often calls me Ceri. And—” Abruptly realizing what she'd failed to make clear, she instantly added, “'Tis my Gran Mab you must thank for the potions which will see your health restored.”

“Ceridwen?” Tal ignored the latter half of this statement while gazing into the damsel's bewitching face. “Then we have more in common than homes amidst Westbourne lands.”

Curious, Ceri's delicate brows arched in silent question.

“Surely you realize that we are both named after figures of Welsh legend?” Amber eyes glowed with gentle amusement. “I for the courageous and ever victorious warrior, Taliesan; while you were blessed with the name of the goddess of poetry.”

“'Tis true.” Ceri nodded and by her action firelight was trapped in a wreath of dusky curls that had escaped from thick black plaits to frame the creamy oval of her face. “But it is an inappropriate choice as I have no talent for verse.”

“You've no need to rhyme words.” The golden sparks in his dark gaze merged into a potent glow. “Your grace and beauty are poetry in themselves.”