History had finally gotten back to its correct course, ensuring that Roseleen’s time in the future would once again be familiar to her. She didn’t know what had changed to get William to give that order to his archers this time around, as he was supposed to, but why he had didn’t matter all that much now, as long as the outcome was what they had sought.
She vowed that there would be no more time hopping for her after this. It was too nerve-wracking, and far too easy to change things without even realizing it. If she hadn’t had the history books to tell her what to look for…
“Verily, did I suspect I would find you near.”
Roseleen and Guy both started and swung around to see Thorn towering over them, his expression not so much disapproving as exasperated.
Roseleen merely grinned, but Guy began to stammer his excuses, “My lord, I—I can—”
“Be easy, Guy,” Thorn cut in. “’Tis easily guessed why you are here. I know how the lady doth browbeat and nag until she has her way.”
“Nag?” Roseleen snorted. “I take exception—”
“So you may, but to little avail this time. How else are you here, when this is not where I left you?” She decided to play dumb on that one and clamped her mouth shut. “As I thought,” Thorn added, then to Guy, “They will be setting up camp soon and need assistance with the wounded. Go you and give what aid you can. I will attend to the lady.”
Guy got out of there fast, while the getting was good. Roseleen had to wonder if the scoldings would come now that she was alone with Thorn, but she didn’t think so. He looked a bit weary—he’d been roused in the wee hours of the morning when William’s scouts had made their report—and still exasperated, but he didn’t look as if he would be lifting her up for some hard shakings.
In fact, all he said was, “Are you ready to leave this time?”
Was she ever. She’d even brought her pillowcase of essentials along, just in case. But a kernel of curiosity got in the way first, and she asked, “Did you happen to figure out what changed things here? Not that it’s important anymore, but—”
“’Twas your Sir Reinard who suggested the use of the archers in that particular way. Until I proved to him that he could not have you, he had been mooning over you, and cared not which way the battle went, he had been so lovesick. With his thoughts on the battle again, and the Normans nigh giving up, he made mention to William of that tactic with the archers that he had once seen previously employed.”
For some reason, her cheeks started to burn with heat. “So it was my fault, indirectly—again.”
“Aye, yours indeed.”
“You don’t have to rub it in. I didn’t exactly encourage the man.”
“There is no need for you to encourage, Roseleen. You needs simply be present, for a man to fall in love with you.”
Her blush deepened. “Well, you can’t blame me for that.”
“Can I not? You would not have met Reinard de Morville had you not—”
“All right! That was a perfectly innocent…blunder…which just supports the conclusion I’ve reached. We have no business tampering with the past in any way. So I’m going to withdraw my permission for Blooddrinker’s Curse to be used for jaunts into the past—after you get me home, of course.”
He sighed and took her hand, bringing it up to his lips before he said, “Aye, I did anticipate you wouldst say just that. Odin did warn me I may not like what I find in the past.”
She made a rude sound of disagreement. “You’ve enjoyed every minute—”
“Nay, I do not like seeing you fret and worry, Roseleen,” he told her sincerely. “’Tis not worth whatever battle I might find here.”
Words like that made her want to kiss him till he begged for mercy, but he didn’t give her the opportunity to try. Even as her free hand reached for his neck, they entered that void that sent them through the realms of time.
39
“I like it not, being kept waiting, Blooddrinker.”
Roseleen heard the rasping voice behind her and swung around to try to locate it. They were back in her bedchamber in Cavenaugh Cottage, which meant no one else should have been there, at least not someone whose voice she didn’t recognize.
But when she found the speaker, slouched back on her narrow desk chair across the room, her eyes flared wide, and she sucked in a breath so fast, she choked on it and started coughing. Unfortunately, that got her the palm of Thorn’s hand slamming into her back, though he didn’t even look her way to see whether he had knocked her off her feet or not. He hadn’t, though it had been a close thing, which made her glare at him in return, but he didn’t notice.
His blue eyes were riveted on the unwelcome visitor, and a slow grin slowly came to his lips.
“Ah, but you have naught better to do, do you?” Thorn said in response to the remark they’d heard, then as an afterthought added, “Greetings, Wolfstan. You really must make a better effort to visit more often.”
A low growl came from the very obvious Viking. He was a ghost. Roseleen had a ghost in her bedchamber, not an assumed one this time, but a real one. And yet—he looked substantial enough, so substantial that the legs of the delicate chair he sat in bowed under his weight.
Long, stringy blond hair fell halfway down his chest. His eyes were so dark they defied color. And he was huge, easily as big as Thorn, with bulging muscles on the bare arms that presently crossed his chest. The sleeveless vest he wore was some kind of untanned black furry hide. The same matted fur edged his boots at his thick calves. And strips of it, with only a patch or two of fur left, cross-gartered his leggings.
Behind him, lying across the top of her desk, was the largest, ugliest ax she’d ever seen. A battle-ax, designed for chopping off heads and limbs, and if used by a wielder of great strength, it could even cleave a man in two. Wolfstan the Mad looked as if he had a lot of strength.
Thorn remarked on the same thing, but with a good deal of scorn. “I see you still have that weak weapon Gunnhilda bestowed on you when you lost your own. You should have killed her when she gave it to you.”
“Think you I did not try, the many times she called me to her to exhort me to kill you ere she died? That ax is as cursed as your sword, Blooddrinker. ’Twould fall from my hand each time I did raise it against the witch.”
“A shame.” Thorn sighed. “I would at least one of us had stolen a few years from her wretched life. ’Twould have been some small recompense for what she did to us, to send her to her devil’s realm early.”
Wolfstan nodded in agreement, only to demand, “Then why did you never try? You, at least, were not under her command, as was I.”
Thorn snorted at that. “Think you I did not search for her to do that very thing? I had great hope that the curse bestowed on me would end with her death, yet was she more powerful than that. And she hid from me well ere I departed that realm for Valhalla.”
The name of that Viking heaven was obviously a sore subject between them, because its mention drew another growl from Wolfstan and brought him to his feet, the poor chair creaking with his movement. And he really was as big as Thorn, maybe even slightly bigger.
His reaching for the battle-ax on the desk was a fair indication that he was a little more than annoyed. Thorn’s suddenly shoving Roseleen behind him made it a sure enough guarantee. And with Thorn’s sword still in hand from their journey there, it was only seconds before the two men were joined in battle.
Roseleen stared at them aghast. They were actually battling, trying to kill each other, right there in her bedchamber. And then the blood drained from her as that word kill set off alarms throughout her whole system. This was the one being who could actually kill Thorn, not just hurt him, but really kill him. And that’s exactly what Wolfstan the Mad was trying to do with every swing of that mighty battle-ax he wielded.
“Stop it!” she cried “Stop it this instant!”
Neither of them paid her the slightest attention. She might as well have not been there. But s
he was, and she was utterly terrified.
Thorn had no shield to use in fending off the swings coming at him. He had to use his sword to deflect those quelling blows, if he couldn’t get out of the way in time. And God forbid he should slip or fumble. Wolfstan like-wise had no shield, but he was on the attack, had been since their blades first drew sparks, and he was giving Thorn no time or opening to mount an offensive of his own.
Without thinking beyond getting this horrible fight over with, Roseleen worked her way around the combatants until she was behind Wolfstan. There she picked up her desk chair and swung it at his back with all her might, uncaring whether Thorn might object to her interference in such a way. But she was forgetting that Wolfstan was a ghost. Unlike Thorn, he really did lack substance, so that the chair actually passed right through him, nearly hitting Thorn in the process, and she ended up swinging around with it, losing her balance, and falling to the floor.
She sat there for a moment, wondering how he’d managed to put weight on that chair to bend its legs and make it creak, if he lacked any substance at all. Or was it selective? Did he have the power to change the consistency of his body himself? His ax certainly didn’t lack substance. Again and again she heard it clash with Blooddrinker’s Curse. But if there was nothing but space and image to him, how could Thorn manage to kill him? Wouldn’t his sword pass right through him as well, causing no damage at all?
Roseleen had to suddenly scramble out of the way as they neared her. She wasn’t quite quick enough to prevent Wolfstan’s foot from passing through hers, leaving an icy chill in that part of her body. She shivered as she got to her feet. She had to stop this fight. But short of calling the village priest to ask him to get over here on the double, she couldn’t think of—
“You always were a weakling, Wolf, even when you lived. Come now, can you give me no better sport this time? A wench could withstand those puny blows of yours.”
Roseleen glanced sharply in Thorn’s direction to see him all but laughing. He was enjoying himself. She was frightened out of her wits, and he was having the time of his life.
She could have taken an ax to him herself at that realization. And yet, she should have known he’d consider this battle fun-and-games time. Hadn’t he mentioned just recently that he wished Wolfstan would find him more often?
“You are an overweening braggart, Thorn. If your family had not the power of Irsa giving you added strength, I would have had your head chopped off long ere the witch got around to cursing you.”
Mudslinging now? Roseleen wondered as she picked up the desk chair, sat down in it, and listened to them throw insults back and forth for the next twenty minutes, some of which had her ears turning pink. Her arms were crossed, one of her toes was tapping impatiently—she was actually getting mad. They were like a couple of kids playing cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers—in their case, the cursed one and the ghost. It was obvious that they had known each other prior to Gunnhilda’s interference in their lives. She could imagine they had behaved much like this back then.
When they returned to some serious hacking and slashing, she merely sighed, no longer afraid that Thorn was going to get hurt. Obviously, he was the better-skilled fighter and he’d merely been toying with his longtime enemy to prolong the enjoyment they were both having. But when Thorn finally spared her a glance and noticed how obviously annoyed she was, he made quick work of ending it.
The next swing of Wolfstan’s ax was deflected as before, but this time Thorn’s wrist twisted and brought his blade quickly back for a slash that should have opened the ghost from one side of his belly to the other. Instead, it passed right through him, just as the chair had, with no blood to show for it.
But instead of Wolfstan’s paying no attention to it as he had when she’d hit him with the chair, he behaved as if he’d received a mortal blow. His ax slid from his hand, he clutched his middle, and then he was gone, having vanished within a blink, and in the next second, his battle-ax was gone with him.
“Until next time, Wolf,” Thorn said quietly as he sheathed Blooddrinker’s Curse.
Vaguely, as if from an echoing distance, Roseleen heard the sound of laughter. She gritted her teeth and just managed to refrain from rolling her eyes.
“Is this a weekly occurence?” she asked him in one of her driest tones. “Monthly? How long will it take him to find his way back to you?”
“He comes only once during each new summoning,” Thorn replied, choosing to ignore her sarcasm. “Actually, he will not come again, as there will be no new summoning.”
He said that with a degree of sadness, having only just realized it. Roseleen heard only that there would be no new summoning, which meant he was going to stick around permanently, as he’d said.
Now would be the time to disabuse him of that notion, to send him away, to get her life back to normal—if that would ever be possible. But looking at him standing there, triumphant from battle, so handsome he took her breath away, she couldn’t do it, not yet. It was too quick, too sudden.
Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow she’d do it. Till then…
40
Roseleen dragged her feet for an entire week, coming up with one excuse after another to keep Thorn with her—just a little longer. She knew it was doing neither one of them any good to put it off, that she was merely being selfish in wanting to keep him near a bit more. All it was doing was allowing her to become even closer to him, which was making it that much harder to think of sending him away.
So for several days, she didn’t think about it. For several days, she just savored his presence, and stored up memories that would have to last her a lifetime.
She gave John and Elizabeth Humes a vacation, suggesting they visit Elizabeth’s mother in Brighton for a week or so. And she put David off on coming to see her when he returned to England. She didn’t want anyone to disturb her last days with Thorn.
But the time finally came when she knew she couldn’t procrastinate any longer. Knowing that she’d never see him again after she sent him away was making her so sick at heart that she just couldn’t bear it any longer.
And yet, she still put it off by first asking silly questions that she didn’t expect any positive answers to. They were in her bedchamber, not to make love, though that was where they’d spent most of the last week, but just lying on the bed holding each other. She got such pleasure out of just holding him, absorbing his heat, feeling his gentle caresses that weren’t meant to stimulate, merely to communicate how much he liked touching her.
Roseleen’s fingers were strolling slowly through the hair on his chest when she asked him, “Is Blooddrinker’s Curse breakable?”
“Nay, ’twas a finely wrought sword to begin with, but the curse has made it indestructible.”
“What about the curse?” She grinned up at him. “Is that breakable?”
He became very still of a sudden. “Why do you ask that now, Roseleen?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m just curious. I suppose I should have asked sooner. The laws of fairness usually allow one little out to correct really blatant injustice, and I was wondering if you had one.”
“Aye, the curse may be easily broken.”
“Easily?” She sat up in surprise, never dreaming she’d get an answer like that. “Then why haven’t you broken it before now?”
“Because I have not the power to break it,” he replied, his tone somewhat chagrined. “The curse wouldst not even allow me to make mention of it, unless I was first asked, as you have just done.”
“Then where does the easy part come in? If you can’t break it, who can?”
“Whoever is in possession of my sword has that ability,” he explained, “since the only way the curse can be ended is by returning the sword to me without reservation, granting me full ownership of it again.”
“Are you serious? That’s all it would take to break a thousand-year-old curse?”
His nod was endearingly curt. “Then wouldst I be in control of my ow
n destiny again, and my sword would be but a sword, all power gone from it.”
“That would certainly guarantee that there would be no more time hopping, should you ever be tempted again,” she said thoughtfully.
But she already knew she would make that sacrifice too, that she would give him back his sword and his own destiny, whatever that meant. And she really couldn’t put it off any longer.
The sword was in its protective case, back under the bed where she had previously kept it. She got up to pull out the case now and opened it, took the sword in her hands one last time. She imagined she could feel the power surging in it, in protest of what she was about to do—end its long reign of absolute, unnatural power.
She couldn’t tell Thorn the truth, that her sending him away was best for him. That could produce arguments from him that she couldn’t validate, since they’d deal with the future. So she’d decided it would be best to lie to him, to give him the old it’s-been-fun-but-now-it’s-over routine. She was certain that a man from any century would tend to accept that fairly well, or pretend to for the sake of his pride.
Considering the subject just under discussion, Thorn sat up and looked at her suspiciously. “What do you with that, Roseleen?”
The smile she gave him was tepid at best as she sat on the edge of the bed, the sword grasped carefully in both her hands. She stared at it a moment, almost hating it now, wishing she’d never even heard of it. Who would have ever thought that something this old and deadly could bring her the love of her life? And who would have thought the fates could be so cruel in not letting her have the man that she loved permanently?
“Roseleen?”
She glanced at him, and a lump rose in her throat. She couldn’t get the words past it, not while she was looking at him directly, so she dropped her gaze again and prayed she’d have the strength to stick to what she was doing for his sake if not for hers.