Winter's Bride

Again, Sir Seymour spoke her name, drawing her from her thoughts. “Lady Lillian.”

She swung around to face him.

He held up her bag, casting a disapproving glance over those seated beyond them in the common room. “If you are ready to go up now?” He seemed anxious to lead her away from this public room. “I will see you safely there myself.”

Lily nodded, wanting to give the knight no cause for worry as to her tractability. “I am ready.”

With no more conversation, Sir Seymour swung toward the stairs and motioned for her to precede him.

As Lily moved toward the steps, she pushed her sable-lined hood back slightly from her face in order to see more clearly where she was going. The lantern that hung from the wall bracket cast its light upon the bottom treads, but little reached the stairs above.

Just as she was about to start up, she heard the sound of booted footsteps moving down. Realizing the stairway was too narrow for two to pass comfortably, Lily stepped back, looking upward…and became very still as her gaze met that of a man.

A man whose face was cloaked in shadow, but who radiated an emotion so raw it held her captive. And that emotion seemed somehow to be directed at her.

Even as she watched, his gaze narrowed and he continued further into the light, his expression so intent that she felt a strange ripple of awareness course down her spine. She wanted to look away, but found that she could not. Though she could not deny that the gentleman was handsome, with his blue eyes and dark, dark hair, that was not what continued to hold her so still.

As she saw his face more clearly some instantaneous and overwhelming sense of recognition washed over her—through her. Like a sweeping wind, it seemed to penetrate flesh and bone to the very inner core of her—the core that she had been unable to access since the accident.

And then, just as abruptly, the sense of awakening was gone. Again there was nothing. She immediately experienced a numbing dizziness.

Completely disoriented, Lily swayed, putting a hand to her forehead.

Tristan Ainsworth looked down at the woman at the foot of the stairs with utter disbelief. The light was not strong, but he would know her anywhere, those wide gray eyes, the sweep of black hair that fell to either side of her fair face from a center parting. Those well-remembered and beloved features were equally patrician and delicate at one and the same time. Each was perfectly in harmony with the others and molded of milky white skin so soft to the touch that it had made him tremble to do so. Her figure, though covered by the lush and enveloping cape, was equally well-known to him. She was tall and slender, her hips and waist narrow, her breasts high and perfectly molded, with raspberry tips. From the first moment of seeing her he had felt that it was as if on that fateful day God had decided to create a woman especially for Tristan’s eyes—his heart.

The woman at the bottom of the stairs was his Lily.

But Lily was dead. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, telling himself that this was only another vision, another specter that would fade away as the others had. For had he not seen Lily in innumerable places, innumerable times, only to discover that she was not there?

Taking a deep breath, knowing with that sinking feeling in his gut that she would be gone when he opened his eyes, he forced himself to do so anyway. There Lily stood.

Still he could not allow himself to believe. Even as he watched, she swayed, grabbing for the railing.

Dear God, there was no mistake. No specter of his conjuring had ever fainted.

Lily.

A great cascade of longing filled him. It grew, washed over and through him as if he was standing beneath a raging waterfall. He was held completely immobile by the very force of it.

As if through a haze he saw that the man behind Lily was moving forward to take her arm. He seemed not to notice Tristan’s reaction, for he was intent upon the lady herself.

It was the man’s presence that finally brought him back to reality. Tristan could not deny his own interest in any man who would be with Lily.

His Lily.

Nay, he corrected himself quickly as a sudden revelation hit him. If she was alive and had not even contacted him in these three years, she was not his Lily.

His tormented gaze swung back to her face. He saw her glance brush his length once again, a strange haunted look in her lovely gray eyes. But there was no sign of true recognition, which made no sense whatsoever. She had known him as well as any human being could another.

Or so he had thought at the time. Perhaps he had only been fooling himself, and she had been toying with his affections, as Benedict had said from the very beginning.

Quickly he focused on her escort, who seemed, if his manner and dress were any indication, to be a knight. The reverence in the man’s voice as he took her arm and asked, “My lady, are you unwell?” told Tristan that he did not hold himself as her familiar.

She spoke in a whisper, and to Tristan it seemed she carefully kept her gaze away from himself. “I…nay, not unwell. I only felt dizzy for a moment.”

The man frowned in concern. “It has been a long day, and I ask your forgiveness for that. I have pushed you so far only because my lord bade me make haste in his anticipation of your arrival. Perhaps I have been overzealous. My master would not be pleased for you to become ill and our journey delayed.”

She raised a white hand to brush the dark hair back from her pale forehead. Even from where he stood Tristan could see that her hand was trembling as she said, “Have no great concern for me. I am sure I will be fine. As you said, we traveled far this day. Morning will see me quite recovered.”

Tristan found himself frowning at this assurance. It was clear that she was quite delicate of constitution in spite of her words, even more so than when he had known her. For then she had been imbued with a vitality of spirit that had made her appear stronger than her physical being. He looked again at that trembling hand. The bones in it and her wrist looked as fragile as those of a dove.

The man spoke again, even as he began to draw Lily up the stairs past Tristan, whom he ignored except for a brief, disdainful glance. “Your lord husband will be very glad of that.”

Tristan froze once more, feeling as if ice had replaced the blood in his veins. Not only had Lily forgotten him and the love they had shared, but she was married. Married to another man.

How could she just forget him, forget all they had shared as if it were nothing? How could she forget the very product of the love they had shared, their own child, Sabina?

The thought made rage flow through him with the force of the winter storms that pummeled the coast at Brackenmoore, his family home. It was too much to be borne.

He would not bear it.

* * *

That night, Lily woke with a start, realizing instantly that she couldn’t breathe. There was something pushing down upon her face. The fingers pressing into her cheeks told her that it was a hand.

She made to move away, but could not. Her body was held by a heavy weight. It felt as if someone must be using his or her own body to hold her down.

Wildly she tried to think as her sleep-fogged mind attempted to make sense of what was going on. She tried to see around that large hand. The room was not as dim as it had been when she retired, for someone, surely her assailant, seemed to have opened a window, allowing the moonlight to pour inside. Briefly, she wondered if the chamber had been entered by that method, even as her desperate gaze came to rest on a man’s face.

She started, her mind reeling as she realized that it was the man from the stairs, the one who had caused such a strange reaction in her. The man had seemed so familiar, though she could not understand why. She did not know him, nor why he would accost her this way in her chamber.

She moved her head from side to side, trying to free herself, wanting to ask this madman why he would do this to her. He only held her more firmly, causing her teeth to dig into her lips painfully. Without thinking, she opened her mouth, sinking her teeth into that hard hand.

“God’s blood,” he cursed in outrage.

He lifted his hand for a brief moment, barely long enough for her to sputter, “Who are you?”

There was no reply. Immediately he forced a scrap of soft fabric between her lips and held it there, then secured it with another piece of cloth, which he tied behind her head.

Driven beyond her usual strength by fear, Lily began to struggle beneath his weight. Even in her frantic state the bedcovers hindered her greatly. Realizing that it was foolish to expend her strength in this hopeless position, Lily grew still. Glaring in frustration and confusion, she met his gaze. Those strangely compelling eyes of his, so close to hers, seemed to mock her puny efforts.

Anger made her thrash anew. Her exertions were redoubled when shame washed through her as she recalled her own folly in thinking him quite attractive, at knowing that she had not been able to forget the chance meeting on the stairs. In the long interval before she had finally been able to fall asleep, she had gone over and over that strange and unexplainable sense of recognition she had felt.

Bitterly Lily told herself not to think about that. She must certainly concentrate instead on finding out what he wanted with her.

As if her own thoughts had triggered him to act, he stood and began to roll her more tightly in the bedclothes. Horrified, she began to struggle harder.

It was of little use. His much greater strength and the fact that she was already covered in the blankets prevented her from freeing so much as a hand before she was completely immobilized from head to foot.