The Wedding Dress

But even in the jungles of Malaysia or while filming in the desert, Emma had never been as miserable as she was tonight. Cold to her marrow, her ridiculously thick hair still damp, she felt more alone than she’d ever been in her life.

That’s not true, a child’s voice argued in her mind. You felt exactly like this one other time. Remember? Ten years old, waking up in a stranger’s room, your mother gone, leaving nothing but a note…

Where had that thought come from? Emma shivered as decades-old emotions washed through her again. Terror, anguish, desperation as her uncle Cade raged, furious that his sister had abandoned Emma and vanished, leaving the traumatized child in his care.

Now Emma understood that her beloved uncle had been just as scared as she was that terrible morning. But her first taste of the famous McDaniel temper had shaken her badly.

Between her uncle, her much-adored grandfather and her cousins who’d inherited the family temper, she’d learned how to fight back in the ensuing years. And she’d done her best to bury the pain of her mother’s desertion, focusing instead on the fact that Deirdre McDaniel Stone had come back for her.

Emma might be alone tonight in this tower room, but she was worlds different from the outcast child who’d once believed her only friend was March Winds’ ghost.

She smiled wistfully, remembering how fiercely she’d clung to that kindred spirit from another century, another girl’s hopes and dreams captured within a Civil War era journal. Addy March would have been as fascinated by this castle as Emma was. For if ever there was a place perfect for ghosts, it was this rugged fortress with its soft curls of mist, moonlight on the water and the raging battle of waves upon shore.

Emma scooted closer to the window, the drafts chilling her as she peered out toward the sea, imagining home so far away. But all thoughts of her mother’s laughter, her cousins’ antics vanished as she glimpsed a quicksilver flash of something on the water. Her heart tripped. No. It couldn’t be. She rubbed her tired eyes, struggling to focus, but the figure remained, dancing with death, no foothold beneath him except the churning waves.

A knight, Emma marveled, his armor gleaming in the moonshine, his sword flashing as he battled demons he alone could see.

Emma flattened her palm on the window, trying to remember to breathe as she watched the warrior battle with the sea, swinging his weapon with terrible grace, leaping and dodging, thrusting and parrying, the weight of his unseen world crushing down on broad, phantom shoulders.

A ghost? Emma’s subconscious queried. How could it be anyone else, out there on the waves? Emma of all people knew about ghosts. But whose spirit could it be? Lady Aislinn’s husband, Lord Magnus, returned at last from King Edward I’s French wars? Trying to fight his way back to her side to rescue her even centuries too late from the foe who had held her prisoner?

As if in answer, a gust of wind rattled the windowpanes. The draft that whooshed through the chamber catching the candle. Its flame leaped wildly, blew out.

Suffocating darkness rolled across the chamber like a sorcerer’s spell, the moonstruck window glowing with new life of its own. She could see the warrior far more clearly now.

The phantom knight was tiring. Emma could feel it as if he were inside her, his battles her own. Pain wracked his muscles, exhaustion slowing the swings of his sword as if he were slashing it through air thick as water. He stumbled and Emma wanted to race down the stairs in spite of the darkness, find some way to steady him, urge him not to give up.

Just what are you planning to do? Butler’s sneering voice demanded in her head. Grope your way through the castle in the dark? Even if you didn’t break your neck on the stairs, you’d fall off the sea cliffs and drown.

But how else could she know for sure? Emma’s subconscious asserted stubbornly. See if he was really there? This warrior trying to fight his way back to the lady he loved even though a chasm of centuries now yawned between them?

And why did it matter so much to her? To prove this phantom was real? A man fighting for love instead of giving up, the way she and Drew had two years ago?

Damn Butler and damn her own good sense! She was going to find out the truth, no matter what….

But she’d barely taken a step away from the window when the warrior made a final wild swing with his sword. She saw the bright blade waver, fall. The knight crumpled to his knees, wind ripping at his silvery hauberk. He yanked a helm from his head, dark hair tumbling about a face she couldn’t see. The sea raged in triumph around him, sucked him down under the waves until he vanished, far beyond her reach.

It was over. Emma sank back down onto the bench, her heart a raw wound in her chest. No question who had won both battles tonight. The knight lost to his ghosts from the past, Emma to demons so old she’d thought she’d forgotten them.

But wasn’t that the hard truth they forgot to tell you in fairy tales? Emma thought sadly.

Sometimes the dragon got to win.

JET LAG COULD BE a beautiful thing—at least if your goal was to make someone as miserable as possible come morning. And that was exactly what Jared Butler had in mind as he tugged on his Barbour coat to head up to the castle. By his calculations, it must be the middle of the night in Los Angeles. Between the grueling twelve-hour flight with its half-dozen delays and spending her first night in medieval luxury, he figured the pampered Ms. Emma McDaniel must already be running on empty.

Of course, he’d be able to enjoy a whole lot more the prospect of her starting their first day of historical consulting with a bad case of sleep deprivation if it weren’t for one minor hitch: he’d barely slept a wink himself.

He ran one hand over the rough stubble on his jaw and glared at his reflection in the shaving mirror nailed to one of his tent posts. He looked like he’d spent the night wrestling a wildcat. His eyes were bloodshot, the lines in his brow carved deep.

And damn if he didn’t have a bruise on his arm where Emma McDaniel had whacked him at the airport. Only because she’d surprised him, masculine pride nudged him to add. He wouldn’t give her the chance to do it again.

His mouth hardened with what his father had called the pure perishing for a fight look he’d inherited from the mother he’d barely known.

Emma McDaniel might be a third-rate actress, but she’d demonstrated one talent he could attest to. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him so mad.

Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him feel anything at all. For a heartbeat he remembered how warm feminine fingertips could be, how soft tracing the planes and angles of his body, how delicate the piercing pleasure as they feathered across his skin.

Damn Davey and the rest of the crew for putting thoughts of Emma McDaniel in his mind. Drops the goddess into the lap of the one man who hasn’t fantasized about what he’d do with her…

Oh, he’d fantasized plenty since he’d gotten word McDaniel was invading Castle Craigmorrigan. Throwing her off the cliff. Hanging her from a tower. Packing her back on an airplane bound for America. But hearing Davey and Nigel extolling the woman’s beauty had unsettled him in a new way.

Not that he’d ever been tempted by the nipped and tucked, painted and polished type of woman who spent hours perfecting herself in the mirror. Case in point: Angelica Robards. A woman who was not only drop-dead gorgeous but one of the most talented actresses of her generation. If she hadn’t gotten under his skin sexually, then Emma McDaniel never would.

The Jade Star actress and everything she stood for made Jared furious. It wasn’t thoughts of steamy, mindless sex that had wrecked Jared’s sleep. What kept him up all night was knowing McDaniel would be making a nuisance of herself around the dig site, distracting his crew of students. The thought made him resolve to exhaust the woman so badly this morning she’d crawl up those tower steps begging for mercy, too tired to turn the heads of kids like Davey Harrison.

Entering the castle, Jared blinked, trying to accustom his eyes to the dimness, the dawn’s haze that filtered through the arrow loops doing little to relieve the shadows. But he knew this site as well as he knew the rough lines and angles of his own face. By instinct, he crossed to the spiral stairs, taking fiendish delight in the dead silence as he strode up the stone risers. Perfect. His prey must be sound asleep.

As he neared the landing to Emma’s tower room, his eyes narrowed in anticipation. No point in knocking. There was no door. One more realistic tidbit from the time of LadyAislinn that Jade Star would have to get used to. A complete lack of privacy.

An unexpected image stung Jared: the tabloid headlines he’d seen in the airport. And he wondered for an instant what it would be like to have his most personal failures splashed across a gossip rag. When his marriage had crumbled he’d been able to bury himself in his work, lose himself in a past far less agonizing than losing Jenny had been. But the press could’ve had a field day with what he’d done if anyone besides Jenny’s father and friends had cared enough to read about it.

Don’t be an eejit. Butler crushed any sympathy he felt. Emma McDaniel had chosen the attention, the fame, the money, the fans clambering around her. What had Davey said? Every men’s dorm room had posters of the woman plastered on the wall? Probably poses of her half-naked. What else could Emma McDaniel expect besides this feeding frenzy in the press?

Well, she was about to find out some men weren’t impressed by a centerfold-worthy body or a lush red mouth or big brown eyes. The castle history claimed Lady Aislinn was distraught when Sir Brannoc and his mercenaries arrived? By the time Jared was through with Emma McDaniel, she’d welcome an invading army catapulting stones at her tower wall!

Jared crossed the threshold, the larger windows cut in the more defensible top of the tower spilling rose-tinged rays of dawn across the chamber. “Time to get up.” Jared let his voice boom against the stone walls. “Can’t waste daylight when candles are so expensive.” Not to mention the cresset lights, rush lights and candles gave a far fainter light than audiences conned by costume dramas on the movie screen would ever have guessed.

What, not so much as a groan from Her Royal Highness? Jared strode to the bed, gave it a sharp kick to shake it. “This is your wake-up call—” he began, then froze. The piles of furs had barely been touched, the pillow still fluffed, no hollow formed by a sleeping head. The bed hadn’t been slept in.

What the hell? Was it possible the prima donna had already taken off for greener pastures? No. He couldn’t be that lucky. He hadn’t heard a car start and God knew he would have. He’d heard every other damn sound around camp last night. She could hardly have walked all the way to the main road hauling that heavy suitcase.

His brow furrowed with a niggling of worry. Of course, somebody who came from L.A. wouldn’t be stupid enough to hitchhike. It would be dangerous for any lone woman and downright suicidal for a celebrity.

There was no way McDaniel had gone that far, he reassured himself. More likely she went for a walk. But he hadn’t seen a soul on his way to the castle. And over the years he’d loved this place, worked on it, he’d developed a sixth sense about anyone prowling around the space. He would have noticed. Unless she’d gone wandering around the cliffs in the dark and fallen. Impossible, he told himself sharply. He would have heard her scream.

His father-in-law’s white-bearded face swam in his memory, the man who had once been Jared’s mentor, so cold, so fragile, aged a hundred years since the last time they’d seen each other. Don’t pretend you even noticed what was happening to my daughter until it was too late. You always were a selfish man, Jared, lost in your own world…

Last night Jared had been lost in his own world again. Just like he’d been with Jenny.

He rushed toward the window to look outside, but halted at the tabletop that had been empty the last time he’d seen it.

The rough wood now held a cluster of things carefully arranged. The ink and quills he’d packed in the chest, two sheets of parchment filled with writing and one object he’d never seen before, completely out of place with the medieval decor. A cheap purple, glitter-encrusted frame so dinged-up it might have gone a few rounds in the barrel of a clothes dryer. A thin crack snaked across the glass, dividing the photograph the frame held in two.

Jared picked up the frame, held it to the light. Christmas lights glowed against a backdrop of Norfolk pine so fresh he could almost smell the needles. What was obviously a family clustered before it. Two sets of parents wrangled a herd of sugar-overdosed children who were flashing sticky smiles at the camera. A sweet-faced redhead with dreamy eyes nestled close to a tall dark-haired man who looked about the right age to be Emma’s father. Another man cradled a toddler in his arms, while a woman with restless blue eyes and a crop of Emma’s wild dark hair laughed up at him.

Enthroned in a leather chair, a man of about eighty leveled a hawkish gaze at the camera. Emma, at least twenty in the picture, curled up on the old man’s lap, her face so fresh and blooming it shoved hard at even Jared’s cynical heart.

Leaning over Emma’s shoulder, a young man with features more perfectly sculpted than Orlando Bloom’s beamed as he held up her left hand and pointed to the flash of a diamond ring.