Chapter Six
“Fire and thunder.” Scents of pineapple and baking bread led Emily to the kitchen. Cursed dragon!
She could understand Aunt Margaret’s need to flee. Jacques would come back for her. It was the waiting part that bothered her.
Two days, three tops. Which meant, Jacques could come back for her as early as tonight? If Blake hadn’t lied to her, she’d been here for three days. Jacques could have come back and didn’t find her. She had to find a way out of the manor and to the dock.
Most likely, he’d taken Margaret and gone to find Emily’s father at the Harghita hatchery.
“Are you hungry?”
Emily gulped guiltily. How long had she stood there watching her? Emily should have escaped through the door while she had the chance, but her stomach protested.
“Famished,” Emily reached up and fingered the pendant around her neck, something she did when feeling nervous.
Naomi moved around the kitchen island, opening the refrigerator. “That’s a lovely locket you have. Is it a family heirloom?”
Emily’s hand tightened around the pendant. “Yes. It was my mother’s.”
Naomi pulled all the fixings for a salad out and placed it on the island before her. “I thought I recognized it. I’ve seen the design before, a very long time ago.”
There was no reason for her to trust this elder woman. Her calming voice and pleasant smile may lure her into friendship, but Emily couldn’t afford friends. She gave herself a mental shake. Others may be fooled to trust, but not Emily. She trusted no one, but Jacques.
Emily watched as Naomi prepared two salads and put them in large bowls.
“If I’m not mistaken, it is the symbol of the dragon riders, is it not?” Naomi turned her back from Emily, washing lettuce in the sink.
Emily bit her lip, trying to decide how to answer the older woman. She envied her long hair, cascading down her back to touch the elder woman’s waist. She dressed in the old style, a long flower printed skirt and a white blouse.
Emily gazed down at her wrapped bed sheet. As if Naomi could see from the back of her head, she said. “I’m to take you into the village shops today to buy you new clothes.”
Emily ran her hand down over her new rounded figure. Against her ribs she felt a bump. She inhaled and Naomi turned with a strainer of washed lettuce.
“Are you okay?”
Emily nodded, “It took me by surprise.”
“It must be strange for you.”
“I’m pregnant, but I’m not,” Emily admitted.
Naomi worked tearing up the lettuce in the bowls. “I’ve never seen an egg attach itself wanting to be born like this before. You must have dragon’s blood since you come from a line of dragon riders.”
“Me? I don’t think so.”
Naomi frowned at the doubt in her eyes. “I don’t blame you for not trusting me. But believe the fiu you’re carrying. It wouldn’t have attached itself to you if you didn’t.”
Emily sensed Naomi was wiser than most, sensible, and cared for her. Why anyone would care about a stranger, she didn’t know. But something deep inside her, whispered to trust her anyway.
“Blake is waiting out in the garden. If you want to head out, I’ll bring your lunch.”
Emily went through the back door of the kitchen out onto a stone patio. From there she could see the sea, calm like a mirror reflecting the brilliant blue of the sky.
Blake lounged at a table sipping a glass of water. He held up several papers reading them. As Emily moved closer she saw they were music sheets.
Outside with the warm air and sunlight kissing her shoulders, she sighed. Of all the prisons, a girl could get confined to, this one rated like a five-star hotel. She could envision herself on a grand vacation if not for her prison’s warden.
His hair glinted in the sunlight. His short-sleeved button-down shirt was open revealing his well sculpted abs. And when his golden-brown eyes captured her own, they seemed to delve deeply into her soul. The eyes of an all-knowing dragon.
“May I?” she asked, the fiu inside her pushing against her heart.
“Of course.” A crease touched the dragon’s brow, as he reached to pull a chair out for her. As she sat, he brushed a stray lock of hair back from her face. She flinched, expecting his fingers to be cool, but they felt warm and callused upon her cheek.
“I’m glad you decided to keep the bed sheet on,” he said with a soft chuckle. “I’m hoping you’ll wear it for our ceremony.”
Emily diverted her gaze the tall pitcher of water, her thirst great. “And when will that be?” she asked, licking her lips.
He took the pitcher of water, pouring her a glass of water. “Sigurd went for Father Armand. He should arrive around supper.”
Sigurd, Bogdan, and Edmund, she remembered them all from the days she’d stole away on their tour bus. She took a deep gulp of water. Maybe she hadn’t heard him right. After she finished her glass of water, he refilled it again.
Emily sloshed water over her hand it shook so badly. Supper? Did he really expect her to marry him so soon?
“Easy there, my love,” he took the glass before she spilled it whole. “There is no sense in drenching yourself for me at this very moment.”
It took all Emily had inside her not to toss her glass of water in his face. “So, you’ll wine and dine me this evening and make me your wife in the morning, is that it?”
“The ceremony will take place at sunset.”
All dragons had a thing with either sunrise or sunset.
Then the same paralyzing fear that compressed her heart the day she rolled out of his bed and out of his life seized her. Two years ago, before her mother’s death, before she’d known he was a dragon, and before she’d became a keeper, she would have jumped at the chance to become his wife—his mate—for the rest of her life.
“It is only a formality.” His eyes slid down her body, lingering below where the fiu rested against her legs then traveled back up to her face. Everywhere his attention lingered made her ache to feel his arms enclosed around her.
Then he gazed past her to the older woman bringing out their salads. “It looks like Naomi has brought lunch.”
By the hungry look in his eyes, it would take more than a mere salad to sate his dragon appetite.