Chapter 29
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Leo roared at the servant boy. He’d asked a simple question: How was Lady Sophie faring this morning? And the answer he got made his blood freeze.
“She’s gone with Lady Fay and Sir Tristan to Dernier. They left before supper yesterday.” The boy shrugged and put the bucket of water he’d hauled down. “Is there anything else you need, sir?”
Now that he knew Sophie was alive and well, he was able to calm his racing heart. His racing mind was another thing entirely. He shooed the boy away and sat down, sticking his blistered hands into the bucket. The cold water soothed the pain in his palms and he carefully dried and rewrapped them as best he could. Why had Sophie gone with her sister? And in such a rush? She’d seemed convinced that she had very little time left and he’d been convinced she would accept Sir Harold in order to break the curse.
He hadn’t slept a wink that night, trying not to hear her plaintive speech over and over in his head.
I’m going to love you next time and the time after that if it comes to it.
She’d come to him the day before and offered him one last chance. He’d been too cowardly to take it and he assumed she would accept Sir Harold. For how could anyone want to continue living under a curse when they had a chance to break it? His heart dared to hope. It seemed fairly clear to him that Sir Harold had real feelings for Sophie. But, perhaps, she didn’t have feelings for him?
“Ah, have you truly been this much of a fool?” he berated himself.
She’d told him with both words and deeds that she loved him. And time after time, he hadn’t believed it was possible. He thought of her brave and idiotic trek through the woods to find him and tell him in case he happened to be killed in battle. She’d also told him how tenacious she was. How she wouldn’t give up until she got what she wanted.
“She wants you, you stupid, selfish…” He’d never been so heartsick, so angry, and yet so happy at the same time. “She really, honestly must.”
But she was gone. Was he too late? She’d promised to keep trying even if he didn’t remember any of this, and perhaps next time he could do better. Be more worthy of her. But he didn’t want to lose the memories he already had of her, though many of them made him cringe at how awful he’d been in them. It seemed she could love him despite running her through with a spear, despite his constant hard-headedness, despite the way he’d let her down when she’d needed him. He had to see her again, his Sophie, the one he didn’t deserve. Even if it was for the last time.
He threw on his clothes, hollering for the servant to ready his horse. At last, at last he was leaving Grancourt. But not to run from Sophie. To chase after her.
*
“How much longer?” Sophie asked, adjusting her position in the saddle. It didn’t help.
Fay was slightly ahead of her and turned around, laughing. “Are we there yet?” she sang. It was clear she was excited to be on her way to her new home, where she thought they’d be safe from the curse. Sophie hoped so.
Tristan, who rode ahead of both of them, called back, “An hour or so at this pace. Is your head hurting you, Lady Sophie?”
She smirked at Fay. “It’s not my head that’s hurting,” she grumbled. The walnut-sized bump on her head did throb still, but it paled in comparison to her butt. It felt like they’d been in the saddle for weeks, not just through the night and part of the morning.
“We can walk a bit if you like,” her brother-in-law offered solicitously.
“But then it will take longer,” Fay said anxiously. She rubbed her lower back as if she were considering taking the extra time to give her own behind a break.
“Let’s keep going,” Sophie decided. “But let’s talk about the hot baths when we arrive.”
“I warn you that Dernier is nothing like you’re used to,” Tristan said, slowing so that he rode alongside them.
“Do you mean like what we’re used to at Grancourt or what we’re used to in the twenty-first century?” Fay teased, reaching across the space between the horses so she could hold his hand. “As long as you have a fire for boiling water, I think we’ll both be happy.”
Sophie looked past them at the seemingly never-ending road and tried to forget her broken heart. To keep her mind off it, she thought about all the ways she’d entice Leo once the curse reset. She’d let Marjorie do her hair in elaborate styles, learn a musical instrument to impress him when he visited. She’d take gifts to his mother and fill her to the brim with all the castle gossip she could ever want. And she’d not only get a second chance with Leo, she could continue Fay’s quest to save Anne. Maybe both of Catherine’s babies would be born healthy the next time around. As a lump got lodged in her throat, she kept forcing herself to think of all the reasons it was a good thing the curse got its nasty way and was going to reset. For all she knew it had already.
“How will we know when it’s safe for me to go back?” she asked, startling Fay with the sudden question.
She dropped Tristan’s hand and her eyes grew sad. “When we get a letter from Anne. Then we’ll know it’s started again.” If possible, she looked even sadder. “Or if Father comes after us for eloping. Since my wedding might never have happened.”
“No, that won’t happen,” Sophie insisted. “I’m telling you, it’s on me now. You did all you could. Nobody tried to roast you alive this time, after all.”
Fay’s answer to that was a twisted grimace. Sophie felt bad for flinging a wet blanket over their giddy mood and they rode in silence for a while, falling back into the same single file line with Tristan taking the lead. Until he suddenly pulled up his horse and came trotting back to bring up the rear, a look of concern on his face.
“Someone’s coming from the south,” he said. “It’s just one horse, I think, but it’s coming toward us fast.”
Fay’s eyes widened at her husband’s sonar ears and Sophie closed her eyes and strained to hear anything other than the wind soughing through the bare tree branches overhead. At last she did, a distinct thunder of hooves. Tristan motioned for them to stay behind him and he pulled his sword, waiting to see who rounded the curve at such a hectic pace.
“It’s Leo,” Sophie cried, trying to move closer to Tristan. “Or, at least it’s his horse. I’d know those spots anywhere.” Her heart raced and she lost control of the reins, causing Tristan to jump down and grab them, expertly keeping his own horse and hers in check while the newcomer rode up.
It was Leo, and he also dismounted, bobbing a quick bow at Tristan, who sheathed his sword and nodded.
“I came to speak to Lady Sophie,” he said, looking up at her. He looked hopeful and her thumping heart dared to feel hopeful, too.
“Then speak,” Fay said roughly, the quintessential big sister.
“I treated you poorly,” he said, coming closer and taking the reins to Sophie’s horse. “I wanted to apologize for that. You trusted me with knowledge of your curse and I promised to help. I broke that promise, so I apologize for that as well.”
“You lathered up your horse for that?” Fay asked, tsking scornfully.
“Not just that, no,” he said, pleading with Sophie with his eyes.
“Fay, let him talk,” she said, trying to sound unaffected by the fact that he’d clearly been riding hell-bent for leather to catch up to her. But she was affected and her heart hoped so much, she didn’t think she’d recover if all he was going to do was apologize.
“I must also apologize for not believing you when you said…” he turned and looked sheepishly at Fay and Tristan. “When you said you loved me. It’s not that I thought you to be false, but only that I didn’t think I deserved your love. I didn’t think it would last and then I feared what would happen with your curse.”
Sophie wriggled in the saddle. “You’re lucky I can’t get off this horse without help, because I’d hit you for being so stupid.”
He nodded morosely. “I was stupid, but it was with the best intentions, I promise you, my love. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you because I was selfish or—”
“You know what?” Fay interrupted. “You’re actually not lucky because I can get off my horse and I’m going to hit you.” She started to swing her leg over but Tristan stopped her with a big hand on her ankle.
“It doesn’t matter how real her love is if you don’t love her back,” he told Leo coldly.
“That’s why I want to hit him,” Fay argued, trying to free her ankle. “Why did he come all this way to make her feel bad all over again? He doesn’t deserve a second chance,” she directed at Sophie.
But Sophie had stopped hearing everything when Leo had called her his love. Tears streamed down her face and she made a chopping motion for Fay to shut up. Leo reached up and took Sophie’s hand.
“I have to apologize one final time,” he said, a hint of a smile quirking up the corners of his eyes. “Because I’ve decided I have to be selfish. I can’t risk losing you. I know you said you’d try again, but I want what we have now to continue. I love you, Sophie. I loved you the moment I… er, hit you with the spear.”
Fay snorted and Tristan shushed her. Sophie was crying in earnest and reached for Leo. “Oh, please help me get off this damned horse.”
He grabbed her waist and she flung her leg over the side, dumping herself into his arms. She clung to him, pressing her face into his neck and breathing him in. “I can’t ride worth beans,” she admitted through her joyful tears.
“I’ll teach you,” he promised. “Anything and everything you want to know about this time.”
She pulled away enough to look into his eyes, one dark, one clouded by an old wound. But both of them full of love. He smiled at her, the rarest of treats but one she vowed to herself would stop being so rare. Because she would make him happier than he’d ever been.
“I love you,” she said as he dipped his head lower.
“I love you, Sophie Hester McCurdy.”
“You remembered,” she whispered delightedly as he lowered even more.
“Of course,” he said. And then he kissed her.
Her heart soared as high as the branches waving over the road at the touch of his lips against hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck and tangled her fingers into his crispy, half-burned hair. With a slight pang, she realized he’d have to keep those injuries but, like he’d professed to be, she decided to be selfish and not care. She’d slather ointment on his burns and carefully snip the singed ends of hair. His hands slid down the sides of her waist and she pressed closer to him, forgetting everything except the feel of his fingertips, the fact that he loved her, and those lips against hers.
“Ahhhhem.”
“Oh, bugger, Fay,” Sophie said. “After all those times I chaperoned you two kissing bandits, you can’t let me have five seconds?”
Fay burst out laughing and Sophie could see there were tracks of tears down her sister’s cheeks. “I was only going to suggest we keep heading home, where you could be more comfortable.” She slid off her horse and hugged both Sophie and Leo together. “You have to have done it. This has to be the end of the curse. I’ve never seen anything so sweet.”
Sophie gasped and burst free from the family embrace. “Except the damned curse won’t take our word for it, remember? We have to be married, right?”
They’d always believed the curse hadn’t been broken by Fay and Tristan’s love because it renewed itself before they could get married. It was the only theory they had to go on. “Even if we whip the horses, we won’t make it back to Grancourt today,” Fay said worriedly. “I was mostly resigned to the curse turning over but now I want to beat its ass. I really do.”
“Me, too,” Sophie said. “But I won’t have a shotgun wedding. I—I wasn’t even asked yet.”
Leo instantly dropped to a knee and took her hand. “I don’t know what a shotgun wedding is, my darling, but if you don’t want one, you don’t have to have one. But would you do me the great honor of being my wife? I will ask your father the moment we return to the castle.”
“We don’t have time to go back to Grancourt, didn’t you hear me?” Fay asked.
“Fay!” Sophie shrieked.
Tristan seemed to understand the difficulty and pulled his wife close, smothering her in his cloak. “Let them finish,” he said into her hair.
“Will you, my love?” Leo asked again, kissing her hand.
“I will,” she said, fresh tears dripping over her lids. “Of course I will.”
“We have a priest,” Tristan said, letting Fay go. “It’s only an hour. Much closer than returning to Grancourt. We may just beat this curse yet.”
“But what about your father?” Leo asked, ever the gentle knight.
“We have a saying in my time,” Sophie said, letting go of her childhood dreams of a fairytale wedding. Perhaps she wouldn’t be surrounded by the family and friends from her old life, but she had new family and friends here. And you couldn’t get more fairytale than marrying a knight. “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
“And you’re a pro at apologies,” Fay said. “Don’t worry. Father will be fine with it. He’s a romantic at heart. And he loves us.” She waved down the road. “To Dernier? And a wedding?”
“And beating the curse,” Leo said. Already the smiles were becoming less rare.
Leo helped Sophie onto his horse and smoothly mounted behind her. He nestled her close and wrapped his arms around her for the rest of the journey while her horse ambled along behind them, tied to the saddle with a long length of rope. Now that she was with Leo, Sophie didn’t care how long the journey lasted. But after the allotted hour had gone by, Fay began to get antsy.
“When are we going to be home?” she asked.
Tristan slowed his horse and let the others catch up to him. “The wall,” he said, shaking his head and looking both concerned and stupefied. “The wall,” he repeated.
“What about it?” Sophie asked. “Are we close?”
Tristan had gone decidedly pale and stopped his horse completely. One by one, they all stopped and followed his gaze, which twitched left and right and back again. “It’s supposed to be here.”
Sophie was already cold from riding through the snow all day, but a deeper cold stole through her at his words.
Fay laughed nervously. “We’re probably just a little off course from the snow,” she said.
Tristan shook his head and pointed to some craggy hills in the distance. “This isn’t right at all.” He gave Fay a stricken glance and told them all to stay put before charging toward the hills.
“We’re not going to stay put, are we?” Sophie asked in a small voice. The barren, frozen landscape that had seemed eerily pretty moments before now just seemed eerie.
Fay leaned over her horse’s mane and kicked it into a gallop. With a mild sigh, Leo took off after her. They caught up with Tristan, who’d dismounted and was pacing back and forth across a smooth, empty patch of ground. Trees grew up around it in the near distance, with those craggy hills close behind. He looked at them, past them. His eyes were wild and empty as he continued to pace.
Fay scrambled off her horse and ran to him, but he walked by her as if he didn’t see her. Leo helped Sophie down and they approached him tentatively. Fay ran along beside him, trying to get his attention. Had her worst fears come to fruition and now Tristan didn’t remember her? What had put that blank look of shock into Tristan’s eyes?
Sophie held out her hand to Leo, needing protection against whatever had Tristan in its hold. He took it and nudged her behind him. The next time Tristan stalked past, Leo shot out his free hand and grabbed him, whirling him around and forcing him to stop the manic pacing.
“What is it?” he asked, shaking Tristan by the shoulder.
Tristan blinked and the emptiness in his eyes was replaced with confusion. Behind the confusion lay pure terror. Fay wished she hadn’t seen it, not on such a fearsome, strong knight. What could such a man be so afraid of?
“It’s gone,” Tristan said.
“What is?” Leo demanded, shaking him again. Fay sobbed as if she knew. Sophie knew as well.
“Dernier,” she said. Just like in her own time. Not a hint that there had ever been a keep there, not even a chimney stone. “It’s a field,” she added, going numb all over.
“Where is my home?” Tristan howled to the sky, falling to his knees on the frozen ground. Fay huddled next to him, putting her arm around his trembling shoulders.
“We didn’t beat it,” Sophie said, wiping away tears. An hour. She’d had an hour of happiness. Her anguish hardened into rage at the thing that had stolen her life, Fay’s life, and was now picking off the lives of those they loved.
Fay turned to look at her, still clinging to her devastated husband. “We somehow made it worse.”