Chapter 8
Sophie allowed Sir Leo to help her to bed where she pulled the covers up to her chin and tried to disappear. Normally Sir Leo kept the door wide open and sat at least six feet from the bedside when he wasn’t examining her, even if someone else was in the room. It was the one thing that kept the Sir Leo Syndrome from causing her to explode.
Now, he closed the door behind him and pulled his chair all the way to the edge of her bed. The fact that she could have stretched out her pinky finger and touched his knee only added to her mental tumult.
He should have been horrified by everything she’d said. He should have been denouncing her as a madwoman, the same as Sir Tristan had done to Fay. At the very least, he should have been skeptical. Instead, he looked like a kid in a candy store about to tear into his new bag of sweets.
How could she make him forget what she’d said? She had never regretted anything more in her life, not even putting on the cursed gown. Any chance she might have had to be somewhat normal here was now gone. She tried to ignore his looming presence by staring at the ceiling. Having him so close, with no chaperone and with the door shut tight, made it impossible. Her skin seemed to hum from his nearness. At the same time she wished he would go, she longed to wriggle closer to him so his clasped hands would brush against her arm. Or her side. Or anywhere. Their age difference and Fay be damned. She was attracted to the man. And she’d ruined any chance of anything ever happening between them because of her loose lips. Snapping out of her fugue state, she slapped at the covers, feeling she deserved the shooting pain it caused her injured arm.
“Fay said you wouldn’t understand,” she said, shaking her head helplessly at him. Now that she’d made herself look at him, she didn’t think she could look away. His dark eyes flitted from her face to her shoulder and back again. If he asked her if she was in pain, she was going to scream. “I’m sorry I rambled on about nonsense. It’s just something silly that I do. You can ask anyone. But I’m fine now, you can go.” He pressed his lips together before laughing out loud. “I don’t know what you find so hilarious,” she said bitterly.
“Your repeated attempts to make me not believe what you said,” he told her. He tentatively reached out as if he wanted to take her hand. Knowing he’d be too proper to actually do it, she took the initiative and grabbed it before he could pull it back to his lap. He looked down at their joined hands with mild surprise, then smiled at her. “But I think you meant what you said. And I do believe you, so I wish you would trust me. Perhaps I can help you. And to be honest, I find it fascinating.”
So she was nothing more than something interesting for his scientific mind to study? And yet, he’d said he believed in curses, had seen one done.
“Which part?” she asked snippily, dropping his hand and instantly regretting it. But she had to show a little pride. “The curse? The fact that you weren’t supposed to understand anything about it? The time travel?”
He waved his hands in a circle. “All of it,” he said. “What—what is your time?”
She stared hard at him. There was no way he actually believed her. Was she going to be the butt of all the jokes that night at supper? He had come to the castle alone, and Fay said he’d been sitting at the family table on the evenings he’d left her side. And he didn’t seem like the jokester sort. There was nothing in those eyes of his, the clear or the clouded, that showed anything other than interest and trust. In the space of thirty seconds, she trusted him as well.
She told him the date she’d put on the gown and watched his jaw twitch. “More than six hundred years in the future,” she said. “And I can never go back. I’m dead in that time.”
“How is that possible?” he mused, not seeming to want her to actually answer. She was glad, because she couldn’t.
“What was the curse you saw?” she asked abruptly, needing something from him in return. She was beginning to feel raw, almost naked, telling him so much.
He frowned and swallowed hard. “A priestess had been traveling in disguise on the same road my men and I were taking. One of my men discovered what she was and made to… dispatch her from this world. I put a stop to it and told her to hurriedly be on her way. I knew there to be a village a short distance away where she could seek safety, and I vowed to waylay my people long enough for her to arrive there.” He rolled his head as if to crack his neck and looked at the floor before continuing. “A few of my men thought I was being ungodly, blasphemous, to let a witch live freely. But I thought I had reasoned with them and it was over. The first man, his name was Ephraim, decided he couldn’t be part of such a group and stormed off, the same direction as the priestess. Fearing more for her life than his, I ordered my men upon pain of death and not being paid to stay put and I went after him.”
Leo shook his head at the memory before continuing. “He’d caught up with her, but it wasn’t the priestess who needed my protection. Without laying a hand on Ephraim, she had him on his knees in front of her. His face was blue and he clutched at his throat as if he couldn’t breathe. I begged her for mercy, that I would take him away with me and leave her to continue her journey. She laughed. It was such a laugh that I couldn’t bring myself to speak to her or even look at her again.”
“Did she kill Ephraim?” Sophie interrupted.
He furrowed his brow and shook his head. “I think he may have wished she did. She shouted out words I didn’t understand. I don’t believe it was anything otherworldly. I just didn’t know the language. Then she told Ephraim since he’d run after her with ill intent and meant to harm her with his filthy hands, he would no longer have the use of either his hands or feet. She nodded her head once and ran off at a pace I don’t think any of my horses could have matched.”
“What happened to his hands and feet?” Sophie asked. All her discomfort at being found out had disappeared and she was lost in the tale.
Sir Leo smiled crookedly and shook his head. “You’re an impatient thing, aren’t you? The moment the priestess was out of our sights, Ephraim regained his ability to breathe. He screamed so loudly and horribly, I can hear it to this day in my many nightmares. And before my eyes, I swear to you, Lady Sophie, the man’s hands began to shrivel and turn black. He tried tearing at his boots with those useless claws, clearly in an agony beyond this life. I helped him remove the boots and the same thing was happening to his feet. We waited at the side of the road until the rest of my men finally showed up at sundown. By then, all he had at his wrists and ankles were blackened stumps. We carried him to the village and sent word to his family to arrange a way home for him. I heard he lived ten years past that, but he could only mumble and shriek, driven mad by the pain of the woman’s curse.”
Any other instance and Sophie would have laughed, clapped him on the shoulder, and congratulated him on telling such a terrifying story. But she could see he believed every word, just as he believed every word she’d said. Curses were real. They both knew that.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll tell you everything and maybe you can help me.” She sighed and got more comfortable, not sure where to start. “I’m dead in my own time, that much I know. And the terms of the curse are that I have to prove true love exists. I’m not the first one that this has happened to, by the way. Fay’s from my time as well.” She leaned closer, grabbing his hand again. “That’s what I really don’t understand. You say you remember Fay.”
He patted her hand, nodding. “I remember a tiny girl who had a terrible temper. Perhaps it wasn’t Fay. The Fay from your time, that is.” He grinned hugely, then tried to suppress it due to the seriousness of the situation. “You must tell me everything about the future. The things you must know… but of course, there’s plenty of time for that later. Back to Lady Fay.”
“Yes, it’s true that Fay isn’t the original sister. She told me she’s wondered what happened to that girl. But for all we know, Anne isn’t original either.”
“You don’t think she would have told you? It seems you couldn’t resist telling me and Lady Fay couldn’t resist telling Sir Tristan—wait a moment,” he said, squeezing her hand in his excitement. “Didn’t you let slip that Lady Fay and Sir Tristan are engaged? How did that happen in such a short time?”
“Fay’s actually been here for more than a year now. They fell in love during that time—”
“But Sir Tristan and his men only arrived here shortly before his keep was besieged. The same time I arrived home.”
“Now look who’s being impatient,” Sophie said. “Yes, it seems that way to everyone because of the curse. The wicked thing has a time limit. Either because Fay didn’t get married before the limit was up, or maybe their love isn’t true after all, the curse started over from the beginning. Everyone’s memory was erased. It’s always 1398 here.”
“That’s not possible,” he said, clearly thinking so hard his face turned red.
“It shouldn’t be possible, no,” she agreed. “And bad luck you, you’re part of it now.”
“It seems so, doesn’t it?” He didn’t seem outraged or in despair as most people would have been. “Explain to me what you meant when you first spoke of the curse, that I shouldn’t have been able to understand.”
Sophie made a face. “Well, Fay told me she used to sometimes just let loose, from stress or whatever, and no one could hear what she was actually saying. She said they thought she was singing or reciting poetry. And this afternoon, I was frustrated so I just wanted to let it out, too. But then you actually heard what I said.”
Seemingly without noticing what he was doing, he stroked her hand. She definitely noticed and stared down at his strong fingers covering hers, his thumb absently sweeping across the back of her hand. She had to blink a few times to keep from swaying at the intoxicating caress.
“Could it be Sir Tristan understood Lady Fay because of their love for one another?” he asked, his face turning redder.
She felt her own face heat to near boiling. “I wondered something like that myself,” she said.
She looked up from their joined hands and met his gaze, certain she’d burn up from his searing dark eyes. She stopped breathing and waited. He tightened his grip on her hand and leaned toward her. Was he pulling her to him or was she drifting closer of her own accord? Something was drawing them nearer to each other, she was sure of it. In a moment, their lips would meet. She could almost feel his soft breath and yearned to taste him. In that instant, all she wanted out of life was for him to kiss her. He blinked slowly, heavily. If those dark eyes remained closed, she would do it. Lean forward the final inch and kiss him. The charged air that swirled around them demanded it.
He cleared his throat and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. She gasped for air and sank back into her pillows, the hairs on her arms standing on end. What had happened? She wasn’t sure, but it had been intense. It was as if she’d left her body for a few seconds and then crashed back into it. Trying to hide her disappointment, she also cleared her throat, then felt stupid.
“Lady Sophie, I will think on this some more,” he said, standing up. “Don’t feel you’re alone in this. You’re not. I will endeavor to help you as much as I can.”
With a bow, he was gone, carefully closing the door behind him. She tossed one of her pillows at it.
“Fierce warrior, my butt,” she said in frustration at his retreat. As her disappointment abated, she couldn’t stop a smile from taking over her face. Whatever it was that she’d felt in that breathless moment, she’d liked it. And she was certain Sir Leo had felt it, too.