Fragments of Grace (Prequel to the Dragonblade Trilogy) (13 page)

“Smell!” she wept, pushing her
hands into his nose even as he reached out to steady her. “Do you smell her?
She was here.
She was here!
”

Keir had heard her screaming from
downstairs. He had raced up the stairs only to find a locked bolt and the
sounds of weeping from the other side.  Chloë was pale and frantic, pushing her
hands into his face, and he had no choice but to do as she commanded. He
smelled her hands.  Then his eyes widened.

“What…?” he smelled again,
deeply. “God’s Blood, what
is
that?”

Chloë was struggling to calm
herself but she wasn’t doing a very good job.  She lifted her robe to his face,
pushing it into his nose.

“Do you smell her?” she asked,
tears and mucus pouring down her face. “Do you smell Frances?”

Keir’s face paled as he smelled
deeply of her robe, her arm, her shift, anything she would lift up to him.  He
began to tremble.

“I smell…,” he muttered hoarsely.

“It is her,” she cut him off,
putting her hands on his nose again. “She was here. She asked for Me-Me and
then she went right through me.  Keir, she went
through
me. Do you smell
her?”

Shaken, Keir began to tear up
because he could indeed smell his daughter on the woman’s hands.  He didn’t
know how or why, but he could. He hadn’t smelled that wonderful smell in three
long years and it was enough to choke him up. Kurtis was standing beside him,
bewildered and mildly outraged, but Keir grabbed her hands and shoved them into
his brother’s face.

“It is her,” he insisted quietly.
“It is Frances. Do you smell her?”

Kurtis smelled flowers and
something earthy, along with the warm smell of human flesh.  He looked at his
brother, wondering how to tell the man that he was following a crazy woman’s
fantasy. He sighed heavily.

“Keir, get hold of yourself,” he
told his brother. “You smell the soap we purchased this afternoon and nothing
more.”

Chloë looked at Kurtis, the voice
of dissention, and suddenly realized how idiotic she must appear.  Keir
understood but Kurtis did not.  Even Cassandra, awakened by her sister’s
screams, was standing next to her and looking at her as if she had lost her
mind.  Chloë was normally an intensely private person and the attention, as she
came to her senses, was not something she was willing to insist upon.  She
didn’t want to make Keir look like an idiot because she knew, as she gazed into
his shaken face, that he would believe her.  Perhaps he missed his family so
badly that he would believe anything.

Lowering her hands, Chloë turned
back for the bed chamber but Keir grabbed her. “Hold, lady,” he murmured.
“Where are you going?”

She looked at the three curious
faces gazing back at her as she labored to recover her composure. “I… it must have
been a dream,” she said, backing into the room. “Keir, I am sorry. I have had
dreams since I was here and I did not mean to… I apologize for making a mockery
of your child. I did not mean to but the… the dreams are very vivid.”

Keir had his hands on her, not
wanting her to get away. “You have not made a mockery of anything.” He lifted
her hands, smelling them again.  His pale blue eyes glowed. “I smell her. This
is my daughter.”

Chloë could see over his shoulder
that Kurtis’ expression was darkening by the second.  Fearful of the man’s
reaction, or perhaps how he would view his brother, she shook her head. “Nay,”
she insisted. “I… I apologize. I had a nightmare, ‘tis all. You only smell
soap.”

Keir’s brow furrowed in
disbelief, perhaps some anguish, as Kurtis grasped him by the arm. “You heard
her,” he said quietly though firmly. “It was simply a figment of her
imagination. Let her go back to bed.”

“Are you saying my sister is
mad?” Cassandra chimed in, her fire focused on Kurtis. “My sister is as level-headed
and sensible as any woman who has walked this earth.  If she said a little girl
came to her, then she did. She would not lie and she is not insane.”

Kurtis looked at the woman, a
very pretty spitfire of a woman, and his square jaw ticked impatiently.

“I did not call her mad,” he
pointed out. “I merely said she imagined it and now she has my brother
imagining it as well.”

Cassandra would not let him go so
easily. “How do you know what is truth and what is not?” she fired back. “It is
possible that my sister dreamt of Keir’s daughter.”

Kurtis wasn’t going to fight with
the lovely blond, although he wasn’t particularly fond of outspoken women. This
one was certainly outspoken.  He grasped his brother by the arms and tried to
turn him back to the stairs.

“Come along,” he instructed
quietly. “Let the women return to bed.”

Keir wouldn’t go with his
brother, shrugging him off. “Take Lady Cassandra back to her chamber,” he told
him.  “I will stay with Chloë awhile.”

Kurtis didn’t like that idea at
all. He shook his head. “Keir….”

But Keir cut him off, lifting his
eyebrows for emphasis. “Go,” he told his brother kindly, firmly. “Please, Kurt.
I will see you on the morrow.”

Jaw ticking, Kurtis did as he was
told although he made it very clear that he was unhappy about it.  He had
noticed from the onset that afternoon that the lovely and luscious Lady Chloë
had some kind of hold over his brother, something he had never seen before. 
His brother was obviously enraptured with the woman and Kurtis didn’t think it
was healthy for him in the least. 

Even now, she spoke of crazy
dreams involving Keir’s children and the man believed her. But Kurtis knew his
brother well enough to know that all the arguing in the world could not
dissuade him.  If Keir wanted to stay with the woman, then he would. 
Frustrated, Kurtis reached out to politely take Cassandra’s arm but she balked.

“I can find my own chamber, thank
you,” she snapped, looking at her sister with a softened expression. “Are you
sure you are well, sweetheart?”

Chloë nodded. “I am,” she said.
“I am sorry to have awoken you.”

“Why not sleep in my chamber with
me? You might sleep better.”

Chloë shook her head. “I cannot
sleep with you and you know it. Your snoring keeps me awake. But I thank you
for the offer.”

Cassandra appeared defensive as
well as embarrassed. “I do
not
snore,” she insisted, purely for the
benefit of the knights. She frowned at her ungracious sister. “If you change
your mind, you know where I am.”

Chloë smiled at her sister, not
oblivious to the fact that she had embarrassed her, as the woman moved down the
stairs.  Kurtis silently followed. 

When the landing was still and
quiet but for the two of them, Chloë turned to Keir.  Her smile faded and her
brown eyes grew serious as she gazed up at him.

“She
did
come to me,
twice,” she whispered. “You said I was dreaming the first time. Now, do you
believe me? Can you really smell her on me?”

Keir’s eyes were riveted to her. 
Reaching out an enormous hand, he fingered her hair, the luxurious red strands
that fell in a great thick mane to her knees.  He brought a handful of hair to
his nose, inhaling deeply.

“I can,” he murmured.

Chloë felt the heat from his
gaze, thrilling and unnerving her.  She was not particularly accustomed to men
and their charms, as her father had focused most suitors on Cassandra while he
hid her well away. 

The problem was that when men saw
Chloë, they forgot about all else, including Cassandra. The younger sister with
the glorious red hair had been the true de Geld prize as legend of her beauty
spread.  Chloë had therefore had little exposure to the ways of men but with
Keir, everything seemed to flow on instinct. It was if the two of them were
gradually becoming symbiotic. 

He was still holding her hair
when she turned away and went into her chamber. Keir followed, his eyes darting
around the dark chamber, sniffing the air to see if he could smell the same
scent that was on Chloë.  But there was nothing in the air other than smoke and
the scent of cold, damp stone, so he moved to the hearth and threw a few hunks
of peat on it, stoking it. By the time he turned to Chloë, she was sitting on
the bed.

She was watching him feed the
fire, the firelight flickering off her glorious hair.  Keir stood up, looking
at her expectantly, waiting for her to speak.  It was apparent that she was
wrought with much on her mind. He could just tell by her expression.

“May I ask you a question, my
lord?” she asked softly.

He nodded faintly. “Please,” he
murmured, “you will call me Keir.”

“Keir,” she whispered. “Will you…
will you please tell me what happened to your children? Why is this little girl
appearing to me and asking for her brother?”

He drew in a long, thoughtful
breath, lowering himself on to the bed beside her.  He was pensive, calm, his
elbows resting on his knees as he clasped his big hands.

“I had been away for a few days
when I received word from a panicked soldier that Pendragon was under siege,”
he said softly. “I had the bulk of my army with me, almost eight hundred men,
so I knew the castle was undermanned. However, Pendragon is so fortified with
moats, walls and causeways that I was not particularly concerned. At least, I
was not particularly concerned until I returned home and found the castle
breached.”

Chloë could see that speaking of
it was painful. She reached out to comfort him, laying her hand over his
clasped fingers.  He took her hand and held it tightly, warmly, between his two
big palms before continuing.

“I did not know the keep had been
breached until we managed to fight our way in to the bailey,” he told her.
“Then I saw smoke and fire everywhere, pouring from the windows of the keep. 
Knowing my wife and children were inside, I made all due haste to reach the
keep and almost got myself killed in the process.  Michael somehow made it into
the keep before me and found my wife and daughter.  He begged me not to go to
them but I refused. I think I even hit him in the face at some point. I found
them… Madeleine and Frances were in the master’s chamber and the attackers had
burned what they had not looted, including my wife and daughter.”

Chloë’s eyes widened. “She was…
burned?”

He nodded weakly, gazing at his
hands as they held her small, soft one.  “Mostly,” he whispered. “We buried
Madeleine and Frances together.”

“And Merritt?”

He lifted his shoulders,
struggling against the horrific memories of his wife and daughter’s deaths.  He
had never spoken of them, not to anyone, but Chloë had somehow eased him enough
to discuss it.  It was as if telling her brought him a certain amount of
consolation, odd as it was. Somehow, he just didn’t feel the pain he used to,
the stabbing grief that ate at him.  As he looked into her beautiful eyes, he
could see comfort and kindness there. It helped him a great deal.

“We never found him,” he muttered.
“We searched this castle from top to bottom but he was never found. I thought
perhaps Lord Stain, the man who destroyed my castle and killed my wife and
daughter, had somehow taken him to ransom but that was not the case. Coverdale
spent months negotiating with the man and was convinced he did not have my son.
So I have spent three years looking for him, searching, making contacts and
hoping somehow I would discover his whereabouts, but no one could help me. It
was as if he had simply vanished.”

Although Chloë had already heard
the gist of the story from her father, to hear it from Keir’s lips was truly
agonizing.  She felt a great deal of pity for the man. She slipped from the bed
to the floor at his feet, clutching both of his hands as she gazed up at him.

“God bless you for the horror you
have endured,” she murmured earnestly. “I cannot imagine your suffering. I
cannot imagine what it would be like to lose my entire family.”

He gazed into her sweet face, the
most beautiful he had ever seen. Aye, it was true. Madeleine had been beautiful
in a sweet sort of way, but Chloë’s beauty was the stuff of legends. She was
magnificent, in every way. Ingilby called her
the goddess
and he was
absolutely right. The name suited her perfectly. Keir cupped her face with a
big hand and bent down, kissing her sweetly on the cheek.

“If God is merciful, you will
never have to,” he murmured, his lips still against her face. “But I thank you
for your words of comfort.  It has done my heart good to come to know you,
Chloë de Geld. You remind me that there is still kindness and beauty in the
world. It is something I had forgotten.”

She could feel him breathing
against her cheek and heart began to race. “I have come to see you as a good
and true man, Keir St. Hèver. Perhaps God will take pity on you and bless you
someday with greater riches than you have ever known. You have earned it.”

Keir’s lips were still against
her cheek, his nose inhaling the scent of her skin, of that magnificent red
hair.  The hand that cupped her cheek began to caress it, feeling her silken
flesh against his fingers. It had been years since he’d tasted a woman and the
feel of her, the scent of her, was overwhelming him.  His other hand came up,
cupping her entire head between his two enormous hands as his lips began to
move along her jaw line.