Love's Battle (True Blue Trilogy) (17 page)

“You’ve come a long way in a short time.” I agreed.

“Who would have thought that I’d be married to a king, heavy with a child that could very well be England’s next king?”

“The future holds may things that we don’t think are possible.”

“Hmmm. Do you think I’ll be a good mother, Thalia?”

“I will help you to be one. As will Gaea and Kyna.” I answered, wanting to reassure her.

Watching my lady feel the kicks of the child that would be England’s next king, a loving sense of calm surrounding her, I couldn’t be more convinced that they were meant to be. In their tender times I could over hear the King reading poetry to his lady fair as well as any educated knight and her plying him in return with her favors.

Theirs was a battle of love, John with his intelligent and sound judgment hidden in the shadows of ignorance and temper, Isabella with her quick mind and loving heart that she protected at all cost so she wouldn’t be seen as weak.

The differences that plagued the couple during the day were put aside at night when the household was asleep. Alone without the demands of the court John and Isabella were content in themselves and in the beginning of their family; for the moment everything was right.

Much like Isabella and John my battle for love had gotten off to an equally rocky beginning.

My life had become so intertwined with Danton’s in such a short period that I could no longer shirk my responsibility to tell him the truth about myself.

Like I promised Faith I’d do, I’d be telling him tonight after the ball game who I was and what I could do. And I was well aware that in doing so I might be giving him up forever.

Chapter 34

Batter’s Up

The mouthwatering scent of roasted hotdogs, freshly buttered popcorn and the sweet hint of cotton candy combined with the aroma of fresh cut grass, sunscreen and sweat made for a perfect summer days’ perfume. Above the hum of multiple conversations, taunting cheers, inventive jeers, and the calls of weary venders traveling the tiered walkway hawking their wares.

“Peanuts, get your peanuts.”

“Beer, I got ya cold beer right here. Budweiser, Miller Light, Bush, got it all. Beer, get your beer.”

Above it all the announcer’s voice tackled the air waves following the ever classic, ‘Put Me In Coach’ during the middle of the fourth inning as the O’s took the field against the Yankees.

“Just a reminder to everyone in the crowd, a portion of all ticket and memorabilia sales from tonight’s game will be going toward the Belinda Mills Uterine Cancer Fund. Mrs. Mills is the wife of our short stop, Gracin Mills. Let’s all do our part to help find a cure as Mrs. Mills continues to fight not only for herself, but for every woman alike.”

A picture of the loving couple flashed on the stadium screen at Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles, two bald heads leaning into each other. They were framed in a fluorescent blue, tinged around the edges with a sickly gray that made me nauseous. True love was ending too soon.

The premonition of impending doom had a breath hitching in my chest and my throat closing up tight. I had to look away. Turning my head I focused on Danton’s face. What I saw there in his simple joy of a late summer’s game grounded me. There was a strength in him that drew me like water from an oasis in the middle of the desert. I might as well have been dying of thirst, my need for him was so great.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” I asked, the question popping out of my mouth without waiting for permission from my head first.

“What?” Danton pulling his attention away from the players on the field. “Where’d that come from?”

I shrugged trying to be indifferent, pretending his answer didn’t matter. “Just a stray thought?”

Danton didn’t look totally convinced as he ran a finger over my tattoo, made visible by the blue plaid corset sundress I‘d paired with a pair of white Keds. “I believe in Heaven and Hell so anything is possible. But if I come back as a bug, I’m gonna be really mad.”

“Yeah, I’d be pretty pissed too.” I snickered, clapping as the pitcher struck out the first batter.

Danton’s next question caught me off guard. “What would you want to be in your next life?”

I thought through all the things I had and hadn’t done. Times had changed so rapidly from one life to the next, but I could still think of a few things I hadn’t done yet.

“I’d like to dance, be a ballerina. Or take Hollywood, the film making capitol, by storm.”

The problem was while dancing came easy, I wasn’t fond of the body breaking work and dedication that went into being a prima ballerina, not when so many other things in life demanded my attention. And I preferred my privacy too much to become a screen siren. Being an archeologist or history teacher in my next life was more realistic.

“Every little girl’s dream. I’d like to be a baseball player,” Danton confessed, pointing to the field. “Third base, extreme sports enthusiast, or video game engineer, something more exciting than a paper pushing C.O.O.”

“And video game engineering is exciting?” I asked in disbelief.

“Are you kidding me? Have you ever been to one of their conventions? Wild!”

I rolled my eyes. Boys and their toys.

“Hey, how about a hot dog?” Danton offered when a vendor came close.

I couldn’t refuse, they always tasted better at the ball park.

We spent the rest of the ballgame in friendly banter only half of our attention focused on the live game as it was being played out before us.

Full of hotdogs, nachos, and peanuts we decided to forego dinner, heading back to

my place instead when the game was over.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” I offered, dropping my purse and new t-shirt on the hall table. “I’ll get you something to drink.” I offered, my nerves stretched taunt, ready to fray at the slightest encouragement.

I pressed a hand to my stomach. It had been turning somersaults ever since we’d parked in front of my apartment. I’d be lucky if everything I ate earlier didn’t come back up.

Chapter 35

Truth

Danton

I couldn’t understand the nervous waves Love was giving off. They were so palpable in the air. I should have been able to reach out and touch them; and they seemed to be getting worse with every second.

“There’s the sofa.” She directed me with the wave of her hand as she disappeared into her kitchen.

I walked through the short foyer separating the small dining room on my left with its oblong wooden table and white tulip chairs from the galley style kitchen on the right with its the fiery red walls, glassed in cabinets, and checkered floor. Straight ahead in the living room lay a lime green sofa.

The small room took my breath away, it was so Love with its brightly colored and oddly eclectic pieces. White throw pillows had been tossed onto the sofa that was flanked at each end by a pair of electric blue side tables topped by squat lamps wearing orange crowns. In the lamp light the walls were a brilliant sunshine yellow, the blonde hardwood floor dressed in a multicolored rug.

A large ornate chest dominated the area in front of the sofa. I worried the wicker table it sat on wouldn’t be able to stand up to the chest’s weight much longer it was so large. Off in the corner behind Love’s sofa next to a pair of French doors was her floor harp. But it was what bordered that same wall had me stepping forward for a better look.

Resting on top of a waist high pedestal was a delicate model ship complete with white linen sails and red banners. Above, encased in a shadow box were a wicked looking set of daggers pinned- one face up, one face down- to a piece of harmonizing red velvet. Both were wavy in length and as thin as stilettos. From hilt to blade they had to be a foot long. The grips, half as long as the blade, were polished ivory craved in the likeness of a mermaid, her fins formed the hilt below which ran chaotic symbols I didn‘t understand.

“Coke okay?”

Crossing back to the middle of the room I took the cup Love offered me, eyeing her as she retreated to the edge of the sofa to worrying her hands. The nervous gesture rattled me. Love was usually so confident, I was beginning to worry. Sitting my Coke on the side table untouched I took a seat beside her.

“Are you okay?” I asked concerned. Her anxiety was contagious.

The hand she pressed to her brow was visibly shaking. “Yeah, um, no. There’s ah, something I need to tell you. I just, uh, need you to keep and open mind. What I have to tell you is going to be hard to accept.”

“What is it? Are you sick?” My thoughts flashed back to the picture of Gracin and Belinda Mills we’d seen hours before. Remembering her strange question about reincarnation my stomach dropped to my feet.

I reached for Love’s hand needing to feel her, to know she was still there beside me. They were cold, lacking all previous warmth. I rubbed them between my own hands to warm them up.

“No, I’m not sick.” Her voice trembled on a forced laugh. “It’s something else. Something I‘ve been trying to prepare you for.”

My relief was short lived.

“Oh, my. This would be so much easier if you believed in magic. If you could believe that what I’m about to tell you is the honest truth.”

Turning from me Love opened the iron chest, the hinges groaning with the effort as specks of rust littered the floor. From its depths she pulled out a clear plastic bag that she held tight to her chest, eyes closed, before handing it to me.

“This is my tartan, my plaid. Hope and Faith also have one. Before it faded and was dinner for the moths, it was once patterned in checks of green, gray, and brown. The purple and white stripes that ran through the hem identified the wearer as part of the royal family.” Love tapped the plastic, her finger pointing out where each color should be. “This small pin was one we wore over our heart and is known as a luckenbooth. Usually given as a betrothal brooch, ours were given to us as a means to show our worth and protect us from harm. Gold, three hearts were entwined and topped with a crown. These gifts beside our very lives were the only things our father gave us. The first and only time we met him, he was on his deathbed, we were eighteen. A week later our mother died in the same moment he drew his last breath.” Needing the extra air Love drew a breath of her own. “That day was the thirteenth of February, eight-hundred and fifty-eight AD. My father was Cinaed mac Ailpin, crowned king of the Picts and Gaels. He was Scotland’s first king.”

“Eight- hundred and fifty-eight?” That couldn’t be right, she was only twenty-five. “Don’t you mean Nineteen-eighty-seven?”

“No. I was born for the first time in Scotland during the middle of the ninth century.”

I could scarcely believe my ears. There was no way she had been born eleven hundred plus years ago, a person could only be physically born once. Love was lying, she had to be.

I wanted to jump up, take her by her shoulders and shake some sense into her. I needed to get her to a hospital, a terminal brain tumor had to be the reason she was spouting such nonsense. There was no way I could believe the lies she told, even if she believed them herself; and I could see that she did.

“My mother, Riona, loved my father more than anything else in the world. Only they couldn’t marry because she a serf, a common slave, a nobody and sadly he was betrothed to another. Riona loved Cinaed so much that she gave her blessing for him to marry the woman who had the pure and royal bloodlines that she didn’t. Being a bastard by birth herself, she knew she could never be the queen Scotland’s people deserved. She also knew that if Cinaed ended the betrothal for her, it would mean war.

“In the end Riona put the lives of hundreds of others above her own personal wants. The night before my father’s wedding they spent their first and last night together. It was then that a promise was made and my sisters and I were conceived.”

As she spoke Love’s eyes filled with tears, her voice taking on a Scottish brogue so thick that despite my instantaneous denial, pulled me in.

“It was March and though spring was on its way to the Highlands, there was still a touch of frost in the air. They came together holding each other close inside the ring of fire that warmed them. Cinaed’s warrior heart beat violently under Riona’s smooth palm as she gave him her pledge.

“This night together will be our only, yet in this gift I shall never be lonely.

To live a life and life again, a living soul that has not end.

A living promise of you and me, a life of three I’ll bare for thee.

With their birth the gift of sight, bathed in blue; loves true light.

From night to night and day to day, with their help true love will stay.

Seen in light, a halo of blue, this my promise I give to you.

Whenever our hearts cease to beat, our spirits true love then will meet.

Held in the heart of the oldest of three, she will bear the love of you and me.

Life to life and heart to heart, our true love no, will never part.

Our love will live again, this you will see, as I will so mote it be.

“Nine months later during the witching hour of the winter solstice, when magic is said to be at its most powerful, we were born. Each of us baring a head full of black hair our forelocks a slash of pure white, our eyes the greenest of green. First came Creideamah, Faith. Next came Dochas, Hope. Then me Gra, Love.

“Every life we have lived since, the order has not changed; and for the most part our first given names have always translated to the equivalent of the same meaning during each life. With each new birth our looks changed based on who our parents are and every life we are blessed with the ability to see the love that can exist between two people. It is our job to bring these people together. It is what we were made for.

“It is that gift that caused me to interrupt Melanie’s wedding to Stephen and it is that same gift that has brought us together.”

As Love finished I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. She must have me on hidden camera, the story was just too far fetched to be real. I swiveled on the sofa to look around.

“You almost had me. Where are the cameras?” I got up to search the room for them. “You’re trying to Punk me aren’t you?”