Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (127 page)

“
He would never short-ship
anyone,” Viviane insisted. “Not Aaron. He’d give someone the shirt
off his own back rather than see them cold.”

“
Aye, he is a man of good
name.” Niall met her gaze and was reassured to see a hint of her
usual consideration there. “My lady, ’tis October,” he reminded her
gently. “If indeed we could return thence, we might be able to
ensure that Aaron does not die so wrongly. I, too, would see him
thrive.”

She wavered. Niall saw the indecision dawn
in her eyes, he noted how she bit her lip. “But, Majella…”

Before Niall could tell her the truth of it,
Monty spoiled everything.

“
Yeah,
right
! Going
back to the past. As if!” He leaned closer, his tone dropping. “But
I’ll tell you something really interesting, Viviane, something
about this little history lesson that you probably don’t
know.”

Viviane looked alarmed. “What do you
mean?”

“
Research, man. A writer’s
gotta research, and I did.” He glared at Niall and Niall wondered
what this man of no repute had found. “Funny thing is, a lot of
people in Cantlecroft thought things had gone wrong right from the
moment they dispatched a certain knight to retrieve an escaped
convict.”

Niall stared in shock. He could not have
found that tale!

“
A woman named Viviane,
condemned as a witch and sentenced to die.” Monty licked his lips
as Viviane started.

“
Nay,” she whispered,
obviously seeing the path of the tale.

“
Oh yeah,” Monty said with
a nod. “And that knight, who swore before the whole of Cantlecroft
at a big shin-dig to bring the witch back to face her execution,
was named Niall of Malloy.”

“
Nay!” Niall roared, but
’twas too late.

“
Nay!” Viviane rounded on
him with flashing eyes and snatched her hand out of his. “Tell me
’tis a lie!” she cried. “Tell me that you didn’t follow me to take
back there! Niall! You couldn’t have wanted me to die!”

But Niall could not lie.

Nor could he tell her the truth.

He cleared his throat. “Viviane, ’tis not as
it seems…”

“
No, it’s worse, babe, it’s
a lot worse.” Monty pushed his way into the conversation. “He’s
just trying to get around you, get you back with the troupe to
re-enact the last chapter of the scene. It’s not gonna be any fun
for you, Viviane, even if it is just play-acting…”

“
You deceived me!” Viviane
stepped forward, raised her hand to slap him, and Niall seized the
only chance he was likely to have.

He had to ensure Majella’s safety.

He had to fulfill his pledge.

He had to clear Viviane’s name - and he knew
there would be no chance to explain all to her here before she fled
his side for all time.

Niall caught Viviane in his arms, ignoring
her scream of frustration and her kicking. He shifted her weight to
one hip, locked an arm around her waist, and closed his hand around
the cursed pendant at the root of it all.

He began to chant.

“
Sea of green and sky of
blue,

Let this one wish come true:

To Cantlecroft would we now flee,

A word with the archbishop we do plea.”

The shimmering that Niall recalled started,
the coldness emanated once more from the ethereal stone. Viviane
whimpered and struggled against him, clearly disinclined to
participate in this journey, but Niall held her fast.

She twisted and fought, she bit him as the
shimmer grew to a glow. She cussed at him with a vocabulary he had
not guessed she possessed. She was crying and Niall hated that he
was responsible for the fall of a single tear. He locked her arms
around her waist, determined not to let her go, secretly terrified
at the prospect of her escaping his grasp during this
transition.

Where then would she be left?

Where would he be left, if he was no longer
in possession of the stone?

“
Viviane! You must hold
fast!” he cried.

“
Hey!” Monty roared as the
light grew to blinding intensity. “What the hell is this about? And
where are you like going? You can’t just take off with her like
this!”

And he leapt on Niall just as there came a
blinding flash.

*

Viviane shivered from the chill and kept her
eyes tightly closed. Though she would have never admitted it, it
was a relief to feel Niall’s arms locked around her once again and
his heat pressed against her.

Even if she was playing second fiddle to
some woman he had left pregnant!

She cried while no one could witness it,
letting her tears scatter to the four winds, hating her own
gullibility. Oh, she had been a fool to believe that Niall was her
one true love, following her across all time to win her heart and
hand.

He had just been doing his job, and a
horrible job it was. And now, she was going back to face that
execution that she had so narrowly escaped.

Some hero she’d found.

Viviane had that same sense of being
stretched thin, before she finally felt the gathering begin. It was
even more disorienting than the last time, and she couldn’t seem to
get a clear sense of where she was. All she could see when she
forced her eyes open was clear blue light.

She heard a man cry out, then footsteps
hastily drawing closer

She heard Monty swear eloquently, then felt
the welcome weight of Niall’s arm lock around her waist.

The first thing that she could discern was
the floor.

It was made of heavy, rough-hewn planks of
wood. Viviane stared at this unwelcome hint of her location as
everything else was still lost in that eerie blue light. There were
herbs strewn on the floor in a way that wasn’t very common on Salt
Spring Island.

Viviane reached for her pendant with shaking
fingers, her arm still unwilling to quickly do her bidding. Even
though she was dazed by the leap through time, she knew that she
had one chance and one chance only to escape her dire fate.

But Viviane didn’t even have that.

A man’s hand brushed her fingers aside and
closed proprietarily over the moonstone. She looked up to find a
tall man bending over her.

His smile was not friendly.

“
I will just take this,” he
insisted silkily and gave the chain a little tug in case she missed
his meaning.

“
But the pendant is mine!”
Viviane protested.

His smile broadened. “Not any more. Take it
off.”

Viviane glanced around herself, only to find
Monty shaking his head and moaning. Niall had his fingertips
pressed to his temples, his jeans and shirt unlikely to aid them
much here. Viviane recalled with a pang that his mail was spread
over the floor of her room at Barb’s.

An impatient tug urged her to look again at
to the man holding her moonstone. He was a tall, elegantly wrought,
older man, dark of eye and silver of hair.

They were apparently in his bedroom, which
was a remarkably lavish chamber. A massive bed, hung with rich
tapestries drawn against the chill of the air, nearly filled the
room. Viviane knew she was back in Cantlecroft and she knew she was
in the presence of wealth, but she would never have recognized who
this man was, because he was naked.

But Niall did. “My lord!” he said in sudden
astonishment and the man flicked an impatient glance his way.

“
I shall deal with you
later,” he said crisply and Niall frowned, though he held his
tongue.

Viviane gasped. The archbishop! Of course,
Niall had asked for an audience in his verse.

She couldn’t hold back her question.
“
Are
you the archbishop?”

He smiled coldly in acknowledgement and
Viviane dared to hope. “The pendant, if you please,” he said
crisply, but Viviane wasn’t listening.

Maybe she could have the hearing that had
been promised to her.

This was her chance!

“
Sir!” Viviane, unable to
bow, inclined her head with respect. “Sir, my name is
Viviane…”

The archbishop frowned. “I know full well
who you are. Now, give me this token and give it to me now.”

“
But there has been a
misunderstanding. I was convicted without ever having the hearing
promised to me and if you grant me the chance, I can
explain…”

But the archbishop chuckled under his
breath. The laughter, Viviane noticed, never reached his eyes. He
shook his head and regarded her as though she was a particularly
stupid child.

Viviane’s heart chilled.

“
There is naught to
explain.” He gave the pendant a little tug. “
This
is
eloquent enough.”

Oh, he thought she had created the magical
pendant! Viviane hastened to reassure him. “Oh, but that’s not my
doing. I didn’t know that it had such power! I just made a wish and
never imagined this pendant would take me across the
centuries.”

The archbishop’s eyes narrowed and he
studied her with sudden intensity. “Across
centuries
?”
Viviane nodded and held his gaze, content to let him see that she
wasn’t lying.

“
Aye, my lord,” Niall
contributed. “We journeyed to the year 1999 and saw many marvels
which could be put to use here in Cantlecroft. ’Twould create labor
and mechanisms to sell abroad. Indeed, I began to learn of the
marvel they call plumbing…”

The archbishop lifted one hand to silence
Niall. “Marvels from the future,” he mused and stared into the
stone. “Never did I guess the talisman was so potent as that.”

He smiled into Viviane’s eyes but the sight
was not reassuring.

All the same, she summoned her best smile
and hoped her usual good fortune would see her free of this
circumstance. “So you see, there was no witchery about it. I’m not
a witch, I didn’t even know that the stone did this. It was a gift
to me and one whose power I never guessed.”

“
I know full well where you
won it.” The archbishop’s tone was cold and decisive. He ran his
thumb across the stone in an almost proprietary way. “Though I had
no inkling of its power until this very moment. Of course, I
guessed once you disappeared that there was more to the stone than
I had suspected. You may be assured that had I known the truth
sooner, it would never have been left in your
possession.”

She had been condemned because of the stone,
but the archbishop hadn’t known it was magical? Viviane frowned in
confusion, even as the archbishop’s lips drew to a tight line.

“
Such an oversight cannot
be tolerated again.” He shook his head and his eyes flashed. “I
would have it
now
.”

The archbishop suddenly flicked his wrist
and snapped the pendant from its chain. Viviane cried out as the
chain bit into her neck and Niall stepped forward to steady
her.

“
There is no need to injure
the lady!” he said heatedly.

The archbishop smiled. “And no reason to
spare her.”

Viviane caught her breath as Niall shook his
head. “Nay, my lord, she has been misjudged,” he said vehemently.
“The lady is innocent of the charge made against her, and I would
vouch for her before you. She is no witch, she is naught but a
woman falsely charged. She knew naught of the witchery inherent in
this stone.”

The archbishop seemed to find Niall’s
defense amusing. “I
knew
she was innocent of
witchcraft.”

Niall’s face lit up. “Then…”

“’
Twas never the issue.
’Twas enough that she wore the stone.” The archbishop shivered
elaborately and glanced around the rich chamber as Viviane
struggled to make sense of his words. Without saying more, he
turned to walk back to his bed.

Viviane looked to Niall in consternation and
it seemed that he could evidently hold his words back no longer.
“But my lord!” he protested. “If you knew the lady was innocent,
then why was she condemned to die?”

The archbishop tossed Viviane’s pendant onto
a table and glanced back. She gauged the distance and knew she
would never be able to retrieve it. “Because
obviously
I
could not afford to let her live.” He smiled coolly. “Just as now,
I cannot afford to let
you
live.”

Niall’s eyes flashed as he straightened.
“What nonsense is this?”

“
It is no nonsense, Niall
of Malloy.” The archbishop folded his arms across his chest. “You
have learned matters that were best left unknown.”

“
But I am pledged to your
service!” Niall argued. “I swore a pledge to you to fetch this
woman back to Cantlecroft, and I have fulfilled my
task!”

“
Against all expectation.”
The archbishop smiled thinly.

“
I defend her honor and her
name!” Niall declared. “You must hear my testimony, as a man of
honor.” He interlaced his fingers with Viviane’s. “She is the woman
I would take to wife, a woman of good heart and noble intent. You
must proclaim her innocence!”

But the archbishop shook his head. “I must
do no such thing. ’Tis regrettable, of course, as you were always
competent, but one must do what one must. Indeed, if you match your
fate to that of a condemned witch, what else am I to do?”

Viviane gasped in horror. How could the
archbishop treat Niall so poorly? Niall was pledged to that man’s
service and had done nothing wrong.

“’
Tis not right!” Niall
cried.

“
And of what import is
that? You will die, as will the woman.” The archbishop smiled.
“Together, as you evidently desire to be. Clearly -” his gaze was
chilly “- she has bewitched you.”