Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (35 page)

“
Will you give it a rest?
I’m not that old!”

A wicked glint lit her sapphire eyes. “How
old are you?”

“
Thirty-four.”

Aurelia waved off this confession. “A mere
babe.”

The comment piqued Baird’s curiosity because
he was sure she was younger than him. “And how old are you?”

“
What year is it again?”
When Baird told her, Aurelia made a great show of counting it out
on her fingers. “By nearest reckoning, eleven hundred and
ninety-eight.”

Baird blinked, but Aurelia wasn’t
joking.

His heart sank to his toes. She was supposed
to be over all of that! Baird’s vision of a glowing future
disappeared in a puff of smoke.

She couldn’t still be nuts.

Baird swallowed his trepidation, rolled to
brace himself over Aurelia and cupped her shoulders in his hands,
carefully choosing his words. “Princess, I thought you understood
that your father is dead,” he said gently.

She smiled. “I do.”

Baird was encouraged. “Then, you don’t have
to pretend to be someone out of a history book any more.
Right?”

“
There is no need to
pretend anything. I now know the truth.”

“
Great. Do you know who you
are?”

Aurelia snorted. “I always knew who I was. I
am the Princess Aurelia, daughter of Hekod the Fifth, King of
Dunhelm and Lord of Fyordskar over the sea.”

Baird blinked. “But…”

Aurelia interrupted him cheerfully. “But
what I did not know was that the prophecy of my birth - one which I
always believed to be nonsense - has come true.” Aurelia offered
her thumb as proof. “I did indeed prick my thumb in the middle of
the whorl and I did indeed sleep until my true love - you -
awakened me.”

Baird took a deep breath. “Princess, you
can’t be twelve hundred years old.” He borrowed Julian’s comment,
but left out the sarcasm. “You would be very dead by now.”

Aurelia arched a skeptical brow. “Do I look
dead to you?” Baird could only shake his head. Her eyes darkened
and she rolled her hips mischievously beneath him. “And do I feel
dead, Baird Beauforte?”

Baird bounced out of bed, not trusting his
body to remain impartial in this debate, and shoved a hand through
his hair. “Aurelia! This is serious!”

“
And I am serious, make no
mistake.”

She was.

Baird swallowed. “Are you saying that you
really are Ursilla’s story, after all?”

“
Of course not!” Aurelia
propped herself up on her elbows, her golden hair tumbling across
the pillows. To his amazement, her gaze was perfectly
clear.

She was convinced of her thinking, even if
he wasn’t.

“
My tale must have been the
inspiration for Ursilla’s story.” Her lips twisted. “Trust me,
there were none who ever called me Gemdelovely Gemdelee and lived
to tell of it. What a woeful excuse for a name!” She rolled her
eyes, but Baird didn’t share her amusement.

He frowned at his toes, unsure how to
proceed.

“
You came to me! You are
the one,” Aurelia insisted in a weird echo of Luan’s certainty.
“You are the one who came to awaken me. It’s all true. Can you not
see? It makes perfect sense!”

“
Not to me,” Baird said
stubbornly. “It doesn’t make any damn sense at all.”

“
Baird, you must face the
truth. We are destined to be together, just as in Ursilla’s tale.
You have come and awakened me from a long slumber and now our fates
are tied together.”

“
Aurelia, that doesn’t make
any sense. That’s crazy talk.”

“
I am not
crazy.”

“
Right.” Baird heard the
undercurrent of panic in his own voice. A part of him found her
argument dangerously seductive, but Baird wasn’t going to listen to
that.

Oh, he could pick ‘em, that was for
sure.

He jabbed a finger through the air at her.
“If you’re twelve hundred years old, then how can you speak and
understand plain old English? Nobody spoke that here then.”

She couldn’t refute that!

But Aurelia did.

“
I have the gift of
tongues,” she asserted without hesitation. She folded her arms
across her chest and tossed her hair. “Once I heard you and Julian
talk, I could understand and converse in your tongue.”

“
Well, that’s handy if
you’re going to sleep for ten or twelve centuries!” Baird shoved a
hand through his hair. “Aurelia, listen to what you’re
saying!”

His voice hardened with determination. “Do
you not remember that I spoke to you in the Pictish tongue first?
Then I tried Gaelic and Briton and finally Latin, but to no
avail.”

She smiled, obviously to reassure him. His
gut urged him to believe her - which make Baird just as crazy as
Aurelia was.

It was time to get the hell out of here.

Baird snatched up his jeans and fought to
get into them as he backed away from the bed. “Look, maybe we can
get you some help around here. We’ll find someone you can talk to
about losing your father. It could straighten things out in your
mind.”

Baird stuffed his arms into his shirt and
made for the door.

Aurelia’s words, so low with disappointment,
brought him to a halt. “You do not believe me.”

Baird sighed. He turned back to face her,
not liking that he was responsible for the disappointment in her
eyes.

But he couldn’t lie to her. “Would you
believe me if this was the other way around?”

Aurelia frowned thoughtfully. “No,” she
admitted softly, then chewed her lip as she studied him. “How could
I prove this to you?”

“
You can’t.” Baird heard
his own frustration. “No one lives for twelve hundred years. It’s
that simple.” Baird rubbed his temple and had no idea how to make
all of this come right. “Look, Aurelia, I’ve got work to do. Can we
talk about this later?”

Though what they would talk about, Baird had
no idea. Her disappointment was tangible, but Baird determinedly
marched out of the room.

A couple of hours wasn’t going to evict the
last of Aurelia’s delusions. On the other hand, her strange
conviction had done nothing to diminish Baird’s feelings for her.
What could he do?

Believe that she had just had a twelve
hundred year snooze?

Right.

*

Baird strode impatiently down the hall.
Aurelia might turn him inside out, she might be sexy, funny and
cute, smart as a whip, she might give him fantasies of a perfect
future together unlike anything he’d ever imagined, but she was
flat out nuts.

His eleventh foster mother’s doomsaying came
to mind: lucky at cards, unlucky at love.

Maybe he should take up gambling.

Didn’t it just figure that Baird would be
dealt a winning hand in all the material signs of success? Until he
had come to Dunhelm, he would never have complained about the
balance, but now Baird felt a yawning hole in the very middle of
his life.

And the one women who could fill it was
bonkers.

Baird nudged open his door, freezing in the
foyer with the sense that he was not alone.

“
Baird, darling, I’ve been
waiting just forever for you!” Marissa rolled from the bed and
strolled toward him in a black lace negligee and satin mules frothy
with ostrich feathers. Her hair was pinned up in artful deshabille,
her lips were red, her eyes were knowing. A waft of exotic perfume
preceded her arrival and made Baird’s nose tickle.

She carried a pair of crystal glasses. “I
thought a little aperitif might be in order, darling. We can start
with sherry - it’s so British, don’t you think?” Marissa chuckled
throatily and walked her fingers up a stunned Baird’s bare chest.
“And then, darling, we can see where things go from there.”

Baird’s nose twitched, he sneezed violently
and completely ruined the ambience of the moment.

Marissa was undeterred. “Have you caught a
chill, darling?” She leaned closer and pouted with false concern.
“Well, darling, I’ve just the thing to warm you right down to your
toes!”

This was the last thing he needed right
now.

“
Marissa, this is not
appropriate.”

She chuckled throatily. “Well, Baird,
darling, I have never wanted to be appropriate with you.” She
hooked a finger through his unbuttoned shirt and tried to draw him
into the room. “I see you’ve started without me, darling, but we
can certainly progress from here.”

“
Marissa, I’m serious.”
Baird glowered. “Please leave.”

She pouted. “You don’t really mean that,
darling. Why, we’ve had almost no time alone and - “

Baird’s tone was non-negotiable. “I’m asking
you to leave.”

“
And darling,” Marissa’s
gaze hardened. “I will make my staying well worth your
while.”

“
Out,” Baird declared
flatly. He pointed into the corridor, what might have been a
dignified pose ruined by the sock and shoe dangling from his
grip.

Marissa looked him up and down, obviously
making a point of observing his state of dress. “Well! I see. Is
that how it’s going to be?”

“
That’s how it
is.”

Her eyes glinted, then her smile turned
brittle. “Mark my words, darling, you’ll soon be bored with that
little package and come begging for more sophisticated fare. Even
Darian, sweet boy that he is, was asking when you and I would tie
the knot. It seems obvious to everyone but you that we’re
absolutely perfect for each other.”

“
Get out now!” Baird
roared.

Marissa sniffed as she swept past him, both
sherries firmly in her grip. “I suppose there’s no accounting for
taste, is there, darling?”

Baird’s only answer was the firm closing of
the door. He emphatically shot the deadbolt home and trudged toward
the shower, pausing on the way to shove open the window to fumigate
the cloud of Marissa’s perfume.

Women. Who in the hell needed them?

*

Aurelia heard Baird’s door open and to her
dismay, Marissa’s voice carried to her ears. Aurelia could not make
out the other woman’s words, but she did not have to.

Baird had gone back to Marissa.

It was not fair! How could he deny the truth
between them?

Aurelia flung herself across the room and
let herself weep. She had lost her brother and her father, she had
lost her home and everyone she had ever known. And now she had lost
the man who was supposed to be hers for all time.

Well, Aurelia was not going to let him go
that easily.

Baird was the one, she knew it in her heart.
But he was skeptical of the power of his own intuition. He did not
trust what he could not hold within his hands. Aurelia sat up and
wiped the tears from her eyes.

Would she not have been skeptical in his
place?

She would have, she knew it. The prophecy
sounded like mere whimsy to the ears of a clear thinking person.
Even she had put no stock in it until the truth had been
undeniable.

Somehow Aurelia had to persuade Baird of the
truth. If the prophecy intended for they two to spend their days
and nights together, it was clear that prophecy needed a little
help.

Fortunately, Aurelia knew exactly what to
do.

*

Darian was bouncing like an enthusiastic pup
when Aurelia came down to the hall that evening.

“
You’ll never guess what I
found today in the well,” he declared as soon as they sat down for
dinner.

Darian looked expectantly around the table,
but no one responded. Marissa looked sour, Baird dissatisfied and
Aurelia was certainly not in the mood for small talk. She was
impatient for night to come so that she could convince Baird of the
truth.

And angry with him for going from her to
Marissa. She never would have imagined that he could be so shallow
and cruel!

Darian’s enthusiasm was unruffled by the
lack of response. “Well, I just have a couple of Polaroids of it.
Didn’t want to disturb it.”

“
Well, what is it?” Julian
asked, when no one else did.

With a triumphant flourish, Darian produced
a shiny image of something so familiar that Aurelia’s breath caught
in her throat. “See?”

The image was of Aurelia’s crossbow, half
buried in the dirt. The gutting was gone, the nut lost somewhere
over time, but she would have known the inlaid wood anywhere. Her
sire had commissioned the design especially for her when he thought
her skill warranted the gift.

She had taken it to the walls that last
morning. Aurelia touched the image, but it was flat, though the
crossbow was complete in every detail. She swallowed, not daring to
ask about this stiff square and its magic, and passed it to
Julian.

“
What is it?” Julian asked
idly.

“
I don’t know, but it’s
old, that’s for sure.” Darian’s voice throbbed with
excitement.

Baird fired a cold glance down the table.
“Don’t you follow strict processes for removing and dating
artifacts? I had assumed that this was going to be a systematic
investigation.”

Darian fidgeted. “Well, you’re right, of
course. I was just so excited!” His features brightened. “And isn’t
it beautifully made? I’m sure that someone can figure out what it’s
for.”

“
It’s a crossbow,” Aurelia
said tightly.

Darian looked surprised. “I don’t think so,
Aurelia. You see, it would have to have a firing mechanism and we
know that Picts didn’t use crossbows…”

“
They most certainly
did.”

“
I thought wood
disintegrated in damp places,” Baird commented frostily, passing
the Polaroid to Marissa.