Utterly Charming (28 page)

“I am treating you like a modern woman,” Blackstone said.

“He has commanded me to slave in his kitchen!” she said, reaching for another plate.

“I’m trying to teach you a skill so you can pay your own way,” he said.

“I am not to pay my own way. Well-bred women do not work!”

“In this century they do,” Blackstone said. “Tell her, Nora.”

Nora suppressed a grin. She’d had arguments like this with Emma, although never one that came to blows. “Oh, no,” Nora said. “You’re on your own.”

“Merlin!” Emma shouted.

Sancho raised his head just slightly above the table. “Yes, milady?” he said with so little sarcasm that only Nora seemed to catch it.

“Take me out of here!”

“Never to return?” he asked, a bit too gleefully.

“Never to return,” she said, stamping her foot. “I will not be anyone’s wench, whether it is ordained or not!”

“I’m not sure it was ordained,” Sancho said. Blackstone turned to him.

“You know the prophecy,” he said.

“Of course I do,” Sancho said. “I’m just not the one who misinterpreted it.”

Nora frowned at him. Blackstone tilted his head, as if he were remembering something.

Sancho lifted his head higher above the table. “Milady, if you take your hands off the plates, I’ll get you out of here.”

Emma had already picked up another plate. She weighed it in her small hands before setting it down again. “Take me away
now
!” she said.

“Your wish is my command, milady,” Sancho said, walking toward her, his hands raised as if he were the bad guy in a spaghetti western. “I only hope Amanda doesn’t get as pissed as Nora does when she’s awakened in the middle of the night.”

He waved a palm over Emma, and together they disappeared.

Blackstone sank against the steel table beside him. He ran a hand through his hair, then looked at the destroyed dishes. “Lord, what a mess. What’ll I tell my staff?”

“The truth?” Nora said as she stood. Her knees cracked. She had been in that position a long time.

“How much of it?”

She shrugged. “Practice on me.”

He looked at her. His entire expression softened. “I missed you,” he said.

She wasn’t going to give in that easily. “You had Emma.”

“Emma.” He glanced at the spot where she had been. “Emma hasn’t acknowledged how angry she is about losing a thousand years. Emma still blames me for that.”

“Surely soul mates can overcome that,” Nora said.

He sighed. “If Emma and I were soul mates, why was I thinking of you the entire time I was with her?”

Nora’s heart started to pound. “The grass-is-always-greener syndrome?”

He shook his head. “I waited for Emma for a thousand years.”

“But you didn’t remember her.”

“No,” he said. “And I had no idea her temper was this bad.” He walked to the side of the kitchen and grabbed a broom.

“Why not use magic on that?”

“And waste it?” he asked. “It all takes a slight toll. I’d rather use magic on important things.” He picked up a dustpan and crouched, starting to sweep.

Nora crouched beside him. “It’s easier if you pick up the big pieces first.”

She demonstrated, delicately lifting the main section of that last plate and cupping it in her hand. Then she picked up other pieces that were just as big.

Blackstone set down the broom and followed her lead. He leaned close to her, and she inhaled, letting the scents of leather and his own exoticness overwhelm her.

“What’s the prophecy?” she asked.

“The one Sancho says I misinterpreted?”

“You can call him Andvari. It’s okay.”

Blackstone whistled. “Such control he gave you. His real name. Do you know what kind of magic there is in someone’s real name?”

“Like Aethelstan?”

He grinned. “I always wondered why I told you my real name that day and not the Alex that I’ve been using for centuries.”

“What’s the prophecy?” she asked again.

“We all get one,” he said, dumping his handful of broken glass in a nearby garbage can. “Mine was—” and then he spoke Greek.

At least, it sounded like Greek.

“How about in English?” Nora asked as she dumped her shards into the garbage can. Then she turned. Blackstone had his eyes closed.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’m blinder than a dead wombat,” he said.

“That’s the prophecy?”

“No, but it may as well be,” he said.

“So what was it?” she asked. “In English.”

He cleared his throat and sat on the floor. “At the end of the first millennium AD—not that it said AD since we have a different timekeeping method than mortals, but that’s what it meant—”

Nora sat beside him. He took her hand.

“—you will meet the woman who will show you your destiny.”

“That doesn’t say anything about soul mates,” Nora said.

He shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “All of our prophecies are about love.”

“All of them?”

He nodded.

“Was your Greek bad, then?”

“No,” he said. “I was twenty-one. I guess I was thinking with the wrong part of my anatomy. And Ealhswith took advantage of that.”

Nora squeezed his hand. It felt so good to be beside him. She had missed him too. “So what destiny did Emma lead you to?”

He raised his eyes to hers. “You.”

Nora smiled. “Surely there’ve been other women—”

“Not like you think,” he said. “No one I’ve ever really loved. I’ve been concentrating on Emma.”

“But how can you be sure that your destiny is me?”

“Simple.” He put his other hand on her cheek and rubbed her lips with his thumb. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever met because of Emma. And from the moment I saw you, I wanted to be beside you.”

“You’re beside me now,” Nora whispered.

“I’m going to stay here,” he said. “Forever.”

And then he kissed her, a long, slow, lingering kiss that warmed her all over. She leaned into it, slipping her free hand into his hair. It was as thick as she had thought it would be. He tasted better than she could have hoped, and when their lips finally separated, she felt slightly disoriented, surprised. She had never felt like that before, not after a simple kiss.

“Forever’s a long time in your world,” she said against his mouth.

“Our world,” he said.

“You haven’t asked me if I want forever,” she said.

He threw his head back and laughed. “A modern woman, with her own life. Here I was, trying to remake Emma into you.” He seemed to catch himself and put a finger beneath Nora’s chin. “Do you want forever?”

She shook her head, and that stricken look she was coming to recognize flitted through his eyes. He barely caught it, tried to mask it, his features becoming smooth.

Then she grinned at him. “I doubt forever will be long enough.”

He laughed again, wrapped his arms around her, and eased her onto the floor.

“Be careful of the glass,” she said, before she realized that they were in her bed, with Squidgy staring down at them in baffled surprise from the headboard. Darnell howled downstairs.

“One more thing,” Nora said as Blackstone’s fingers found the pearl buttons on the jacket Sancho had given her. “Will you send Darnell to Emma? He’s miserable without her.”

“I’m glad one of us is,” Blackstone said. He waved a hand, and Darnell vanished midhowl. Then Blackstone wrapped his body around Nora’s and proceeded to show her what forever would be like.

Forever would be spectacular.

Until that night, she hadn’t believed happily ever after would ever be possible.

She had been wrong.

Before turning to romance writing, award-winning author Kristine Kathryn Rusch edited the
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
and ran Pulphouse Publishing (which won her a World Fantasy Award). As Kristine Grayson she has published six novels so far and has won the
RT Book Reviews
Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Paranormal Romance and, under her real name, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, the prestigious Hugo award. She lives in Oregon with her own Prince Charming, writer Dean Wesley Smith (who is not old enough to be one of the original three, but he is handsome enough) as well as the obligatory writers’ cats. www.kriswrites.com.