Alys remembered when she would come to the abbey with her mother, climbing over the stones, lying in the meadows with the sun on her face. The way it had sheltered her after she lost her mother. ‘It brings me great peace, as well. My nursemaid used to tell me there were fairies living here.’
‘That reminds me, fair Alys—you do owe me a story still. Remember our bargain?’
Alys laughed. ‘I can’t think of any good tales now.’
‘Certainly you can. What of those fairies? Come, entertain me while I eat. I have been alone all day, after all.’ He gave her an exaggerated sad look that made her laugh again.
‘There is a tale I loved as a child,’ she said. ‘It rather reminds me of you.’
‘Of me?’ he said with a laugh.
‘Aye. There are many fairies who live near us and they watch what we do even as we have no awareness of them. Some of them wish evil on humans; some are only mischievous. And some do love us, in their own way, even though their fairy love can destroy us as easily as the illness-causing evil fairies.’
‘Am I an evil fairy, then?’
Alys studied him carefully, his easy smile, his beautiful eyes. ‘Nay. You are the sort who draw unwary mortals closer and closer, until they long for the fairy realm and forget their own homes. Just as the tale my old nurse told me, about a fairy king who sought to wed a human princess. She was betrothed to another prince, but when she saw the fairy king, he mesmerised her with his eyes, and drew her to him, until she vanished to her family and fiancé.’
‘He had magical eyes?’
‘Aye. A beautiful emerald-green, like your own, if I remember the story right.’
Juan gave a sad sigh. ‘But alas, I have found no princess to love me.’
Alys laughed. ‘You just have not looked close enough, I would wager. I am sure princesses from Antwerp to Lisbon have looked into your eyes and been lost. Mayhap your mother was not Spanish after all, but fey folk...’ Emerald-green eyes. Alys smiled as she thought of their rare beauty and felt the deepest sympathy for the lost human princess. They were mesmerising indeed. Just like...
Like the green eyes of the boy who had once saved her and soothed her tears away.
Startled by her own memory, she looked up at Juan and saw there the boy. The green-eyed boy with the floppy dark hair and sweet smile. He had come back to her now, when she had thought never to see him again.
Flustered, she looked away. ‘I should look at your shoulder and make sure it is healing properly before I go,’ she said. ‘Does it give you any pain?’
He rolled his shoulder with seeming ease. ‘Not at all. You have worked miracles. A healing angel.’
Alys felt her cheeks turn warm with a pleased blush. ‘Nay, not I, it’s just the herbs. My mother used to say any wound could heal, if kept clean and dosed with the right herbs. The earth knows what is needed.’
‘Then she was a most wise woman. I’m fortunate she had such a daughter.’
Alys smiled and tentatively eased back his shirt. The linen was warm from his body and when she was so close to him it was hard to remain sensible. She forced herself to concentrate only on his wound, not on the way he smelled, the smooth, hot satin of his skin.
She turned back the bandage and saw that the poultice was doing its work. She reached for the new mixture of herbs from the basket and wound a fresh bandage around his shoulder. The familiar work distracted her from old memories.
‘Do you remember anything at all of your own mother?’ she asked.
‘Very little. She died when I was very young. I think I recall the way her perfume smelled, of summer roses, and her smile, which was sad and sweet. After she was gone, I fear our house was not a home at all. The buildings began crumbling, a wreck just like my father turned into.’
Alys felt a pang of sadness for him as a little boy, left alone to face a cold world. ‘I am sorry. Dunboyton might be dull and chilly, but it is never cruel. The home my mother tried to make is still here.’
‘Is it your home, Alys?’
She thought about that carefully. ‘Not the castle, no. But my memories, the people I love—that makes it home, I suppose.’
‘Will you miss it when you marry and leave?’ he said tightly.
Alys peeked up at him and found he watched her carefully, his bright eyes narrowed. ‘Of course. But thanks to my mother, I will know how to make a new home. What of you, Juan? Will you find a fine lady to marry and make a new home?’
He gave a bark of laughter. ‘Nay, I would not know how to do that. I have never known a home.’
‘But would you like to?’
He was quiet for a long moment. ‘I think I might. A home—it does sound like a fine thing.’
There was a note of sadness in his voice that made Alys’s heart ache all over again. She rested her hands on his shoulders and leaned against him, longing to bring him comfort. To bring that to herself.
Suddenly, the air between them seemed to change, growing charged as the sky was just before a lightning strike. She could hardly breathe, especially when he reached for her and drew her closer. She had never been so close to a man. How dizzying it was! All her senses tilted and whirled, and all she knew in that moment was him. The way he felt under her touch, so alive and strong and warm.
‘Alys...’ he said hoarsely.
‘I—I am here,’ she whispered.
As if in a hazy dream, far away, yet more immediate and real than anything she had ever known before, his head tilted down towards her and he kissed her.
The brush of his lips was so soft at first, like warm velvet, pressing softly once, twice, as if he expected her to run. But Alys could not have moved away from him. As she moved up to meet him, his kiss deepened. It became hotter, more urgent—the most urgent, hungry thing she had ever known.
Something deep inside her heart responded to that urgency, a rough excitement that grew and grew until she thought she would burst from it. She moaned, parting her lips to the shocking feel of his tongue seeking entrance, sliding over hers. There was only him, not the world outside, only him and that one perfect moment.
But the outside world insisted on breaking into her dream. A sound like a branch falling against the roof shocked her, making her fall back from him. She jumped to her feet, her whole body shaking. She longed to jump back into his arms, yet she knew she could not. If she did, she might never free herself again.
‘Alys, I am so very sorry...’ he said, his sea-green eyes grown dark.
‘Nay. Please don’t say you are sorry for what happened,’ she gasped. ‘I could not bear it. I just—I must go now.’
She whirled around and ran out of the dairy, hearing him call after her. She couldn’t stop, though. She hurried out of the abbey’s ruins as if the ghosts were indeed running after her. She didn’t feel the cold wind, even though she had left her shawl behind, and she could hear nothing at all but the wild beat of her heart in her ears.
She paused at the kitchen-garden wall to try to catch her breath. If her father was awake, she knew she could not let him see her in such a state. But as she studied the castle, she saw that no windows were alight, except the one in the guest chamber of the tower. The one where Sir Matthew stayed. She felt as if someone watched from behind those blank windows, someone who sought all her secrets.
He was not alone in his hiding place. John could sense it. And whoever lurked outside, it was not Alys. She would have dashed inside, her basket in her