Faerie Read online

  Faerie

  Delle Jacobs

  Thomas Mercer (2011)

  * * *

  Rating: ****

  Tags: Romance

  Like her mother before her, Leonie of Bosewood carries Faerie blood in her veins, a secret she harbors to protect her own life. For although the people of eleventh-century England believe in magic, their ignorance and fear have made being different a very dangerous prospect. Caught between the human and Faerie worlds, yet belonging in neither, Leonie must guard her heart…no matter how strong the temptations.

  As the king’s emissary, Philippe le Peregrine has watched Leonie mature from gangly girl to alluring woman. With each encounter, his attraction grows, but he knows a match between them can never be. For Philippe hides his own secret, one that has condemned him to a life of lonely celibacy for fear of harming the woman he loves. But when powerful forces prompt them to unite against a sorcerer intent on conquering the world, Leonie and Philippe realize that only together are they strong enough to combat the evil threatening to engulf them.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2012 Delle Jacobs

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781612185934

  ISBN-10: 1612185932

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  GLOUCESTER PALACE, GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND

  JULY, AD 1093

  “THAT ONE,” SAID the crone. One long, bony finger emerged from her dark green sleeve to point into the courtyard beyond the shadowed arcade. Tall, gaunt, old, and ashen-faced, she was everything Rufus was not.

  He frowned, but quickly hid it. No one told him what to decide. He, William II, son of the Great Conqueror, was King of England.

  It was an odd demand she made. Of all the king’s knights, only Philippe le Peregrine wanted no fief, no wife, no family, only to roam at the king’s will, to fight and make peace at the king’s command. In return, Rufus had given the Peregrine his word to honor the knight’s wish, and Rufus made it a point of honor to keep promises to his knights.

  Still, as he studied his favorite knight from the obscuring shadows of the colonnade, he began to see the possibilities. Aye, it just might do. In fact, he could not have dreamed up a better opportunity himself.

  Again he frowned, this time purposely, as if she had angered him. But his mind was spinning with thoughts on how he could use her demand. “He will not do it,” he replied.

  “Oh, he will, Red King,” the crone said, her gravelly voice crackling. “He is bound to you, just as you are bound to me by your father’s oath. You know what will happen if you do not keep it.”

  He rubbed the crisp curls of his red beard. Aye, he knew, and he needed her. She knew he would comply. He honored his father above all men, and that first Norman King of England had trusted this strange old woman implicitly, enough to give her free rein in the promise she exacted.

  So, then: His own promise betrayed to honor a prior one of his father’s making. It would not be the first time a king had not kept his word. “So it shall be,” he replied at last. “But how to do it? It will not be easy.”

  The crone laughed, but she did not smile. “You will know,” she said, and again the rough chuckle shook the bag of bones that was her body. She focused her gleaming green eyes on him, and Rufus tried to look away, only to be caught in their compelling intensity. A chill rippled down his spine. She did not possess the Evil Eye, nor was she a witch—he had met his share of evil beings and had a sense for them. But in some indefinable way, she was magical. For what she knew, Rufus would pay her price, any price, just as his father had done.

  With a jerking gait that made him think of walking sticks, she passed through the pale arcs of sunlight and shadows of the colonnade to the stone wall between Rufus’s private courtyard and the palace bailey. She glanced back, then pulled the hood of her moss-colored cloak over her straw-like hair. Her cloak blended with the shadows, then faded into the morning mist.

  The mist thinned and vanished. The crone was gone. Rufus tilted his head and squinted. Nothing was left. Only the wall.

  For a moment he wished for her strange powers. Imagine a king who could walk through stone. Imagine a king standing in a room when no one knew he was there.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CASTLE BRODIN, YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND

  AUGUST, AD 1093

  THE FOREST HAD always been like a friend to her. Not that Leonie minded the hot sun in the meadow, and the bright, hot weather was a boon that would bring plenty to sustain the castle and village through the coming winter. But the forest was her place, as if she had been born with an affinity for its cool shade and deep green, quiet majesty.

  In fact, like all of the Faeriekind, she had a kinship to the forest, but that was the secret she dared not share with any human. Only old Ealga knew. And the old woman who had been handmaid to Leonie of Bosewood since the girl’s birth lived in constant fear that Leonie’s carelessness would someday betray her.

  In the meadow that lay between the woods and Castle Brodin, the sun bore down in blistering brightness on the burned necks of the villeins harvesting the grain. But beneath the canopy of leaves, the air stirred into a cooling breeze. Leonie let her veil fall to her shoulders to cool her scalp, for no one was in the forest except her and her favorite little boy, Sigge, the curious dreamer who always wanted to know everything and do everything.

  Other times of year, Leonie and her little friend might roam about the forest for other reasons. But now was the time to harvest the club moss she used to make green dye for the prized Castle Brodin wool. And it was Leonie who made the perfect green dye. But the secrets of other colors—the perfect scarlet, the brightest yellow, or a blue as bright and clear as the summer sky—eluded her.

  Leonie grinned as she spotted a clump of club moss, growing like a tiny fir tree beneath the first of the year’s fallen leaves. “Sigge, come here,” she called, focusing her gaze on the clump as she knelt.

  “In a minute,” the boy responded.

  She frowned. The child was uncharacteristically quiet. “No, come, Sigge. You need to see what it looks like and how it hides beneath the leaves if you are going to help me.”

  “Coming.”

  She smirked in silence at the rustle of noise. That was more like him. She swept back the leaves, unable to contain her own exuberance any longer. “This is just right, Sigge,” she said, gently fingering the succulent branches of
the moss. Her fingers worked into the dark, cool, loose soil beneath the plant, carefully dividing it so that she would leave some of the plant to regrow. Already she was imagining the rich green dye simmering in the pots over the castle hearths.

  The calm air shattered with the child’s scream. “Leonie! Help! Help me!”

  Terror sliced straight to her heart. She jumped to her feet and turned to see the little boy hopping on one foot, blood pouring from the other one into a spreading blotch in the dirt. His face was already paling.

  She leaped up and ran. “Sit down, Sigge! I’m coming!”

  “It hurts, Leonie!” The child sank to his knees just as she reached him. She plopped down, scooped him into her arms, and turned the sole of his foot upward. Bile rose in her throat at the bright red blood gushing out.

  “Aye, Sigge, I know,” she said and glanced around her. She could stop it. Just touch and let the healing flow through her hands. She knew never to do it. But.

  Frowning, she pulled off her veil and dabbed at the wound. She couldn’t wipe fast enough. Her stomach sickened at the thought of her favorite little boy bleeding to death.

  She fought her fears to find a calmly pleasant tone for her voice, as if nothing were seriously wrong. “What happened, Sigge?”

  “A piece of metal. Ow!”

  “Metal? In the forest?” Strange. Nobody discarded valuable metal. “Someone must have lost it.”

  “I saw it and I thought I could dig it up. But I didn’t see the other part.”

  Sigge gasped hard, and tears flowed down his cheeks. For all her calm appearance, Leonie’s heart was pounding rapidly. From her infancy she’d been taught never to show her strange skill, lest she be thought a witch. The old Celtic part of her knew what she had to do. But her Norman half screamed at the danger. Normans did not understand such Celtic things.

  No one else was in the woods outside Castle Brodin. She could close the wound and no one else could. There was no choice, and she knew it.

  “Leonie!” Leonie jerked her head toward the meadow beyond the wood and the sound of her cousin Claire’s voice. “Leonie, where are you? You must come now!”

  Leonie gritted her teeth. Why now? Claire would be within the wood in no time. Close as they were, Claire was only an ordinary human and knew nothing of Leonie’s secret. She had to move fast, now. Just enough to stop the blood. A swift swipe of her thumb. Tricky, but if she did it right, not even Sigge would suspect.

  Sucking in a breath, she swept her thumb over the wound and the light-headed, foggy feeling filled her head as if part of her life abandoned her. But it was nothing like the near faint that had overcome her as a small child when old Ealga had first discovered Leonie’s hidden talent. Ealga would turn white from fear when she learned she had once again been disobeyed.

  “Oh, look, Sigge!” Leonie smiled as sweetly as if she were pointing to a fawn bounding across the meadow. “It’s stopping already. I told you it would be all right.” But before he could really see, she wrapped her veil tightly around the child’s foot. “Now, hold your thumb against the cut while I get my basket.”

  He shook his head, and his voice trembled. “I can’t. It hurts.”

  “I know. Imagine yourself a brave knight. You’ve always wanted to be a knight, haven’t you? Well, now you must act like one. We’ll keep the bandage on tight, and you mustn’t walk on it, and by tomorrow, you will be much better.” For the rest of this day, she must mask her worry. Pretend it only looked like a lot of blood. Pretend there was nothing to fear. But that was not new to her.

  Leaving the boy where he sat and grimaced, she hurried back to the beeches and snatched up the basket she had spilled. She rushed back to the boy. Already he looked better.

  “Up, now,” she said, and lifted him to her hip. With his arms wrapped around her neck, they started out of the woods just as Claire came running up the path.

  “Leonie, where have you been? I’ve been calling for you.” Then Claire stopped and gasped, her pretty blue eyes round like plates.

  Leonie looked at her blood-soaked kirtle and grimaced. “He’s cut his foot,” she said. “It bled a lot at first. He will be all right now if he doesn’t walk on it.”

  “But your clothes! What will Mama say? Papa has visitors. The king’s knights!”

  “I’ll hurry up and change, then.”

  “But your veil!”

  “I’ll wash it myself.” That was not what Claire was thinking, Leonie knew, but it would deflect her for now. Claire was like her mother sometimes.

  With long strides, Leonie bounded over the meadow toward the castle, knowing Claire’s short legs would have to work hard to keep up. “What do you suppose is so important that the king sends his knights?”

  “Maybe he’s chosen a husband for you. ’Tis about time.”

  Leonie shook her head and snickered, once again playing the carefree maiden. “He wouldn’t send knights to tell us that. More like, he has his mind on war. Again.”

  Claire giggled. “Or trouble in Normandy. Again. And the king seeks a new levy to pay for it.”

  Leonie smirked. “Uncle Geoffrey will not be pleased.”

  “Mama will be angry with me, Leonie,” Sigge said, tightening his hold around Leonie’s neck.

  “Your mama loves you, child,” Claire said, patting the boy’s shoulder. “She worries when you sneak off to the wood.”

  “I was only helping Leonie. And looking for mushrooms.”

  Leonie shuddered. “And don’t you do that again. You don’t know a good mushroom from a bad one. It’s not the time of year for the good ones. A bad one could kill you.”

  She strode past grazing sheep toward the castle, Claire panting behind her. Pausing at the edge of the village, Leonie spotted the brightly garmented knights approaching, with the king’s flamboyant pennon of gold and crimson signaling their status. Helms, swords, and shields flashed bright stars of sunlight. Apprehension tickled in her chest. This was no ordinary visit. Everyone would be expected to be in attendance of the guests. She must not embarrass her uncle with her disheveled appearance.

  “I’ll go through the postern gate and up the back way to the solar,” she said to Claire. “You go around to the barbican.”

  Claire gasped for breath and nodded, probably grateful for the easier route. Claire was not the sort to tromp about in the wood like her cousin, nor run up the steep hill, but Leonie could walk even faster if she didn’t have to worry about Claire. With Sigge’s legs locked about her waist, Leonie climbed the steep steps on the castle’s north side to the postern gate.

  She emerged into the lower bailey, but too late, for she could already be seen by the knights who had passed through the barbican and now dismounted in the bare ground. Sigge’s father, the blacksmith, broke away from the gathering crowd to run to his child.

  “He is not hurt badly,” she said as Harald took the child from her arms. “He has a kinship to metals, I think. His foot must have found the only piece of discarded metal in the entire forest. Do not unbind his foot for a day, and do not let him walk on it, and he will be fine.”

  “My thanks, lady.”

  If Harald followed her directions, he would never know how bad it had been. If he ignored them...

  Well, she had done what she had to do.

  Leonie turned to sneak past the upper bailey gate, intent on the outer steps of the hall that led to the solar. But Uncle Geoffrey caught her eye and motioned to her to join the crowd. She sighed. She was not fond of looking foolish. As it was she was different enough, with her long, thin legs and arms, funny pointed ears, and wild hair that looked like curly straw.

  With her eyes downcast in a vain attempt to look maidenly, she sidled toward the back of the crowd, hoping to be unseen. An interesting feat since she stood head and shoulders above every woman and most of the men.

  “Mother in Heaven, girl! What has happened to you?”

  Aunt Beatrice. Leonie’s face heated, knowing the rumpled, blood-streaked, dirt-sm
udged state of her kirtle. Sigge was not the cleanest child who inhabited the castle.

  “She had to rescue Sigge, Mother,” said Claire, still gasping deeply as she hurried up. “Again.”

  “Again? What will that child do next? Where is your veil, Leonie? Your hair is a shambles!”

  “Wrapped around Sigge’s foot,” she mumbled, her face growing even hotter, remembering how she had left off the veil for most of the hot afternoon to let the occasional sultry breeze toss her long curls. Even after entering the cool shade of the forest, she had left it draping over her shoulder.

  Aunt Beatrice flung the back of her hand to her forehead, and although she was not one to faint, Leonie feared this time she might. “You’ll be the death of me, child. Of all the times, Leonie, why now? It is the king’s Peregrine himself who has ridden all the way from Gloucester to sup with us.”

  Oh no. The hot flush fled Leonie’s cheeks as fast as it had come on her. Philippe le Peregrine. It wasn’t bad enough already. Did it have to be him?

  Aye, there he was, standing beside his great brindled grey warhorse, the knight of her dreams and her nightmares, his huge, brawny body dwarfing his companions.

  He lifted off his helm and handed it to his squire, then shook out his tousled golden hair—Viking hair, more golden than the sun. But he had Frankish eyes, warm and mellow brown like meadow honey, and they made her feel as if her bones were melting.

  She’d been but thirteen years old, barely budding into adulthood, when she had so thoroughly humiliated herself over him that she had hoped never to see his face again. Now, here she was, with her disheveled kirtle and hair tossed like a tumbled haystack, once again about to make a fool of herself.

  If only she were a true Faerie, not merely a secret halfling! For then—so Ealga had told her—Leonie would have been born knowing how to fade into the stones at her back and be safely unseen and forgotten. But she didn’t know. All she could do was stand there, tangling her slender fingers together like spun wool attacked by a kitten.