Page 25 of Mesmerized

“No, please, do not worry. It was—it was—”

“Pray don’t think that I brought you out here to force my attentions on you,” Stephen went on stiffly, more in control of himself.

“No, indeed, I do not,” Olivia assured him. She could think of no way to say what she truly felt without sounding like a forward hussy. Her insides were jumping about wildly, and she pressed her hand against her stomach as if to quiet them.

Stephen stood for a moment, facing her. Olivia appeared soft and vulnerable, gazing at him with her huge dark eyes, her mouth still damp and a dark rose from his kiss. He felt like a cad for grabbing her and kissing her like that, yet he could not deny that, looking at her, he wanted to pull her into his arms once more and kiss her all over again.

“I am sorry,” he repeated finally, and turned to fetch their horses.

He packed the picnic hamper on his horse, then gave Olivia a leg up onto hers, both of them doing their best to pretend that the necessary contact between them did not exist. They rode back to the house feeling rather awkward, their infrequent words being directions as to where to turn or stilted attempts at polite chitchat, such as a query on Olivia’s part about a certain tree or Stephen pointing out a low stone wall that was reputed to have been standing since before the Conquest.

Once they were back at the house, Olivia thanked him politely and went straightaway upstairs to her room. It was already midafternoon by the time they returned, so she decided not to try to do anything else, but to simply take a bath and get ready for the evening meal. Since she washed her hair, as well, she spent the next little while running through the tangles with a comb, then brushing out the long mane in front of the low fire.

When her hair was almost dry, she rose and went to the bed and lay down on her side. She was a trifle tired, and her head was still reeling with thoughts of that afternoon. She smiled a little secretly to herself as she had done frequently since their picnic. She relived Stephen’s kiss inside her head. She wondered if he had really been sorry that he had done it. More than that, she wondered if it might ever happen again.

As she watched the flames flicker up from the logs of the fireplace, the light seemed to dim, and the room before her subtly changed.

* * *

A THICK RUG lay on the floor, but smaller and reddish in color, and it lay only in front of the fireplace, atop the bed of dried reeds that covered the floor. The fireplace, too, was different, made of large blocks of stone, the opening larger, the fire higher and smokier. Gone was the chair beside the fire where Olivia had sat to dry her hair, and gone, too, the low decorative mahogany table that lay before it. There now, just to the side of the rug, stood only a heavy wooden stool.

A woman sat on the rug, her legs curled under her, running a brush through her long blond hair. Firelight flickered on her hair, turning the pale strands copper and gold. Olivia knew that she should be frightened to see a stranger sitting here in her room, but she was not. All she could feel was a sudden stunned amazement...and curiosity.

She stared at the woman, who seemed sublimely unaware of her presence. Her face turned to the side, the woman stroked her hair in rhythmic movements as she hummed a tune beneath her breath. She was a pretty woman, with a squarish face, her cheekbones high and wide, and there was a faint indentation at the bottom of her chin, right in the middle, that gave her a piquant look. It was too dark to see the exact color of her eyes, though they seemed light. Her feet were shod in leather slippers, and on her body she wore a long, slender blue tunic that fell straight from her shoulders to her feet, skimming her hips. Beneath it she wore another, lighter dress of a beige color that showed in the neckline and along the deep-cut armholes of the side. Long sleeves fell to points on the backs of her hands, and at the top, the sleeves were tied to the armholes of the underdress. A belt of gold links encircled her body, just above her hips, fastening in the middle in front and falling down in a straight line to her thighs. Where it fastened, there were three links set with colored stones.

A man came into Olivia’s vision, crossing the room to the woman. She turned her head at his approach, and a radiant smile broke across her face. She glanced behind him, then, the smile giving way to an anxious frown.

“Do not worry, my love,” he said. “None saw me enter your quarters. Your name will not be sullied.”

He wore a gray tunic over an undershirt of blue, and below that, leggings of the same color. Around his hips ran a wide leather belt, and hanging from the left side of it was a sword in a scabbard. His hair was longish and cut shaggily, a darker blond than the woman’s, almost brown, and there was a little bit of a curl to it.

Standing behind the woman, he unbuckled his belt and laid the sword aside. Then he knelt and curled his arms around her, laying his head against hers. He kissed the top of her head, and she let out a little sigh and snuggled into him.

“’Tis a sin, I know,” she said in a soft voice. “But I cannot help myself. Each day is black unless I see you. I cannot bear to be apart from you.”

“’Tis the same with me.” His voice was a low rumble, and he nuzzled her neck. “I love you.”

“And I love you. I cannot even confess my sins, for I cannot say that I repent.”

They kissed, clinging to each other. His hand smoothed down her back and over her hips, and he pulled her closer to him. She turned, her arms going around his neck, pressing her body into his. With one arm around her, he eased her back to the floor.

Chapter Five

OLIVIA JERKED AWAKE, her eyes flying open. For a moment she stared blindly in front of her. Then, slowly, she sat up, gazing around her at the room. A dream. She had been asleep and dreaming.

She rubbed her hands over her face. She felt fuzzy and odd. What a peculiar dream! It had seemed so real, as if she had been watching a play, or real people. It had been, she thought, exceedingly odd for a dream. Usually she knew the people in her dreams—even if they did not look like themselves, she was aware of who they were. And she was usually the main participant in her dreams. She was late or running from some horror or doing some task, but it was always herself. But in this dream she had seen an unknown room and people who were strangers to her. She herself had not been in the dream except as an unseen watcher.

The man and woman had been dressed like people from the Middle Ages. She paused, thinking about the woman’s dress. The early Middle Ages, she thought, around the time of King Henry II, for the woman’s dress made her think of Eleanor of Aquitaine. And though they had spoken English, their accents had been odd, the words stilted, and she had had trouble understanding what they said. She had once or twice dreamed about a different time or place, but on those occasions she had been reading about that time or place, or studying it in school, or Theo had written her about it. But she had read nothing about the time of Henry II in the recent past.

Unbidden, the thought of an old Norman keep came into her mind—the castle she had thought she glimpsed as the carriage approached Blackhope. A shiver ran through her.

She stood up, rubbing her arms to warm herself. What was the matter with her? She could not remember ever having seen something that didn’t exist, even for an instant. That, she told herself, was even odder than the dream. If she told anyone about it, they would think her as peculiar as her grandmother.

There was a knock on the door, and Joan entered to help her dress for the evening. Olivia forced a smile onto her lips and determinedly put both the imagined castle and the dream out of her mind.

* * *

THAT NIGHT AT SUPPER, much to Olivia’s surprise, Lady Pamela spoke to her. “I hear that you rode out with Stephen this afternoon, Lady Olivia. I hope you enjoyed your tour of our place.”