Meanwhile, in another time…
* * * * *
“Royce, stop.”
At Beatrice’s words, Royce pulled back Mallory’s reigns and the horse dutifully halted.
His beautiful new bride twisted to look at him and he caught her eyes, hiding his impatience. He was keen to get to Lacybourne, the weather had turned and the sky was threatening rain and worse.
But with one look at his beautiful new wife and Royce thought that imminent rain was the less important of the two reasons there were to get home, as quickly as possible, to Lacybourne.
“Is something amiss?” Royce asked, staring down into her eyes, noting they’d softened to a mellow brown with only the barest inflections of green at the pupils.
“This morning…” She pulled her lips between her teeth in a gesture he had become used to over the last several months, a habit he found quite endearing. Then she released them and whispered, “I should have told you before we wed, you may have decided…”
Royce sighed his impatience. “Beatrice, rain is coming, do you not feel it?”
“Royce, I think I’ve gone quite mad,” she burst out. Before he could comment on this, her latest bizarre utterance to add to the wealth of bizarre utterances she had amassed since he met her, she went on, “I… sometimes I…” she paused, looking for the right words then she found them, “drift away. These past months, with you, always with you, I just go away, somewhere nice, somewhere peaceful and then I come back and I find time is lost to me. You do not seem to notice I’ve been gone and we have… done things while I’m not here… and… I just do not remember.” She pulled in a broken breath and watched him closely before she whispered, “My love, I think I am mad.”
He did not speak because his entire body stilled.
She dropped her eyes to her lap. “What’s worse, sometimes I think you do it as well.” Her head lifted with a snap and her eyes caught his again. “Sometimes you are simply…” she hesitated again then finished, “not you.”
Royce regarded her for a moment and then swiftly alighted from Mallory’s back. He put his strong hands on Beatrice’s waist to pull her down and he set her before him. Very close before him.
She tilted her head up and he stared at her, her beautiful, dark, glossy hair shining on her shoulders (she’d worn it down, just for him). It was threaded liberally with flowers and he thought, with pleasure and unusual whimsy, that she looked somewhat like a nymph.
But now, her eyes were frightened and wary and she was waiting for him to react to her words.
“I feel it as well,” he admitted, “in me and in you.”
Her eyes warmed and she breathed, “Truly?”
Royce nodded.
Beatrice sagged against him
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said with extreme relief. “I thought it was only me.”
“You are pleased we are both mad?”
Her eyes were shining when she looked at him. “No… yes… no, but I think… yes.”
He grinned at her with every intention of keeping from her, for her own protection (of course) that he felt he knew the woman she became when she was no longer Beatrice. That he had a vague feeling they had been together, somewhere, not there. That she was good and kind, just like Beatrice. That there was nothing to fear because, in some way, she was Beatrice.
It was a fanciful notion and a man like Royce did not waste time on fanciful notions.
He lifted his hand to her neck, setting his thumb on the soft skin under her chin.
“Do you fear this night? Our night?” he asked gently.
Her eyes rounded. “Yes… no… yes, but I think… no.”
He shook his head but still grinned at her.
“You have nothing to fear, beloved.”
Her eyes melted to liquid.