“I will heave you over my shoulder and start walking if you do not quit making up stories and get in that cart,” Trystan muttered into the perfect shell of an ear not inches from his lips. Admittedly, he would rather nibble that ear, but now was not the time to anticipate how they would share the journey ahead.
The ear might as well be deaf for all the woman attached to it indicated that she’d heard. Mariel stood tall and lovely beside the borrowed farm cart, like royalty bestowing favors.
“Bless you for looking after Francine,” Mariel trilled to the elderly neighbor she’d cajoled into this task earlier. “My beloved is impatient to have Eduard’s approval before he must set sail. This is so kind of you.”
His beloved was an improvisational liar of the highest caliber, although he assumed she was merely protecting her sister from gossip with this bit of stage dressing. Trystan leaned over and nibbled her seemingly deaf ear, and when she turned in shock, he covered her mouth with his, swallowing the rest of her lies before she could speak them.
Mariel squeaked in surprise. Her eyes widened. Then, to his satisfaction, her lashes swept downward, she balanced her hands on his shoulders, and she kissed him back, with as much enthusiasm as he could possibly desire.
So much enthusiasm that he almost didn’t come up for air. Her plump lips tasted of sunshine and sea and promises far beyond all he’d come to expect…
Gasping, he pulled back. She stared back with as much astonishment as he felt.
Struggling to regain control of his situation, Trystan wrapped his arm around her shoulder, knowing she had to comply with the loving gesture to verify her story. She shot him a glare from beneath lowered lashes, and with a smug grin, he hugged her tighter.
“It is the least we can do for the generous gentleman who brought us wheat,” the old lady assured them, beaming happily at their lover-like behavior. “I hope Jacques’s cart will suit.”
Trystan didn’t know when he’d become the hero of the wheat story, but he was quite certain it had to have been at Mariel’s behest. Odd, that she didn’t bask in the effusive gratitude the villagers had displayed in their every encounter this evening. His amacara was as modest as she was devious.
The bakery was apparently working overtime. The entire town smelled of yeast. People were literally dancing in the street. He’d never been hugged and kissed so much in his life. But it was Mariel’s kiss that had him rethinking his disdain for emotional displays. His impatience gathered new momentum, and he tugged her toward the cart.
“We will fly on dreams,” Mariel promised the couple as he dragged her onward.
“Come along. The moon will light our way for a while yet.” Trystan bowed to Mariel’s sister, who had watched them worriedly throughout the evening. He understood Mariel’s concern for her. Francine seemed overly frail in her pregnancy.
“We have plenty of time to reach Pontivy,” Mariel murmured, tugging her skirts around her limbs as he practically heaved her into the cart. “I’ve learned the baroness is determined to wed on Saturday, before her chevalier leaves for his new appointment in Versailles.”
He ought to be worrying over returning her to Aelynn. He ought to be horrified imagining what would happen to the chalice in the hands of an infidel. Instead, Trystan was admiring Mariel’s trim ankle and wondering how long it would take to reach the next inn. He was surely ensorcelled.
She was his match. Even though he might not understand the reasoning, the gods had decreed it. He might as well enjoy the arduous task he’d been assigned. If he got her with child before they reached the altar, the chance of producing his heir was less, but there would always be next time. The gods had never failed to provide what the island needed.
First, they had to reach an inn. He’d always stayed in seaports during his travel, having no need to journey inland. Trystan glared dubiously at the swinging tail of the pony as he took his seat in the big-wheeled cart. He was a seafarer. He hadn’t driven a vehicle since he was a child and had hitched a goat to a garden cart.
“Shake the reins so they hit the pony’s sides,” she murmured beside him, straightening the lace cap that hid her magnificent hair.
Trystan slapped the leather up and down and winced when the pony broke into a trot, throwing him back against the hard wooden seat. “Walking would be simpler.”
“But not faster. Rein him in a little or you’ll run over someone.”
“Why aren’t you driving if you know so much about it?” He pulled back on the leather a little and breathed easier when the pony slowed. The jostling trot would have driven his tailbone into his skull if he’d maintained it much longer.
She eyed him skeptically. “You would let me?”
“Why should I not?” he asked. “Goats are the biggest beasts we have at home. I know nothing of even a small horse like this.”
“Here, men do not let women drive. A widow might be excused for using a pony cart, but no man would allow a woman to take the leather. It would offend their honor.”
Trystan snorted. “Your world is ridiculous.”
“No more so than one made of powerful gods who refuse to aid those who are different from them,” she retorted.
The argument was specious, and he refused to take her up on it.
The seaside village of Pouchay had only one main road inland, so Trystan had no difficulty following it. Once they were beyond the last cottage, he handed the reins to her. “Are those gloves thick enough to protect your hands?”
She glanced at her thin black gloves and shrugged. “I have no idea. Brace yourself.”
She slapped the reins and sent the pony into a smooth stride. While Trystan might be able to run faster than the cart for a while, Mariel couldn’t. And he supposed that her aid created less likelihood that he would have to use his strengths to interfere in the working of her world, so he must accept her company.
He kept one hand on his sword and warily watched the passing shrubbery. They carried a fortune in gold from the loan against his ship, and he did not mean to surrender it until he had the chalice in his hands.
“We are not married,” she announced, finally taking offense at his kiss now that they were out of sight of the village.
“I agree. That was your tall tale.” That didn’t mean he wouldn’t take her to his bed at the first opportunity. He was already aroused just watching her luscious rosy lips from the corner of his eye and letting his mind drift to the ways she could put them to good use. Now that they were away from the aroma of baking bread, he could smell her spicy scent of lilies and surf.
“I will wave you off at the dock and then announce later that you were lost at sea,” she continued, obviously enjoying the tale she embroidered.
“You will be on the ship when I sail, and we’ll exchange vows on Aelynn,” he corrected.
“You said yourself that it is the duty of Crossbreeds like myself to look after the people off the island.”
“You may return to your home after we say our vows.” He was merely throwing away his future with that declaration. “Right now, I am only concerned about finding the chalice.”
“Is it like the Holy Grail to you?” she asked with curiosity. “In my father’s books, King Arthur’s knights went on quests in search of the Grail, and Pontivy was often mentioned.”
“I know nothing of King Arthur or knights, although I have heard of your Holy Grail. I seriously doubt that they are the same.”
“I always thought a Holy Grail ought to be able to find its own way to wherever it wanted to be, but the stories were interesting.”
“In our legends, the Chalice of Plenty left Aelynn by way of a dragon during the Black Plague. One legend makes it sound as if the chalice caused the plague. Another hints that it cured the disease. Still another claims the chalice was responsible for the repopulation of Europe, however that might be.”
Mariel chuckled. “I like the last one. A Chalice of Plenty should provide what is needed, and that would be births after so many deaths.”
“I don’t think I care to speculate on how that is possible. This is a modern age, and we should leave such superstition behind. But I refuse to be the one responsible for losing an object so valued by my people.” He hoped the legends were just superstition. He didn’t want to think what would happen to the island if the chalice took away the gifts the gods had granted them.
“Do your legends say how the chalice returned after the dragon stole it?”
“No. For all I know, it rolled down the road and up the gangplank of one of our ships. I don’t think I wish to wait for that to happen.”
“No, there are too many people like me who would see it as a means of putting food on the table.” She yawned and tried to hide it behind the back of her hand.
“Have you rested at all since you returned home?” Trystan demanded.
She shrugged. “A few hours. You sail faster than I swim. I’ll be fine.”
Trystan grabbed the reins from her. “In the back, now. Get some sleep. I can keep the animal on the road until we find an inn.”
She didn’t bother fighting him for the reins, but she didn’t climb in back either. “I am not sleeping with you, so you may as well keep going until we reach Pontivy. Unless you haven’t had any sleep either?”
He was unlikely to sleep until he had had the chalice and Mariel on a ship home, but Trystan didn’t think she fully understood his predicament. He had to complete his task and return to Aelynn before the full moon to reinforce the island’s shield. He glanced upward. Little more than a week now.
“I will look for an inn,” he informed her.
“Not many barns or inns in the forest. We may just have to tether the pony near a stream and sleep in the cart.”
“I thought you wouldn’t sleep with me.”
That shut her up. There was none to see or hear them out in the woods. They could do anything they liked. Perhaps he could persuade her that the physical pleasure of being mated was desirable enough for her to willingly accompany him home.
Trystan wondered if Dylys’s decree was her way of saying she didn’t approve of his marriage to Lissandra. That was a dismaying thought. The Oracle’s late husband had been in favor of their pairing. But Luther had been a Council Leader, not an Oracle. Had Dylys “seen” something unpleasant in his future if he wedded Lissandra?
Mentally cursing the unfathomable minds of women, Trystan slapped the pony’s reins and hurried it into another bone-jarring trot.
He glanced at Mariel. She had wrapped her unbecoming black dress in an old velvet cloak that even he knew had been out of style for a decade or more. Her eyelids kept drifting closed. The sun had set, but there was enough moonlight to see the shadows of Mariel’s long black lashes against her fair cheeks.
When he verbally sparred with her, she challenged him into thinking she was older and more stalwart than she actually was. With her lids closed, she was barely more than a weary girl, and a too thin one at that. Her cheekbones jutted against her pale skin, leaving dark shadows in the hollows beneath.
No wonder she had stolen the chalice. She was wasting away.
He supposed if he could find the chalice and right his world again, he could return to trading and bring cheap grain to port—but unless he smuggled it past the authorities, the tariffs would put the price well beyond the means of Mariel’s family.
Sighing in exasperation, Trystan wrapped his arm around her and tugged her against his side. She resisted briefly, but finally gave up and nestled against his warmth, nearly purring as she lay her head against the pillow of his shoulder.
“Sleep. I will let you know if I get lost.”
“Don’t bother,” she murmured. “I don’t need to know.”
He chuckled and settled her more comfortably against him.
He might thoroughly resent this unexpected upheaval in his carefully plotted life, but he could appreciate the altar’s choosing an interesting amacara for him.