Hearts Across Time (The Knights of Berwyck: A Quest Through Time Novel ~ Books 1 & 2) Read Online Free PDF

from her side. She wept.

Chapter 4
    Bamburgh Castle
    The Year of Our Lord’s Grace 1179
    I will find you …” Riorden awoke with a start, still hearing the haunting words and seeing the tears of the woman from his dreams. There had been such longing in her voice that, for some unknown reason, the sound seemed achingly familiar. Yet, he knew her not...or so he thought. So why did he know her name?
    He threw the coverlets off and rose naked from his bed. Kneeling afore the hearth, he began to rekindle the few remaining embers into a small semblance of a blaze. It took but a few moments ’til most of the chill began to recede from the room as the fire grew brighter. As he went to grab his tunic, he noticed his hands were actually shaking. God’s wounds! What is wrong with me? He continued to watch his hands as if they were not his own ’til, disgusted, he donned his remaining garments.
    Despite the fact he had just warmed the room, he went to the shutter and flung it wide open, letting in the cool air to clear his confused head. He peered out into the early morning hours, but ’twas still too dark to see much of anything. Looking back into the chamber, his brow furrowed. It had all begun with this damn room.
    After pouring a chalice of wine, Riorden sat upon a stool and ran his still trembling fingers through his mussed hair, recounting the events of the past hours. Upon his arrival yester eve, he had assumed he would be shown to the Garrison Hall. Instead, a servant had shown him to a richly appointed chamber. Afore the man had left, he had informed Riorden the table held instructions from His Majesty King Henry.
    He had begun to walk across the room to retrieve the missive, when he had halted as he had felt a presence in the chamber with him. A shadow of a woman had appeared, dressed in the oddest blue hose he had ever seen. Her strange lavender tunic was cut shockingly low with some sort of odd fasteners running down the front of the garment. Tawny colored hair fell well past her shoulders in soft waves of long, loose curls, which flowed teasingly when she moved. She had been touching the frame of the bedpost, almost reverently, ’til she at last had turned to stare upon him, as if she had finally taken note that he, too, was there. Recognition had flashed across her face with a look of such yearning reflected in her aquamarine eyes, it had torn at his heart, for he had never in his life seen a sign of elation of this magnitude in another.
    He remembered having rubbed his eyes to clear his vision of what surely must have been some kind of trickery, and she had been gone. At the time, he had shaken off what he knew was his imagination making a fool of him. He had begun to leave the room to find Aiden and had not gone but a few steps past his door into the passageway when, blinking his eyes in disbelief from what he was seeing, he had had no doubt that his mind was once more playing games with him. There she had stood, yet again, looking just as lovely as she had but moments afore inside his chamber.
    This time, she had been walking down the corridor towards him whilst brushing her hand along the stones of the wall. His footsteps had faltered and he had felt unable to move by what he was witnessing. He had stared in wide eyed fascination at the strange lights hanging from the ceiling. ’Twas not any kind of candelabrum he had ever seen afore. Even the torches placed in the sconces on the wall had not been familiar to him.
    The woman’s tinkling, merry laughter had rung out, drawing his attention back to her. The sound of her unmistakable joy, which he had been privy to hear, had filled his head with a sense of contentment. He had wondered what she had found so entertaining to make her face radiate such happiness. Her smile had lit up her entire visage with so much delight that it almost seemed unfair that he had not been able to join her in the knowledge of whatever had pleased her so.
    She had continued her steps