Love's Magic Read Online Free PDF Page A

gasped, unable to take in air as he remembered the last thing he’d heard before crashing. It felt as if someone was squeezing him hard enough to break his ribs. He was choking, strangling, and then suddenly, he could breathe again. Celestia had one hand on the back of his neck, and a cool cloth pressed against his forehead. “Is it true?” he croaked.
    Her touch was light, yet warm, and her tone compassionate when she answered simply, “Aye.”
    Sitting there together for a few minutes, absorbing a truth so large it was suffocating, he finally asked, “Did you always know about me?”
    She dipped the cloth in a dish of water, wrung it out, and placed it against his wrists. They both ignored the thick ropy scars that marred his skin. “No. We thought that the baron was childless. All his bairns seem to die as infants.”
    “I had heard that, as well. Not that I gave it much attention,” he laughed dryly. “Why should I have?” Celestia’s silence prodded him to speak, even as he longed to find a safe place to rest and think. Did this knowledge change his vow to kill the baron? So what if the man was his father? He was still an arse-wipe. “Men do not care about such things.”
    Celestia lifted one brow, the right one, over the blue eye. “Like family?”
    He stiffened. “I was brought up an orphan at Crispin Monastery. My entire life I worked outdoors and said prayers, and when I was offered to serve allegiance to Baron Peregrine and train to become a Crusader for God and King Richard—I thought that I was the luckiest bastard ever born.”
    “Hmm.” She walked, jingled actually, to the black pot over the fire. She took two bowls from the side cupboard, and dished something fragrant and meaty from the pot into the dishes.
    Nicholas’s stomach growled, and his mouth watered.
    She came back and handed him a bowl with a chunk of bread. “‘Tis beef soup,” she said. “Eat slowly. You look like you have not been well for some time.” Sitting on a stool opposite him, she lifted the bowl to her lips and blew into it before taking a small sip.
    “You must think me the lowliest man you’ve ever met,” he said, staring at her smooth face. Why should it matter what she thought?
    “That’s not true. I know some worse than you.”
    “Lord Riddleton?”
    She looked up. “You heard the conversation between my grandmother and me?” Her pale cheeks turned scarlet.
    “Some of it. I was not eavesdropping on purpose. It’s not often that a man is referred to as an odious toad.”
    Celestia smiled and Nicholas noticed the flash of a dimple in her left cheek. “Well. Did you hear anything else?”
    “No. I probably missed some very interesting gossip, too.” How could he banter like this, when not long ago he’d been pounding on death’s door? He shook off the feelings of camaraderie.
    “You have no idea,” she agreed, soaking a bread crust in the warm liquid before popping the piece in her mouth.
    He held her gaze, thinking that a man would never get bored looking at such a beautiful woman. “Does it bother you, having one green eye and one blue?” Nicholas finished his soup, hoping that he hadn’t just offended her. “Never mind.”
    “Besides having to overcome the fact that people want to know if I am a witch, you mean?”
    “You are mocking me.”
    “Of course.” She stood and collected their bowls, setting them on the counter next to a bunch of dried herbs, and sending him a shy smile over her shoulder.
    Lord Riddleton must have been a dunce. “I have been too long from polite company.”
    “‘Tis no matter. It is time for another tisane, lavender and—”
    “I don’t want to sleep.”
    She put a hand on her hip. He was learning she did that when she wanted her way. “I do. ‘Tis late.”
    God’s bones, he was an inconsiderate oaf. She had been playing nurse to him, his chest tightened, for three days.
    She looked at the covers on the table. “Let me shake them out. Oh! My grandmother