Chapter 10

TEN

Desmond stared at the flames. Was he dreaming? Had he somehow slipped into unconsciousness again? Was he suffering some sort of delusion? "This cannot be real."

While her gaze was fixed in his direction, she was not looking at him, but past him. Almost as if she were afraid to see his reaction. "It is. It is real, Desmond. And I understand if it changes things between us. I would be astounded if it did not."

Did it? In the general order of things, he supposed it should. But all he could think of was the way she had tended him, the way her touch had soothed him. Whatever beliefs he might have had about the practice of witchery, there was no evil in the woman before him. None. So he spoke freely, impulsively, and with complete sincerity, "What could possibly change? Other than my thinking you are more extraordinary than I could have imagined… I will not run from this. Not from you nor from what I feel for you."

She closed her hand, the dancing flame vanishing inside her closed fist. "You don't understand. I am cursed. Every woman in the Goodwynne line has been cursed. And this instant attraction we have for one another, this immediate connection between us is part of that. It's as if… it hastens things. Accelerates the development of any tender or romantic feelings. They develop sooner, but the relationship ends sooner, as well. Usually it ends only in death."

"For you?" He asked.

"No," she said, shaking her head sadly. "No. The curse will be that if I let myself love you, then I will only ever love you. And I will grieve you for the rest of my life. I've only known you a short time, and already I can feel the tethers forming between us. And I can't bear it. I can't bear for you to die because you had the misfortune to cross my path."

It should have startled him, her talk of love. After all, she was correct on one count. They had only known one another a short time. But it didn't feel like a short acquaintance. It felt as if he'd always known her, as if meeting her was more like discovering a part of himself that had been missing and now he was whole. "Isn't that my choice to make? Whether or not I'm willing to risk it?" He asked. "And I should warn you, Belladonna, that despite the flames dancing on your fingertips, I do not believe in curses. I do not believe in magic. What you did is simply something science has not yet found a way to explain."

She walked away from him then, once more seating herself at the small table. The slumped shoulders indicated that the weight of the world was resting on her. "You do not understand, Desmond. No woman in the Goodwynne family has ever made it to the altar. Either their lovers die or are proven false before such a thing can occur… And I know you have not proposed marriage. I cannot let it get that far. If I do, it would be a death sentence for you."

Desmond waited for the panic to set in—to feel that bone deep urge to run when discussing the possibility of forever. After all, he'd spent his entire life trying to avoid the trap of marriage. But it didn't happen. She'd brought it up and it simply felt right to him. Like everything else had since he'd met her. He hadn't believed in such a thing as love at first sight. But he was now having to reconsider his stance on the topic. "I very much fear, Belladonna, that we are already well past the point of caution. It was one thing to go for a walk alone. It is quite another for us to have been alone in your home, unchaperoned for two nights. The people of Highgate will be more inclined to accept a witch than to accept a woman whose virtue they have such a reason to question."

He watched her face, noting the moment when she recognized that truth. But then her shoulders squared and she said, "I am so low on the social strata that it simply will not matter. How can lying with a man outside of marriage be worse than being in league with the devil? That is what they whisper about me now. That is what Reverend Stalker has been telling anyone who will deign to listen."

Stalker. The mere mention of his name had, as if indeed by magic, cleared away the veil between his conscious mind and the memory of the events that had brought him to his current place. "Dear God!" The exclamation came out on an exhale, the words low and stunned. "That's it, Belladonna! That's bloody well it."

"What?"

"Stalker," he said. "I remember now. When we were in the clearing, I heard the snapping of branches and insisted you leave. I was trying to protect you from whomever was lurking there."

Belladonna stared at him in horror. "That was why you made me leave? Because you thought I was in danger? Danger from Reverend Stalker?"

"At that point, it was simply because of someone," he said. "I had not identified who was watching us. But when I was walking toward the village, just after it started to rain, the mist grow so thick and heavy I could hardly see."

"He struck you?"

Desmond nodded. "With a rock. A large and very heavy one—but I only recognized him when I was lying on my back on the road and he was standing over me. My assumption is that he left me there thinking I was already dead or near enough to it that I would not be a problem for him… and I think he was moved to violence because he knew I would be an obstacle to his true objective."

"Which is?" She knew what he would say. That fear had been her constant companion for the last six months. Since the man had arrived in Highgate-on-Trent, he'd made it his mission to denigrate her at every turn and to sway others to his cause.

Desmond's fists clenched at his side, as he spoke, "I thought his choices of material for his sermons to be odd and somewhat repetitive. Every scripture referenced was one related to the wickedness of women. Every caution he offered was to emphasize that tolerance of another's sin made one culpable of it, as well. I think, had you been alone in that clearing, the outcome would have been very, very different… I would not have been the one injured and left for dead."

Belladonna shivered. She knew that he was right. Knew it with a certainty that came not simply from her mind, but from that other part of herself. The part that allowed her to read the leaves and the cards with such insight. The part of her, she thought bitterly, that was never wrong.