Dangerous Magic by Alix Rickloff Read Free Book Online Page B

husband. The Killigrew women have ever done it thus, though I’m supposing there have been some who found happiness in wedlock. My grandmother never did, nor my mother either. And though it would be easy enough to marry a man without love for the sake of a babe, I won’t do it.”
    Rafe should feel horrified at such wanton and immoral behavior. Yet with what little he knew of her he could understand such reasoning. There was something about her he couldn’t see crushed beneath the boot of a loveless marriage.
    “Did you ever know your father?” he asked.
    She shrugged. “Some said my mother sought her children in the great house at Rosevear. Jago and I bear the coloring of the Chynoweths, but who’s to say for certain. Any truth to that tale went to the grave with Morvoren,” she gave Rafe a pointed look, “and I’m not pining for halls of marble or trinkets of gold.”
    They reached the cottage. “So you never want to marry?”
    Gwenyth met his gaze, gray eyes snapping with an inner fire. “I never said I didn’t want to marry, but it cannot be—not ever.”
    A throbbing began behind Rafe’s eyes. Sweat teased down his neck, and the world faded and melted until he heard only his own blood roaring in his ears and saw only the gray cloudbank of her stare. “And why is that?” he whispered, refusing to look away.
    “My love is doomed to die,” she said in a strained voice. Rafe realized the brightness in her eyes was unshed tears. “Caught in the shrouds of his sinking ship, he drowns. I’ve seen his fate again and again. So if widow’s weeds I’ll never wear, neither shall I don a wedding gown.”
    Straightening her back and lifting her chin, she entered the cottage. Rafe put a shaky hand to his head. The wild idea burst in him like cannon shot. She said she’d never marry, but there was nothing gained without a risk. Damn me for a fool, he thought, but why not?

Chapter 5
     
    Gwenyth sat at her loom. Outside, dense, rippling clouds brought with them a misting rain and a damp chill, hardly a hopeful beginning to May. Captain Fleming sat in a chair drawn close to the fire, a piece of wood in one hand, a knife in the other. Gwenyth’s hands worked, moving the shuttle back and forth, back and forth, leaving her mind free to wander.
    Rafe had grown quiet since yesterday. The angles of his face lengthening and hardening into the stern lines of the smuggler captain, the man who could command a rabble of a crew or battle a revenue cutter. The man who could weather a fierce Atlantic gale or slip through the blockade, landing tea and brandy, tobacco and lace upon Cornwall’s guarded shores. Worried, she’d gone so far as to try and slip between the cracks in his mind, catch a glimpse of what ailed him. Was it his wound? Was it worry over his ship and crew? But since his arrival, he’d closed himself off to her, the snatches of his thoughts and memories held tightly within him. He wouldn’t allow her such contact again, and she hesitated to take from him what was not freely given.
    A gust of wind slammed against the cottage. The door crashed open. Rain billowed in to puddle on the floor as the door swung wildly upon its hinges. They rose at the same instant, both rushing to secure the latch. He reached it first, closing it firmly against the weather. Gwenyth turned for a cloth to wipe the floor, but he caught her arm. His eyes glittered in the glow from the fire, but there was no pull of her Sight drawing her in to their depths, nothing to reveal his thoughts to her. She was on her own.
    “Gwenyth, I need to speak with you.” He gave a shaky laugh. “You probably already know what I mean to say. Don’t you?”
    He didn’t drop her arm. Instead he ran his hand up her sleeve to touch her shoulder, her cheek and the stray strands of hair escaping her combs.
    Trying to ignore the nearness of his firm, sensual lips and the days-growth of beard shadowing his jaw, Gwenyth shook her head. “The Sight moves