Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams by Christina Skye Read Free Book Online Page A

during the night, her breath jerky, her muscles tense. But each time, the room was just as she’d left it—velvet bed curtains half pulled, behind a damask wing chair that had seen better days.
    Moonlight spilled through the casement windows.
    Rat-a-tat-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat.
    So that was it! Kacey felt a surge of relief. Just the wind shaking the glass. Just the wooden window frame creaking.
    She lay back slowly, holding the bed linens protectively against her neck. It was cold for a June night, and she found herself wishing once again for her bags, which had been lost on the flight from New York. Back at Heathrow, she’d requested that they be shipped on to the abbey, when they were found.
    She was reminding herself to phone the airline once again in the morning when her eyelids grew heavy. Her fingers twisted in the pristine sheets, monogrammed with dragon-entwined coronets.
    How good it feels to be home again, she thought dimly just before her eyelids closed for good.
    Â 
    I N HIS BEDROOM , N ICHOLAS tossed down the agricultural journal he’d been reading and began to pace. The article had been boring enough—he should have fallen asleep hours ago. But sea-green eyes drifted before him, and a vision of tawny-colored hair.
    Lips soft and proud by turns, and a body sweet beyond imagining.
    With a low curse, he tried to fight the haunting pull of her, to forget the dreams.
    But it was no good.
    He knew without the slightest hint of a doubt that she was the woman in those dreams.
    And he the man.
    When finally he could pace no more, Nicholas sank tiredly into a chair by the window. The moon was thin and chill, like cobwebs on his face.
    He slept—and was tossed instantly into dreams.
    Thunder. The slash of rain and wind.
    His hands fought the empty air. “Katharine! Come back—you must not go!” His eyes were stark, desperate with fear.
    The wind swept back her cloak, and he saw her face. Green-eyed, chiseled beauty at cheek and chin. Her porcelain skin glazed with tears.
    Guilt wedged in his throat. He had driven her away. He and Adrian, with their constant quarreling and their everlasting jealousy.
    And then her wild, shrill scream, twisting his heart into a thousand pieces.
    â€œNooooooo!” His pulse thundering, Nicholas jerked upright in the chair. At the window a tree branch scraped the glass.
    Only the dream, he told himself, trying to steady his breathing. Only an illusion.
    But tonight the pain was far worse, because tonight Nicholas had sensed that it all might have turned out differently if he hadn’t been so bloody stupid.
    He stared out into the silver night, choked by a wave of regret, realizing that this dream was more real than anything he’d ever known.
    Â 
    S ILENT AND SILVER, THE moon rose over moat and meadow, dappling yew forest and hedgerow in ice and shadow. Beneath its molten light, the walls of the abbey seemed to shimmer and change, rendered faint and then finally insubstantial.
    Like a paper castle in a paper landscape.
    An owl cried once from the dark stand of yews at the brow ofthe hill. A night creature rustled and scurried through the dense shrubbery lining the moat.
    Wrapped in a timeless dream, like a sleeper waiting to be kissed back to life, the ancient stones slept on.
    The eyes were keen and clear in the moonlight.
    Dark and bottomless, they studied the home wood, then swept down to the darkened windows of the turreted gatehouse.
    There, the motionless figure thought. So close.
    And yet she might just as well have been an eternity away.
    The eyes clouded, harsh with regret. But regret was a useless thing. “Regret is life’s bitterest poison.” Hadn’t he read that somewhere, eons ago?
    Noiseless, the figure glided across the clipped lawns. The night seemed to hold its breath, the wind to still. As if of its own accord, the oak door swung open.
    No light was lit to guide him, nor did the dark figure require any. He