Read Online Dangerous Magic by Alix Rickloff - Free Book Online

orange as the rain moved on to the east.
    What had possessed him to make such an outrageous proposal to Gwenyth? He blamed it on a sleepless night and the sweep of emotion bound up with the discovery of Goninan and his impending return home. Besides, she was right, of course. He did have a garden of ladies to choose from, each more beautiful, more accomplished, more untrustworthy than the last.
    Anabel Hillier’s face swam before his eyes. With her soft auburn curls and her sparkling green eyes, she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever known. And he’d known her all her life. “When we grow up, you’ll marry me and we’ll live happily forevermore,” she’d told him over and over as they’d walked the lanes and tracks around Bodliam’s park, and he’d believed her. How could he have known that her childish fantasies would turn to adult ambitions? And that those ambitions would never include a younger son with only an uncertain future in the Navy to recommend him?
    Even now, years after she’d blown his world apart with her casual dismissal of his suit, after she’d laughed at his naiveté and informed him that his best friend Charles Woodville had betrayed him by wooing her with promises of wealth and a title, the old anger still gnawed at him. His despair had receded, but not his bitterness at Anabel’s treachery. He’d be damned if he’d play the fool again. But how to guarantee it?
    As a poor naval officer, he’d been secure from the matchmaking mamas and their grasping, greedy daughters. Now as a wealthy gentleman in his own right, he could no longer believe that a woman expressing her undying love was not simply coveting the trinkets and trappings his money could buy.
    Once more his thoughts turned to Gwenyth. He tumbled two stones in his hand, imagining his arrival home—the disgraced prodigal returning with the bastard daughter of Lord Mark Chynoweth upon his arm. Talk about placing the cat among the pigeons. A thin smile curled the edge of his mouth. Perhaps not such an outrageous proposal after all. No, he couldn’t marry Gwenyth. She’d never agree and a return to the world of his birthright prohibited him from entering into such a lopsided match. Still, if finding him a bride kept her close to him for a few weeks longer, he’d enter into such a deception. The idea of leaving her behind grew more difficult with every passing hour.
    So what would induce her to come with him?
    Money?
    Rafe laughed at the idea of Gwenyth acting out of mercenary reasons.
    Fear?
    Angrily, he flicked a stone across the top of the waves. He wouldn’t threaten her even as a hoax.
    He rose and stretched, chucking the remaining stones into the surf. There must be something she desired—something only he could give.
    But what?

Chapter 6
     
    The clouds of yesterday fell to shreds beneath a freshening ocean breeze. Gwenyth hurried to the cottage, anticipation making her stomach flutter and her heart skip faster. It was Beltane. As night stole across the cliffs and the hills around Kerrow, farmers and fishermen, young and old, rich and poor would gather to light the great Bel-fires in honor of the beginning of summer and the defeat of a hard winter.
    Gwenyth loved this ancient celebration. It seemed to her as if all the magics running beneath the earth erupted in one spectacular display of power and anything was possible. Heading up the road from the harbor, she passed a group of young men preparing for the night’s festivities. They piled a wagon with kindling to be driven to the hills above the village where the fires would be lit as the sun sank beneath the waves. Up and down the surrounding hills and glens similar preparations were being made to celebrate the turning of the season.
    She paused to watch the men work just as a knot of young women strolled by, baskets under their arms. They giggled and eyed the men whose rolled shirtsleeves and open collars revealed gleaming, tanned flesh.
    Gwenyth smiled a secret