Boadicea's Legacy Read online

  Accolades for

  LOVE’S MAGIC by Traci E. Hall

  “Hall’s take on medieval life is rich in history and deep in mystery. The flashbacks of her hero’s imprisonment are dark but add much to his development, while the heroine is a gutsy young woman with spunk.”

  —Karen Sweeny-Justice, Romantic Times BOOKreviews

  “A very interesting story … entertaining and the characters were fleshed out wonderfully.”

  —Rista Tompkins, The Romance Readers Connection

  “Love’s Magic is a well-written, enjoyable story for anyone who likes their romance tinged with fantasy and the hint of the impossible. A stubborn man and a proud woman make this a delightful romantic tale to while away the hours with.”

  —Novelspot

  “Love’s Magic is a well-written story filled with interesting characters, intrigue, and romance. Set during a treacherous time in England’s history, the author will keep you guessing about the mystery while enchanting you as Galiana finds her own magic.”

  —Rho, A RomanceReview.com (October 2009)

  Accolades for

  BEAUTY’S CURSE by Traci E. Hall

  “Beauty’s Curse is a delightful story that charms and entertains while teaching a moral about all that is truly important in life!”

  —Heather Graham, New York Times Bestselling Author

  “Chock-full of royal intrigue and wry humor, hall weaves a deft, not-to-be-missed interpretation of Arthurian-era Britain.”

  —Nina C. Davis, BookList (September 2009)

  “4 Cups. Traci E. Hall enables the reader to step into another time. I was ensnared by the wonderful historical details that the author worked so hard to provide. Beauty’s Curse is a detailed and thrilling novel that is worth the read.”

  —Delane, CoffeeTimeRomance.com (November 2009)

  “5 Blue Ribbons … a very sweet romance. I’m looking forward to more in this series.”

  —CinLee, RomanceJunkies.com (December 2009)

  “If you are a romance fan, you will like this book. It is full of drama, mystery, and passion.”

  —Tricia C., bookbargainsandpreview.com (February 2010)

  DEDICATION:

  To Greg, my enduring love and best friend.

  Published 2010 by Medallion Press, Inc.

  The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO

  is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 2010 by Traci E. Hall

  Cover design by Arturo Delgado

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-160542078-3

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

  Sheryl McGavin. Girl, without you, Easy Cheese, and Triscuits, this book never would have made deadline. I hope you know how important your friendship is to me. After six books and countless bottles of wine …

  Trena, Becky, Rhonda, Cherry, Leanne, and Ames—for being great friends and sounding boards. I am blessed in my friendships, so even if you don’t see your name here, know that I adore you and that there is only so much ink in the world.

  To all the wonderful people who put information on the Internet. Remembering what Web page I’ve browsed is not one of my skill sets, so I’ll give a shout out here.

  To my family—I love you guys! The reason I get a kick out of writing about families is that I have a great one.

  And to the staff at Medallion Press. “Thank you” is not enough. The artwork is phenomenal, the editors terrific.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Montehue Manor

  May 1200

  Chapter

  One

  Ela raised her face to the moon, accepting benediction from the Crone in the night sky before the light disappeared behind a cloud.

  She slashed her arms down, fingers pointed to the ground. Lightning skipped from grass to tree to her very fingertips, setting her long auburn hair spinning like ribbons around a maypole. Her scalp tingled as she bowed her head to nature’s show of might. I’m ready.

  The eve was dark as a witch’s cauldron. She inhaled the heavy earth scent of coming rain. The air crackled with suppressed energy, and it took all of her courage to stay when her instincts bade her bolt.

  I’m no coward.

  Ela lifted her chin and glared at the cloud-covered moon.

  What she attempted now was for the good of her kin, her sisters’ children, and someday, mayhap, her own. Meg said that Beltane eve was one of great natural power. Blessings and curses abounded as the veil between the worlds thinned. And who but a wisewoman trained to read the secrets of the earth could be so sure of that?

  Lightning zigzagged across the ebony sky, and Ela’s blood quickened.

  She was no sorceress to be playing with magic, yet Boadicea’s burden was a drowning force. Dark dreams came with more frequency. It chafed her entire soul to be ruled by a specter of a long-dead past.

  By God and all the saints, Ela thought with a determined exhale, she was a woman at the beginning of a new century. She should be shackled or nay to whomever she pleased without fear of losing her gifts. Stretching her arms to her sides, Ela tossed back her head, her unbound hair whipping at her ankles. The Moon Crone’s aura pulsed blue with despair.

  There was much angst since England had a new king. Like a bully, John Plantagenet took what he wanted without thought to what lay broken in his wake.

  But that is not my battle.

  Not this night.

  Thunder boomed with enough force to rattle her teeth, yet she wasn’t afraid. She laughed into the oncoming storm, drawing nature’s energy.

  Ela needed all of the earth magic she could absorb for this spell. Only Andraste would be strong enough to rescind the curse Boadicea had laid on her daughters, and theirs, and theirs. To wed without love meant forfeiting personal power—whether it was healing, seeing auras, or divining the future.

  Thunder raged—a drumbeat reverberating throughout her body. She shouted over the blasting wind. “Andraste! Hear me, Goddess of War.”

  A crack whiplashed across the sky, followed by a torrent of skin-pelting rain. Ela refused to cower beneath the stinging drops.

  “Mighty warrior-goddess! Release my family from Boa-dicea’s curse. Grant us free will.”

  She dropped to the ground in supplication, her knees splashing mud in the sodden grass. The
chilled water brought goose bumps to her naked flesh, but this was Beltane, and Meg swore that no other night would do if she were to reach the ears of the ancient Celtic goddess.

  The wisewoman said that only Ela, as a direct recipient of the curse, could plead for respite and hope to reach the battle-hardened goddess’s heart.

  No spirit answered her call.

  Ela wondered, as she blinked away the rain, if her bare-arsed prayers to a dead Iceni queen and a Celtic goddess in the middle of a spring thunderstorm would send her to hell. Father Harold might think so—not that she had any intention of confessing her folly. Her teeth chattered. Mayhap the old goddess was too far back in time to care about the descendents of Boadicea.

  Imagining her nieces trapped solidified her purpose. Unless she risked everything this night, they would always be tied to the damned curse.

  Ela struggled to her feet in the mud and threw her arms parallel to her body. Her hair lashed at her raw skin as she shouted against the wind. “Andraste! Boadicea! Our family honors the gifts you’ve given us. If there was a debt owed, surely it has been paid.” Ela bowed her head, offering the one thing that made her whole as a worthy sacrifice. “If not, then let me return my gifts to you, if you will but grant freedom to the rest of my kin.”

  The notion of not being able to read auras made her physically nauseated. Putting her hand over her bare belly, she thought of her family. They’d be well placed under King John if she swallowed her pride—along with a good deal of bile—and wed Thomas de Havel. For certes, the Montehues would be much safer in this new regime once she wed a member of it.

  Ela spluttered as a fat, foul-tasting raindrop landed on her lip.

  Her father was a strong warrior. In these turbulent days, that wasn’t enough. It couldn’t matter that the price of her family’s safety was her magic. Ela raised her voice so that it could be heard over the thunder and beyond time. “Andraste—you can’t ignore me all night!”

  Osbert Edyvean leaned over the neck of his steed, his eyes intent on the swishing tail of the horse in front of him.

  “Come back, fool.” Os clenched his jaw, determined to stay in sight of the disappearing horse’s ass. He was at a disadvantage, since the man on the horse in front of him obviously knew the dark, winding roads, whilst he was a stranger to these lands.

  A year into the quest for his liege, Os was not fond of wet, dark roads or inhospitable peasants who were loyal to their lords. He much preferred the toads who spit information after an ale or two. An accomplished knight and a man of business for the Earl of Norfolk, Os hated to be outwitted by a peasant with one tooth.

  Rain slashed from the sky while thunder boomed and lightning lit the area around him in a single flash before turning the night black again. His horse stumbled, and he had to slow or endanger Bartholomew. “Pox take you,” Os muttered to the man’s back.

  The sound of the horse’s hooves grew fainter. Usually clear of head, Osbert’s spurt of temper back in the village had now gotten him lost in the middle of nowhere during a ferocious storm. Sir Percy had taught him that emotion led to mistakes, and again his mentor had been right.

  He could either stop or end up in a ditch. He might deserve a spill for being an impatient sod, but his horse had earned better. He patted Bartholomew’s mane. “Sorry, boy.”

  It was too late to bother the lord and lady of the manor. Mayhap the innkeeper would rent him a room even though he’d chased one of her patrons from the inn. Or he could sit in the rain and get drenched. He was not without options.

  A flash of lightning briefly showed a worn trail off to the left. Os yanked at the reins, wanting to find his prey—and answers. Bartholomew somehow managed to keep his footing as they dove forward into the dark night. Os ducked beneath oak tree limbs and slashing foliage.

  Had he thought this a trail?

  It wasn’t even a footpath.

  Suddenly a shaft of moonlight illuminated a hill ahead. A peal of thunder covered what might have been hooves in front of him, and Os patted the neck of his steed. “Hurry. Over the hill, and we’ll have him, by God.”

  With the confidence of one who has rarely lost a fight, Os charged the hill and drew his sword to confront the peasant once and for all. He needed to find Robert Montehue and his lady wife, Deirdre. A year was a long damned time to be searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

  Os reached the crest and immediately yanked back on Bartholomew’s reins. The horse protested softly as he regained his footing. Osbert’s jaw dropped, and he rubbed his eyes in disbelief. He blamed the ale he’d drunk at the inn as he fell from his saddle to the slippery grass. Cautiously righting himself, he leaned against the heaving flanks of his mount.

  He blinked in the sodding rain.

  He wiped his eyes.

  She was still there, a vision in alabaster and crimson. Curling hair flowed down the nymph’s naked back, her bare arms lifted to the moon in supplication. Sparks lit from one finger to the next as she shouted something that sounded … primitive.

  Andraste. Familiar, though he would swear he’d never heard the name before this night.

  Os was struck with a deep yearning that caused his armored heart to ache with sadness, regret, and desire.

  His groin pounded and it hurt to breathe. Os wanted her in a primal way—savage. His loins tightened, and he imagined her beneath him in the throes of passion. Her eyes would be green, her laughter warm. Impossible.

  It felt like a memory.

  He wanted her now. Yet he’d sworn an oath to remain chaste until marriage. And he wouldn’t marry until he had his own land.

  Yet …

  Dedicated to God, church, and kingdom, Osbert Edyvean quickly crossed himself in the downpour of rain. I’ve been damned by a flame-haired witch.

  Chapter

  Two

  Ela heard the whinnying of a horse, and she glanced up to the top of Abner’s Hill. She straightened her shoulders, prepared to see the ghost of Boadicea in her chariot ready to lift the curse by separating Ela’s head from her shoulders. Her breath seized in her chest as she realized that she was looking at a very human man leaning against his horse and staring at her as if she were the ghost.

  A triple boom of thunder freed her from the pull of his gaze. Though she couldn’t see the details of his face, she sensed that he was a force to be reckoned with. Then she remembered that she was alone in the glen, using old magic, and lastly, that she was as naked as the day she was born.

  From the way the man stared at her, he’d already noticed.

  Her wet hair left little to the imagination. Crossing her arms over her breasts, Ela quickly assessed the glen and saw nothing that would give away her identity. She bolted for the cover of the woods, praying to the current God that she wouldn’t be compromised. Not even the odious Thomas de Havel would have her then.

  “Hold!” The man’s voice echoed down the hill. It was an order, not a request. Ela reached the edge of the tree line, where she’d folded her dress beneath a canopy of branches. Donning her gown in the blink of an eye, she then continued running for the back of Montehue Manor. Home.

  At twenty years of age, she’d known no other.

  Most girls, women, she chided herself as she raced barefoot across pine needles, were married and mothers by her age, and yet she’d managed to hang on to her virginity as if it were a badge of honor. It was easy enough to do when no suitors came calling to sweep her off her rather sturdy feet.

  Last May Day she’d foolishly, and publicly, sworn by St. Agnes’s finger bone that she’d rather give the prize away and be ruined for good than to live by the rules of Boadicea’s curse. Though she hadn’t done the deed, her rash vow had added to her wild reputation. It was better to be held in awe than pitied.

  Hooves crashed across the glen and into the cluster of trees. Ela quite distinctly heard the cursing of the stranger as he tried to pick his way through the trail in the woods. Having memorized each rock of the forest, Ela easily bypassed
Meg’s tiny cabin and turned left. She deliberately broke a tree branch on the right before circling around.

  She would follow him to see what he was up to—mischief, no doubt. What else could a stranger want, after midnight, in the woods behind the manor?

  His horse slowed him down, making it easier for her to track him. The small, overgrown forest was a haven for some, like Meg and her son, Jonny, yet the thin trails made it impossible to ride more than two abreast. And that was only if a person knew where they were going.

  He cursed again and Ela smiled. ‘Twas obvious that he was quite lost. She picked up the hem of her long gown so that it wouldn’t drag in the mud, but it was too late. Dirt soiled the edges. Ela rolled her eyes, thinking wickedly that naked was better—less clothes to wash. Ever practical, she’d remember to wear a short tunic the next time she was spell-making in a storm.

  Not that she would do it again. Ela was tempted to wake Meg up just to let the wisewoman know how wrong she’d been about being able to call either Andraste or the spirit of Boadicea.

  Instead of a ghost, she’d caught a man. He was a down-on-his-luck knight, from the looks of his thin leggings and the worn heels on his boots. A cross was stitched on the shoulder of his cloak, but it was too dark to tell the color of his hair. It was wet, anyway, and curled at his shoulders.

  She stayed to the shadows, careful not to make a sound as she watched the man struggle ahead through the forest. Ela paused at the mossy base of a huge oak tree, where she made a series of whistling noises and waited. It wasn’t long before a polecat poked his head from beneath the undergrowth and wrinkled his dark, weasel-like nose, issuing a chirruping sound that she interpreted as hello.

  “Henry, we have an intruder in the woods,” she whispered. Henry’s ears perked, and he looked positively intrigued. Truth to tell, so was she.

  Henry leaped for her shoulder, curling his long body around the back of her neck like a scarf, chasing away the residual chill from the glen. The dense forest held the rain back to a mere drizzle. Ela stroked the polecat’s tail, which dangled down her shoulder. “Shall we follow him?”