Claire Delacroix by The Moonstone Page A

the unwary.
    Just as Viviane’s beauty hid her traitorous heart.
    Well, Niall was wary enough for two. He skeptically surveyed the sky of vivid blue, the water as radiant as a glinting sapphire. The land stretched in great curves around them, though Niall could not guess whether ’twas a morass of islands on all sides or some single jut of land that twisted like a serpent.
    The trees that clung to the land were starkly drawn, their boughs drawn to grow in one direction by an evidently strong and prevailing wind. They gripped the veined grey of bare rock with great presence and no small measure of stamina. Seabirds cried overhead as the waves lapped at the sides of their craft.
    For they five were aboard what was clearly a ship, though ’twas unlike any vessel Niall had yet seen. ’Twas all wrought of gleaming white, the glimmer of the sunlight upon it so bright as to make a man wince.
    “You know him?” demanded that second man. He was as sparse and bedraggled as an unkept dog, his manner little better. Niall assumed him a servant or a beggar of some kind, though his tone was most haughty.
    “Well, sort of,” Viviane acknowledged, with a sly smile to Niall. Her grip tightened on his arm and her eyes glowed. His heart skipped a beat, though Niall told himself ’twas only because it had been overlong since a woman regarded him with such welcome.
    Save his sister.
    And Viviane herself on that fateful morn.
    Niall scowled, hoping the witch would be dissuaded by the fierce expression that had sent warriors fleeing from before him in the past.
    But Viviane was unaffected.
    “He did save my life,” she purred and nestled yet closer to Niall. “Just like Gawain, from King Arthur’s court, who so nobly saved the besieged lady in his adventures.”
    A murmur of appreciation echoed across the deck. The drenched man nodded and the other woman smiled. The bedraggled man folded his arms across his chest and looked displeased.
    Niall felt the back of his neck heat beneath their admiration and felt the need to correct the witch’s false conclusion. “’Twas naught...” he began to protest, but the witch interrupted him.
    “You see, he’s so wonderfully modest.” Viviane sighed and treated him to a smile so warm it could nigh melt the bones of a man unprepared against her allure. Even Niall’s resistance wavered. “He did save my life, he did!”
    “And now you’ve saved his,” the tiny dark-haired woman declared with approval. She clasped her hands together and sighed rapturously. “Perfectly closing the circle and sealing your entwined fates. How wonderfully romantic!”
    The man who had hauled Niall from the ocean cleared his throat pointedly. “ Some others were involved,” he commented with a sharp glance to that woman.
    They were a pair, Niall immediately concluded, for the woman’s eyes widened and she scampered to the man’s side to make amends. “Oh, of course! You were heroic , Derek, just the way you dove over the rail...” She sighed as though much enamored of the man’s deeds and Derek exchanged an amused glance with Niall.
    He winked and Niall knew not what to do.
    In ordinary circumstance, Niall would have assumed they shared a manly jest over a woman’s approval, but still he could feel the imprint of this Derek’s kiss.
    ’Twas a situation rather outside of his experience.
    And one of little import. Niall had a mission to fulfill. As Matthew insisted, ’twould be prudent to see matters resolved with all haste. Sooner begun, sooner finished.
    Niall caught Viviane tightly around the waist, refusing to consider the price she would pay upon their return. ’Twas sympathy for her that had led him awry in the beginning and Niall was not a man to make the same error twice.
    Niall closed his free hand around the moonstone pendant and took a deep breath, trying to compose a verse to wish them back where they belonged.
    “Oooh, you’re soaked and cold,” Viviane complained as she pulled away from