Time Travel Romances Boxed Set by Claire Delacroix Page A

crone behind her.
    The woman leaned heavily on a cane to survey
Aurelia with twinkling eyes. Her face was wreathed in wrinkles, her
hands gnarled, but she exuded a good-humored charm and a strength
unexpected.
    Her bright pink dress flapped around her
knees and danced with large blossoms. Her silver gray hair was
pulled back and pinned, but seemed to have a wavy defiance. Quite a
lot of it blew freely around her face.
    She must have been a beauty when she was
young.
    There was something familiar about the
woman, but Aurelia knew they had never met before. She would have
remembered those eyes, she was certain of it. All the same, she
found herself returning the woman’s smile and felt oddly comforted
by her presence.
    “ Who are you?” Aurelia
asked. “I did not hear you come near.”
    The woman’s smile broadened. “Oh, I know
well enough who I am and who you might be, Gemdelovely Gemdelee.
The question is only - what do you seek, pretty you, pretty me?”
The woman’s voice was delightfully musical in cadence.
    “ My father. King Hekod the
Fifth.”
    “ Ah!” The woman’s eyes lit
up, as though she laughed at a secret joke, then she turned to walk
away. Her cane tapped on the wet rocks, but she climbed the slope
with the assurance of one who knew her way well.
    Aurelia guessed from that expression that
the woman knew something she was not prepared to tell. She rose to
her feet and anxiously gave chase. “Do you know where he is? Have
you seen him?”
    The woman slanted a glance Aurelia’s way. “I
have seen many come and many go, Gemdelovely Gemdelee. Some call
themselves kings, some merely believe themselves to be.”
    Hope rose within Aurelia. Could this woman
have aided her sire? “But have you seen my father? Was he
imprisoned here? Did you help him escape?”
    The woman climbed, apparently untroubled by
either Aurelia’s questions or her concern. “No one can escape their
fate, Gemdelovely Gemdelee. Any task left unfinished must be done,
any debt settled and balance paid.” She turned a fired a piercing
glance to Aurelia. “There was a time when you understood such
things.”
    Aurelia had a sudden recollection of her
dame giving her just such a look when she had forgotten a vital
lesson. She gaped at the old woman, and realized belatedly that the
woman’s eyes were the same silver gray as her dame’s had been.
    And they twinkled with the same vigor.
    As Aurelia fought to make sense of this, the
woman smiled and turned back to her climbing. “You are not afraid
of me, Gemdelovely Gemdelee. Can you tell me why that might
be?”
    Aurelia exhaled slowly. “You remind me of
someone.” A lump rose in Aurelia’s throat. “Someone I loved very
much.”
    “ Do I that and can that be,
Gemdelovely Gemdelee?” The woman seemed to find this amusing,
though Aurelia could not guess why.
    Aurelia climbed behind the woman, hoping
neither of them would stumble and fall. “I think you may have me
confused with another. My name is not Gemdelovely Gemdelee.”
    The woman gained a rise near the summit and
turned, her brief flash of a smile almost mischievous. “And I think
I know what it is that I do see, Gemdelovely Gemdelee.” Her lips
twitched as though she would laugh out loud were she alone, and
Aurelia was again reminded of a trait of her mother’s.
    Aurelia’s dame had often stifled her
laughter in Hekod’s presence precisely thus, especially when it was
something Hekod had done that she found amusing. The remembered
bellow of her sire when he thought himself mocked echoed through
Aurelia’s ears, followed by her mother’s lilting laughter.
    They typically had retired to their chambers
after such exchanges. Much laughter had carried from those rooms
throughout the night, as well as various mysterious thumps and
bumps.
    Of course, all that had changed when Gemma
died.
    Tears blurred Aurelia’s vision and she
suddenly felt very much alone. She folded her arms around herself,
unable to deny the chilly