Red Crystal Romance: #1 Emma Read online

  Emma

  A Red Crystal Romance

  Karen Nichols

  Copyright 2013 by Karen Nichols

  Smashwords Edition

  Published by Karen Nichols. Copyright, Karen Nichols. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author except for brief quotes used for review purposes.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Prologue – Present Day

  She was tired.

  Not an exhaustion that sleep would fix.

  Tired of hurting. Tired of feeling. Tired of being.

  Just tired.

  So many years and humans haven’t changed. How and why do people want to live in a world like this? What drives them forward? Was it having others around? Was it some innate stubbornness or pure ego that made them believe they could make it different? They could make it better?

  She didn’t have that, either.

  Not anymore. She’d had another. Once. And he’d left her way too early.

  And she’d lied to him rather than hurt him.

  He was sweet and tender and loving and it had never been enough.

  But she never told him. She pretended and he was happy. He loved her and she loved him, no matter what she wasn’t able to feel physically or emotionally.

  Another regret. Another day, she thought, lying back on her bed and picking up the small oddly shaped red crystal she’d found in the pagan shop that morning.

  She’d only bought candles, one of the few things that cheered the long winters. But the clerk had gestured to a large black caldron.

  “Just reach inside…swirl your hand around and pick one,” the young girl had told her, the overhead light sparkling off the many piercings in her ears.

  So she did.

  She wasn’t sure what it was. A round piece of some sort of red stone with etchings on it. It felt good between her thumb and fingers, so she held it as she lay back on the pillows, staring into the rain spatters over the windows.

  How often over the last too many years had she just wished…on stars; on candles…even a little praying from long past memories…praying to mute statues that were supposed to hear, supposed to listen. Supposed to help.

  Just let me sleep, she whispered again. Just…nothing, please.

  Don’t let me wake in the morning…I’m simply too tired to be anymore.

  Please.

  With eyes closed and tears slipping from the sides, she didn’t see the stone in her fingers glow before she fell to sleep.

  Eastbourne, Great Britain, 1872

  Chapter One

  Warmth, she thought, wiggling and snuggling down a little further.

  No, came the low purr from deep in her throat.

  Just a little beyond simple warmth. It smelled good. It smelled like spring with fresh green grasses and maybe a little early morning rain. Her nose twitched appreciably. There was even the faint scent of low tide, wet sand and seaweed. She was positive she could hear the distant screeching of gulls.

  That is some dream power, she thought with a sigh, stretching slowly and frowning enough that her head popped up from the crisply scented pillows.

  She didn’t have scented pillows. And her bed was comfortable but never was it this soft. This was like sinking onto a pile of feathers.

  Her hands were above her head, arms wrapped around a large cube of pillow. She patted the surface beneath her fingers and squeezed.

  “Oww!”

  Her mattress had also never stabbed her before. She pulled her hand down and stared at the small red bead on her finger. She moved it to her mouth to lick it off and frowned some more. If that was possible since she was pretty certain the frown had never left her face.

  There was hair in her way. Long dark hair. A deep brown that smelled like lilacs.

  Okay, she had dark hair. Mostly now because of hair color, but still… Her natural color had been a deep chestnut, once upon a time before she was silver. But it had been ages since she’d let her hair grow out. Oh, no, ages didn’t quite cover it, she thought.

  Decades. That covered it.

  She licked the bead of blood off her finger and blinked through the thick curtain, her hand up to send her fingers into the mass and rake it away from her face. Then she caught sight of her hand and blinked some more.

  But before she could consider the long, slender fingers devoid of a ring, she realized there wasn’t any pain. Her knees weren’t hurting. Her shoulder wasn’t sore.

  Lying face down on the bed, she stretched and flexed her legs and feet.

  She rolled to one side and then back, expecting the tell-tale twinges that seemed to mock every move she tried to make lately. Only there were no twinges. Nothing ached. Nothing protested.

  Her feet flippered back and forth; her knees bent and nothing complained or warned that it wasn’t going to happen.

  Nothing hurt. No twinges in her hip; no aches in her shoulder. She repeated the words in her mind and frowned.

  She wiggled from side to side, unaware of the eyes that watched her movements with increasing interest.

  “Well, this is really just off…maybe this is a really good dream where nothing hurts,” she mused aloud, pulling both hands before her face and pushed against the surface of the bed.

  Her body behaved.

  Not only behaved, it did what she was telling it without creaking; without aching but mostly without pain. She’d become so used to it, so accustomed, that she wasn’t sure how it would feel to be alone in her own body anymore without the constant aching as company.

  Now she decided it wasn’t such a bad dream at all.

  So she pushed against the surface of the bed, a bed definitely not her own, she said inside her head. She blinked, trying to see through a long, thick curtain of hair and…what was the gauzy stuff hanging from her bed? Since when did she have stuff hanging from the ceiling? She stared into the bright light on the other side of the filmy drapes, her gaze going from one side of the bed to the other.

  Since when did she have a window on either side of her bed?

  She put her hands on her knees and intended to rise up when she froze in place.

  Her head slowly, very slowly, tipped downward to stare at the caps of her knees.

  They shouldn’t be there. They definitely should not be there.

  Two hands came up, ten fingers raking back the hair as she simply stared.

  She couldn’t remember the last time her knees bent like that. Again, the simple answer was, decades. She poked at her thigh with one fingernail.

  “Oww…what the heck…”

  “You might be feeling slightly inconvenienced, Miss Carstairs. Between the carriage ride and whatever drug your father had used on you, you should consider moving slowly until your bearing has helped your body adju
st.”

  This time she did bolt upright, ignoring what shouldn’t be happening and spinning on her knees to stare toward the deep male voice. A deep, resonating sound that was decidedly foreign to her ears. A really deep sexy sound, she corrected cautiously.

  Since when was there ever anyone in her bedroom?

  She peered around her, taking in the gauzy fabric hanging from the thick top rails of this bed. Definitely not her bed, she thought firmly.

  Okay, not her bed. Not her room. Definitely not her body, she thought, realizing she wore no clothing.

  Not a stitch.

  And there was a sexy, low male voice talking to her from the other side of the veil. Okay, good way to think of it. A veil. A time veil, uh-huh, no more books for you, girlie, and definitely not more of whatever you ate the night before.

  “Who…who are you?” She asked, jerking herself up at her own voice.

  Younger. Much younger. Much softer and definitely matching the body she could see. Fingers poked at her breasts. Firm and small and round. Wow. Nice. Long hair got in the way when she went to her knees and stared down. A waist, slender hips and…cripes! She was almost shaved clean! Or was it natural? How old was she in this dream?

  She brought her hand to her mons and stroked, breathing a sigh of relief. Okay, stubble. Good sign, she thought. So she wasn’t a child. With nice boobs.

  A dream.

  Okay, she could deal with a dream. But wait…how come when she poked herself with her fingernail, it hurt? How come her finger was bleeding?

  “You may call me Lucas,” came the answer in the middle of her musings. He’d considered her question. He’d considered a great many things while waiting for her to wake. Too many things. Least of which was dispatching her father to hell at the soonest opportunity. None of this was her fault, her doing, and yet, here she was. But he didn’t want her to know all, not yet.

  “What is this stuff hanging on the bed?” She asked, deciding to begin small and work her way up. Were people allowed to ask questions in dreams? Hell, it’s my dream and I’ll do what I want, so there. “And why am I naked and where the heck is the bathroom?”

  God, she hated gravity after a long sleep. Every ounce of fluid in your body rushed to find the exit in your bladder!

  “A bath room?” He repeated with word as if it were a foreign phrase. “A room where you bathe?”

  She crawled on hands and knees, oblivious to the smile on her lips at the decidedly foreign exercise. She even wiggled her ass just because she could and it didn’t hurt. She poked her head through the gap she’d seen in the gauze.

  “A room where you pee,” she said at the same time her head poked through the gap.

  The room was huge. Her eyes fell on the figure reclining in the heavy dark colored wing sided chair on the far edge of the room. Alright, as dreams went, this was turning out to be a pretty darn good one.

  He stared at the angelic bow of her lips pulled into a taut frown. Long, disheveled dark hair surrounded the oval face, barely shielding the few bruises she’d gotten when the carriage crashed. He straightened in the chair and looked to his right where the door stood ajar. Mostly to behave with a modicum of civility and not stare at the curves of a very nude woman.

  “Bathroom?” She didn’t wait for a word, her head disappearing into the gauze before her body came out the side closest to the direction he pointed. Long legs crossed the hardwood flooring, her hand absently reaching for a light switch and coming up empty.

  Not that she cared or needed a light to pee. Not when it was this compelling.

  She only stared for a moment before nature told her there was no choice and she perched over the edge, sighing in great relief a long minute later. She hadn’t even cared about the door, just squatted and peed, eyes faintly puffy peering around as she drained into the large cistern.

  No place to flush, she thought, and then her eyes landed on the rope that hung at the side. Unusual, she thought, but…it was a dream, after all and at least so far there wasn’t a white rabbit or red queen. She was rather fond of her head. Not to mention being able to move and twist and bend. She found less than soft paper stacked on the small counter and wiped before standing up and approaching the basin.

  Looked like a sink. It was a really old-fashioned sink, but a sink none-the-less, so she turned one of the handles. Logic said that should be the hot water and she slipped her hands beneath it. Hot it wasn’t but…again…a dream where she felt the water warm as it fell over her fingers. She let it fall into her hands and rubbed briskly over her face, looking up but finding no mirror to peer into.

  No matter. She rubbed the damp palms against her sides and once more swept the long, starting to become annoying hair back from her face. Using her nails, she raked it back repeatedly, frowning and willing it to stay out of her eyes as she wandered back into the large bedroom.

  Nice. If you’re going to dream, she thought, dream nice. But very old-fashioned. She saw the two large trunks. Yes, trunks, and wandered to them. Easily big enough to hide a body inside, she thought fleetingly. Fingers were out and trailing over the heavy bolts and decorative iron clasps that seemed to hold the lids in place.

  She looked toward the voice when he cleared his throat loudly. Again. She’d ignored him the first couple times, deciding if he had something to say, he’d just say it. It was her dream, she rationalized, and continued wandering around the room, touching the tops of the large bureau and the small table next to a chair sitting by an open set of wide glass panes.

  “Is there a problem?” She asked when his throat clearing became annoying. She turned to face him and decided she might have been looking over the wrong things of importance in the room.

  And while she faced him, he did everything in his power to keep his face averted from her. Handsome. Rugged. A nice set of cheeks, a strong chin and a long neck. She couldn’t stand a man with no neck, or worse a chin that seemed to blend into his shoulders.

  He wore a dark coat of some kind, maybe an old-fashioned suit jacket with a white shirt beneath it that buttoned at his throat. Stiff, she thought. Stiff and uncomfortable looking, with white cuffs that appeared at the ends of his coat sleeves.

  “I realize that you’re an American and perhaps the habits and peculiarities of your culture are…unusual…however…” he struggled to keep his gaze averted, which, considering the tantalizing charms laid out before him in clearly uninhibited glory were meant to be enjoyed, not avoided, but still, manners prevailed.

  “American,” she repeated slowly, continuing to look him over. He wore glasses, she noted, small round glasses and he was actually blushing. “You aren’t American,” she said carefully. “British?”

  “Clothing, Miss Carstairs, please,” he uttered, slightly strangled as he swallowed hard. “And yes, I am British.” He said the words but frowned at their sound. Before he realized what he was doing, he faced her only to quickly turn his face aside again. “You sound as though you were completely unaware of your nationality.”

  “I guess I am. I don’t know where this is. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what kind of crazy dream I’ve created and since it is obviously my dream, I’ve decided I’m quite comfortable without clothing,” she said loftily, but sighed. “But just for the sake of argument, where would I find my clothing?”

  “The trunks.”

  “And why would I not have clothing on at the moment? Other than I was sleeping and I don’t generally wear things to bed, so that would make sense,” she wandered to the trunks, looked from one to the other and shrugged before working the latch and raising the lid. “However, one might find it odd that I’m bare assed naked and you’re sitting calmly in my bedroom.”

  “When the carriage crashed into the mud, you were thrown free. Neither you nor your attire fared well in the aftermath,” he told her, slowly turning to look at her. If his father was going to win a female in a gambling debt, she was most certainly well worth acquiring. “Mrs. Neilson and Nancy helped rem
ove the damaged clothing.”

  “Carriage crash? That was kind of them. I’ll have to thank them for helping,” she lifted a folded something and shook it out. Dress. Frilly, lacy and gold colored. Decent enough. But she really wanted jeans and a T-shirt. Maybe a pair of panties would be nice, she thought, digging into the stacks and tossing things to the chair at her side. She finally came across a fitted camisole and pair of off-white cotton shorts. Thick fabric, she mused, and stepped into the shorts and tied the little ribbons at her hip before pulling the camisole over her head and adjusting the ribbons down the front.

  She wandered to stand by the window, pulling in a long, slow breath. Summer. Greens of all colors filled the landscape before her that seemed to stretch for miles in a flat collection of trees, shrubs and open patches in the distance.

  “It’s beautiful here,” she sighed and turned to find him staring at her. She looked down at the crème colored clothing she’d put on and shrugged before meeting his gaze. “Is something wrong? Why are you staring at me?”

  “Breakfast,” he announced abruptly. “If you finish dressing, I’ll escort you to the dining hall and we can have a late breakfast.”

  “I’m dressed…I suppose I could use some shoes, but it’s so nice and warm, I’m okay with bare feet,” she told him crossing the room and standing before him. “And I am hungry. I’m not sure hunger is supposed to be part of a dream, however. How did the carriage crash? Were you in the carriage? Were you hurt? A carriage?” She repeated the word, her brows arched. “Like a carriage that horses pull?”

  “I…” the word kind of gurgled in his throat. He stood up, a little awkwardly and with a visible wince that slipped free before he could catch himself. He turned from her and adjusted his trousers before striding to the bureau on the far side of the room. He returned with a large oval beveled mirror and held it before her. “I was unharmed, as I wasn’t with you, I was in pursuit. And of course a carriage that horses pull. How else would it navigate the roads?”