Free The Enchantress by May McGoldrick Page A

no longer could feel the body encasing her soul.
    And then she had found the river, nearly stumbling into it before drawing herself back.
    Laura turned her back to the river and stared blankly at the stretch of beach she’d just covered. She did not recognize it. Everything appeared strangely tilted, unnatural. She tried to focus her eyes on the track of dark footprints snaking away from her in a long meandering trail, but she could not even do that.
    Then, suddenly, she was looking across a moor in Yorkshire. The snow that covered the ground would soon disappear in the lightly falling rain. Her sister’s tracks led just over that hill. Laura could hear the sounds of their voices calling her.
    Her mother had begged her to leave the house, to escape with her sisters. But as the three had run across the courtyard, Laura’s hand had pulled out of Catherine’s. She’d stopped. She couldn’t help herself. She could hear the screams of the serving folk as the king’s men cut them down. They were taking her parents away. They were killing any who raised a hand.
    They were killing them, but there was nothing she could do to fight the evil.
    Nay, Laura realized vaguely, that was past. She knew she was not in Yorkshire. There was no moor. The smell of salt from the sea penetrated the vision, and she turned her head slightly to look at the wind-whipped froth. She shivered and her gaze turned downward. Her feet were planted in the snow, but they seemed to belong to someone else. She could not move them.
    Her mind wandered again. She could see the crenelated towers of their home above the crest of the moor. Was it spring already? Laura could smell the lilacs on the soft breeze.
    She would stay here until her sisters came for her. Only vaguely could she feel the warmth of tears on her face.
    “Laura!” Her sister’s frantic call reached her ears, but she remained still.
    Oh, Virgin Mother, she prayed. Protect them. All of them.
    “Laura!”
    She slowly brought her hands to her ears to block out the distant sound of her name. They were dying in the household. The monsters were cutting them down!
    “Laura!”
    She shook her head. She couldn’t go. She couldn’t leave them behind. If it was her parents’ fate to die, then she would die, as well.
    “Laura!”
    She opened her eyes and saw him.
    Out of the mist he came. So huge on his charger. His long, dark hair streaming in the wind.
    “Nay!” she tried to scream. “Leave me to die.”
    But she knew the sound was only in her head. The cold had robbed her of her voice.
     
    *****
     
    William Ross leaned down on the side of his horse and hauled the soaked body of the woman onto his lap. Like a frozen branch floating on an endless sea, there was no fight in her when he tucked her closely against his chest. Her bare hands were colder than ice--her exposed face red with the weather. He saw her lips move, but the words never broke through.
    He didn’t pause more than an instant before yanking his horse around and charging down the beach. This was the last thing he needed right now--her dying of the cold.
    With the wind at his back, it was not long before they reached the hut. Laura Percy’s life, though, seemed to have slipped from her body as he carried her inside. He knew there was still a very real danger of them being found if he was to start a fire inside the hut. The wind would carry the smell of smoke a long way. But laying her unmoving form on the packed dirt, he suddenly didn’t care.
    After leading Dread in and closing the door against the invading wind, William quickly built a small fire from the driftwood. Once the blue flames were crackling in the center of the hut, he moved to Laura and went down on one knee beside her.
    “Och, only a madwoman would have done what you did this morn.”
    William continued talking to keep his mind off the chore he knew he must do. The cloak and blanket still half wrapped around her were stiff with ice. Carefully, he peeled both of