Dark, Devastating & Delicious!: The Marriage Medallion / Between Duty and Desire / Driven to Distraction

CHRISTINE RIMMER

LEANNE BANKS

DIXIE BROWNING

THE MARRIAGE MEDALLION

BY

CHRISTINE RIMMER

Christine Rimmer, before settling down to write about the magic of romance, had been an actress, a salesperson, a caretaker, a model, a phone sales representative, a teacher, a waitress, a playwright and an office manager. Christine is grateful not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves, who loves her right back, and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day. She lives with her family in Oklahoma.

For those who never looked for love,

those who had more important things to do.

I do so hope that love found you!

Chapter One

Princess Brit Thorson opened her eyes to find a blurry silver disc hanging directly in front of her face. Beyond the disc she could see the instrument panel of her Cessna Skyhawk.

She blinked. The metal disc still dangled, cold and heavy against the bridge of her nose, blocking the center of her vision. The controls were still there, too. Beyond them, through the windscreen now crosshatchedwith cracks, lay rocky ground. Farther away, steep black cliffs jutted downward, softened here and there with stands of evergreens, into a sliver of clear, pale blue Gullandrian sky.

It was cold and it was quiet—too quiet, except for the whispering whoosh of rising wind outside and various odd creaking noises all around her.

Her head hurt—and her arms were dangling over her head. “Huh?” The world swam and shifted, her addled senses locking at last onto the correct perspective.

She was hanging upside down from the pilot’s seat, held crookedly in place by her shoulder harness. The blurry disc? That silver medallion Medwyn Greyfell had given her before she left the palace on her way to the airport. “To keep you safe from all evil,” her father’s grand counselor had said.

Considering her current situation, the medallion could have done a better job.

Then again, though she hadn’t made it to that meadow farther inland where her landing would have been much less eventful, she was alive….

Brit groaned and shut her eyes as it all came flooding back: the unremarkable takeoff from Lysgard Airport. The smooth climbout to 6500 feet. Once she’d reached cruising level, she’d banked right, heading northwest, following the curve of the Gullandrian shoreline. At the mouth of Drakveden Fjord, she’d made a right ninety.

And then…

That routine oil-pressure check. The reading: zero.

The awful, hollow feeling of unreality as she went about setting up her best glide speed, running through her emergency checklist, reminding her guide in the rear seat to buckle up, getting on the radio at emergency frequency to broadcast her call of distress.

And all the time, checking below, seeking some viable strip of land where she might bring the Cessna down in one piece. She’d sighted the narrow spit of dry ground at what seemed like the last possible second.

The landing had been rough, but they’d made it down okay. It was during the rollout that she lost it. Some jut of rock must have snagged a wheel. She remembered the sickening lurch, the right wing going up.

About then everything went black…

Brit popped the belt latch and crumpled with a grunt to the deck—scratch that: roof. With some effort, she untangled her arms and legs and got herself into a sitting position. She stared at the dead instrument panel and tried to get her foggy mind to focus.

The Skyhawk was a beautiful, soundly engineered piece of machinery. No way it would completely lose oil pressure out of nowhere—not without help.

Whatever had gone wrong, it wasn’t by accident. Someone had tried to kill her. And someone had almost gotten what he—or she—wanted.

Gingerly she poked at the goose egg rising near her hairline. Hurt like hell. But other than that, now the disorientation was fading, she felt all right. Not terrific. Achy and stiff and bruised in places she’d never been bruised before. Also, a little too close to some serious cookie tossing. But passable. Once she and Rutland dragged themselves out of here, she should be able to keep up as the guide led the way to…

The thought trailed off unfinished. Rutland. When they boarded for takeoff, Rutland’s long, lined face had looked way too pale. “Don’t care much for flying, Highness. Think I’ll sit in back, if y’don’t mind.”

After this experience, Rutland would probably never get in a plane again.

Brit shivered. With the heater as dead as the upside-down instrument panel in front of her, the cabin was getting colder by the minute. Outside, the wind kept whining and fading and then rising to whine again.

“Rutland?” Her voice sounded strange—strained and a little shaky—in the unnatural creaking quiet of the cabin, with the eerie wind whistling outside. She wriggled around, getting herself facing aft. “You all ri—” That last word became a tight, anguished cry.

Her guide was rear-end up, knees to the roof along with his head, which was pressed into his shoulders at an impossible angle. He stared at her through sightless eyes.

She’d got it right a moment ago. Rutland Gottshield would never get in a plane again—except maybe to be flown somewhere for burial.

Brit clapped a hand over her mouth. Very carefully, she sucked in a long, shaky breath through her nose. She let the air out. And repeated the process.

She wanted to scream. To throw up. To totally freak. To just give herself over to the sick, swirling combination of pity, panic and guilt that threatened to overwhelm her.

She swore low, and commanded herself through clenched teeth, “No. Don’t you dare lose it. You keep it together.”

Ignoring as best she could the dead eyes of her guide, Brit took a slow, careful look around. Both left and right hatches were crumpled shut. She moved back and forth, testing the handles. She beat on one and then the other, getting her shoulder into it. Neither gave so much as a fraction.

Okay, so she wasn’t getting out through the doors. But she most definitely was getting out. And she was taking her pack, her coat and her weapon along with her, all of which waited aft—safe, she hoped—in the baggage net behind the rear seats.

Brit swallowed, sucked in another fortifying breath and wriggled between the front seats. Rutland was squarely in the way. As she tried to squeeze past him, his body crumpled to the side, landing half on top of her with a weird grunting rush of expelled air.

Deadweight, she thought with bleak humor. Never had the meaning of that phrase been so nauseatingly clear.

One deep breath. Another…

And then, with considerable effort, she pushed and prodded the body—still warm, oh, God—until it was rearranged into a marginally more dignified pose, resting against the battered side window, out of her way.

She collapsed the right rear seat back, got the baggage net unhooked and dragged out her stuff. Then, hauling it all along in front of her, she scrambled backward, slithering between the seats until she attained the cockpit area again.

“Weapon,” she muttered, breathless, panting. It was wild country out there. Also, she hadn’t fallen out of the sky by accident—and she’d do well to remember it.

Yes, she could shoot. Her uncle Cam had taught her, out in the vineyards of his Napa estate, years and years ago. And she kept in practice at a certain San Fernando Valley shooting range. When you lived and worked in one of the rougher areas of L.A., it never hurt to be able to protect yourself—whether at home or on the job. The job being the East Hollywood pizzeria where Brit waited tables to make ends meet.

The painful truth? Though Brit could handle a weapon and fly a plane, she’d dropped out of UCLA—and somehow she could never quite manage to live on the income from her trust fund. There were always too many things she had to do. Flight lessons. Backpacking trips. Self-defense classes. Shooting range fees. And then, well, sometimes a friend would need a loan and she couldn’t bring herself to tell them no.

Thus, the Pizza Pitstop had become part of her life. Paolo, Roberto and the guys always found it so amusing, when she told them to keep hands off or they’d be looking down the barrel of her trusty SIG 220. “Macha woman,” they called her, chuckling with affection.

Not much to chuckle over now. Brit strapped on her shoulder holster, loaded her weapon and slid it in place beneath her left arm. Then she pulled on her thick down jacket. Barely September, and already it was major nippy in the Vildelund—the Vildelund being the Gullandrian name for the wild north country of her father’s land.

Weapon loaded and ready, wearing her coat—unzipped, so she could reach the gun if she had to—her pack close at hand, she was ready to go.

Yet she didn’t move. Cold as it was in the cabin, it would be colder still outside. She’d almost rather stay in here with her dead guide and the increasing chill and the creepy creaking sounds. At least in here she knew what she was up against.

She felt in a pocket, sighed in relief when she found they were still there: a full bag of peanut M&Ms. She liked to eat them when she was working at her laptop, writing one of the novels that always started out with a bang and somehow never got finished, or when she was feeling tense. Or feeling good…

Well, okay. The occasion didn’t matter. She liked them, period. Some people smoked. Brit ate peanut M&Ms. She ate them one at a time—very slowly, sucking off the firm shell, getting to the soft chocolate beneath, never biting the peanut until all the coating was gone. She found the process of eating peanut M&Ms so pleasurable. And soothing—and comforting.

She could use a little comfort now. She pulled out the bag, tore off the top, took one out—a yellow one. She liked the yellow ones. Oh, hell, she liked all the colors. Even the greens.

She folded the top of the bag and stuck it back in her pocket and popped the single candy in her mouth. Umm.

Truth to tell, she could almost wish herself back in balmy East Hollywood, safe in her adorably seedy Day of the Locust-style courtyard apartment, tying up her duty shoes, ready to head out the door, late as usual for the lunch shift, looking forward to a few harsh words from her boss and an endless stream of—

“No!” Brit sat up straighter, biting the peanut before all of the chocolate was gone. Don’t go there, she commanded herself silently. You wanted this. A man has died because you had to do this. You don’t even get to wish it all away.

And it was time. Time to stop cowering in the crushed cabin of her plane. Time to get a move on, time to be on her way.

Bracing between the upside-down seat and the un-budgeable hatch door, Brit kicked the windscreen’s web of ruined Plexiglas out of the frame. That accomplished, she tossed her pack through the hole. And then came the fun part: dragging herself out after it.

As she crawled free of the wreckage, she marveled—better to marvel than to give in to the twin urges to burst into sobbing, desperate tears and start screaming in terror.

She was alive and that was something.

If only Rutland could be crawling out with her….

Shivering, her arms wrapped around herself, she crouched on her haunches on the unwelcoming rocky ground and stared through the ragged hole from which she’d just emerged.

Should she go back, try to drag the guide out, to give him the dignity of a shallow, rocky burial?

She shivered some more, shaking her head. To bury the guide would take time and considerable effort—both of which she needed to conserve at all costs. And Rutland wasn’t going to care, either way.

Bracing her hands on her knees, she pushed herself up to a bent-over position. Whoopsy. Her head spun and her stomach rolled. For a few seconds she sucked in cold air and let it out and stared at the ground between her boots, aware of the distant cry of a hawk somewhere far overhead, of the lapping of the fjord waters against the shoreline behind her, the whisper of the wind, cold and misty, smelling of evergreen, the constant creaking of the wreckage that had once been the plane. Somehow, she’d cut the back of her hand. Blood trailed between her fingers. She turned her hand over and studied her palm. Damp, slightly shiny, almost coagulated.

She flexed her hand. Okay, she thought. I’m okay. With care, she rose to her height, brushed the dirt and debris off her jacket and jeans.

I can do this, she told herself.

Aside from a few superficial cuts and bruises and a throbbing bump on the side of her head, she was uninjured. Her trusty Timex had a compass feature, and she carried a map scribbled with arrows and instructions on how to get where she was going. The map—and the detailed instructions—had been provided by Medwyn, who’d been born in the Vildelund. She had enough food to last a few days. And she knew how to make a fire. Beneath her jacket was a thick wool sweater and beneath that, good-quality thermal underwear. Her heavy-duty boots were broken in, and her socks were the best alpaca wool. She had a weapon and she knew how to use it if it came to that.

She may not have finished college, she might have trouble keeping a job, but life and death she could handle.

She could do this. She’d backpacked in the Sierras, done both the Appalachian and the Continental Divide trails. She would manage to find her way alone to the Village of the Mystics where Eric Greyfell—Medwyn’s son and hopefully the man to tell her the truth about how her brother Valbrand really died—was purported to be living.

She would find Greyfell and she’d have the up-close and personal little talk she’d been itching to have with him. And when she got back to civilization, she’d find out who messed with the plane—and thus murdered poor Rutland. She’d see that the guilty were punished and that her father’s men came for the dead guide, that his remains got the formal burial ceremony he deserved.

Look at it this way, she told herself, as she gauged the rugged upward sweep of craggy land before her. The plane crashing and Rutland dying was about the worst that could have happened. And guess what? It had happened.

The worst was over and she was still breathing.

Right then, something whizzed past her ear so close, it stirred her hair.

So much for the worst being over.

Brit went for her.45 as she dropped to one knee. She had the weapon half drawn when she heard a hiss and a thwack. Something punched her in the left shoulder.

An arrow! Wide-eyed in sickened disbelief, she stared along the shaft, following it to the head, which was buried in layers of fabric. Blood bloomed high on the front of her jacket. She could feel it spreading, warm and wet, under her sweater.

The good news? She felt no pain. Beyond the shock of impact, the wound itself was numb.

Also on the plus side, she wasn’t dead yet.

She scanned the land before her, seeking her attacker—there. Stepping out from behind a big black boulder not fifty feet away. Some guy—way young, seventeen or eighteen, max. Long, tangled gold hair. Rigged out in rawhide leather with a mean-looking crossbow. The crossbow was pointed right at her. But she had her SIG out by then. With some fumbling, as her left hand didn’t seem to be working too well, she levered the safety back—at which time, her left hand went limp. Very weird. But she was dealing with it. Nice thing about the SIG 220. The kick wasn’t all that bad. She could shoot it one-handed. She took aim.

It was a Mexican standoff—until everything started spinning.

Now it was her damn right hand. Something wrong with it, too. It had gone heavy. She couldn’t hold it extended. It fell, nerveless, to her side, the pistol dropping to the rocks.

Well, okay. Now she was dead.

But just before the arrow took flight, as her body gave way and she began a strange, slow, nerveless slide to the ground, she heard a gunshot. Her too-young would-be assassin grunted and jerked back. The arrow meant to pierce her heart went wild.

And Brit was flat on the ground—drugged somehow. From the arrow in her shoulder? Must be. She wasn’t out yet, not exactly, but hovering in some hazy, halfway place between waking and nothingness.

She lay on the rocks, the wind whistling overhead. She could see that hawk she’d heard before. It soared high up there, in the distant, cold blue yonder, dark wings spread against the sky.

Footsteps came crunching toward her across the rocks. A man was bending over her. An angular, arresting face. Deep-set, hypnotic gray-green eyes. She knew him from the pictures that sweet old Medwyn had made a special point of showing her.

He was Medwyn’s only son, Eric Greyfell, the one she’d come to see.

And there. At Greyfell’s side. Another. All in black. His face hidden behind a smooth black leather mask.

The things you see when you’re probably dying…

And her eyes refused to stay open any longer. They drifted slowly shut.

There was silence.

Peace.

Oblivion.

There was a time of purest silence and velvet darkness.

Then came hot delirium. She burned within, her body ran with sweat.

And there were dreams.

In the dreams, she had visitors. Elli first. Elli was her middle sister. They were three, the sisters, fraternal triplets born within hours of one another: Liv then Elli then Brit.

“Oh, Brit.” Elli wore her Viking wedding dress—and her most patient expression. She carried her wedding sword out before her, point down, jeweled hilt gleaming. She floated above the ground, surrounded by light as golden as her hair. “What have you gotten into now?”

“Ell, you look fabulous.”

“You don’t.”

“Well, it’s just… I’m so hot. Burning up…”

Elli made a tsking sound. “You should have gotten your degree at least, don’t you think? Or maybe finished one of those novels you’re always starting, before you went off and got yourself killed?”

“Not dead. Uh-uh. Not dead yet…”

“Didn’t I warn you?” That was Liv, dressed for success in a cream-colored ensemble and those Miki-moto pearls that Granny Birgit had given her. Liv was bending over Brit, looking down, a scowl on her face, blue eyes narrowed, smooth blond hair falling forward against her cheeks. “Our dear father, His Majesty the king, has the whole palace bugged. Spies everywhere. How can you call him Dad? He as good as abandoned us, the daughters he didn’t need… until both his sons were lost.”

“He is what he is….”

“You should have kept your promise to Mom and come home with me in the first place. Then you wouldn’t be here. Sweating and delirious. Dying.”

“Hot. So hot…” Brit shut her eyes.

And when she opened them again, she could see her father. He seemed far away, standing behind his massive desk in his private audience chamber at the royal palace, Isenhalla. But at the same time he was there. With her. Looming over her, looking down at her. Firelight gleamed in his silver-shot dark hair and flashed off the ruby ring of state. Blood-red refractions danced everywhere. “Brit. Be strong.”

“So hot…”

“Fight. In your veins runs the blood of kings. I have big plans for you. Don’t you dare to die and disappoint me.”

“No, Dad. I won’t die. I swear I won’t….”

But her father only shook his head sadly—and disappeared.

Her mother stood in his place, tall and beautiful and thoroughly exasperated. “What are you doing, Brit? What were you thinking?”

“Mom,” she cried, reaching, crying out again when pain lanced through her shoulder. “Oh, Mommy, I’m so sorry….” But like the others, her mother had vanished.

Gentle hands guided her back to lie among the furs. An old woman with kind eyes bent close and whispered coaxingly, “It’s all right. Rest. You’re safe here.”

And there were other voices, soft voices. They whispered of the poison that burned through her body, they murmured that now they could only wait and watch and keep her as comfortable as possible. They spoke to her soothingly. They bathed her sweating face with cool wet cloths.

And then, within the swirling, firelit twilight…

The one whose picture she carried with her, in her pack. The dead brother she’d never know.

Valbrand.

A hot bolt of fiercest joy shot through her. Not lost! Not dead, after all.

Oh, she had known it, though until this moment she hadn’t quite dared to admit it even to herself.

Yet it had been there, against all odds, deep in her most secret heart. No one had really believed she would learn anything new when she said she would find the truth about what happened to him—well, okay, her father believed, at least a little. And Medwyn. After all, they had sent her here to find out what she could.

But no one else had any hope. Not her mother. Not her sisters. Not even Jorund Sorenson, the ally she’d cultivated at the National Investigative Bureau.

They all told her the truth was known already: Valbrand had died at sea.

She’d told herself they were probably right, that she only sought Eric Greyfell to understand better how her brother had died.

But still, she had known

And she’d been right.

She tried to say his name. But words wouldn’t come.

Valbrand. Tall and strong and so very alive. Standing right there, next to where she lay. He was dressed all in black, like the masked figure she’d seen in the heart of the fjord as she stared up, numb and fading, from the cold, rocky ground.

Had that been him, then—the masked one, in the fjord?

Valbrand was looking at Eric Greyfell, who stood beside him.

Eric warned her brother, “She sees you. She knows you. You shouldn’t be here, not without the mask.”

One of the soft-voiced women who tended her whispered, “She knows nothing. She’s trapped in her world of fevered dreams….”

Her brother, still looking at Greyfell, smiled. His smile was rueful, sad and teasing all at once. “The littlest of my little sisters…”

Not so little, Brit thought, irritated. Just because she was the youngest by barely two hours didn’t give anyone—even her long-lost and recently dead brother—the right to call her “little.”

She tried to tell him that, but again the words would not take form. Valbrand was still looking at Eric, still smiling fondly. “Your bride,” he said. The two words echoed. They bounced off the rough wooden walls.

Your bride, your bride, your bride, your bride…

Greyfell’s expression gave away nothing. “If she lives.”

“She’ll live,” said Valbrand. “Thor and Freyja protect her equally. Hers is the thunder, hers is love.” He chuckled. “And war…”

And then he looked directly at her. She saw that something terrible had happened to the left side of his face. It was crisscrossed and puckered with ridges of white scar tissue, the flesh between ruined, ranging from angry red to deep purple. What could do such a thing to a man?

Acid? A blowtorch?

She cried out in pity and despair.

The gentle hands caught her, guiding her down. The soft voices soothed her. “Rest now, you’re safe….”

Chapter Two

Slowly, the burning heat faded. The dreams receded.