by Lisa Jackson
“I just ... I just don’t trust her.”
“Because you remember her as a girl.”
“Yes. I don’t believe that people change, not like that, not in their hearts. Elyn of Lawenydd was a stubborn woman only interested in herself. Well, and Brock of Oak Crest.”
“And what of you? Did you not once lose your heart?”
Morwenna stiffened. “That was a long time ago.”
“Aye, and now you feel differently about Carrick of Wybren.”
She didn’t answer, but he saw her blanch as they climbed the steps to the great hall. Inside, workers were already setting up the tables for the evening meal.
“Lady Elyn and I are wed. That will not change, sister,” he said, finally releasing her. “You must accept it.”
“I’ve tried.”
“Try harder.”
Kelan dropped into his chair by the fire and began working off his gloves. He heard footsteps hurrying down the steps. He looked up to see Elyn dashing into the chamber, her hair flying, her beautiful face as white as weak milk.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said. “The physician is searching for you.” He shot to his feet. ” ’Tis your mother, Kelan,” she said, her face ashen and drawn. Compassion filled her eyes and Kelan felt his entire body tense. “She’s asking for you and ... and there is not much time.”
Morwenna gasped. She bolted out of the chamber and Kelan overtook her on the stairs. He heard Elyn behind them, but he didn’t look back, thought only of what he would find in his mother’s room. No matter how much time one had to prepare, there was never enough. He nearly ran into the nurse as she flew from Lenore’s chamber.
“Oh, Lord Kelan, I’m so sorry—” she cried, her voice trembling.
“No!” He wouldn’t believe the worst. He burst through the doorway and found Daylynn sitting near the bedside, tears streaming down her pale face, the physician wringing his hands and the priest mumbling a prayer over the bed.
“Mother ...” He charged to the bedside but his mother was unmoving, her chest beneath the bedclothes not rising or falling. “Nay,” he whispered, pain welling up from the very depths of his soul.
“I did what I could,” the physician insisted. “I gave her comfrey for her bones and used leeches and—”
“Enough!” Morwenna ordered. “You are not to blame.”
Kelan’s heart crumpled. He knew this day would come, of course, had told himself he was preparing for it. But now his throat clogged and his eyes burned and deep harrowing sorrow burned through his soul. His mother had been forever on his side, forever his champion, and now ... and now she was gone. ’Twas unthinkable and yet he’d known it would come to this, had convinced himself he’d expected it. But he hadn’t. Not deep down. “Leave us,” he said to all the servants, and his voice sounded strange. Strangled. “Leave us alone with our mother.”
Boots rang up the stairs and Tadd, disheveled, his clothes askew, flew through the open door. He stared at the bed in horror. “Why did someone not call me? Why was I not told that ... that the end was at hand?” he demanded, his face twisting in pain.
“The end came on quickly,” the physician said, puffing up his chest a bit. “I had been with her earlier, and though she was very weak, her passing did not seem imminent. She had been the same for days.”
“She was ill,” Kelan snapped, tired of the bickering. His mother had passed on; there was no need for blame or recriminations.
“Elyn was the last to see her,” Morwenna said, her voice harsh. “Did you not notice that she was failing?”
His wife nodded. “She was tired.”
“You spoke with her alone?” Kelan asked.
“Aye. She asked to see me.”
“Alone? But we’d seen her just ...” Was this not odd? For a second he thought of the vials he’d found in the bedchamber at Lawenydd. Had she not drugged him then? Did she not have some knowledge of potions that made a person sleepy and sluggish or never want to wake? Would this woman that he married dare give his mother something that might slip her into death? Oh, nay. That made no sense whatsoever. Why would Elyn wish to harm his mother?
“She sent for me.”
“So the nurse was with her?”
“For a while.” Elyn swallowed hard and took in a deep breath. “But she sent Rosalynn out of the room.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to speak to me alone.”
“What about?” Morwenna demanded, moving closer to her.
Kiera felt every grieving eye upon her, every face turned to her, as if in her last conversation with their mother she could provide them some kind of insight or comfort. She looked from one to the other, but there was no solace in her words; she had no answers, and she felt a strong need to unburden herself, to admit the truth about her duplicity, but not now when the family was in shock and grief. She could not. Coward, the hideous nagging voice in her mind taunted, but she refused to listen. Refused to tell of her deception. She had to talk to Kelan alone. “Lady Lenore wanted to talk of my marriage to Kelan.” Kiera glanced at him, noticed his lips tighten with distrust. “And what would be expected of me as the Lady of Penbrooke.” Not really a lie.
“Please, I implore you, whatever it is that’s troubling you, whatever it is that haunts you, do nothing to thwart this marriage.” Lenore’s dying request echoed through Kiera’s mind.
“Why would she call you up here just to tell you of your duties?” Morwenna demanded, her thunderous blue gaze focusing suspiciously on her new sister-in-law.
“Why wouldn’t she?” Kelan said, and stepped closer to his wife.
“Yes, why wouldn’t she?” Daylynn nodded and sniffed back her tears. “Mother was concerned with what would happen to Penbrooke. We all know that. Did she not ask us all to marry and have children and ...” Daylynn’s voice broke and she buried her face in her hands.
Gently, Morwenna touched her sister’s shoulder. “Shh, Daylynn. ’Twill be all right.” Bryanna folded Daylynn into her arms.
“Will it?” Tadd asked, and his lips compressed into a tight, angry line. He glared at his brother. “I guess we’ll see now that you, brother, and you alone will be running this keep. Without Mother’s counsel, without her support, without her damned insistence that you were destined to be master of Penbrooke.”
“ ’Tis the natural order of things,” Kelan insisted.
“Is it?” Tadd asked. He stepped to the bed and, after touching his mother’s fingers, turned on his heel, cast a disparaging look at Kiera, and left.
Morwenna’s gaze softened a bit. “There is much to do,” she said, as if to herself.
“I am so sorry for your loss.” Kiera glanced down at the bed where Lenore, serene in death, lay.
“Thank you.” The tears that had been once stemmed now ran down Daylynn’s cheeks while Bryanna stiffened her shoulders and attempted to appear brave. Kiera said, “If there is anything, I can do—”
“There is,” Morwenna cut in swiftly, her gaze fastened on her sister-in-law. “All we want, Elyn, is that you, as a member of this family, as the baron’s wife, never lie to any of us. That your loyalty is to Penbrooke. I hope that is not too much to ask.”
“Enough,” Kelan snapped, his face drawn in grief. “We’re all upset, but we must do as Mother wished. And that, sister, was not to fight and bicker among ourselves.”
“As you wish, m’lord,” Morwenna muttered sarcastically before leaving the room with Daylynn at her heels.
“Please give me some time alone with my mother,” he said to the priest. As Father Barton retreated, Kiera started to follow. “No, Elyn, you stay with me,” Kelan asked, and laced his fingers through hers. She felt awkward but held his hand. His fingers were tense, his eyes dark with sorrow, as he silently said good-bye to the woman who had borne him. With his free hand, he brushed a strand of hair from Lenore’s pallid cheek, and he blinked hard against tears.
Kiera was surprised that he would share this moment with her, that
he would allow her to see him so raw and aching. Her earlier suspicions concerning Obsidian, the questions she had designed to discern the truth about that night three years ago, were lost. How could she have thought such unkind thoughts, have such dark suspicions? Oh, if she could do anything to ease his pain, to balm the grief that was so evident in his features. Then she remembered Lenore’s faint voice and her plea.
“I think you are the only woman who has ever touched my son’s soul ... Please, do nothing to thwart this marriage.”
Dear God, Kiera thought, how in all of heaven and earth will I ever be able to tell him the truth?
Chapter Twenty-one
“He’s gone,” the idiot of a soldier said with such maddening authority that it was all Wynnifrydd could do not to take her hands and claw the man’s piglike eyes from his head.
“You’re mistaken,” she insisted as she stood in her wedding dress, her veil affixed to her head, in the decrepit solar of Lord Nevyll, Brock’s father.
Not only were the soldier and the baron in the chamber, but her own father was as well. Two guards stood near the door, one belonging to Oak Crest, the other from Fenn. All observing her disgrace. And the guests ... lords and ladies who had come to this horrid keep to witness her wedding and now would be able to be shocked by and eventually gloat over and gossip about how she’d been left standing alone, waiting for a bridegroom who had left her. She would be a laughingstock. No. She couldn’t allow it.
“Find him,” she ordered, panicking inside. “Brock is somewhere in the keep; I’m sure of it. You just have to locate him. He was half in his cups earlier; mayhap he’s dozed off somewhere.”
But even to her this excuse sounded feeble. Worse, it seemed to come from a desperate woman. Fury singed her brain. Embarrassment clouded her vision. How dare Brock not appear in the chapel for her wedding? How dare he? Who did he think he was, this lowly son of an aging baron with a keep that was about to fall to pieces? He had no right to treat her this way. Oh, when she got her hands on him, she would show him what it meant to leave a lady waiting for her own wedding! “But be discreet. It would not do for the guests to think that he’d nearly missed his own wedding!” Just the thought of it brought a dreadful heat up the back of her neck and to her cheeks.
“Aye,” Nevyll agreed hurriedly. He swallowed hard and worked his hands as nervously as a virgin about to bed a rogue. “My son is in the keep. As Lady Wynnifrydd suggested, mayhap he began celebrating his nuptials too soon and took a nap somewhere and lost track of time ...” He sounded hopeful, not that he believed his pathetic excuse but at least he wanted everyone else to accept his explanation. “Check the battlements, the towers, the dungeons, and every square inch of the castle. You’ll find him ...”
Nevyll was grasping at weak straws. And he must have known it for his smile was twitchy and unsure. ’Twas preposterous to think Brock had lost sense of time or forgotten his own wedding! And yet what other reason but the one that Wynnifrydd feared most, that he’d abandoned her at the altar? Her teeth gnashed so hard her jaw began to ache, and a headache began at the back of her skull, reminding her that Brock had never been faithful. Never. Not even when she’d told him of the baby ... which, of course, did not yet exist. She had hoped to feign a miscarriage after the wedding and then quickly get pregnant.
Where the devil was he? She smoothed the folds of her wedding dress, a gorgeous creation of white velvet and lace. Now a useless garment, a mockery of her situation.
An ugly black thought snaked its way through her throbbing brain.
What if Elyn of Lawenydd is not dead? What if she did marry Kelan of Penbrooke and even now Brock was hastening away to steal her away and claim her? What if he mortified Wynnifrydd on purpose? What if he knew there was no babe as she’d claimed, that she’d only wanted to force him into marrying her?
“My men and I have looked everywhere, m‘lord,” the soldier said. He was a big bear of a man with a huge girth and a ruddy complexion. He spread his hands in a gesture of perplexity. “We have gone from the highest tower to the lowest dungeon and every spot in between. His bed is undisturbed; his wedding clothes are lying upon his wooden chest. ’Tis as if he up and vanished.”
That much seemed right. Wynnifrydd had seen Brock’s handsomely tooled mantle, his finely woven tunic and breeches, pressed and waiting upon the chest. She’d ordered them from the tailor herself and they’d been there when she’d sneaked into his room earlier. Was it possible this half-wit of a soldier was telling the truth? Had her worst fear come to pass? And all because she’d made the mistake of loving a heartless rogue who had used her and left her without a second thought?
Tears of mortification burned the back of her eyelids.
Her heart and pride ripped as painfully as if they’d been fused together. What a stupid, love-duped fool she’d been! “Look again,” she ordered the beefy constable, feeling her cheeks flame with her shame and outrage. “Talk to everyone. Find out if anything is amiss. Anything!”
“Yes, yes, check again,” Lord Nevyll commanded, rubbing his fat hands together.
Her own father stepped in. A small man, he nonetheless had the voice of a bellowing bull. “And when you find him,” Lord Seth said, “tell him I want to speak to him before he marries my daughter.”
Wynnifrydd panicked. “Nay, Father, the moment Brock returns, the wedding is to go on as planned.”
“What? And have the guests sit idle?”
Better than to let them go at this point when there was still a chance she could reclaim some of her rapidly disappearing dignity. “They can roam the castle and be entertained by the jesters and musicians or watch the bearbaiting or cockfights,” she said, thinking fast. “Certainly the cook can serve some of the food that has been prepared for the wedding feast. Then, as soon as Brock is located, the marriage will commence as planned.” She glanced to Lord Nevyll for support. “Well, unless you and the servants of Oak Crest are unable to keep the guests satisfied.”
“Oh, nay!” Nevyll shook his head quickly. ” ’Tis a grand idea, Lady Wynnifrydd. I’ll alert the cook—”
“Stop. Do not.” Her father shook his head, and she noticed his face was so flushed with rage that she could see his red scalp through his thinning white hair and beard. ” ’Tis too late. We had an arrangement,” Lord Seth insisted, pointing a beringed finger at Brock’s father. “And if your son has shirked his duties and embarrassed all of us in the process, there will be no marriage, no alliance, nothing. My daughter has had her choice of suitors, from Wybren to Rhydd, and neither she nor I will suffer this kind of humiliation. If Brock doesn’t appear with an apology within the next three hours, consider the wedding never to take place.”
“Father! Nay!” Desperation clutched Wynnifrydd’s throat, nearly strangled her.
“You will not be compromised, daughter, nor mortified.” His head snapped toward the soldier who was in charge of the search party. “Find him,” Seth ordered, “and find him fast. I’ll have a word with him.”
Wynnifrydd wanted to collapse into a pile of tears. She wanted to kick and scream and gnash her teeth. Oh, Brock would pay. Whenever she looked upon his handsome face again, she would make sure he would never forget the raw disgrace she’d suffered at his hand.
Someone rapped upon the closed door.
Wynnifrydd’s heart soared. Brock had been found! Surely this was all a horrid mistake.
“Who is it?” the guard demanded.
“Willis. I’ve got John, the stableboy, with me.”
The guard opened the door. Two men, one yet another soldier, the other a lame little man with one droopy eye, bustled into the room. No Brock.
Wynnifrydd wilted inside.
“You’ve found my son,” Lord Nevyll said hopefully.
The soldier shook his head. “Nay, m‘lord, but John, ’ere, ’e knows something that might help. Go on, tell ’im,” he said to the crippled little man.
“There be a horse missin”,’ the man said, seeming about
to jump out of his own skin. “I work with the stable master, and Dafydd, he’s worried sick about it.”
“What horse? Brock’s steed?” Lord Nevyll asked angrily.
“Nay, the big sorrel, he’s where he should be, with the others. But Sir Brock, he had another horse, a high-strung little mare he swore he won in a game of dice a few nights back and ... she’s missin’.” The man was sweating profusely and Wynnifrydd suspected he was lying or was somehow responsible for losing the horse, but he continued rambling on. “Now, it could be that she ran off. God knows, Dafydd, he sometimes sleeps on the job, but Dafydd, he claims the mare was locked up in a stall, and just today when he awoke, the mare was gone. He figured Sir Brock had taken her out for a ride, but now everyone says Sir Brock’s missin’, too, and I thought ye should know about the mare.”
“So what are you saying?” Wynnifrydd demanded of the little worm of a worker. “That Sir Brock left me to wait for him at the altar, just to embarrass me?”
“Oh, nay, nay, m‘lady,” John was quick to answer. “Mayhap he took a ride or hunt and an accident befell him. That’s what I’m sayin’.”
Now this made more sense. A second’s relief washed over her. Of course Brock wouldn’t leave her alone on the wedding day intentionally. Why, she’d seen him earlier today ...
Lord Nevyll took the man’s word as that of the Bible. “Assemble the troops,” he ordered the soldier. “I want every man available to start looking in the surrounding forest.” Lines of worry etched his face. “But be careful. Brock is an excellent horseman, so it could be that he’s not been involved in an accident, but that someone has attacked him.”
“Who?” Wynnifrydd’s father scoffed.
“Mayhap an outlaw who recognized him as my son and would hold him for ransom.”
Lord Seth raised a dubious eyebrow as he glanced around the sparsely furnished room with its threadbare tapestries and cracked walls.
Baron Nevyll was undeterred. “Or ... or perhaps someone did not want the marriage to happen.”