by Lynn Wood
Nathan couldn’t help but be impressed by his wife’s indifference to the fortune lying in the mud at her feet. At the same time her attitude only served to underscore the vast gap between their family backgrounds.
The stranger remained motionless on his knees at his young wife’s feet. Rhiann remained still as the statues in the square staring down at the box. Nathan suddenly felt an urgent need to protect her from what was inside.
“Rhiann?” The eyes she lifted to his were filled with such stark desolation he felt their emptiness to the depths of his soul. “What is it?” His hands on her shoulders tightened their grip and turned her to face him. Her voice was barely a whisper when she replied.
“I have to let them go. She says I have to let her go. I don’t want to. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“You’re not alone, wife. I’m your family now.” Her glance probed his, testing his assurance, trying to decide if she could count on it or not.
“I don’t want them to leave me, Nathan. It’s too soon. It’s cold here now with all this blood and death. Do you think it’s warm in heaven?” Nathan’s eyes locked briefly with the concerned glance of the man still kneeling in the mud at his wife’s feet. He wanted to know what the hell was in that box and why his wife was resisting it so desperately.
“Do you?”
His wife’s soft insistence refocused his attention. “Do I what?”
“Do you think it’s warm in heaven?”
How the hell was he supposed to know if it was warm in heaven or not? “Yes, I’m sure your family is warm in heaven.”
She nodded distractedly, not really believing his assurance. “I have to let them go in my heart, otherwise they’ll linger here.”
Nathan’s head was beginning to spin, but he sensed the core of Rhiann’s dilemma and even appreciated the stranger’s help with it. Until his wife accepted the deaths of her family and her old way of life she could never embrace the new life they could build together. “Yes wife, you have to let them go in your heart.”
She nodded. “She said I have to cry for them. How did she know I hadn’t?”
Nathan felt his own tears stinging behind his eyes at his wife’s bewilderment. The tears she denied were streaming silently down her cheeks and dropping like blood in warm drops onto his hands resting on her shoulders. “I don’t know how she knew.” He admitted with an effort.
The insistent sounds of the neighing stallion reached them from a distance and Rhiann turned her attention to where the black stood proudly on the hill, his head turned towards her as if it was possible for the two of them to communicate.
Nathan felt his wife’s slender form slip from his grasp as she slid to the surface and hesitantly reached for the box. Nathan watched her stilted movements from his vantage point over her bent head. She undid the clasp of the box and found inside a plain and well-worn leather pouch. Rhiann’s shoulders started shaking as she reached for it. Nathan was surprised by the tingling sound, like tiny bells, emanating from the pouch.
More disturbing was the sight of the jeweled dagger beneath the pouch. He watched Rhiann’s trembling grip close around it and every nerve within him instantly came to full alert. He had no wish to interfere with her private grief over the loss of her family, but nor would he allow her to take her own life in response to the devastation he read in her eyes. His own again met the stranger’s over his wife’s bent head and he relaxed a little at the quick denial he read in his dark eyes. The stranger’s concern for his wife was obvious to Nathan but still he didn’t trust him.
The black neighed again and Rhiann’s glance once more lifted in his direction. It was as if he was waiting impatiently for her to join him. A ridiculous fantasy he knew, as a woman of Rhiann’s slight form could never hope to seat the black. It would take all of his strength for Nathan to gain his back. The stallion was still wild – like his wife, Nathan thought, finding a glimmer of humor in this bizarre situation he suddenly found himself in the middle of.
Nathan glanced back down at his wife to find she now gripped the dagger firmly in her hand and was cutting her hair with it. When he instinctively reached down to take it from her hand, she passed it to the stranger, who accepted it reverently in both of his own. Rhiann took great care curling the long strands of a length of her hair into the jeweled box, then closed it and handed it back to the Salusian. Nathan did a quick inspection of his wife’s head, relieved to see he couldn’t tell where she’d taken the length from. He was all for her mourning her family and getting on with her life, but he had no intention of waiting several years for the glorious gold curls to grow back if she took it into her head to cut them off.
The black neighed again and this time rose up on his hind legs, a magnificent sight against the unusually bright sun of a typical dreary Saxon winter day. As if the action was some mysterious signal meant only for her, Rhiann rose to her feet, seemingly unaware of Nathan’s hand under her arms to assist her.
Her eyes were fixed on the stallion and she started walking towards it, her husband’s heavy cloak falling unheeded to the ground. When Nathan reached out to stop her, the stranger’s hands and quick shake of his head momentarily stopped him. The black remained where he was, some distance away at the top of the hill. As long as Rhiann didn’t get too close, Nathan wouldn’t interfere. The black could kill her with one outraged kick of his magnificent legs.
Rhiann appeared almost in a trance as she walked towards the animal, the tinkling from the leather pouch audible in the heavy silence of the onlookers. When Nathan had just about made up his mind to go after her, she stopped and stared up at the sky. Nathan drew a relieved breath. Maybe this was over now. Rhiann was bidding a final farewell to her family after which he would, like any considerate husband, take her back to the warmth of the castle, a hot meal and tuck her into his bed.
He turned to signal to his squire to bring his mount when the sharp intake of collective breaths behind him had his head swinging back around to where his wife was now running towards the hill, where the black used to be, but was no longer. He was racing down the hill on a collision course with Rhiann. Nathan threw an accusing glance at the stranger, wishing he had time to strangle him before he raced off to save his foolhardy wife’s life.
“Rhiann, no!” His voice was drowned out by the sound of thundering hooves advancing on his wife. He would kill the bastard, Nathan vowed silently. After he killed his bride for the terror that threatened to overwhelm him. He would never reach her in time. She would be trampled beneath the horse’s onslaught.
“Nooooo….!” The anguished denial was dug from the very depths of his soul. He couldn’t lose her now. He needed her. It wasn’t fair, damn it! He shouted silently to the creator of the universe. ‘Why did you give her to me only to take her away after a single night?’
He cursed his God even as he accepted the inevitable. His legs kept pumping, straining to reach his young wife, to shield her slender form, gladly accepting death in her place so as not to have to face the empty bed awaiting him back at the keep. He closed his eyes as the two met in the grassy plains, just yards away from where Nathan still strained to reach Rhiann in time.
He was too late. His knees almost gave way at the agony of his loss, but he wouldn’t stop while there was still a chance. He opened his eyes, forcing himself to watch the final crushing blow to his newly resurrected hopes and dreams. Without Rhiann the estates he fought so hard to secure would be cold comfort after the warmth of his marriage bed.
He was still too far to intervene when the final collision came, but rather than see his wife go down beneath the steed’s trampling hooves, at the last second she reached out to grab the black’s mane and pull herself onto his back in a single graceful movement, the black never breaking stride as it raced off back up the hill.
Nathan shouted his outrage at the stallion’s retreating back. The steed galloped away so swiftly he appeared to outpace the wind and only the echo of Nathan’s command drifted back to settle
around him in the hushed silence surrounding him. His wife never looked back. She was too busy hugging the black around his proud neck as he raced off up the next hill and out of sight of those still standing glued to the earth, their astonishment over the amazing feat they just witnessed momentarily robbing them of their ability to both move and speak. Nathan was the first to recover his senses. He retrieved his own mount held at his squire’s side, the young man’s expression bordering on awe at the spectacle of Rhiann’s horsemanship.
Nathan was too furious to appreciate his wife’s skill. Instead he grabbed the reins out his squire’s hands then changing his mind, instantly threw them back again in the direction of his surprised squire, who recovered himself quickly enough to keep the horse from bolting.
Nathan strode towards the stranger who stood regarding Nathan’s approach with a satisfied look on his face, at least until Nathan let his fist sink satisfyingly into the other man’s rock hard stomach. His taut muscles might have saved the stranger’s life but they didn’t prevent him from sailing through the air and landing in a hard thump several feet from where he previously stood, his grunt of pain audible, his face no longer wearing the smug, gratified expression of moments ago. Nodding now with his own satisfaction, Nathan returned to his mount and took off after his wife, gesturing for his men to follow.
He was going to lock her in his room until she was pregnant with his son. Nathan consoled himself with the cheerful thought – that or beat her regularly, a practice he considered barbaric but he knew some men resorted to in order to control their wives. He thought them ridiculous for resorting to physical violence in order to prove themselves masters of their own households. After less than a day of married life, he was clearly in danger of losing control of his own.
He was going to have to take a firm hand. As soon as he caught up with his errant wife and her untamed horse. Obviously Rhiann was allowed to run wild in her father’s household. And what did the stranger mean exactly when he referred to Rhiann’s grandmother as his queen? What did that make Rhiann with the rest of her family dead? Her heir? Over his dead body. Rhiann was his. The Salusians would have to find a new heir to their throne. Surely the queen had a son to inherit.
Nathan gained the hill and looked around, expecting to find his wife in the valley beneath him. His heart started racing again when he could find no evidence of her. Didn’t she spare a single thought for her own safety? Wasn’t she aware of the dangers a woman alone tempted outside the city gates?
He caught up with her after a hard, panicked ride across the countryside. That was a lie. He didn’t catch them. He spotted sight of the black standing at the entrance to the old forest. Rhiann was nowhere in sight.
Fear gripping him, assuming she must have been thrown from the stallion, remembering her death grip around the black’s neck, Nathan urged his mount on, his mind painting dark images of his wife being trampled beneath the hoofs of the wild stallion, or lying motionless near where the horse stood, pawing at the ground, her back broken from the force of being thrown from the stallion’s back.
Relief slammed through him at the sight of his wife sitting quietly and apparently uninjured leaning up against the trunk of an ancient tree at the entrance to the forest, and was quickly replaced by the hot spill of fury. Nathan slid off his mount just a few feet from where she rested and when he would have reached out to pull her to her feet and into his arms, the black objected strongly. He rose up on his hind legs and bandied his front hooves threateningly in Nathan’s direction.
Rhiann seemed unaffected by the stallion’s outburst. Nathan took a cautious step back, recognizing incredulously the stallion was actually protecting his wife from his anger. The black settled back on all fours but kept a cautious eye on Nathan. Archibald slid up cautiously to stand beside him. The two men exchanged incredulous glances.
Then Nathan shook his head at his own fanciful interpretation of the black’s actions and once again stepped towards his wife. The horse moved to block his approach. Nathan turned back and exchanged one more incredulous glance with his friend, this time noting the amusement Archibald made no effort to conceal beneath his astonishment. His men, who accompanied him on his reckless race across the countryside, still remained mounted on their own steeds and all bore the same astonished expressions at the sight of the stallion’s defense of their new mistress.
Resigned, Nathan tried to peek around the black and address his wife. “Rhiann. I believe, as your lord and husband, I’m entitled to an explanation about…” Words failed him and instead he spread his arm in a wide arc, unable to give voice to the full extent of his frustration, and ended lamely, “…about all of this.”
His wife acted as though she didn’t hear him. In fact, she’d yet to acknowledge his presence at all. He took an impatient step forward, then just as quickly retreated at the stallion’s bristling manner. His unusual retreat tasted sour in his mouth but he was unwilling to risk the stallion backing up and crushing his wife beneath one of those threatening hoofs. The stallion was wild. There was no telling when he would turn on the object of his defense and attack her instead. Forcing himself to adopt a calm demeanor he was far from feeling, Nathan squatted down and peered at his wife’s still form and bent head between the stallion’s massive legs.
“Rhiann.” No response. “Rhiann, look at me, wife.” He forced a soft, patient tone he was far from feeling, and waited, his patience straining to its very limits, until she lifted her head so he could see her face.
He drew in a breath at the sight of her devastation. Tears streamed down her face and the look in her eyes revealed her abject defeat. The strange box and the arrival of the stranger was the final burden that broke her spirit. He couldn’t stand seeing her like this. “Rhiann.” He whispered her name and stood to approach her, only to be stopped by the black once again. His impatience exploded within him. Damn it! He should be the one comforting and protecting his wife in her hour of need, not her stupid horse. “Rhiann if you don’t call off the black, I swear to God I’ll instruct one of my men to put an arrow through its heart.”
His threat shook her out of her misery long enough to whisper a few soft words in the Salusian tongue to the black, who turned a suspicious glance back at Nathan before neighing as if he understood every word his wife spoke to him, then dipping his proud head before his wife, took off towards the crest of a nearby hill.
Nathan stood and approached his silent bride. Her head was bent towards the ground and she continued to refuse to acknowledge him. He reached out and lifted her chin so he could see her face. As soon as their eyes met he forgot the lecture he was planning on delivering about scaring him to death, about forbidding her to ever go near the wild stallion again, about how he was her husband now and he deserved an explanation about why she was wearing the jeweled dagger from the strange box strapped to her arm, did she think to use it on him? About why there were tiny bells woven into her hair that tinkled softly in the almost still breeze.
Nathan couldn’t believe he was only now noticing the last few details. His brain was so addled from his fear of his wife getting herself killed; he apparently somehow managed to overlook them. He felt as though he stepped into an alternate existence. Nothing was the same in his usually ordered, disciplined life since he became tangled up in his wife’s ever expanding web of chaos and confusion.
He definitely needed to take a firm hand. And he would do so just as soon as Rhiann stopped staring at him with that hollow expression in her eyes, as if the grief she managed to avoid until the stranger’s appearance suddenly caught up with her all at once. She sat regarding him with an expression of despair and the hopelessness of death as if all the life was sucked from her beautiful eyes.
“Rhiann.” Her name was a whisper on his lips. The hand he used to cup her chin and wipe away her tears was as gentle as if she were indeed the still half-wild, untamed colt she brought to mind earlier.
“I should have died with her. Then you could have my father’s estat
es and not be saddled with me for a wife.”
Her pitiful confession stirred his heart. “No wife. Without you, your father’s lands would be small consolation. A cold bed at night. No one to instruct me in my husbandly duties.”
Her lips curved in a tiny smile at his weak attempt at humor. “You’re a wealthy man now, Nathan. There wouldn’t be any shortage of ladies, even Norman ladies, who would be pleased to wed you.”
“Perhaps.” He conceded her rather mercenary point. “But none who would please me as you do.”
“You’re angry with me.” So much for his effort to conceal his dark mood until she was feeling better.
“You belong to me now.” He reminded her, thinking the statement explained everything she needed to know.
“I know. I like belonging to you.” A blush stained her cheeks at her soft admission and her lashes dipped low over her green witch’s eyes.
Her confession took his breath away. “I like it, too.” He was somewhat stunned by his willingness to admit his weakness to his wife, and even more astonished by how much time he already wasted chasing after his young bride this morning. His schedule was in complete disarray.
Rhiann apparently possessed not the slightest understanding of the concept of self-restraint, or even a minimal concern for her personal safety. He was at a loss as to how she managed to survive so long without some semblance of the discipline and self-control that ruled his life since he was a boy. She was turning his previously well-ordered life into a mockery of discipline and self-control. He had no idea how to convince her of the danger she was in when she left the city alone on her foolish gallop across the country. He accepted she was in no real danger. He would never allow anything to happen to her.
But what if she took it into her head to go off on one of her jaunts when he was occupied with other matters? He was a busy man. He couldn’t spend every waking moment in pursuit of his flighty bride. She was his wife now. He remembered quite clearly her vow before the priest to obey and honor him. He was her lord. She needed to understand she was under his authority. Just like one of his soldiers, who would never take off on some personal errand without first seeking his permission.