Kella was ready to walk to the glen by the time Alyn thanked Goll for his information with a coin and sent him off with a blessing to assure him that Idwyr had in no way put a spell on him.
Convincing Idwyr that his services were not needed was more difficult. “Jesus ’n’ me will help ye divine where to find yer one lost sheep,” the wizard offered.
Alyn groaned. He’d done too well in convincing Idwyr of biblical truths. The man was like a sponge, soaking up every word, weighing each one, then bobbing with enthusiastic agreement. But the druid added his own twist to the truth, which didn’t necessarily make it true.
It was agreed at last that Idwyr and company would wait until Alyn and Kella returned before heading home for Dumyat. And that was only after Alyn and Kella promised to wait another day to travel with the merchant caravan for protection. Alyn was certain the wizard would be tempted to search the wagon to satisfy his infinite curiosity, but there was little choice.
Still, Alyn began his morning prayers with one for God’s protection over the wagon and its contents as they started the uphill journey to the healer’s glen. Since his return, his prayer discipline had been sorely compromised, perhaps when he needed it most. Certainly, there could be no more beautiful reminder of God being with them than their surroundings.
To one side of the pass was a thick rise of spring-greening oak, beech, lime, and sweet chestnut trees. On the other, the land sloped down to the carseland between water and higher ground. There, all manner of birds and wildlife cavorted in and among the waving river grasses. Herons and kingfishers searched the sun-glazed surface for the fat salmon and trout swimming beneath the surface, while fishermen in small cobles tried their hand to bring the fish in with nets.
Kella returned the wave of one young man drifting in a boat closest to the rushes. Alyn could hardly blame the smitten fisherman for flirting with the golden-haired lassie bounding up the hill like a wild child. Like this, she reminded Alyn of the little girl who’d tagged along with him in the days of their youth spent in Glenarden. Except she was a full-grown woman, rounded in all the right—
Heavenly Father! Alyn renewed his prayers. One to distract him from this innocent kindled longing. Another that her soaring spirit would not be shot down if Egan was not the man she’d seen; she’d suffered so much heartache of late that he wondered if her pain was felt by the baby. Another that the man who’d stalked her had gone back to wherever he’d come from. And another that his teachings to Idwyr might take root and grow true. He even prayed that he would not run out of things to pray for.
Eventually, the trail curved away from the river and uphill through the woods into a sun-dappled glen where honeysuckle perfumed the air. It boasted a small garden, well tended, with all manner of herbs, roots, and vegetables planted in neat rows and patches.
A vine-covered archway to the east led to yet another open space. Upon closer examination, it revealed a chalybeate spring warmed by the earth, judging from the Eden-worthy plant growth around it. On a shaded, grassy bank sat a crudely made table with benches. The furniture was worn smooth and bleached almost white by the weather, but no cottage or shelter was to be seen.
“There’s no one here,” Kella said. “Nothing but wild vines and undergrowth and this bit of a clearing.” Her struggle to hide her disappointment was futile. “But Da has to be here. Do you think we left the river path too soon?”
“It ended in the marsh,” Alyn replied, kneeling to sample the water. Warm and tasting of iron salts. “But this is a healing well.” A place that once belonged to the druids of old and, for the superstitious, the fairies. He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hallo! Is anyone here?”
There was no reply save the patter of the water springing from a rocky rise into the gathering pond, and the hush of the birds, whose song he’d interrupted.
Then a rustle of leaves, as if someone was dragging branches across the ground, attracted Alyn’s attention to an ivy-infested thicket deep in the trees. A door opening appeared, not much taller than a child, as what Alyn thought to be a cluster of dead branches was swept aside. A woman climbed out from what had to be a partially sunken dwelling—at least four feet below ground level, Alyn guessed.
The lady was nearly as tall as Alyn with waist-length, ink-black hair shot silver with age. Her oval face had been etched by a light heart at the corners of her lips and eyes. A long, faded blue dress skimmed her slender body as she approached, gliding barefoot toward Alyn and Kella with a regal grace that had escaped the stiffness of arthritic joints.
Like Gwenhyfar, age had been kind to her, though Alyn knew better than to guess the number of her years.
“You’re Brisen?”
Her dark eyes danced as she closed his slack jaw with a tapered finger. “That I am, young priest.” Curious, she examined his belt, reducing Alyn to a hot-faced stammer.
“I … I apologize, it’s just that—”
“You’re certainly not what we expected,” Kella finished for him. At least one of them had kept a cool head. “I believe your name is a derivative of the Welsh word for queen, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You are not, milady.” Brisen turned her appraisal to Kella. “But I am not Welsh.”
“You are a Pict … Cruithne,” Kella replied in the Pictish tongue of Gwenhyfar and Alyn’s own mother.
That surprised Brisen. Two fine tapered brows—the kind women used charcoal or plucked to imitate—arched over the woman’s gaze. “Yes, I am. And I am queen of this kingdom.” She opened her arms to encompass their surroundings. “Do take a seat at yon table by the spring. I’ve put water on for tea, but it will be a while. Rest yourselves in the shade, my dears. It’s the perfect spot—”
“We’re here to see the red-haired stranger you’ve been healing.”
Brisen smiled, unruffled by Kella’s directness. “Finn will be along shortly.” A pretty pink colored her cheeks, making her almost seem girlish. “He’s a roguish influence on me. I’m usually up, breakfasted, and working in my garden by now.”
“Finn?” Alarm grazed Kella’s face. “Did he say his name was Finn?”
“Nay, ’twas the name I gave the brawny”—Brisen turned the word into a low purr—“man.”
The spring and sway in the lady’s return to the thicket dwelling from which she’d emerged left Alyn staring in her wake. If they had indeed found Egan, they’d no doubt find the old dog grinning ear to ear to have such a remarkable woman so taken with him.
“You can close your mouth again.” Kella planted her hands on her hips, less than enchanted with Brisen and him.
“But she’s stunning! Never in my wildest … did you expect Brisen would look like that?” he whispered.
Kella ignored his question and his offered arm. Instead she marched through the archway of flowering vines as if ready to do battle, not have tea at the table and benches. “She’s an educated woman … not the hag I expected.”
Alyn agreed but held to silence until he could fathom what was going on behind his wife’s snapping eyes. He’d have thought she’d be thrilled. It was very likely they had found Egan. Giant, red hair …
“And Egan is certainly brawny,” Alyn deduced aloud.
“He is not!”
“Kella, your da is a big, brawny man. You can’t deny that.”
“Not brawny the way she said it,” she hissed through her teeth.
Alyn tapped his fingers on the table, processing this bad turn of humor until Kella’s earlier peeve with Goll came to him.
“My father would not ‘take a real strong likin’ to’ any woman after my mother.”
Aha!
“Kella, my love.” Alyn covered her hand with his. “If this is your da, and he doesn’t know who he is, how can he remember his love for your mother?”
She pursed her lips, thoughtful.
Kissable.
Alyn rushed past the thought. “And if it is Egan, and he found someone who makes him happy, someone to love him like you’ve found to
love you and your baby, would it be so bad?”
“Alyn, they are not mar—” Kella’s face reddened.
Alyn could almost see the guilt that cut her off and continued to batter her. “We are,” he told her, wiping away with his thumb the single tear that trickled down her cheek. Well, mostly.
“Oh, Alyn, I-I’m such a hy”—she hiccupped against his chest—“hypocrite.”
“But you’re a forgiven hypocrite,” he consoled. “No,” he added when she tensed. “I meant, you’re forgiven because you feared for your father’s soul, not because you judged him.”
Why was it that he could guide even an old pagan’s soul-searching, but when it came to Kella, his words tumbled out in a jumble?
“Let your father get well first,” Alyn advised. “We must take one step at a time and pray for God’s direction. He will take care of the rest,” he whispered against her ear. The whisper became a kiss. Just a little one, though he yearned to show her just how much he loved her.
“Excuse us—have we come at an inopportune time?”
Chapter Twenty
Alyn jerked away to see Brisen standing in the archway, an inlaid tray with a fine Romanware teapot and four cups in her hand. Behind her, for there was no room for the two side by side, stood Egan O’Toole. At least the man resembled Egan. He wore a kilt of Glenarden’s red, black, and gray, and a black leather vest with no shirt to cover the red-bristle spread across his broad chest. A leather thong filled with gold and silver trophy rings glistened there. But this man was clean-shaven, with his hair pulled into a thick copper braid in the back, instead of loose and wild as Scotch broom.
Thawing from the same shock that bound Alyn, Kella tore away from him and flung herself at her father. Brisen sidestepped, lest the young woman knock the tea and her aside in her eagerness.
“Da, it is you!” Kella cried. “It is you!”
Alyn could see right off that Egan didn’t know Kella. Glancing at Brisen as if for a cue as to what to do, the big man humored Kella, allowing her to hug him and babble about how much she’d worried, how she’d known he wasn’t dead, how she’d felt it in her heart.
Father God, help us. Help Kella.
Alyn stood behind Kella at the ready when she finally realized that Egan was not responding to her declarations of love and joy. When the moment came, he caught her as she shrank away, supported her as she looked up into her father’s familiar face in wounded disbelief.
“You … you really don’t know me?” Her voice was little more than a squeak. She leaned against Alyn’s reinforcement. “I am your only daughter … Kella. Mam died when I was born. You said you could never love another but your colleen.”
The pleas evoked naught but pity from the brown eyes staring down at her.
“My dear child,” Brisen said softly to Kella, “come, sit down. Give the man time to think. To speak with you and your companion.”
Alyn ushered Kella over to a bench and sat beside her.
“Come along, Finn,” Brisen encouraged Egan. “Let us talk with our guests. Maybe they can help us determine what happened to you.”
Joining them, Egan sat arrow straight, hands that, when fisted, were big as hams folded before him. Alyn had seen Glenarden’s champion knock more than one man off his feet with a single blow. His bare tattooed arms bore the scarred badges of his courage in battle. A few were fresh. Yet here he was, reserved and polite, sipping tea from a cup instead of reveling, boisterous and jolly, with a mug to his lips. ’Twas like seeing another man in Egan’s skin.
“Ye’re a bonnie young lassie,” Egan said, breaking his silence as he put down his tea. “Any man would be proud to call ye his daughter, but I swear, I dinna ken ye … or yer laddie, for a’ that.”
Her father didn’t know her.
It didn’t matter that Kella told him about her mother, at least the stories he’d shared with her, for Wynn had died at Kella’s birth. Kella searched the warm brown eyes she adored for any flicker of recognition as she relayed memory after memory, but there was nothing. Nor was there any sign of joy when she told him that she’d married the young man he’d favored for her husband and that they would soon make Egan a grandfather. His gaze was not merely empty, but resistant to the recollections she tried to reestablish.
“I’m happy for ye, lassie, what with the bairn and yer laddie. But nothin’ ye say sounds familiar to me ear,” he apologized as they sat alone on a wooded bank overlooking the river.
Brisen had suggested they go for a walk to give them privacy to talk, while Alyn remained behind to discuss Egan’s injuries and possible treatments.
“I’m wishin’ it did,” her father told Kella, “for ye both would make a fine family for any man.”
“At least come with us,” Kella pled with him. “We’re on our way to Fortingall to deliver a package for Queen Gwenhyfar. Perhaps time in our company will nudge your memory. We have a good life at Glenarden, Da. People love you there. I love you and want you to enjoy your grandchild.”
A thoughtful smile pulled at the corner of her father’s lips. He looked so strange without the kilt of his mustache to accentuate it. “I canna think my life could be better than it is now with Brisen.”
The twinkle in his eye tore at Kella’s heart. She’d only seen it light so when he mentioned her mother, Wynn. Her father loved the healing woman. Or at least he thought he did.
“Mine musta been a lonely life before this.” He pointed to a long row of careful stitches that closed up a gash behind his ear. Brisen had shaved enough hair away to secure and treat the wound, but the spot was barely noticeable on that full bush of Egan’s hair unless one knew where to look.
It never occurred to Kella that Da had been lonely. He seemed to relish filling his days with weapons and training and his nights about the fire with his hearth companions. He was born to fight and make merry, he’d say.
“I canna explain the pure joy that woman has given me.”
His dreamy expression was no more familiar than the rest of him. Had the warrior turned lovestruck poet? Was it possible that his bluster about battle had done what ambition had done for Kella—isolated them from a chance at love?
“I’m by Brisen like yer young man is by you.”
“What?” The shift in the conversation took Kella by surprise.
Egan snorted. “Ye’re married and carryin’ his bairn, lassie. Surely ye know he worships the verra ground ye walk upon.”
Kella couldn’t help feeling guilty for misleading her father. As for Alyn, the only one Alyn worshipped was God. Next came sciencia. Though he had been more than tender since he returned, and more than once he’d said he loved her.
“He’s a kind man,” she allowed. “And generous.”
Were Alyn’s declarations of love real—not the product of pity and generosity of heart? Or of a dutiful spirit? Aye, he said he’d always loved her, but she’d always loved him, too. In a brotherly sense. Yes, once, when she was barely grown, love for him had even been a romantic fancy. Now Alyn had changed, become more manly.
“He’s a good man. Smart, too. Smart as you.” Egan shook his head. “I dunno how the likes of me could get a child as bonnie and keen-witted as you, lassie. Ye’re like a princess.”
Egan used to call her his princess. “Da …” Kella caressed the night’s growth of stubble on her father’s cheek. “You’re one of the smartest men I know. Born with a keener wit than half the students schooled with me. You’re a champion and have always been my hero.”
“Maybe so,” Egan admitted, “but yer man’s a champion too. ’E’s got heart bigger’n me to travel about armed with n’more than a stick.”
“You taught him how to use that stick,” Kella teased. Her smile faded as Egan studied her. She resisted the urge to squirm, for when Da gave her that look, she swore he could read her thoughts.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, if I overstep me bounds, lassie, but …” He frowned.
“No,” Kella encouraged. Maybe his memory was
warming. “Go on.”
“If the two of ye are wed as ye say …”
“We are,” she averred strongly. That much she could admit.
“Well, ye act like acquaintances.” Egan tended to draw out big words he rarely used. “Not like lovers.”
Indignation stirred her embarrassment. How dare this man—who was her father—question her as if …
He was her father?
“I … I don’t know what you mean, Da.” Whether he’d lost his memory or nay, he’d not lost his knack for spotting curdles in the cream.
“Ye sit apart as if to touch one anither is a crime. I don’t even know the man, but it’s easy to see as this big nose on me face. He loves ye with his heart and eyes, but I’d wager not with his—”
“Da!”
The mischievous wink Egan gave her was so much like him. “I wasna goin’ to speak untoward now,” he chided. “But the way ye act together—it makes no sense to me. Ye don’t know each other like a man and his wife should.”
“I’m with child, for heaven’s sake.” Kella had never been a good liar. At the moment, she surely glowed like a firefly at midnight.
“Just because there’s a bairn on the way is no reason to limit the bed to sleepin’ alone.” Egan leaned forward, folding his arms across his knees. “I’d bet the poor laddie finds every reason in the world not to go to bed at night.”
Like staying up and talking half the night with his family. Then with Idwyr. Kella glanced away from the probing arch of her father’s brow. The brow of a man who claimed he didn’t know her but spoke to her as if she were his own.
“I canna keep from touchin’ Brisen, just to be sure she’s real,” he confessed. “Do ye feel that way about yer man?”
Her man was dead.
Even so, Kella had not felt that way with Lorne … had she? They’d not shown their affection for each other aside from that stolen moment. Stolen and gone.
Father God, tell me it was real and not some flight of fancy craved by a lonely heart.
His image, even Lorne’s words of love, was hardly more than smoke in the wind. ’Twas Alyn filling Kella’s mind of late.
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