“Laird Kincardine,” said the same man, looking down from his mount. “I bring ye greetings from our sovereign. Malcolm instructs me to tell ye that the cause is not lost, and that the woman will yet belong to ye.”
A collective sigh swept through the clustered people. The man dismounted, followed by Malcolm’s three other men. The two driving the cart, both in Bryce’s colors, stayed in place, scowling.
The Scot who had spoken approached. “I am Gawain MacAlister, captain in His Majesty’s royal guard. Malcolm sent me to reassure ye that he is doing all he can to press yer claim.”
“I am grateful,” said Marcus. “And curious. What do you have from Trayleigh?”
Gawain looked surprised. “Why, the lady’s clothing, man. As she wanted, or so I heard.”
Avalon was walking over to the wagon. She didn’t recognize the two men still seated, which was just as well, considering what she was about to do.
“Pray, unload them over here,” she said, pointing to a plot of grass in the bailey.
The men looked at each other, then back down at her.
“What are ye waiting for?” growled one of Malcolm’s guards. “Unload the wagon for milady.”
The men, grumbling, stood up and began to sweep back the cloth of heraldry.
Seven trunks. That was all. Avalon couldn’t tell if the one she needed was included; she couldn’t quite recall what it looked like. She had remembered it mainly for its position in the lineup along the wall of Luedella’s room.
“Take them inside,” said Marcus, clipped.
“No.” She looked back at him, surrounded by a brace of his kinsmen and Malcolm’s guard. “I would open them here, my lord.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
It was a standoff of wills, hers clashing against his, their audience rapt. He was cold again, the laird, giving her nothing but a chiseled look, obviously displeased with the situation. The chimera stirred, rattled its tail.
Not enough.
Avalon turned her back on him and the rest of them, to hell with what they thought of her. She was her own mistress in spite of what they said, and she would do as she wanted. Bryce’s men shrugged the first trunk down from the wagon, carried it over to where she pointed.
For a long moment it seemed the crowd would not part for them. None of the Scots moved; they only stared at the two men carrying the heavy trunk, a human wall, blocking them.
Avalon moved briskly to face the crowd. She met each gaze with cool authority, and the people were not immune to it. Slowly a rift opened in the wall. Avalon pointed at the ground, near the middle of the bailey.
“There,” she said, and Bryce’s men almost tossed the trunk to the grass.
“The key.” She held out her hand before they could walk back.
One of them fumbled at the heavy belt on his waist, pulling out a small ring with the ornate brass keys she remembered. He gave it to her without comment, then both men returned to the wagon for another trunk. This time the clan left the path open for them. They had all turned to watch Avalon.
A fine fool she would look if the right trunk was not here, she thought to herself as she worked the lock on the first and snapped it free of its catch.
She pushed the lid back and the mass of people inched forward, craning for a look. Marcus and the wizard and Malcolm’s soldiers moved to the front, but no one came very close.
Yes, these were her clothes. Her bliauts from Gatting, in all colors imaginable, finely stitched, worth a fortune by themselves, actually, but nothing compared to what she was looking for.
It wasn’t this trunk. She had taken care to sew the coins and the jewelry into only the most sensible of her clothing, not knowing what the weather would be like when she fled, nor what her circumstances might be afterward.
And indeed these were the style that Bryce had sent her, hording the fancier finery for his own purposes, or perhaps for when he thought he would have her again. But still, this was the wrong trunk. Avalon had placed the altered bliauts and the cloak on top, ready to be grabbed when the time was at hand.
To be certain, though, she lifted up the gowns nearest her, tossed them so they draped over the sides of the trunk, and rummaged through the rest down to the bottom.
Bryce’s men brought forth another as she was finishing. They looked at her curiously but didn’t pause, heading back to the wagon.
She found the key to the second trunk and opened it. Wrong again. These were the wrong gowns. The wrong bliauts, the wrong undergowns.
She opened the next four trunks, none of them the right one. By now she was slightly frantic, tossing the gowns randomly about, causing a growing concern she could feel at least among the women. She wondered why the chimera would not tell her if the right trunk was even here. Had she missed it? Was it possible she was mistaken in which gowns she sought? No, no, because she had spent hours on them herself, she knew exactly which ones she had picked apart and sewn back up again, the simple green wool, the dark blue linen, another wool, this one dove gray—
The men set down the last trunk and then stood back, watching her as closely as everyone else did. Avalon could feel the expanding doubt around her: What was she doing? Why was she acting so oddly? Was she touched somehow, had she a fever?
Avalon abandoned the trunk she had just gone through and wiped the moisture from her forehead. What a stupid risk she had taken, what an imbecilic thing to do, trusting that Bryce would bow to her carefully hidden agenda, that he would send up the one trunk she had been praying for.…
The last one was it. As she opened it the first thing she saw was the dove-gray bliaut, sturdy and plain, finely woven, artfully deceiving.
Avalon let out a cry of delight and whisked it out of the trunk, holding it up in front of her. The people watched, mystified, as she whirled around and approached Marcus, who stood with his arms folded.
“Your dagger, please,” she said.
His thoughts were closed to her, his face had that hard, impartial look that meant he was deeply involved in some emotion. But at her request he inclined his head, then took the dagger at his waist and gave it to her, hilt first.
Balthazar, standing next to him, nodded to her approvingly.
Avalon walked back to the trunks and then turned to face the multitude of puzzled men and women.
“Clan Kincardine,” she said, raising her voice to be heard all around. “I bring you your true savior!”
Avalon hefted up the hem of the gown, took the dagger and began to split open the stitches. The blade was sharp and exactly the right size, making swift work of it. She held up the gown and shook the contents onto the grass.
A rainfall of gemstones landed with soft thuds, brooches and earrings, rings and pendants. Pearls and sapphires, emeralds, rubies and gold, topaz and citrine and aquamarines and amethysts—all from Gwynth, all purely Avalon’s to give.
After one tremendous gasp of air, no one said anything.
“Here!” Avalon bent down and picked up a figured brooch with two large, perfect pearls, one white, one black. She held it up, let everyone see, then found a ring with a rounded green emerald, bright and vibrant, a dragon’s eye set in gold. “And here!”
She looked around at their stunned faces, Marcus’s stony one, Balthazar and Gawain MacAlister openly smiling at her. Avalon walked over to the wizard and handed him the brooch and the ring, knowing that Marcus would not accept her gift.
Back at the trunks she pulled forth the dark blue gown, opened it up, and more pearls slid out, great strands of them, white and black and cream and pink and even a rare blue. Everyone watched. No one moved.
“Here,” she called again, but she was more subdued now. She gestured to the earth at her feet, a treasure fallen to the grass, all the gems gathering up the sunlight, the gold bright and telling, the pearls like tears on the ground.
“It is for you,” she said, looking just at Marcus now. “For grain, and salmon. For the stables and the fallen walls and m
ore looms.”
A sound was flitting though the crowd, garnering strength until it became a great shout, a cheer, men and women alike throwing up their arms, embracing each other, hailing her and her gifts, another prophecy of the curse fulfilled!
“No—” Avalon said, but she was not heard. This was not prophecy! This was fact, a fortune of real things, not myth.
All around her swam the emotions, almost delirious, the bride had come, aye, and she was bringing her prosperity, she was ending their time of want and all of Sauveur would be whole again!
Some of the people were tumbling up to her, were bowing to her feet, kissing the hem of her skirts. Women were weeping and Avalon was trying to lift them all up, trying to get them to stand.
“No, no,” she was saying, attempting to explain it to them. “It’s not the curse. It’s not!”
And again they did not heed her, but passed around the precious jewelry in trembling hands, taking it all to Marcus, offering it to him. He broke his concentration on Avalon to shake his head at them but then had to give in, because they insisted he take them, the rings, the necklaces of pearls, the brooches. A growing mound of gold and jewels weighted his hands, and still Avalon could see that this was not enough for him.
The chimera nodded, agreed.
This was not what she had wanted. She had not meant to encourage the legend but to silence it, to show these people that what they needed was not flimsy stories but hard fact. And they had taken her intent and wrapped it around their fable, defeating her as quickly and as ruthlessly as Ian used to do, knocking her flat, leaving her winded.
Avalon pressed her hands to her cheeks, then looked back at Marcus. He was smiling now, all right, knowing her thoughts, watching the legend take firmer root around them all in this moment.
She stepped through the people, picked up the third gown and the cloak of coins, draping them over her arms.
Marcus kept his smile as she approached, an amazing sight, the masculine radiance of him heaped in gold, glittering in the jewels he held. He truly looked like a god now, a heavenly creature touching down to earth only for a moment, just long enough to scatter the treasures of paradise to the mortals.
Avalon stopped in front of him and met his look without conceding defeat. “There is more,” she said, and tossed the gown and the cloak at his feet, then laid the dagger on top.
Not enough! laughed the chimera.
And Marcus’s smile grew, as if he had heard the chimera speak, and knew that she did, too.
“A fine beginning,” he said, “from our bride.”
The buttery was vacant. Avalon imagined they were still stunned out in the bailey, still singing the praises of their absurd curse, and Marcus standing there, the laird burdened with golden riches under the admiring eyes of all.
Let him be their savior, Avalon thought acridly. He believed in their superstition. He was as steeped in it as the rest of them, and no better than they, when it came down to it.
She found a wedge of cheese and the heel to a loaf of bread. It was enough for now. Avalon took the food back into the keep and then made her way to what used to be a gatehouse, but was now long overgrown with thistles and grass, with clutches of little birds nesting in what remained of the roof. They greeted her in warbling trills.
A square-cut stone, long ago fallen from higher up, made a comfortable seat as she sat down and began to eat.
Her shoulder seemed much better. Even after the exercise today the stiffness was barely there, and her ribs no longer needed to be wrapped. Soon she would be perfectly healthy again, and when the emissaries did return, her excuse to stay would be gone.
What to do about that? Avalon sighed. Her life, once so strangely but surely mapped out, now seemed as nebulous as fog. There was no solid right or wrong any longer, and that was troubling enough. But add on top of that her mounting attraction to the laird of the Kincardines and what seemed only nebulous before grew to be impenetrable.
Attraction meant nothing, Avalon scolded herself. Attraction was a tricky diversion, and if she let it, it would trap her here for the rest of her days. And that was not what she wanted. Was it?
Of course not! If she stayed here her freedom would be forever curtailed, and the superstition would eat her whole, and Hanoch would laugh at her from purgatory until the day she joined him there, choked dead from the muck of his damned legend. She would end up being nothing but what he had planned for her to be—a creature with no identity but that given to her by a ridiculous fable. Her entire existence would turn into a sick joke.
And if she stayed, she might never have the opportunity to make Bryce pay for what he had done, a very real crime, no fantasy. If Marcus discovered that Bryce had bought the Picts, he wouldn’t allow her her revenge, he would assume command of it himself. But it was her quest, not his.
She had to leave. Yet if she did, she would never see Marcus Kincardine again. For some dark reason, the mere idea filled her with despair.
One of the birds came closer, taking short, nervous hops in her direction, tilting its head, tiny bright black eyes, a short yellow beak.
Avalon tore off a piece of bread and tossed it to the bird, watching the creature skip back in fear, then stop and dart forward again.
“I wouldn’t hurt you,” she said to it, holding still. “Go on, it’s yours.”
The bird hopped forward and picked up the crumb, then fluttered away.
“So, the people are not enough for you, my lady. You think to feed even the animals of Sauveur?”
As if just the image of him in her mind had summoned him to her, Marcus was here. He blocked the entrance to the round room, making a huge shadow that draped over the thistles and stone and grass, edging into her lap. The birds above grew silent at once, then rushed around in circles up to the sky.
“Shouldn’t you be off counting your blessings?” Avalon replied, then took a bite of cheese.
“Consider them counted.”
He came forward through the thistles, stepping carefully around the hidden barbs in the weeds. “I have discovered an interesting method of locating you, Avalon. I think of the most deserted place, and there you are.”
“How convenient for you,” she said wiltingly.
“Aye, indeed. It brings me much solace, knowing where I can find you.”
He chose a rock much like hers, fallen haphazard into the room from above, embraced by the grass. It set him across from her, with a rectangular window just to his left, a framed picture of colorful hills, a meandering river in a valley that emptied out into a small, rounded loch.
She tried to go on eating, ignoring him, but he made it impossible, even though he stayed silent. He watched her every move with sharp winter eyes, he sat there and brooded before her, and again she felt as if he were trying to understand her, the heart of her, her deepest secrets.
“Is there something you want of me, my lord?” Avalon asked, giving up, putting aside her food.
The change in him was certain and fleet, a darkening of his eyes, a small twist to the curve of his lips.
“Aye, most surely,” he said.
There could be no doubt of his implication. She had to look down at the grass to hide her reaction, a flush of heat, a tug that led her back to him.
“What will you be doing with the rest of your clothes now, I wonder, Avalon?” His voice had not lost its sensual undertone. “Do you think to wear them instead of the tartan?”
She had not considered it. When she had told the emissaries she wanted more than this plaid, it had been merely words to her, another tool to convince them to send the trunks. But now Avalon saw that the arrival of her clothing could be seen as a rejection of the Kincardines. And she didn’t want that.
Ridiculous, her mind scolded. Don’t let anyone dictate to you how to dress! You are not a serf!
But she heard herself say, “Take the gowns. Sell them. They’ll fetch a fine price.”
He arched one eyebrow at her words, leaned back on the s
tone with a hand around his knee. “As much as I like the idea of you being without them, I wouldn’t sell your clothing.”
Avalon pressed her lips together, resolving to ignore his double meaning. “Why not? I have more.”
“For one thing, it doesn’t appear that I need to. You have bestowed rubies and pearls aplenty.”
She shrugged, looking out at the winding river, the silver-black loch.
“And was this why you sent for the trunks?”
“Of course,” she snapped. “I could hardly ask Bryce to fetch me my jewels so that I might give them away.”
He was silent, absorbing this, his stare never wavering. It was unnerving to her after a long moment, and so she stood up and brushed the bread crumbs off her lap, then walked around the sitting stones and past him, to the window with the view. Marcus spoke to her back.
“So now I must contemplate what my bride will do next. You think you’ve saved the clan, isn’t that right? You thought to rout out the curse and bypass the legacy. You thought that a bestowal of jewels would end your obligation to Sauveur, and you could leave.”
She had thought that, more or less, and wondered why it didn’t feel as wonderful right now as it should have. And who was he to belittle her efforts? Why should he take her to task with that slightly mocking tone when all she had wanted to do was help him and his people?
“The coming cold will not be so harsh now, you cannot deny it,” she said. “Your spring will have new seed, new cattle. I fail to see how you need me any longer.”
“You fail to see how I need you? I hardly think so.”
She bit her lip at her mistake, but he continued.
“I think you see everything quite clearly, Avalon. You see how the people need you. You see how I need you.”
She turned. “What I see is that you now have the means to stave off want. With careful management, your clan will prosper for ages to come. This is my gift to you. I would not scorn it.”
He stood, a little too close, a little too fast, surprising her again with his lithe nobility. “I never said I scorned it.”
“Excellent. Then we have nothing further to discuss.”
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