My Something Wonderful

by Jill Barnett

  "I had no idea what danger I was in until I looked up. Before me was a line of them, snarling, and so close I could smell their fur.” Mairi shuddered. “They pounced, but Lyall beat them off and carried me back to mother. But Atholl…” She paused. “He could not save us both.“

  “Lyall never said a word but he never spoke his name again. He merely grew more quiet and inward. At some point Donnald tried to give him another hound from one of the litters here at Rossi, but Lyall refused. He never wanted another pet.”

  And, Glenna thought, he never again named another animal.

  “’Tis a sign of a great heart, and his greatest curse, that my son does not forget those he loved.”

  * * *

  Lyall could not forget her. He tried. His stepfather’s words haunted him, echoed about his mind in an eternal headache, and defied who he thought he was, while keeping alive some part of him that still had the essence of a conscience. He ate little, under the assessing eyes of Ramsey and the worried glances of his mother, but went back to pace the parapets again, walked the halls of Rossi, and finally sat down and played chess with an old knight he found sitting in front of the huge hearth near the keep’s back entrance, long after the castle was quiet and abed.

  “You have lost thrice now. If an old man did not know better, I would think you were throwing the game, lad.” Sir Magnus had been with Ramsey for more decades than Lyall knew and had trained Lyall in service when he was first at Rossi. “Get yourself to bed.”

  Lyall rubbed a hand over his face in frustration, then rested his hands on his knees and stared at the fire. “I cannot sleep.”

  “What is this sleeping excuse from one as young and strong as you? I am old, which is a fine excuse to be awake at this hour--too many aches to sleep through the night, too many broken bones.”

  And I have a broken heart. Until he had just thought the words, he had avoided the core of his troubles and what was truly bothering him. Now it was there for him to chew on.

  “Based on the confounded look you wear, I will venture a guess that a fine ankle and a pair of breasts are involved,” he laughed wearily. “ ‘Tis only women that inspire in a man such utter despair and complete confusion.”

  Lyall gave a wry laugh. “A fortunate guess.”

  “In my six hard fought decades, I have seen too many men felled to their knees by a fair maid. Few men are immune. Kings and princes, earls and freeman, even the baron himself.

  “Ramsey?” Lyall laughed.

  “Aye, he suffers still.”

  Lyall doubted that piece of frippery. He shook his head. “He is a large part of my problem. The lady is willing. My stepfather threatens me to not act on it…on her.”

  “I am not surprised,” was all Magnus said.

  “My orders are to keep her safe.”

  “Safe? Matters of the heart are seldom safe, and power, title, name and wealth provide no armor. My own dear Aileen ran me a merry and frustratingly long race from a nunnery to the Cairngorms, to Normandy, Outremer and back. Aye, ‘tis a lass who gives a man that lost look. “

  “I look lost?” Lyall said, not really a question. Was he that weak. A lost lamb? He’d rather think of himself as a coward.

  “Oft times you have been lost. You have not made good choices over the years. But this manner you have is different. You do not look driven by fire and vengeance.”

  Magnus and his brutal honesty. Lyall gave him a square look.

  “I, too, have lived with the fires of youth. Vengeance and greed have ruled my life. I do not condemn you, lad. You have followed what you wanted unflinchingly. And that is not a weak trait, Lyall Robertson.” He paused meaningfully. “Now you need to decide what you truly want--make certain it is what you want--and chose your path without regrets. If your path is truly your own heart’s desire, you will have little to regret when you are my age. The trick is to find the truth in your desire. To not chase after something for the wrong reasons.” He stood and stretched, wincing with his joints snapped aloud.

  Lyall stood out of respect for him.

  “I told you years ago, when you first came to Rossi, that a man must choose his battles. Do you remember?”

  “Aye, but in truth I have not thought of it,” Lyall admitted with a wry laugh. “Or I would not be in this fix.”

  “I somehow doubt that, lad.” He clapped Lyall on the shoulder. “You must learn which battles are worth fighting. Now I am off to bed and you should do the same.”

  Lyall watched him leave, then took a candle from a stanchion to light his way through the halls and arches, and went up to the next floor, Magnus’s words alive in his head as he passed by Glenna’s chamber. He stopped and walked back to the door.

  Inside, the room was still dimly lit from too many candles that been forgotten and the glow of the banked fire in the hearth. At first glance, the room appeared ransacked, but with a closer look, he realized that was not the case. The clothing rod was empty and the drape that covered it wide open. The chairs, stools, benches and tables were strewn with gowns of every color. Shoes were lined up by each gown, some with long toes, some square-toed with no backs and small heels that might bring her closer to his chin, shoes made in leathers and fabrics of every color with silver buckles and ribbands. Shifts and chemises, other underwear and thin, delicate sleep gowns ladies favored, some in a bleached stark-white spilled from a large open clothes chest lined with hand stitched sachets of flower petals Mairi always used and that made her smell like a spring garden.

  He looked at the number of the thin sleep gowns. Ironic, since Glenna lay asleep on the bed wearing a thick, finely-woven wool robe and hugging a red velvet gown with fur trim to her chest like a coverlet, and on one foot was a green slipper with gold ribbands and a purple kid ankle shoe with red laces on the other.

  Watching her, a smile curved his mouth and felt sweet, and something like happiness swelled within him, the first he’d felt since he’d been home. His heart was in his smile, but it was safe now, to reveal his deepest and secret feelings inside this room, because no one could see.

  There was the chance he could spend every night of his lifetime watching her sleep, seeing her at peace, and by doing so, feel at peace himself—a miracle of sorts? In her he felt the wonder of miracles, the truth of life and God and man, the reason to be alive and to walk the earth. There was no other woman he had ever looked at and imagined fat with his child, imagined faces and bright eyes and small hands, with no other woman had he seen his sons and daughters until now.

  What had Magnus said? Reasons…reason.

  There was no wrong reason for Lyall to go after Glenna. He had never set out to make her his and prove or avenge something. But what would their being together do to her? There was the true issue. Who would be most hurt? Ramsey was certain something dire would happen. Would she look at him someday with regret?

  As he left her chamber and moved down the hall toward his, he knew one certain thing: with her, he would never have a single regret.

  * * *

  The next morning was filled with busyness that started barely after the cock crowed. Prayers in the chapel, where Glenna knelt quietly between Lyall’s mother and sister until her knees were sore and her quiet words ran together in her head, then off to break fast with the women in the solar over bowls of stone fruit, a platter of crispy fried trout and hot pepper bread with warm honey and crunchy, oat cakes fried and dusted with cinnamon. Mairi’s boys joined them, romping like spring colts, while they asked Glenna enough questions to fill a coffer, and eventually their nurse took them off to run wild outside rather than in. The room felt the sudden quiet.

  “They are a handful,” Lady Beitris said as she rose from her tapestry stand and placed a hand on her low back. “Enough stitchery.”

  “Not for me,” Mairi said looking up. She bit off a thread and rummaged through a basket of spools. “I want to finish this today.”

  Lady Beitris took Glenna’s arm and slid it through her own, patting her hand. �
��Come along with me, Lady Glenna. ‘Tis a lovely day. I will show you about Rossi.”

  And that was when the day took a different turn. As the women walked the castle gardens, moving from the rows of roses and bellflowers, past the great cabbages and root vegetables, to a large, flat herb patch with clumps of marjoram, thyme, thick, sharp rosemary tuffets, and the wide frosted colored leaves of the sage plants, chatting, a wide brown leather ball flew behind Glenna and crushed a corner of the herb garden.

  Lyall came running around a wall, laughing and teasing, with one of his nephews in his wake, until they came face to face with the women. He stopped, his eyes on Glenna.

  “Ladies,” he bowed and said, “Make your bow to the ladies, Duncan. That’s a good lad.”

  “Look at my herbs!” Lady Beitris scolded, but there was no anger in her tone.

  Lyall picked up the ball and tucked it under his arm. “Fluff your grandmother’s prized weeds, Duncan.”

  “Weeds!” Lyall’s mother gasped. “You are incorrigible, Lyall. These weeds are what make your winter mutton palatable.

  But Lyall was still staring at Glenna, until she finally looked away from all the feeling she saw in his eyes, and she flushed when she realized Lyall’s mother caught their exchange. The pensive expression on the face of Lady Beitris was telling.

  “Come along, lad. Your brothers are waiting.” Lyall nudged his nephew into a race and they disappeared behind the wall.

  By afternoon Glenna had a few moments to herself, and for the first time since morn she was alone. She went down to the stables to see Skye.

  “Hallo, you worthless nag,” she said, stroking Skye’s muzzle as she fed her a summer apple. When Skye was done nibbling, Glenna started to wipe her hand on her clothing by rote, but stopped. She was in a gown, the plainest of the lot and made of finely-woven, thin violet wool, with simple sleeves and shoes of calf that fit her feet like gloves. She squatted down and wiped her hand on the clean straw then straightened, looking around her, liking the familiar scents of the stables. She had missed this.

  Leaning her head against Skye’s neck, she thought back to days on the island, when her life was simpler and all about horses and feed and manure. She closed her eyes as her mind drifted back over time.

  “Thinking of me, love?”

  Her eyes flew open and she stepped back. “Lyall!” Was he everywhere?

  Handsome as the Devil himself, hair golden, eyes the color of cornflowers, grinning wide enough to show a rare dimple in his cheek, he stood there, arms resting on the stall gate, intent on watching her.

  “Thinking of you?” she repeated sweetly. “The baron might have to enlarge the castle arches so you might manage to get your head through. And if you must know,” she lied, “I was thinking of how to scrape the manure off my shoe.” She pulled up the hem of her gown and showed him her shoe.

  “And a fine shoe it is, as is your lovely ankle. But I was recently warned that a fine ankle is trouble.”

  “What do you want, Lyall?” she asked in a flat tone, feeling mixed up and annoyed, happy to see him, yet confused, and wanting to throw her arms around his neck and cover his face in kisses.

  His look changed, the joy in his expression vanished. “Want? Something I cannot have,” he said seriously and the moment died. “Good day, Lady Glenna,” he added curtly and walked away.

  Her heart sank, and she cursed herself for dousing their fire.

  But they were not done and the afternoon and evening continued to play cruel tricks on her. They crossed paths repeatedly, almost as if they were dice in hand of God. When Glenna took Mairi’s lads to the kitchen for a sweet, rewards for napping quietly, Lyall was standing with his arm resting atop Cook’s head as the short woman who ran the castle kitchens looked way up, waving a wooden spoon under his nose as she pretended to scold him for sticking his fingers in the plum sauce, both of them laughing, until Glenna and the boys interrupted.

  Later, as she raced from her chamber to go to meet Lady Beitris in the solar, she and Lyall came out of their doors at the same time, both froze in place looking down the long hallway at the other. Later still, when she was speaking with Mairi in her chamber, Lyall came in without knocking, asking his sister a question before he looked up just as Glenna dropped her wine goblet on the carpet. And when night had fallen and the moon began to rise, when the stars overhead blinked in the darkening sky, when the castle was just beginning to quiet, they met on the dark narrow staircase, each heading in a different direction, and they stared, startled, frustrated, then turned to edge by each other.

  But quarters were too close and her breasts brushed his ribs, making her breath catch. He looked down, their mouths were almost level, with her on a higher step and him on a lower. His breath was warm on her cheek, and she could smell the scent of cinnamon and allspice from the stew served earlier, and feel the intense heat coming from his body.

  His hands touched hers, and something glinted in his eyes, before he pulled away as if burned and continued down the stairs without looking back, his voice quietly saying, “I cannot do this. I am done.”

  And as she watched him walk away, shocked by his words, she vowed, “You might think we are done, but I am not done.”

  31

  The moon was higher in the night sky when Lyall turned at the sound of the door and there she was. “Glenna,” he spoke aloud, her name coming naturally from his mind to his lips. She was not a ghost of the woman who had haunted him, that he had seen around every corner as he tried to hide from her and what he felt.

  Flesh and blood Glenna stood inside his bedchamber, a royal daughter in a deep green gown, fitted to her body and with gold embroidery along the neck and in panels at the sleeves, looking like an angel, a siren, and a witch, the beautiful sorceress placed in this earth to test his mettle.

  He had known she would keep pushing, that he would see her again, but not now, not when he was tired of living with himself, and the disappointments of those who should matter in his life.

  Not now when he’d been tested all day by face to face encounters and still tried to feel nothing. He could not find release from how he felt. And here she was. He was all too aware of the determination in her manner, the gleam in her eye. She came to him in the way a knight charged after the quintain. He took a deep and long-suffering breath. Her scent filled the air, that of a summer field full of flowers, reminding him of moments when he had held her. He crossed the room putting some distance between them, and he blew out a candle, then pushed aside the chair and braced himself against the edge of the table, crossing his feet at the ankles and acting as if she did not affect him as she did. “I know why you are here.“

  “And you are not pleased,” she said moving near a chair, where she stood on tiptoe and took a candle from the wall prick, using it to light another.

  “You wish to save me.”

  “Someone has to. They will not dare to hang you as my husband, and were anyone to try, I would go to my grave fighting for you. “ She moved by the bed and lit more candles, one, two, five, six… “ ‘Tis the simple plan, Lyall.”

  When she faced him, he saw she truly thought ‘twas all so clear and sensible. But nothing in his life was simple. She stood before him, a Trojan horse in the guise of a small black-haired woman who would be his champion.

  “Aside from that,” she admitted. “There is another reason. I have a selfish motive to save you.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Because you gain a husband who will not bury you alive.”

  “Aye. There is that,” she agreed.

  “So you imagine I am safe. I think your father, his councilors, and my stepfather all would argue that point, sweetheart.”

  “I do not care,” she said stubbornly.

  “But I care.” He straightened and turned his back to her, unable to look her in the eye with what he was about to do. “With all of your grand ideas you have not considered one thing.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Why shou
ld I exchange one shackle for another?”

  She paused about one heartbeat, then laughed at him and did not budge.

  Stubborn, mule-headed and foolish woman!

  “Oh, Lyall, really. What a poor liar you are.”

  “You should leave, Glenna.”

  “Perhaps I should, but I cannot. I dare not leave you again. I love you too much to let you keep running away from this…from me.” She came close and stopped next to him, so close he could hear her breath, and she lit the candle he’d blown out. “From who we are together.” She looked at him from beneath the darkest thick lashes, a sultry look that was far beyond her experience. She pulled the gold combs from her hair and shook her head, and her hair tumbled down as black and shiny as a rook’s wing.

  The king’s daughter was bent on seduction. Her eyes met his and the gauntlet was down.

  “You are only afraid of who you are and what you’ll have to face, of your father and his decisions,” he said truthfully. “I am merely the simplest answer to your problem.”

  “Aye,” she nodded without hesitation. “That too is true. Convenient is it not? I can save you and you can save me.” She smiled at him, a smile that was easy and free and unconcerned, a smile that drew him unwillingly into the charms of it. “Seems the simplest of all solutions. I expect that you would leap upon this opportunity if you cared nothing for me.”

  Her words struck. That she knew him so well was different, and not so very comfortable.

  “You claim you are a selfish coward,” she continued. “But a true coward would never walk away from the simple answer to a problem. I think you are no coward. Why do you do this but for my sake?”

  He had no answer because she spoke the truth. And that was how he was caught in his own game. He could not do with her what he did with others in his life: act as if he didn’t care. She saw him for exactly who he was, not on the surface, but deep, deep inside, the place scorched by all the hurts in his life.

  “The more you balk, Lyall, the more you prove that you love me more than yourself,” she said.