by Lisa Jackson
“M’lady,” a man said gruffly, and with him came the smell of rainwater and horses, a hint of smoke, and a rising of the hairs on his arms, as if this unknown man with the deep voice was an enemy.
“Sir Alexander.” The younger woman’s voice. Morwenna’s voice. By the gods, why was it so familiar? Why did her name resound in his mind? Why the hell couldn’t he remember?
“How is he?” the man Alexander inquired, though there was no hint of interest in his voice. He is the enemy. Beware!
“About the same. He’s not yet awakened, though the physician says he’s healing and you can see that his wounds have scabbed over, the swelling lessened. Nygyll says no bones were broken, that most of the wounds were of his flesh and, as he’s not gotten worse, no organ was damaged significantly.”
Such good news, he thought wryly as he decided Nygyll was the physician. Another name to be committed to memory.
“Should we not send a messenger to Wybren and notify Lord Graydynn?”
Wybren? He knew in an instant that they were speaking of a castle. Lord Graydynn? That didn’t sound right. Or did it? Graydynn? Aye . . . surely he’d known a Graydynn . . . or had he? His stomach knotted more painfully and he sensed something was wrong, so very wrong. Graydynn! He tried to conjure up the man’s face but once again failed and was left with a sour taste in the back of his mouth worse than before.
“Send a messenger to Wybren and tell the baron what?” Morwenna asked in a tone of disbelief. “That we have a near-dead man we found in the woods and that the only identification we have is a ring with the crest of Wybren upon it?”
“Yes,” Sir Alexander said. “Mayhap the baron or one of his men could identify this one and we could then determine if he’s friend or foe.”
“ ’Tis a good idea,” the older woman said hurriedly, almost as if she and Sir Alexander had planned this conversation in advance. “Then we would know once and for all if the man is Sir Carrick.”
Carrick? His heart nearly stopped before racing wildly. He was Carrick? Carrick of Wybren? The name pounded through his brain in a way none other had. He tried to concentrate, to think past the pain, to remember. Was he Carrick?
“Not yet,” the younger woman said. “I agree, eventually we will have to contact Lord Graydynn, but let’s wait until we find out more about the stranger.”
“And how will we do that?” Isa demanded.
“We’ll talk to him, once he awakens.”
“If he awakens,” the older woman said with a disgusted snort. “It has been over a week since we found him and yet he doesn’t respond.”
Over a week? That long?
Isa added, “He may never awaken.”
The crone’s words were like a prophesy, for struggle as he might, he was losing the fight and soon he slipped back into the oblivion of darkness.
“ ’Tis not idle gossip,” the fat merchant insisted. Wedged into the chair before the fire in the great hall at Heath, he licked his fingers and then plucked another jellied egg from the platter laden with wedges of cheese, slices of salted eel, and dates. “I was at Calon but two days ago. The guards who knew me well, they stopped me and questioned me and searched my cart. They would not say why, but later in town I was playing dice and having a few cups when I spied Wilt, the apothecary. Though he had to be urged into speaking, he finally admitted that Carrick of Wybren had been located and brought to the castle.”
Lord Ryden, sipping from his mazer, listened while the obese man told the story of a savagely beaten, near-death stranger found close to the castle gates. Ryden’s blood heated and he tried to tamp down his anger, or at the very least, disguise it. The thought of Carrick of Wybren infiltrating the fortress that was Calon infuriated him. It mattered not that Carrick was near death; the fact that he was close to his fiancée, Morwenna, caused Ryden to clasp his mazer in a death grip.
The merchant was caught up in his tale. He gestured wildly in between bites and, no doubt, exaggerated the captive’s wounds and the ensuing mayhem at the keep, playing up his own part in risking his life to bring Ryden the information.
But the tale had merit. This was not the first person to have brought him news of Carrick’s capture, which was all the more distressing.
Ryden wasn’t a man who deluded himself. He knew that Morwenna of Calon had agreed to become his bride only after she’d been jilted by Carrick. Ryden had no illusions that she loved him; nor did he love her. But Calon was her dowry, so the marriage would be a strong union, solidifying two baronies that abutted each other into one stronger, with vaster lands over which he would rule. He itched to see it happen and wouldn’t let anything or anyone stop him.
Especially not Carrick of Wybren, the lying spawn of Satan who had bedded and then mercilessly killed Ryden’s sister, Alena, in that unforgivable fire. Ryden felt his rage return as he thought of the sibling who was young enough to be his own daughter. She’d had so much life within her. With straight flaxen hair, a melodious, near-naughty laugh, she’d also been blessed with a twinkle of devilment in her gold eyes. She’d been beautiful, had known it, and at the age of seventeen had pronounced she was madly in love with Theron of Wybren and had married him scarcely six months later.
Ryden hadn’t been fooled. Alena was too much of a flirt to settle down with one man, and not long after the nuptials there had been trouble, rumors abounding that she had taken up with Theron’s brother Carrick. Ryden had even sent a spy to watch his sister, and the spy, curse his soul, had never returned. Just taken his hefty fee and disappeared.
Now, as the merchant rambled on, losing pieces of fish in his heavy beard so hasty was he in stuffing the food into his thick throat, Ryden silently considered his options. He’d known of Carrick’s fate long before this smug trader had driven his cart through the gates of Heath.
Managing to appear only slightly interested, Ryden sipped from his cup, plotted his revenge, and heard the man out. Carrick would have to be dealt with; he’d known this from the moment he’d heard that the wounded man brought into Calon was suspected of being the missing son of the dead baron Dafydd.
Eventually the merchant’s story petered out, which, it just so happened, was when the trencher was empty, and Lord Ryden rose, signifying that the audience was over. He thanked the man profusely, then passed him off to the steward with instructions to buy more of the merchant’s wares than the castle actually needed.
The fat man left happy and thinking Ryden was his ally.
But then it was obvious the seller of goods was a fool who liked to think he was more cunning than he was.
So many were like him and they were so obvious, their motives clear to anyone with a brain. But Ryden outwardly treated the slob with respect. Though Ryden had a small army of his own trustworthy spies and was perfectly capable of looking after his own affairs, it never hurt to have another set of eyes watching out for his interests. So he managed a thin smile just to show that he appreciated the fat man’s efforts and then let it fall from his face as the tradesman waddled off with the steward.
Once he was alone, Ryden simmered, rage burning like cinders in his blood. He walked to the fire and stared into the flames, conjuring up the conflagration at Wybren and the horror that had ensued.
Carrick.
Morwenna’s lover.
“Hell,” he muttered and spat into the flames. They exploded and sizzled, shooting sparks. He told himself to bide his time with Morwenna. Somehow he would have to be as patient with her as he had been with his other wives, perhaps even more so. Both Lylla and Margaret had been headstrong women, rulers of their own keeps, but Ryden had remained ever patient with each of them, intent upon his ultimate purpose, and in so doing had increased his lands threefold.
When he finally married Morwenna, his wealth would again grow, his holdings widen. To add to her allure she was young enough to provide him with an heir. A son. At last! Lylla had borne him a daughter, a frail thing like her mother, and they’d both died of a fever within three months�
� time. He’d married again, and Margaret, nearly as old as he, had been a cold widow when he’d taken her as his bride and she’d turned out to be barren as a stone. He could have been mounting a statue for all the good it did to try to impregnate her. She’d died within five years, wasting away until she was barely skin and bones, the physician at a loss as to what was happening. All the urine examinations, bloodlettings, leeches, herbal pastes, and potions had been for naught and, he supposed, for the best. Margaret’s only merit had been that she’d been wealthy.
Ryden had shed no tears for her for she’d been a fussy, demanding, self-serving woman who had blamed everyone but herself for her own misery.
But Morwenna was young and spirited. Surely fertile. He smiled at the thought of bedding her and imagined losing himself in her. Getting her with child would be a pleasure. She was sensuous without knowing it, tall and finely muscled, her buttocks round, her breasts large enough without being ponderous, and he imagined she would enjoy the lovemaking as much as he. Oh, to feel her strong legs surround his torso as he plunged into her again and again, pushing hard against her, making her cry out in pleasure and pain. For what was sex without the pure, animal rutting of it? The domination of male over female . . . Ah, yes, he felt himself grow hard with the thought of it.
Dominion—that was what he craved more than anything else on heaven and earth.
He couldn’t wait to claim Morwenna as his bride.
Aye, ’twas a fine, fine union, the best he’d ever planned and one he would have pursued were Morwenna an old, fat, hook-nosed, addled crone. The fact that she was young and supple with firm breasts and a trim waist was but a little sugar on an already tempting pie.
He licked his lips in anticipation.
Ryden of Heath wasn’t about to let any man, least of all Carrick of damned Wybren, change his destiny. He would become husband to Morwenna of Calon no matter what.
CHAPTER FOUR
Morwenna escaped the chapel and felt anything but holy. Her thoughts throughout the dreary service had been with the stranger, and though she’d made the sign of the cross, listened to Father Daniel’s prayers, fingered her rosary, and whispered her own words to God, she’d done so without any thought or consideration. Her prayers had been merely a matter of habit, and all the while she’d considered the wounded man. Friend or foe?
Carrick?
Could he possibly be?
Her heart leapt at the thought as she walked through the frosty afternoon, and she experienced a warm sense of something close to vengeance run through her blood. Was it possible? Could destiny have served up the blackheart that she’d loved so fiercely, giving her the power over his fate? She felt a pang of guilt at that turn of thought, probably because he was in such a bad way. Had he been healthy, she would have readily thrown him to the wolves of Wybren. To Graydynn. To the hangman, if he was a murdering traitor. But he’d been near death when they’d found him, and her hard heart had cracked a bit as she’d stared into that battered face.
Somehow the wounded man had survived. Though the physician had warned her that the man would probably die within twenty-four hours, he had prevailed.
It had been more than a week since he’d been discovered near death. Surely he would survive, a man whose will to live was this strong.
So, Morwenna, what will you do with him? You, as lady of the keep, hold his fortune in your hands. What if he is Carrick? Or . . . what if he isn’t?
“Bother and broomsticks,” she muttered, as confused now as she had been when he’d been carried into the keep upon a stretcher. Wrapping a scarf more tightly around her neck, she barely noticed the servants and freemen working in the inner bailey. The farrier was pounding out horseshoes while girls collected eggs or singed the hair and pinfeathers off dead chickens, and the laundress frowned at the dark sky. Morwenna was hardly conscious of the efforts of those around her. Her body, however, responded, her stomach rumbling as she passed by the baker’s hut and the scents of fresh-baked bread, apples, cinnamon, and cloves assailed her.
“Morwenna, wait!” Bryanna cried as she hurried out of the chapel. Morwenna glanced over her shoulder to find her sister picking her way through near-frozen puddles to catch up with her in the garden where last year’s flowers had withered and a bench placed near a fountain was slick with ice.
As if reading her older sister’s thoughts, Bryanna demanded, “What if the man in Tadd’s chamber is Carrick?”
“ ’Tis not possible. Carrick likely died in the fire with the rest of his family.” Morwenna kept walking, holding her cloak tight to her body. They passed by a trellis where a few rose hips still clung to a dark, leafless vine. She didn’t want to speak with her sister about Carrick or whoever the devil that man was. She and Bryanna had exhausted this conversation a dozen times since they’d seen the damned ring of Wybren on the wounded man’s hand. “He’s . . . dead.” She glanced at her sister. “And so is this discussion.”
“You were in love with him once,” her sister charged, and Morwenna nearly stumbled over a rock in the path. “And now you’re promised to Lord Ryden of Heath.”
Morwenna’s jaw ached. She couldn’t think of Ryden. Not now. “I was never in love with Carrick,” she said, as much to convince herself as her sister. “Aye, ’tis true that I thought I loved him, but it was all just foolish youth.” After all, had not he also bedded Alena before and after his flirtations with Morwenna?
“He broke your heart.”
Inwardly Morwenna cringed, felt the lie of denial leap to her tongue. Instead she stopped short near the carter’s hut and wished to the heavens above that she didn’t have to have this conversation.
“It was a long time ago. Three years have passed.”
“I know, but if this man does prove to be Carrick, what will you do? Either he set the fire at Wybren and is a criminal, or he escaped the fire and whoever set it may be after him . . . and either way Lord Ryden will not be pleased to think that you are harboring an old love who might also be a criminal, a murderer.”
“Or a victim,” she said and spied the challenge in her sister’s eyes.
“I knew him not, but I doubt Carrick of Wybren was a victim,” Bryanna said. “A rogue, aye. A blackheart, yes, but never a victim.” She didn’t wait for an answer but hurried off, leaving Morwenna alone with her cold, troubled thoughts.
The fire could have been accidental, Morwenna told herself and wouldn’t believe that Carrick had intentionally killed all of his family. To what end? True, if his father, Dafydd, and older brother, Theron, had died in the blaze, he would become lord. But only if he could get away with their deaths. And he would have to come forward and challenge his cousin Graydynn for the barony. Graydynn, Lord Dafydd’s nephew, had inherited the keep after the inferno, and if Carrick did happen to be alive, he had not surfaced to challenge that claim to the inheritance.
Because he was a traitor. A murderer!
“Oh, for the love of Saint Peter,” she mumbled under her breath, and the carter, leaning over a wheel with broken spokes, lifted his head.
“M’lady?” He straightened, his nose red from the cold, straw-colored hair sticking at odd angles from beneath a woolen cap. “Is there something I could do fer ye?” He wiped his nose with the ragged sleeve covering his arm.
“Nay, Barnum, ’tis nothing.” Forcing a smile, Morwenna walked back to the garden and sat on the solitary bench. She looked up at the sky, where dark clouds glowered, promising an early dusk. The day was as gloomy as her spirits. Glancing upward, toward the small window of the room where the wounded man lay, she imagined a castle overcome by fire, the panic that would ensue, the long lines of people with buckets of water being passed from hand to hand from the well and ponds as the flames burned and crackled. Commoners, servants, soldiers, and the lord’s family would try to beat out the fire with wet rags or buckets of sand and prevent the spread of flames. Thatched roofs would be frantically doused, young children and livestock herded away. Pigs would squeal, people scre
am, dogs bark, horses shriek as the flames leapt ever closer, destroying all in their paths as black smoke roiled to the unforgiving heavens. Pandemonium would ensue, and if the wind were to shift in the wrong direction . . .
She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. Could someone have intentionally started the fire at Wybren?
But why?
Personal gain?
Revenge?
Abject hatred?
She bit her lip and stared up at the small window. Was she harboring a murderer? And if so, was he the one man who had touched her heart, only to break it? Steeling herself, she stood and headed out of the garden again. If the man in Tadd’s room truly was Carrick, then she should deal with him as she would anyone suspected of a crime. She would hand him over to Lord Graydynn. Perhaps there was a price upon his head, a reward.
That thought should have given her a sense of anticipation. Or a little thrill of satisfied revenge. Instead it only dampened her spirits all the more.
“You’re pathetic,” she growled at herself. And the man in the chamber is not Carrick of Wybren.
“We’ve found out nothing more than we knew a few days ago,” the sheriff admitted later that day. He was warming his legs before the fire of the great hall and holding his cap in his hand as he shook his head. “My men searched the surrounding villages, listened to the local gossip, and asked questions of innkeepers, farmers, merchants, anyone who might have been a witness to or heard about the beating. Not one person had anything to offer.”
“The only people who know what happened are the man upstairs and whoever did this to him,” Morwenna said.
“But it looks as if there was quite a struggle. I’d hoped we would find someone with bruises and scars he couldn’t explain, but we haven’t. There was a farmer who’d been nearly trampled by his horse, a huntsman who’d fallen from a ridge while chasing a wounded stag, two boys who’d gotten into a fistfight, and that was it. Whoever did this to the man we found either has hidden his injuries well, had received none, or has disappeared. We also looked for someone who had ended up with an extra horse, assuming that our guest was riding. But you know that finding a stolen steed is a difficult thing to trace, animals being traded and sold all the time.”