And Vivienne was weak enough to want nothing less.
He was wary, to be sure, but no man could bear such a violent and fresh scar without possessing some fear of his fellows. The wound had been wrought by a blade, it was clear, and she shivered inwardly at what he must have borne.
His lips closed over hers, his kiss resolute as he claimed what he believed to be his due. Vivienne knew that a more sensible maiden would have rejected his embrace, would have stepped back from him until all of his mysteries were revealed. But Vivienne found herself welcoming his embrace, found her arms twining around his neck, found herself reveling in the marvel of his kiss.
She rose to her toes, for though she was tall, he was taller. His hand slid into the tangle of hair at her nape, her hands landed on his shoulders, her breasts collided with his chest. She closed her eyes and there was nothing but his kiss, nothing but him and his desire that she depart with him.
Nothing but the desire he awakened within her. He caught her closer and Vivienne almost forgot all she knew to be true.
But not quite.
* * *
Vivienne tore her lips from his and he released her, his steady gaze fixed upon her. She retreated, her thinking becoming less addled with every step she put between them. She looked away from him and fought to find her reason.
Kisses and promises should not be enough, not from a man who would not even surrender his name to her, a man who had tried to hide his face from her.
Vivienne wished she had never seen his scar. She knew too many tales of men served false who sought justice, of a fearsome face masking a heart wrought of gold. She knew too many tales in which a bold woman and her love were the salvation of a man who had lost all. It was too simple to see herself within such a tale, too simple to forget that impulse had oft served her false.
It had been a tale, after all, and her belief in it that had led to this circumstance.
“Make haste,” he said softly. “We must depart immediately.”
“No. I cannot go.” Vivienne’s words fell quickly in her determination to make a sensible choice. “I cannot leave with you, not so soon. You must show me more reason to trust you than this. You must meet me here again this night.”
“Be not afraid, Vivienne,” he said.
Even with the use of her name, he made her conviction fade! She held up three fingers, hating how her hand shook. “Three nights the tale pledged.”
He shook his head and took a step closer. “The tale, whatever it was, was not true. We depart immediately.”
“I will have three nights courtship and a red rose wrought of ice,” Vivienne insisted stubbornly. She knew it was a mad demand, but she needed time away from him to consider her course. She needed to speak to Alexander, to find out why he had made this wager, she needed to think without her lover’s compelling blue gaze fixed upon her.
“There is no time,” he said.
“There must be time.” Vivienne hastened to the portal, intending only to flee. Did she choose aright? She did not know, she could not reason with the taste of him upon her lips. Surely caution was never rewarded poorly? She had so little experience with it that she could not be certain.
She knew, however, that impulse could steer her false.
A cock crowed then in Kinfairlie village, though she ignored both it and her companion’s muttered curse. Vivienne did not hear his footstep, did not guess that he had moved until his arm locked around her waist. She cried out, but he cast her over his shoulder with dangerous ease.
“Not yet!” Vivienne struggled against him, but he granted her no chance for escape.
“I have pledged myself to you, you have surrendered yourself to me and your brother has accepted his price,” he crossed the chamber, untroubled by her protest. “The wager is wrought, for better or for worse, for a year and a day.”
“I said not yet!”
“And I said that you had no true choice,” he said, even as he stepped to the sill of the window. “We have wasted too much time this morn already.”
Vivienne saw the ground far below them and panicked anew. “No!” she cried, fully aware of what he meant to do.
Undeterred, he seized the rope yet hanging outside the window and swung them both out into the early morning air with a bold confidence Vivienne could not echo.
Indeed, she buried her face in his tabard, clutched his shoulder, and prayed as her stomach roiled in protest. He planted both feet on the wall with surety.
“Hold fast, for I need both hands for the rope,” he commanded.
Vivienne had little choice, for she did not wish to plunge to her death. She seized him, knowing that her fingers dug into him like claws, and did not care. She did not remain silent, though she guessed he would have preferred as much.
“Help!” she screamed. “Awaken, sentries of Kinfairlie! Be of aid to me!”
“Be silent!” growled her captor, but Vivienne was no more inclined to heed his words than he had been to heed hers. She screamed with vigor and was delighted when an answering shout carried from Kinfairlie’s bailey.
A sentry bellowed from his post and an arrow flew past them, embedding itself in the wall.
Vivienne’s lover cursed, and descended with greater haste.
“Help me!” Vivienne cried. “I am the laird’s sister Vivienne and his man means to capture me!”
Her captor halted his descent long enough to swing her around and shove one of his leather gloves into her mouth. “You will waken the entire village,” he said, anger making his eyes snap with sapphire fire.
Vivienne protested, but her words were muffled by the glove. She did not dare to loosen her clutch upon him to remove it. She was cast over his shoulder once again, no more troublesome apparently than a sack of grain.
Mercifully, the sentries had already seen her and she had made her circumstance clear.
Her captor would not get far.
But, to Vivienne’s surprise, no second arrow followed the first. She dared to look and spied a trio of Kinfairlie’s sentries conferring in the mist of the morning. They did nothing to intervene, though they could not have been forty paces away.
Indeed, they leaned on their bows to watch.
What was this?
Her captor reached the ground, swung her around into his arms. He clamped her knees tightly and her elbows fast against her side, and she saw the annoyance in his expression. He strode through the village with purpose and she noted now that he limped. He still set an impressive pace and her struggling did little to deter him. Still the sentries did nothing to aid her.
He glanced down and must have noted her surprise, no less guessed the reason for it.
“You have been bought,” he informed her as he marched toward one of the crumbled walls. “And your fate is sealed by that. Your brother ensured that I could scale the tower unobserved and it is clear that his men have been commanded to not intervene. You need no further sign of his endorsement than that.”
Vivienne ceased to fight at his words. Indeed, she could think of no other explanation for events. Alexander must have given the sentries directions not to interfere with her capture.
Her grim captor did not say something else which Vivienne also knew must be true: Alexander would not have made such an arrangement without complete confidence in her future with this man.
Alexander must have known something to her captor’s credit in order to accept his uncommon suit. She could not imagine that Alexander would wed her to a man who meant to do her injury. Her brother loved a jest, but he was not cruel.
Who was this man?
Her captor was disinclined to confide his secrets in this moment. He cast her across the saddle of a horse hidden beside the crumbled wall. Vivienne managed only to sit up before he swung up behind her, caught her fast against him and gave the steed his spurs.
Vivienne was not so foolish as to leap from the back of a racing horse, though her captor held her so tightly that she had little chance of doing so. Kinfair
lie’s chickens scattered before them, a pair of goats bleated, and Kinfairlie’s sentries leaned upon their blades to watch the destrier’s departure with indifference.
“All is well!” one shouted as the church bells rang the first hour, though Vivienne most assuredly would have disagreed. She wished with sudden vigor that she knew whatever Alexander had known.
She doubted, however, that the man behind her would tell her much.
* * *
Elizabeth, the youngest of the siblings of Kinfairlie, was awakened early by some ruckus in the bailey. She heard the sentries shout that all was well, so settled back into the warmth of her pallet. She tried desperately to return to sleep and failed.
Elizabeth was cursed with the ability to see fairies. Actually, Elizabeth felt herself cursed that she was able to see one particular fairy, a spriggan named Darg, who had a talent for matchmaking and had developed a fondness for Elizabeth since that maiden had saved that spriggan’s life.
On this particular morning, Elizabeth did not share that affection, for it was Darg who kept her awake. Darg was excited about some matter and insisted upon dancing on Elizabeth’s chest.
In fact, Elizabeth was wondering just what had compelled her to save the spriggan from drowning in that pitcher of ale. On this morn, it seemed that having left well enough alone would have been a better choice.
Surprisingly, that near-demise had not lessened Darg’s taste for ale. It was true that Darg had an unholy taste for mortal ale, though it affected her even more strongly than it affected mortals. Perhaps that was the root of her fondness for the brew.
“You should not have finished all of the ale last night,” Elizabeth said, her manner grumpy. “It always makes you restless, which means that I get no rest at all.”
Darg chortled and danced on Elizabeth’s chest. “Great deeds afoot at Ravensmuir; this day we hasten o’er the moor.”
“We are not going to Ravensmuir today, however much you desire it.”
Darg cried out as if in pain. Elizabeth grimaced, not in the least bit grateful that she was the only one in her family who could see or hear the spriggan.
“O’er hill, o’er dale, o’er rose and thorn, thus do the fortunate find their way by morn.”
Elizabeth thumped her pillow and rolled over, closing her eyes against the spriggan chatter. After a night of broken sleep, she did not much care what Darg desired or where the fairy wanted to go. The sky was barely pink. Elizabeth could hear chickens clucking and goats bleating to be milked, but it was altogether too early to rise.
She pulled her linens over her head resolutely and tried to will herself back to sleep even as she ignored the capering spriggan.
Darg danced with greater vigor, driving tiny heels into Elizabeth’s flesh like small hammers. “Fairy is one kind, mortal another; no soul of sense sees one in the other,” the fairy proclaimed. “Flesh and blood and death and bone; this mortal man will wed his own.”
Elizabeth was intrigued despite herself. She was twelve summers of age, had been suddenly (and alarmingly) endowed with ample breasts, and found the topic of men more alluring than once she had done.
She peeked over the hem of the covers and whispered, so as to not wake her sisters. “What man?”
Darg chortled in triumph. In truth, Darg was not a very attractive creature and did not always have the kindest motives. Elizabeth regarded her with her usual measure of suspicion.
With a final leap, the fairy dropped to sit cross-legged on Elizabeth’s new curves, and whispered gleefully. “A tale was told, some of it true; a wager made, the price come due. The man’s true name, no soul knows; what shall be done when he leaves no rose?”
Then the spriggan clicked her tongue in disapproval, sounding like an agitated bird.
Darg must mean the tale that Alexander had told the night before! One of Elizabeth’s sisters must have been beguiled by it -- and Alexander must have been playing one of his pranks. The sister would be claimed not by a fairy lover, as the tale recounted, but a mortal man.
Elizabeth sat up so hastily that the fairy tumbled head over heels from maiden to hard floor. Darg cursed long after she came to a halt, upside down on the bare wood, but Elizabeth did not care. She looked around the chamber and was relieved to see the tumbled tresses of Annelise and Isabella, auburn and fiery red in their turn. Vivienne, however, had burrowed beneath her covers and only the mound of her body was visible.
Certain that she would be cursed by Vivienne for her deed, hoping Darg was wrong, Elizabeth crept toward Vivienne’s pallet and abruptly cast back the covers.
Then she gasped in dismay, for the mound in the bed was not Vivienne. It was an old cloak, bundled to look like a body in the bed.
She spun to confront the fairy. “Darg, where is Vivienne? What has happened to her?”
The spriggan arched a brow, then brushed down her garb in obvious and elaborate reference to her rough ousting from Elizabeth’s bed. She took great care in straightening her cuffs before she replied, undoubtedly aware that Elizabeth seethed with impatience. “Ill-mannered mortals would show themselves wise, to look upon messengers with kindly eyes.” Darg put her nose in the air and marched away from Elizabeth.
The girl darted after her, knowing that only fulsome flattery would see her question answered. “Darg, I am sorry to have roused you so roughly. I was fearful for my sister.” Elizabeth bowed her head at the fairy’s indignant glance. “Though that is no excuse to be rude to one so wise as yourself. I apologize, truly I do.”
Darg sniffed, though paused to preen slightly.
“Please tell me what has happened to Vivienne. Only you are sufficiently clever to know the truth of it, while we mortals stumble in darkness in comparison. ”
“No more, no less than what she desired,” Darg laughed and the sound was a little bit mean. “Blades are not known until touched to fire.”
Elizabeth was fearful of these tidings, though her discussion with Darg was interrupted by the arrival of Vera, the older maid who roused the sisters each morn.
Vera thumped noisily through the portal, dropped her buckets of steaming water with a curse, then rubbed a heavy hand across her brow. “Awaken, my ladies! The church bells ring and the laird himself insists that you all hasten yourselves to early mass.”
Darg spat on the floor, communicating an opinion of early mass quite clearly, then disappeared through a chink in the wall. Elizabeth fairly growled in vexation, then turned to find Vera’s bright eye upon her.
“Talking with the fey again, are you, lass?” Vera chuckled at the whimsy of that and Elizabeth felt her cheeks burn. Any inclination she had to confess Vivienne’s absence faded before the maid’s skeptical manner.
Perhaps Vivienne had a good reason to be gone so early this morn. Perhaps Darg was mistaken. Perhaps Vivienne had a tryst, or a secret courtier, or a mission she wished none to know about. It certainly looked as if Vivienne had meant to deceive others about her presence, which could only mean that she had departed willingly.
“Awaken, my lovely lasses, the laird makes no concession for those of us who must labor to see you all, nay, nay, not he. He raises his voice and makes his command and expects all to be precisely as he decreed.”
“Alexander is laird now, Vera,” Elizabeth observed, and won a sour look from the maid for her comment.
“Be that as it may, he is not king!”
Isabella groaned and rolled over, burying her face in her pillow. “I will go to midmorning mass instead,” she mumbled, for she was not one at her best early in the morn.
A gleam lit in Vera’s eye, one that did not bode well for Isabella. “His lairdship insisted,” the doughty maid declared with boisterous cheer. She trudged across the chamber and pulled the linens away from Isabella with a victorious sweep of one hand.
Isabella screamed and snatched for the linens. “It is cold!”
Vera smiled as she danced backward. “And leaving you cold is the sole way to rouse you, my lady.”
“Give me those linens and give them to me now!”
“The laird decreed that none should linger abed this morn, not even you.”
Isabella shivered elaborately. “Vera, you are cruel beyond expectation.” She sat up and surveyed the room in what was clearly a poor temper, wrapping her arms around herself as she shivered. “And Alexander is wicked to his very marrow.”
Vera chuckled. “While you are lazy in the morn, my lady. Rise, rise and hasten yourself to mass like the good demoiselle you are. We each must have some flaw and this surely is yours.” She gave Isabella a mischievous glance. “If you rose and attended mass, you could tell our laird what you think of his edicts.”
Isabella snorted. “If I were Lady of Kinfairlie, I should pass an edict banning church services before midday.” She made another unsuccessful snatch for her bed linens.
Vera marched away with the linens, triumphant. “But you are not Lady of Kinfairlie, and you never will be. You cannot wed your own brother.” She shook a finger at Isabella, clearly enjoying their daily game. “And the laird himself has demanded your presence. You had best rouse yourself, for you do take longest with your hair.”
“Because it is too red!” Isabella wailed and fell back against her pillows in apparent despair. She glared at the ceiling. “It is uncivilized to command another to attend mass so early. Alexander is a barbarian to make such a demand.”
“I hardly think it barbaric to be so concerned with the fate of your soul,” Annelise said sweetly. She had risen and washed while Isabella had complained.
Isabella grimaced then spoke darkly. “He has no concern for our souls.”
“I think he is impossible since becoming laird,” Elizabeth added. “To think that once I liked my eldest brother!”
Isabella nodded. “Mark my words, there is some jest behind this command. Alexander makes no haste from his bed in the morning either.”
The Rose Red Bride JK2 Page 6