She glanced within the cup she held and watched the wine swirl about. After Otgar tasted the sweet brew, she would never again be forced to lie beneath such a disgusting denizen of the forest.
Otgar’s tread fell noiselessly against the floor as he came to her. He did not question her unusual readiness for him, and she was glad for it. But his swiftness in discarding his garments, then and there, startled her. Within minutes he was standing over her.
He pushed aside the cup of wine she held out to him.
“Drink with me first,” she pleaded.
Otgar took the cup and put it to the table by the bed. “‘Tis not wine I yearn for.”
“Surely there is no hurry when we could talk awhile first.”
His chest heaved with ragged breaths of desire as his eyes roamed hungrily over her.
Before Leonie could reach for the cup, he forced himself full upon her, casting his body this way and that like a newly caught salmon. His callused palm cupped her breast as his rotted breath covered her mouth. Desperately, she reached to the bed table, grabbed a vase and slammed it atop his ugly head.
Otgar growled like the demon he was and in a new fit of rage he stumbled from the bed. Staggering to his heap of clothes, he grabbed for his dagger. When he swiveled back around, he came at her so quickly she had no time to flee. He plunged the knife deep.
He appeared to shudder in pleasure as he watched her fall back, struggling for breath. Bored with watching her die, he rolled his shoulders to stretch the tenseness there before reaching for the goblet of wine. Sitting upon the edge of the bed, Otgar held the cup above her, giving cheers before downing the dark brew in its entirety, unaware of the smile that played upon her lips as he drank.
~~~~
By the time Derek arrived at Silverwood it was morning and the air was brisk, stinging his face with its coldness. Derek grew haggard with worry as he climbed the wide stairs, carrying his wife in his arms. Why had she not yet awoken? Her breathing was steady and her color had returned. It made no sense.
The sentries recognized the woman in his arms as their lord’s daughter and hastily opened the round-headed doorway of the castle. Servants scurried through the hall to inform the Earl of Silverwood of his daughter’s arrival and to prepare a place for her. A pallet was provided near the hearth. Carefully, Derek placed her there and knelt beside her.
Hugo and Emmon followed him inside and stood close by.
Richard Forrester swept into the room and to his daughter’s side. Pale sunlight streamed in through the mauve drapes and hit her face just so.
“It cannot be,” the earl said as he looked upon her pale face. “Morgeanna, is it you?” The Earl of Silverwood looked to Lord Vanguard for answers. “Where did you ever find her? And where is her sister?”
“Amanda is well. I will explain later. Right now we need to warm her. She is chilled to the bone.” Derek took an offered blanket from a maid and wrapped it snug about her.
The Earl of Forrester knelt down beside him and took his daughter’s hand in his. “Surely I am dreaming,” he said as the ball of his thumb rubbed against her soft skin. “Seems only like yesterday that I held the wee infant in my arms. My beautiful Morgeanna has come home at last.”
“Mother…is that you?” Morgan’s eyes fluttered half open before closing again.
Eleanor Forrester came into the room next. She had heard the calling and her eyes darted about the room as she moved closer, slowly at first. Her skirts rustled as she went to the side opposite of where her husband knelt. Her hand trembled as she swept back her daughter’s hair from her brow.
“‘Tis not Amanda I fear,” Richard told his wife. “Her name is—”
“Do you think I know not when I see my own flesh and blood?”
“Of course you do, my dear, ‘tis only that…” Richard paused, looking heavenward as if for guidance.
Eleanor’s voice was soft and sure as she stroked her daughter’s cheek. “Your mother is right here child, where she has been all along.” She looked to her husband, and then back to Morgan. “After all these years of longing to touch my baby, my beautiful baby.”
The earl’s eyes glazed with bewilderment. “You have known all this time…all these years? Will you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?”
Eleanor stood, tears wetting her cheek. “There is naught to forgive, my dear. Our beloved child is home…my sweet daughter has come back.”
~~~~
Derek kept a steady gaze on Morgan as she slept in Amanda’s bed. Her parents were in the other room, but every few minutes one of them would peek through the chamber door. “Wake up,” he whispered hoarsely. “I demand that you do.”
Heavy eyelids slid open and Morgan’s eyes narrowed as she tried to focus. She lifted her hand as she gazed into his eyes, reaching upward to touch his cheek, his jaw, his hair. “You came for me?”
He took her hand and nodded. He was about to kiss her palm when suddenly her eyes became focused and she snatched her hand back and sat up as if she only just now realized who she was talking to. “Where am I? Where is the Witch of Devonshire? What have you done with her?”
Relief swept over Derek at seeing her awake and talking, and he smiled at her. “I finally came to my senses,” he said. “I should never have let you leave Braddock. Everything you ever told me was naught but the truth and I was but a fool all along.”
“Why?” she asked skeptically. “Why the sudden change of heart?”
“The king sent a messenger to Braddock. You were right. I am the Earl of Kensington.”
“And that’s why you came? To tell me what I already knew?”
His eyes said it all. “I wish to apologize. I should have listened to you; I should have known.”
She rubbed her forehead. She loved him so much it hurt, but she couldn’t live with a man who could never love her back. “Nobody could have known,” she said softly. “I hardly believed it myself. But you had no right to stop me from returning to my true home.”
“Amanda Forrester came to Braddock looking for you,” he explained further.
“You’re not listening to me, Derek. I don’t care about all of that anymore. I’m tired. I want to go home…I belong in the future.”
He lifted her chin, forced her to look into his eyes. “Amanda came to Braddock to meet her twin sister.”
“You can’t stop me, Derek. And if you think you can—” She stopped mid-sentence. “Did you say twin sister?”
He nodded.
Edging off of the bed, Morgan came slowly to her feet and tested her legs as she gazed curiously about the room. She went to a high table and touched the small hand mirror and dainty combs and brushes. She picked up a silk glove and breathed in the sweet familiar smell of lavender. She was in Amanda’s room.
The witch, too, she recalled, had said she was Amanda’s sister, which would mean… Slowly, she turned about, sensing someone other than Derek in the room. Her heart nearly stopped.
Beneath the rounded doorframe stood an elderly man. The same man she’d seen so many times in her dreams. She moved toward him, wondering if all her dreams and prayers were being answered in this one glorious moment. The gray at his temples and his sparkling blue eyes were the same.
It was him. Chills coursed over her. It was her father.
He held out a hand to her and she was sure she’d never make it that far. Her knees wobbled and her hands shook. A tear fell, sliding across his softly bearded cheek.
She put a hand to her chest and breathed in.
“My sweet daughter,” he said. “How I have waited and yearned for this day.”
“Father,” she whispered, “is it really you?”
He held out his arms and she fell into them before he could answer because in her heart she already knew. She stayed wrapped in her father’s arms for a long time and when her mother entered the room and joined them in their embrace she wasn’t sure if she could take the multitude of emotions coursing through her, making her feel as
if she’d literally burst from happiness.
Her vision was blurred, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Derek leave the room. She didn’t have the strength to stop him. He didn’t need her. He wasn’t ready to love.
~~~~
Derek walked out of the castle and past the outer gates of Silverwood. He made his way through the low misty fog until he could no longer see any signs of daily life. He took a seat upon the ground beneath a large oak and looked about. Had the trees always been so tall? he wondered. He couldn’t remember hearing the birds as he heard them now with their rhythmic singsong of notes and whistles. Beneath a layer of dirt he spotted a bit of color and easily pulled forth a tiny bloom. He put it to his nose, surprised that something so insignificant had any scent at all.
Had he truly lost her? he wondered, his heart twisting in a slow, tortuous anguish.
A loud screech caught his attention as a bird protected its nest. The high-pitched sounds drew forth his darkest moment, the present becoming intermingled with the past, until the noise was deafening. He covered his ears. When he squeezed his eyes shut he saw clearly his father’s bloodshot eyes as his father came at him with a raised iron poker and the combined wrath of a dozen wolves. At the time, Derek was eight years old at best, and he opened his mouth and screamed, bracing himself for what was to come.
Usually he opened his eyes or woke up and the horrible vision disappeared, but this time he kept his eyes shut. He felt strangely disembodied as he watched himself as a boy, peek through swollen eyes to see his mother enter the room. She placed herself between him and his father and in so doing received the blows meant for him. She shouted for Derek to run, pointing a bloodied hand toward the door, but all he could do was stand there and scream.
Derek opened his eyes, tried to breathe.
It could not be. But even as he denied it, he knew that it was true…the shrieks he’d heard so often, the cries that had awoken him most nights…were his own. Matti had told him many times that his father had been a troubled man, but Derek had refused to listen. Although he despised the man for the coldness he had lent upon his only son, ‘twas his mother he blamed all these years for leaving him. Nothing else had mattered after she left Braddock.
The crackling of brush caused Derek to drop his hands and look in that direction.
“Are you all right?” Morgan asked as she stepped into view.
“Aye.” He inhaled deeply of pine and moss, rolled a twig between his fingers. “You were right about my mother,” he said after a quiet moment. “When I was young I used to see a darkly cloaked woman watching me from afar. I never considered until now that the woman could have been my mother. It was her though; I am certain of it, for I saw her the day she left Braddock. She wore the same dark cape then as she did when I spotted her near the training fields, at the market, and then again on the day I turned nine…that was the last time I ever saw her.”
“Ohhh,” she said. “I’m sorry about your mother, and your father.”
“And I am sorry I stopped you from returning home.”
“You shouldn’t have interfered.”
“I know.” He came to his feet and brushed himself off. As she peered up at him he wondered how he ever let her leave Braddock. “You were right about many things,” he went on, “including my following in my father’s footsteps. I have been smothered by bitterness, ever so close to becoming the one man I never wanted to be.” It all seemed clear to him now, he thought. Judging by her blank expression and somberness he worried he might indeed lose the one thing he needed most. His throat went tight. He could hardly swallow. “I lied,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“About what?” she asked, looking toward the bird’s nest of all things, instead of at him as she always had before.
“About my being sorry.”
Her brows knitted.
He began to throw his arms into a wide arc, and then thought better of it and lowered his hands back to his sides. Again he attempted to explain, his voice audibly strained. “I am not suited to this…this apologizing nonsense.”
She gave him a pitying look.
He swallowed a lump in his throat. “I did not mean ‘nonsense.’”
She sighed.
“What I meant to say is that I lied because I am not at all sorry I stopped you from leaving this world. Because you see I…I like you. I like you very much.” He waited for her to throw her arms about his neck in gleeful bliss as she always did. But she hardly moved. Perhaps she was too overjoyed to speak.
When she finally turned back toward him, he fully expected to see her eyes glistening with tears of happiness. Instead he saw dry eyes and a meager half smile.
“That’s nice,” was all she said. “I should go now.” She made a small gesture toward the castle.
Tell her the truth. Tell her you love her. Derek’s pulse roared in his ears at the thought that he still could not summon the courage to say the words. Damnation, he thought as he watched her walk away.
“Morgan Hayes!” he said as he went after her.
She stopped, but still failed to turn fully around. She was a stubborn wench, he mused, and if she thought he was going to drop to his knees and beg…
“I love you,” he said, dropping to his knees the minute he saw her look at him with empty, non-expressive eyes. “Do not look at me like that.”
Her hands went to her hips. “Why?”
“Because as you told the maids so many times at Braddock, those frowns will cause lines about your eyes.”
She rolled her eyes. “I meant, why do you love me?”
“Ahhh,” he said, wondering why women made everything so complicated. “There must be a reason?”
She did not walk away or present him with a scowl, and thus he surmised his question to be a reasonable one. After pondering the question for less than a moment, she crossed her arms and simply said, “Yes.”
He scratched his chin and did his best to ignore the pain in his knee. His head throbbed, as did his shoulder, making it difficult to think. “I am not certain of the reason.”
Her shoulders drooped, and she appeared ready to turn away again so he reached out a hand to stop her. “I do know,” he quickly added, “that the birds are singing. Do you hear them?”
She listened for a moment and nodded, clearly puzzled.
“Do you not see?” he asked her. “Until I met you my world was quiet and dark. But your love has set me free. Because of you, Morgan Hayes, I can hear the soothing song of a single bird and take pleasure in the sweet smell of a single flower. I do love you,” he said as if he only now just realized it, “from the very core of my heart. I love you for all you have given me.”
A tear slid over her cheek and Derek mistook her crying as a sign of displeasure. “I told you I was no good at this. Only because I have not had enough experience courting the ladies. That is not to say I did not charm the ladies, but—”
“Derek,” she said, gazing down at him, placing a finger over his lips. “Stop. You were doing just fine.”
“Then you do love me again?”
“I never stopped loving you.”
“So this was all for naught?” he asked.
“Be quiet…just be quiet.”
“But I dare say I was not yet finished.”
She got down on her knees so that they were face to face. “Just kiss me,” she said. “That is an order, not a prayer.”
Derek quickly obeyed, relishing in the thought as their lips came together that his very life had only just begun.
~~~~
Ten days later, Morgan was the epitome of elegance. She wore her newly found mother’s silk dress, trimmed with lace and embroidered with gold thread. She smiled at her father and as he came to stand between her and Amanda, she took hold of the crook of his arm.
“I missed you all those many years we were apart, every day…every moment,” her father whispered close to her ear, repeating the same words he had told her almost every day since she arrived at Si
lverwood.
“I missed you, too,” she said. “And yet I saw you so often in my dreams. You brought me flowers and prayed for me. I always hoped we would meet some day.”
His fatherly pride filled her with joy.
She turned to watch Derek move through the crowd until he came to stand before the king. Seeing him in all the layers of refinement, his eyes burning fire into hers when their gazes met, caused a warm ribbon of tingles within.
Derek wore a rich, emerald green cloak over a dark tunic with a leather belt that was gilded and jeweled. As he stood with both legs firm and steady, his dark stockings melded to his muscular thighs. She was going to marry the Earl of Kensington. If only her mother could be with her now. She wondered how she’d ever stop missing her.
Amanda leaned close and said, “I am so glad to have you as my sister. We will have a lifetime to catch up.”
They embraced. Upon looking up again they saw Robert grinning at them both as he passed by, taking brisk jaunty steps toward the king.
Their father urged them forward, escorting both daughters toward the wedding platform where King Henry sat upon a temporary throne. The king dipped his head in acknowledgement.
As the trumpets blared Morgan gazed proudly at the people flocking about Braddock. Her eyes widened when she spotted an old woman half hidden behind a tree. The Witch of Devonshire had come after all. She’d paid the witch a visit a few days ago, to thank her for all she’d done and to invite her to the wedding. The old woman had obviously been a hermit for most of her life and thus had balked at the idea of coming. But here she was. Morgan smiled broadly and blew her a kiss that prompted the witch to hide behind the width of the tree.
At the front of the crowd Morgan saw Hugo and Matti. Emmon winked fondly at her as he held Shayna’s hand tightly in his. Odelia stood between the Chippendales and wiped her nose with a hanky. Little Joseph saluted Morgan with his slingshot and Eleanor Forrester stood close by basking in her daughters’ bliss.
Return of the Rose Page 29