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’s 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 sisters paused to exchange glances, for Isabella spoke the truth. “Do you think he rouses us only to play a trick upon us?” Annelise asked, her skepticism clear.
“What else?” Isabella said. She pushed herself to her feet with a groan. “We shall have to play a jest upon him in exchange, and it will have to be a good one.”
“It seems unlikely that any jest of Alexander’s would be played in church,” Annelise said, quite sensibly. She had already donned her stockings and now tied the lace of her chemise.
The sisters stilled as one at her comment.
“Church!” Elizabeth whispered and her gaze fell upon Vivienne’s empty pallet. “Perhaps that is where Vivienne is gone so early in the morn. Do you think Alexander means to compel her to wed?”
Vera strode across the chamber and pulled back Vivienne’s linens with a flick of her wrist. The sisters and maid stared at the pallet in dismay, for they all had clearly thought Vivienne still asleep. “What do you know of this?” Vera demanded of Elizabeth.
“Nothing, save that she is gone.”
Annelise licked her lips. “Marital vows are exchanged in church,” she said in a much smaller voice.
“If Vivienne guessed his intent, she would be the one of us bold enough to flee such a scheme,” Isabella said.
The sisters exchanged glances of horror, recalling with dreadful clarity their eldest brother’s determination to see them all wed. Vera froze and watched them with undisguised trepidation.
Isabella pounced on the maid and shook the sleeve of her kirtle. “What have you heard in the kitchens, Vera?”
“Not a word, I swear it to you! Though the laird is said to be well-pleased with himself this morn and demanding a midday meal worthy of a feast.”
“A wedding feast,” Isabella said sourly and kicked her pallet. “The cur!”
A tear welled in the older woman’s eye. “Oh, surely the laird would not plague dear Vivienne with a notorious spouse as he did Madeline? I heard of that folly of an auction, though I was not as yet here, for it was the talk of all Kinfairlie.”
“The talk of Scotland, as like as not,” Elizabeth said. “It was a folly beyond compare.”
“Alexander did pledge to Rhys that he would not auction the hand of any of us, as he did Madeline’s,” Annelise noted. Vera knotted her hands together, so concerned that she could not practice her usual tasks.
“But he has never summoned us all to early mass, either,” Isabella said sharply.
“And in your best garb!” Vera wailed. “That was what he decreed.”
“Surely he cannot mean to wed all of us this morning,” Isabella said, doubt in her voice. “That would be a feat, even for Alexander.”
“Surely he but plays a jest upon us, as once he did,” Annelise suggested.
“He has forgotten how to jest,” Elizabeth said grimly. “All that has merit to him is respectability.”
“But where then, is Vivienne?” Vera demanded. They looked again at the empty pallet.
Elizabeth began to fear that Darg had spoken the truth.
“There is only one way to know for certain,” Isabella said with resolve. “We must behave as Alexander anticipates and meet him cheerfully at morning mass.”
Elizabeth nodded. “And if he means to wed Vivienne against her will—”
“Or any of us!” Annelise interjected.
“—Or any of us,” Elizabeth continued, “then we must somehow ensure that the vows are not exchanged. It is time enough that he learned that all he decrees shall not be done.”
The sisters nodded, resolve gleaming in their eyes, then turned to quickly don their best garb for church.
Four
In short order, Kinfairlie village faded behind them and Vivienne’s captor pulled the glove from her mouth. At its removal, she spat once, cleared her throat and said nothing. She sat stoic before him, her straight spine telling him more clearly than any words that she was displeased.
Or that she did not wish to touch him overmuch.
He was somewhat disgruntled himself, having wasted a goodly amount of time in trying to persuade her, only to have her insist upon some feminine madness. The three nights of courtship she anticipated was no more than reasonable, but he had expected better of her than a demand for a red, red rose wrought of ice.
His pragmatic plan had no margin for a whimsical virgin determined to see romance in all around her. His need to conceive a son of unquestionable paternity required that he find a maiden to claim for his own—though Vivienne’s passion abed had been a surprise. There was a sweetness about her that made him feel a cur to offer her less than the fullness of marriage and security.
But he had no such security to offer to her. He had paid good coin for her, and if her brother had been so willing to sell her, then he was a fool to feel any qualms.
Even if she had not flinched from the sight of him.
“You have nothing more to say, it appears,” he said, feeling her silence too keenly.
“There is little point. I do not know your name, your destination or your intent, and you are disinclined to confess any of them.” She gestured to the open coast. “There is no soul here to hear my cry, if indeed they had not already received instruction to surrender me to my fate, whatever it is.”
“I had no choice,” he said gruffly. “It was time we fled.”
She scoffed. “I cannot discern any reason for haste, given that none intended to aid me.”
There was little he might say to that. It was the anonymity of darkness he had desired, out of habit and the fact that her brother thought him to be someone other than he was.
He was not prepared to discuss that with the lady as yet. He let the horse set its own pace, for none gave chase to them. The morning was clear, the sky slowly turning a milky silver, and the wind was crisp. The steed that the Earl of Sutherland had lent to him was well-rested and moved with characteristic grace.
He was aware of more sensory pleasure than this. Vivienne’s hair was a loosed cloud, for she had not braided it this morn, and a marvel of rich auburn tendrils dancing in the wind around him. He did not protest the soft hair, though it blew against his face and furled against his shoulder. Its assault was unabashedly feminine, a soft luxury such as none he had known in recent years and he admitted to himself how much he enjoyed it.
He could almost forget the discomfort of this southern garb, donned solely to ensure that he could pass with less notice. He sorely disliked the constraints of the chausses.
He was particularly aware of that constraint in this moment that he was besieged by Vivienne’s allure. He could smell the sweetness of her skin, could see the creamy curve of her cheek and throat. He felt the ripe curve of her buttocks against him, and savored the long strength of her. He liked that she was tall, he liked that she was lean yet curvaceous enough to tempt his touch.
It was too easy to think of meeting her abed once more. After all, it would take more than one night to ensure that she conceived a son and there was no opportunity for delay.
He resolved then to savor each night in Vivienne’s embrace until she knew for certain that she bore his son. So lost was he in anticipation of what they might do together that her curt tone surprised him.
“You ride a destrier, as if you are a knight,” she said. “Yet your jerkin is leather, not mail.”
He inclined his head, sufficiently intrigued by her show of intellect to let
her make her own conclusions.
“Is it truly your own steed or did you steal it?”
“I steal only women,” he said, surprised to hear a thread of humor in his tone. It had been long since he had made a jest, but the gentle assault of her hair lightened his mood. “And thus far only one, solely because circumstance demanded as much.”
She twisted to meet his gaze, her own green eyes alight with curiosity. He blinked, shocked that she was so unafraid of him, astonished by the clarity of her eyes’ hue. “What circumstance could possibly demand my capture?”
He frowned. “It is a long tale.”
A smile pulled at the corner of her lips. “You no longer give your steed your spurs. It seems that we have time aplenty.”
He studied her, incapable of tearing his gaze away from this merry maiden. What was remarkable was that she did not assume any tale would show him badly. She assumed the best of him, had been unafraid to demand more of him. For a man oft condemned by his face and equally oft denied the benefit of the doubt, that was potent indeed.
But tender feelings had led him astray before. He dared not care for this woman, who only rode at his side until—and if—her womb proved potent.
He let his expression turn grim. “I have need of a son, a son whose paternity is beyond doubt. Thus I have need of a woman, a woman who was maiden until meeting me abed, a woman of a family known to be fruitful, a woman who will have no opportunity to lie with another until she bears that son to me.”
“You have need of a wife,” Vivienne said, with a small smile.
“I have a wife,” he said curtly and watched her smile disappear so completely that it might never have been. He knew he should have been pleased to have forced a wedge between them, knew he should have been glad that she turned her back upon him once more and freed him from the spell of those magnificent eyes.
But instead he felt a cur and a knave besides, for he alone had dimmed the sparkle of the lady’s smile. It seemed small advantage to have halted the lady’s questions.
All's Fair in Love and War: Four Enemies-to-Lovers Medieval Romances Page 71