Stolen Brides: Four Beauty-and-the-Beast Medieval Romances

by Claire Delacroix

  The Hawk shook his head. “I refuse to believe such nonsense. There are no visions.”

  “And I refuse to suffer your obstinacy,” his wife retorted, glaring at him. “We shall resolve this matter together or I shall leave.”

  Fear clutched the Hawk’s heart. In his determination to assert his claim over her, he chose the wrong words to soften her stance. “You cannot leave. We are wedded. That pledge is eternal before man and God.”

  She held his gaze stubbornly. “If my visions are not valid, if they are not to be acknowledged, then I will be said to be mad.” Her eyes glinted and he thought of the rumors Blanche had muttered about Aileen’s mother. “I refuse to surrender my wits to marriage. No man is worth madness.”

  “You will surrender more if you venture away from here without my protection,” the Hawk retorted. “You are clever enough to know that the world has no place for you if you leave my side. You will have to beg, or whore yourself, or steal.”

  “Having my wits and my reputation might be compense enough!” She flung out a hand in frustration. “And I would not have to travel far to earn coin as a whore. Your own hall abounds with whores!”

  “Men have need of gratification.” The Hawk dismissed this concern with a gesture. “Ours is a company of warriors and these women abide here by their own choice.”

  Aileen snorted. “My mother never was compelled to suffer whores within Abernye’s hall. Their presence challenges your assertion that you mean to make a marriage in truth. Would you have whores play nursemaid to your children?”

  The Hawk was appalled. “No!”

  “No decent women will serve in your hall in its current state. No vassals will entrust their daughters to my training.” Aileen shook a finger at him. “My mother always said that distance cools a man’s ardor, and having fewer bastards in the hall keeps coin in the laird’s treasury. You could do me the courtesy of dispatching the whores to the village.”

  The Hawk did not care to be threatened, though there was merit in her request. He folded his arms across his chest and regarded his lady wife, taking no trouble to hide his anger. “Do you threaten me, if I do not comply? I forbid you to leave Inverfyre without my accompaniment or permission.”

  Aileen glared at him, a rebellious light in her eyes that should have made him cautious.

  Instead, he spoke more foolery, so fearful was he of losing her.

  He stepped forward until they stood toe to toe, and gathered her untied chemise in his fist. He lifted her to her toes, though she did not as much as blink. “Leave,” he threatened softly, “and you need not return. I shall spurn you forever.”

  “You need not make the prospect so tempting,” she said, her teeth gritted in her anger. “Indeed, I cannot imagine why I would desire to remain with a man who thought so little of my counsel, especially when I tell him what he knows to be right!”

  They glared at each other for a charged moment, and the Hawk considered shaking her until her very bones rattled. How vexing this woman could be! She was right, though he was sufficiently irked that he could not admit as much.

  Then, to his astonishment, Aileen took a deep breath and glanced down at his fist in her chemise. “We have made this error afore,” she said quietly and he knew immediately it was true.

  She laid her hand atop his, and lifted his fingers away, unafraid of him or his anger. “We gain nothing in this battle, and could lose much. Our strength will be in unison, not conflict.” Her gentleness disarmed him, her change of mood dissolved his own annoyance.

  She looked up at him, her gaze clear. “Understand that I saw this vision, whether that fact pleases you or not,” she whispered. “I saw Tarsuinn’s wound.”

  He shook his head. “No, you cannot have done.”

  “And what explanation do you offer instead?” Aileen’s expression turned gloriously defiant. “I am not mad. I am not whimsical. I am not a sorceress. I am not the pawn of some traitor in your hall. I saw Tarsuinn’s scar.”

  The Hawk could not summon a word to his lips.

  “Do you call me a liar?”

  He shook his head, uncertain what to think.

  “I would rather that you were right in this,” she asserted to his relief. “These visions are not welcome to me, but they come all the same.” A tear glistened on Aileen’s lashes, though she blinked it away with impatience. “Understand, my lord, that I am more afraid than ever I have been.” She appealed to him, her doubts evident in her gaze, as she whispered. “What if this is madness? I must make sense of what is happening to me here, if I am not to share my mother’s fate. I must find the source of these visions, if I am to keep my wits.”

  Her unexpected confession pierced his heart and he felt a strange commonality with her. Had he not been frightened when Adaira had seemed to spice his own thoughts? There was but one way to dismiss this whimsy for all time. There was but one way to protect his lady from her fears.

  He had to prove her to be mistaken.

  “Come.” The Hawk lifted Aileen’s hand in his. “Let us find Tarsuinn with all haste and prove this to be the nonsense that it is.”

  The Hawk and his bride found Tarsuinn in the moulting house. There must have been a dozen boys working beneath the falconer’s command. Peregrines were being bathed, stroked, and fed, and several boys were singing softly to their restless charges. Though it was evening, there was still labor to be done.

  Tarsuinn moved from one to the next, his advice kindly but firm. His face was red from his exertions this day, for he had grown plumper on Inverfyre’s fare. He secured a peregrine’s tether with care, talking gently to the creature all the while. The apprentice beside him watched with keen eyes.

  It was not yet time to take young birds from their parents’ nests, and these were eyasses claimed at least the year before. Tarsuinn’s skill was legendary, and he never relinquished a bird for sale until he was convinced that her training was flawless. The Hawk could see the admiration the boys felt for their master as they watched him. They learned a valuable trade beneath Tarsuinn’s hand and learned it from one of the greatest falconers in Christendom.

  It was soothing here, for the birds were all hooded and Tarsuinn would not tolerate a disturbance that might frighten his charges. Several fidgeted on their perches, and the bells affixed to their ankles rang quietly as they moved.

  “Tarsuinn, might we trouble you for a moment?” The Hawk had known the falconer all of his life and his loyalty was beyond question. As a result, there is such respect between the two men that the laird refused to command Tarsuinn away from his labor on a mere whim.

  The falconer turned, though his eyes widened at the sight of Aileen. He bowed hastily, but the Hawk had seen his dismay and wondered at its cause.

  What fear had Tarsuinn of Aileen?

  What did he know of her that the Hawk did not?

  How could he know her? The Hawk thought again of treachery, of the cursed MacLaren clan and their endless schemes. Uncertainty gnawed within him and he feared that he might have claimed this bride with too much haste.

  “At your service, my lord and lady,” Tarsuinn said.

  The Hawk nodded to Aileen. “My lady has a question for you.”

  Tarsuinn smiled encouragingly.

  “Forgive me, Tarsuinn, but I would ask a bold favor of you.”

  The falconer’s gaze flicked to his laird’s who nodded approval. He bowed to Aileen again. “Whatsoever my lady desires, of course.”

  “Did the wound on your shoulder heal without a scar?”

  Tarsuinn paled and he almost took a step back. When he spoke, his words were thick. “What wound would that be, my lady?”

  “The one you sustained in the siege of Inverfyre.”

  The Hawk looked at his bride in surprise. From whence had she learned such a detail? Even he had not known Tarsuinn had been wounded in aiding Evangeline to escape burning Inverfyre.

  Aileen’s tone was firm with her conviction. “The one which Adaira stitched for you
, while Evangeline of Inverfyre watched.”

  The Hawk’s blood chilled.

  Tarsuinn stepped forward, though his discomfiture was clear. “See for yourself, my lady,” he said unevenly, and pulled his tabard and chemise down from his neck. A fine white line was evident there, though none would have noted it in passing. “Nigh forty years have faded it much, I fancy.”

  The scar was older than the Hawk’s bride, perhaps older than her mother would have been. The hair began to stand on the back of his neck.

  Aileen could have no memory of this!

  The Hawk watched as his bride touched Tarsuinn’s scar with a shaking finger, running her fingertip along its length with a familiarity undeserved. Her voice was surprisingly deep when she spoke, as if it was not her own.

  Indeed, she spoke with a surety even beyond that she had already shown. “Inverfyre, under all its names, has long been a contested land, and the combatants of each epoch have oft had much in common with the combatants of the past. It is a place of some witchery, a place that casts a light into the heart of all those who pass its threshold, a place that condemns many of them to return again and again.”

  Tarsuinn had the pallor of fresh milk now. The Hawk guessed the falconer had heard these words afore, though he still refused to accept how his bride knew them.

  Aileen nodded with the resolve of one much older than her own years. Indeed, her posture was more bent, like that of an old woman, and he noted that her eyes were closed.

  “One hears of ghosts in this land, of souls condemned to haunt a locale or rest uneasy,” she intoned. “Mine is a tale of ghosts, if you will. Two souls I speak of, two souls whose fates are entwined like two plies of a rope. And like the plies of that rope, neither can be strong or complete without the other.”

  The Hawk looked between the two of them, uncertain what to do about his wife’s odd manner. Would he injure her by forcing her to awaken? Would she be more wounded if she continued? She had already confessed fear that she became mad beneath his care and he was keenly aware of his responsibility to her.

  The boys who aided Tarsuinn lingered around the perimeter, their eyes wide. Tarsuinn perspired freely, but he did not step away from the lady. Indeed, he did not seem to breathe.

  Aileen nodded again, as slowly as a sage. Her finger worried Tarsuinn’s wound, sliding back and forth, guided by some compulsion. “Magnus Armstrong was drawn to Inverfyre to meet his fated partner, to put an ancient crime to rest, to release these two souls from the confines of Inverfyre. It is the fate of these two to return time and again to Inverfyre. By divine compensation, they have the chance to set an old wrong to right, to seek each other anew each time their souls don a cloak of flesh.”

  She shook her head and the Hawk suppressed a shiver. “But the gods are not kind. No, they are tricksters, each and every one of them. They give with one hand while stealing with the other. The chance of winning eternity together was what they offered to this pair, but memory of the tale was what they stole. By the time Magnus understood the price of his own ambition, he had betrayed his destined lover yet again and lost her companionship for yet another mortal life.”

  Aileen tapped her fingertip on the Hawk’s arm without glancing at him. Goose pimples rose on his flesh, as if a shade had stepped among them.

  “Evangeline’s son is Magnus Armstrong in new guise, as well as all the other men Magnus was afore. The wheel turns, the soul takes flesh again, and each course through the world is destined to teach some morsel of a higher truth.”

  Enough! The Hawk seized his wife’s shoulder, not liking this fey mood a whit. “Aileen!” Her pupils were so tiny as to be invisible and she stared at him unseeingly. “Lady mine, what claims your wits?” He shook her, his voice rising when she did not respond. “Aileen, answer me!”

  Her eyes rolled back, her lips parted and she fell limp. The Hawk caught her as she fainted, then looked at Tarsuinn, seeking an explanation.

  “I knew it was her,” the falconer muttered. “I knew from the first glimpse of her that she walked among us again,” He crossed himself with vigor and licked his lips. “Upon my soul, my lord, those were the very words uttered by Adaira when she tended this wound. I swear it to you.”

  The Hawk shivered then in truth. The alarmed boys crossed themselves and more than one took a step back.

  “That cannot be so,” he insisted. “She cannot know such a detail. You must be in error, for it cannot be true.”

  “But still it is.” Tarsuinn swallowed, then took a shuddering breath. His normal garrulousness returned now that Aileen was silent. “It was nigh thirty-eight years ago, my lord, when Malachy and I led your mother away from burning Inverfyre. She only left her home for the sake of the child in her womb; she left so that you might survive. The MacLarens would have killed her to ensure that no blood heir of Inverfyre could ever be born. She was the last of your lineage, the last afore you.”

  “Just as I am last,” the Hawk murmured, with no intent of doing so. He stared down at Aileen, his very flesh creeping. The old crone’s words, just repeated by his lady wife, echoed in his thoughts. He fought the wild claim, even as his heart whispered it was time enough he saw the truth.

  It seemed he, too, fell prey to madness. It was not the trait he had hoped he and his bride would have in common.

  It was not a trait men sought in their leader. It was imperative that the Hawk not lose the support of his men in these last days afore his triumph was complete.

  Tarsuinn looked at Aileen, and shook himself visibly. “Adaira found us in the woods and spake those very words, my lord, as she stitched my wound. I never forgot them. Adaira even sounded thus, her voice low and thick, my lord. This was most uncommon! How your lady could have known such details, I cannot say, but I have gooseflesh.” Tarsuinn shivered, then forced a laugh and waved the curious boys back to work with a chiding jest.

  He halted then and glanced back at his lord, his voice falling low so that only the Hawk could hear his words. “I knew it was her, my lord. When I first saw your bride, I had the strange conviction that Adaira had taken flesh to walk among us again.”

  “It is madness to make such a claim, Tarsuinn, madness in defiance of all the church’s teachings.”

  “I know. I know.” Tarsuinn licked his lips and glanced about himself, then leaned closer. “But sometimes I recall the tales my father told and I cannot dismiss them so readily as that. Sometimes I fear there is truth in these old hills, truth that many would prefer not to heed.”

  With a last significant glance and a pat on the Hawk’s arm, he turned away.

  The Hawk studied Aileen, her visage pale, and could not summon a reasonable explanation for what he had witnessed.

  Save the one he struggled against.

  Tarsuinn gestured to his apprentices and the Hawk spoke to the boys, though his thoughts churned. His lady limp in his arms, he made excuses for the strain she had recently faced, the words sounding as thin as old soup even to his own ears. He spoke with surety and tried to halt rumor afore it started. All the same, he knew the tale of his lady’s fey manner would be whispered through the kitchens and stables in a matter of moments.

  He cared less for that than for the lady herself. The fact remained his wife’s affliction was both his fault and his responsibility, though he had not an inkling of what he could do to heal her.

  And that was worrisome indeed.

  VIII

  The Hawk carried Aileen to her chamber and laid her upon the bed, his thoughts in chaos and his doubts growing.

  He called for a brazier, a jug of wine, some cold victuals in case she awakened with a hunger. Nissa showed great consternation for Aileen when she brought these things, and the Hawk marveled that the two women could have forged such a bond so quickly. Old Gunna, too, fairly shed a tear in her concern, though the Hawk had never seen the competent servant show any emotion at all. The hall seemed uncommonly clean, though he would have readily confessed that was not a matter that concerned h
im overmuch.

  What magic had his wife wrought in his home?

  Aileen slept like a child through all of the bustle. The Hawk dismissed the servants, locked the portal and stood beside the bed, staring down at his wife.

  Was she mad? If so, then so was he, for he had had a similar experience with Adaira years past. Was she a sorceress? He was astonished by how little he cared. Perhaps his lady wife had cast a spell upon him.

  If nothing else, she was an enigma he was tempted to solve.

  The shadows were deep at this hour, but the light from the brazier touched Aileen’s features with gold. She looked soft and sweet as she slept and he wondered how any man could have called her plain of face.

  She was not an obvious beauty, but there was dignity in her stance and intelligence in her eyes, and kindness softened the curve of her lips. She certainly was not wrought of ice, for it was fire that leaped between the two of them when they touched. Perhaps they shared an affinity.

  The Hawk paced the chamber, knowing the name of that affinity well enough. He glanced back at his bride, considering what had happened this day, and tried to find a reason beyond the one she presented. It was possible that she had met with someone in the forest, for she had not progressed far during the day. That person could have told her of Tarsuinn and his scar, but the tale seemed more fanciful than the more obvious conclusion.

  Dubhglas MacLaren had been a boy at the siege of Inverfyre. The Hawk’s heart clenched in acknowledgment that he would have known about Tarsuinn’s scar.

  But Aileen insisted she was Adaira taken flesh again and he was tempted to believe her. The Hawk shoved his hand through his hair and paced with new vigor. He had no doubt such a feat was possible, for he had tasted the power of a vision in Adaira’s embrace. He knew how terrifying the experience could be, and could understand Aileen’s utter certitude that she had seen the truth.

  But was it the truth? The Hawk did not know. He paused at the side of the bed and stared down at her, wishing he could put his trepidation aside, wishing he dared to trust her fully.