Deirdre (19 page)

With equally oafish disregard for the fine dining table, he buried the up of the knife in the wood on the far side. “You are most welcome.”

“Actually I took the liberty of writing out the contract. Doda provided me with the materials,” she explained at the lift of his brow. “And Father Scanlan helped me get it all down. If you sign it, then he will post the banns … in case someone has cause to protest the marriage.”

She withdrew the document from the pocket of her dress and handed it to him.

“I’m beginning to think I may protest myself.” Alric snatched the folded parchment from her hand and opened it.

“Would you like me to read it to you?”

“I’ll
struggle
through.”

The cryptic note of his voice made it hard to smother a smile, but Deirdre managed. Gaining confidence by the moment, she finished the bread and broth, while he studied the words she’d penned earlier. She hadn’t realized just how hungry she was. Besides, she would need to build herself up for her bridal fast. Fasting wasn’t one of her strengths, but if she were to convince Alric that she was meant to dedicate her virginity to the church as the bretwalda’s pious Queen Aethelreda had done, it was necessary Ecfrith had needed the alliance, so he’d agreed to a platonic marriage. If Alric wanted this wedding enough, so would he.

“For a sickling, you’ve surpassed yourself.”

Deirdre lowered her gaze. “The Lord God gave me a miracle. I am not the same person you left this morning.”

“I believe that is the first truth you have actually admitted since we
met. You are not the same woman. That’s plain to any eye, save a blind one.” This time when he took more wine, Alric poured it into the glass before him with deliberation in every movement. After a sip, he tapped the parchment with his finger. “This reeks of the priest’s hand. So he is to be your mentor.”

“It would make my life more bearable to have a man of God to confide in.”

“Does he suspect your soul will consume his time such that he’ll have no time to save other souls?”

“Scanlan has known me since I was a child … and he was witness to my miracle,” she answered, as Alric returned to reading.

He smacked the parchment with his finger. “You
really do
expect me to give you a king’s ransom and use my influence to find your brother and rescue him with it?”

“That is what the agreement says.”

“Woman, I’d have to purchase back my men’s share of the booty, not to mention the king’s.”

“Perhaps your father would give it to you as a wedding gift.”

“’Tis blackmail!” The timbre of Alric’s anger echoed like a war drum in her ears.

“Your proposal of marriage or mine, milord?”

Alric rocked forward as if to get up and and then sat back, apparently reining in his fiendish fury He chewed his lips as though to draw blood, a feral glower in his gaze. Surely if he so much as spoke or moved, the beast would be unleashed upon her. The hallucination of the wolfman came to her mind and would not be banished.

“For I Know I think thoughts that are best for you—”

No, that wasn’t it. Deirdre scurried for the right wording as if it were a weapon knocked beyond reach. Scanlan thought she might handle the negotiation best, but now she wished he’d stayed. She braced for the final explosion, but when Alric reached her last condition, he spoke so quietly, she could hardly hear him for the pulse thrashing in her ears.

“And I’m to believe that you, a deceiver among deceivers, have suddenly become as pure and pious as our bretwalda’s queen?” He
sounded almost amused, were she not aware that the beast strained at his last tether.

“As suddenly as I was healed.” Her equally deceptive calm was heaven sent. If God had truly chosen her, she
wanted
to be worthy to be pure and pious. “I told you, it was a miracle. And remember that Northumbria’s queen is winning souls for His kingdom. Your people worship her for her purity and devotion, I’ve heard.”

“Those I know mock Ecfrith behind his back.”

“If I must live in this heathen land, I might at least have that comfort—that I am not merely one of your peace weavers but a servant of God.” This had to work! Scanlan assured her it would.

The leash snapped.

“Servant of
God
?” With a bellow, the beast leaped from his seat, overturning it behind him. Cynicism laced his reply “My
mother
served her God well enough … and my father, too.”

“She had no choice.”

“Neither do you.”

“For the Lord knows what He thinks—”

Deirdre willed down the rise of panic and exasperation undermining her task. Whatever God said, He meant it for her, even if Alric was bullying the exact words from her mind. God was with her, she told herself, leveling an affirmed gaze at the outraged incredulity flashing in his.

“You told me you would never harm me, that you never took a woman against her will. Did you lie, milord?”

“Not nearly as much as you have, milady.” he sneered. “What manner of fool do you take me for?”

“One who wishes me to marry him when there is nothing to be gained from it.” Daring to turn away, Deirdre washed her fingers in the laver and dried them on the napkin. Still clasping it, she rose in a leisurely fashion. “Even if Cairell is lost forever to Gleannmara, my hand is of no use to you regarding my father’s kingdom. My people will not accept a Saxon king. One of my cousins will succeed him when the time comes.”

She placed the linen back on the table, signaling the end of the evening’s hospitality with forced control.

“It is not your
hand
that interests me, Lady Deirdre.”

The insolent rake of his gaze down the length of her and back left a smoldering trail, despite the distance between them.

“Nonetheless, milord,” she rallied, “that is all you will have …
if
you wish this marriage to take place.”

Neither she nor Scanlan could guess Alric’s reason for this mad course he’d set, though now he cast doubt on that. If it was not to be, she could only guess that ransom was the motive. She supposed her father would find the money to save at least one of his children. Cairell would be lost as his ransom was far higher than hers would be. And Gleannmara’s coffers would be empty.

Love was out of the question as the prince’s motive for wedlock, ambition ill founded, and desire unlikely. Given his good looks and money, he could have any female he wanted to satiate the baseness kindling in his gaze. Deirdre only prayed that the peculiar brand of honor he professed was real. Slavery or marriage—she might as well choose which hand she’d like severed, the right or the left.

“Now ’tis you who play false, Alric of Galstead. A man such as yourself would not enter marriage for physical satisfaction alone.”

“What does the pious virgin know of a man like myself?”

Deirdre braced as he reached out and traced the curve of her neck, from the glittering torque to her chin. The senses at the nape of her neck tingled, awakening others behind the defenses she’d thought in place. Stepping closer, he cupped her chin and tilted her face. The predator had shed his princely skin and now smelled the blood catapulting through her veins and hammering at her throat. He would settle for nothing less than a kill.

“Much less of
physical
satisfaction.” Alric’s throaty seduction taunted places the hand could not, exacting tiny shudders that threatened to unravel mind, body and, heaven forgive her, soul.

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the L
ORD
, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

Returning his bone-melting gaze with the steel of God’s promise, Deirdre drew to her full height. “I know only what God will have me do,” she replied steadily. “And that is plainly written for you to accept
or reject. The decision is yours.” Gathering her skirts in hand, she stepped around Alric. “I bid you good evening, milord.”

Fully expecting the beast dwelling beyond her companion’s civilized facade to leap upon her back at any moment, Deirdre walked out of the room and beneath the cover of the inner colonnade. She had to concentrate to place one foot in front of the other as she made her way back to the room, gaining speed with each step. By the time she was inside and slid the bolt into place, her heart seemed to pound against the back of her throat. Ear pressed to the plank door, she listened for any sign that Alric had followed her, but all she heard was the peaceful patter of the fountain.

Exactly how long she waited, frozen in the same spot, she had no idea, but her breathing had returned to normal and her pulse slowed to a cautious rate. She’d held her own against the Saxon’s temper and his devilish seduction. A smile lighted on Deirdre’s lips as she closed her eyes in prayer. “This unworthy but willing servant thanks You, Father!”

For the first time since her capture, she giggled outright, intoxicated not by the fruit of the heath but the fruit of faith. She prayed it would sustain her through the night ahead.

Christians and their miracles!

It was a notion such as this that had put Alric in this untenable position to start with. His course was as unpredictable as the
Wulfshead
’s had been that first night away from Erin’s coast. The contract in his shirt burned like a fireball lodged in the hold of his ship, fueled by the frustration and fury of this battle of wills. How could someone so fragile one moment be so formidable the next?

A white burst of pain increased the blankness of Alric’s wit as he broke off the low-hanging tree limb that assaulted him on the moonlit path to Aelfled’s glen. Rending it in two over his knee, Alric found slight relief that it was not a certain princess’s soft white neck. She dismissed him like some underling and then dared to lock him out of his own room. Yet, had he indulged in the luxury of breaking in the door,
he might not have stopped there. He threw away the broken branch and plunged deeper into the trees, as though daring another to test his humor.

The exotic scent of Aelfled’s incense wafted out to greet him before the wooded path to the glen widened at the ivy-draped entrance. Moonlight bathed the small cottage in an ethereal glow, almost as otherworldly as the laughter that haunted it. But it was the more masculine accompaniment that stopped Alric in his tracks. Aelfled had company.

The might of the realization struck a blow no less harsh than that which had taken Woden’s eye. Oddly, the pain was not that of jealousy for he had no more claim upon Aelfled than she on him, but more of disappointment. Where was his elfin beauty’s premonition when he needed it most?

He swore, making his silent way around the edge of the clearing to the spring path in the back. Curse the Irish wench! She tossed this contract at him, making it clear that no power or monetary gain could be had in their marriage, not even conjugal bliss. And now, the fact that Aelfled was not available when he needed her made him feel as alone as the day Orlaith went to the other side.

Had he fooled himself? Allowed the promise of what he deemed illusion to distract him to the point of recklessness and indecision? What was the point in marriage at all?

Because you will not take a woman as a slave the way your mother was taken
, a nagging voice reminded him. So why, he asked the voice, did he have to take the princess at all? Because of a prophecy he didn’t believe in?

“Frig take it all—women
and
gold!” He swore, angry at Deirdre for plaguing him, at Aelfled for not being here for him, and at his father for leaving him such a legacy of guilt.

Without taking time to strip off his shirt and breeches, Alric waded into the healing waters of the shaded pool as though they were his last hope for relief. Since it wasn’t expansive enough for him to work out his exasperation by swimming, Alric sought out the hot spring. Staring up at the starlit ceiling of the night, he rested upon a slab of rock just
beneath the water’s surface, alone in the mystical glen for the first time.

God, if that be Your name, or whatever power rules over man and earth, I need help, not the assurance of others, but from You, that I will know what I must do.

Shocked at the cry of his innermost being, Alric moved to where the water from the hill swirled with that of the hot spring. He lay back so that it flowed around his neck and over his shoulders. Resting his head on the rocky ledge, he listened. God had spoken to his mother. The water stones had spoken to Aelfled.

Would anyone speak to him?

A pair of night birds hailed each other. The breeze whispered in the canopy of the trees. The water babbled, but Alric heard no words of wisdom or condemnation. Nothing.

With a sigh, he closed his eyes. A panorama of memories began to play across his mind, pleasant and plentiful enough to keep him company and distract him from the quagmire of the present. Muscle by muscle, the healing waters worked their magic until he felt his muscles give up the burden his mind had piled upon them. The numbing effect lulled him into an almost druglike state of rest, just as a night of Aelfled’s potions and bed had done, except that this was the result of neither drug nor a charmed mortal.

Had he been wrong when he’d insisted to his mother that he needed Aelfled’s charms? He returned from one of his first sea battles, badly wounded. While Orlaith had seen to his wounds and prayed over him, his healing had not progressed as quickly as his impatience to recover. He ordered servants to help him to Aelfled, where the forest beauty saw him immersed in the healing spring daily. Improved, he returned to his mother to gloat over the superior powers of his elfinlike enchantress.

His mother’s answer was as serene as the setting about him: “She was but the star who guided you to the healing well, muirnait. ’Twas God who placed the star in your path and created the waters.”

And tonight, beloved, your star failed you, but He did not.

Alric’s eyes flew open at the invasion of his mother’s voice upon his recollection. The night was as still as the moon in the cloudless sky.
Frig’s mercy, now the Irish vixen had driven him to hallucination.