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Authors: Linda Windsor

Deirdre (29 page)

BOOK: Deirdre
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“Isn’t it wonderful?” Scanlan encompassed the whole of Galstead with a sweep of his arms. “We have to assemble on the commons because there is not enough room for my flock here.”

“Did someone contribute to the chapel?” Deirdre asked. Surely the cost of thatching and repairing the building was no small sum.

“I spoke on Colossians last week—doing all as one would do for the Lord—and these good men showed up this morning to work for
God.” The brightness in Scanlan’s eyes stung Deirdre’s own. “I have seen miracles abound, more than even I believed possible. If ever there was a place ripe for God’s message of hope, it is this one—from the king to the peasant, they thirst for spiritual water as the land does for rain. Had we made our journey uninterrupted—”

“Pardon me, Father, but could ye have a look at this?” the carpenter called out.

Scanlan didn’t have to finish. Deirdre knew exactly what he meant. Their capture was no accident but part of a plan. Alric, Gunnar—they were merely unwitting instruments. But what of Cairell? Had Alric found out anything?

Chances were that he hadn’t, as he’d been at sea practically the entire month. Even now tents were being set up on the common for the arrival of wedding guests. She’d had her last fitting in Helewis’s beautiful gown of lavender damask just that morning.

“If you don’t mind, milady I saw a lady selling ribbons a while back. I’d like to purchase a blue one to match Helewis’s eyes.”

It was a sweet thought, no doubt sincere, but Deirdre had not missed the young man’s interest in a friendly wrestling match between some strapping youths near the livestock pens.

“Go,” Deirdre told Gunnar. When she came to visit the chapel, he was as restless as a dog on a leash. “Why don’t I meet you back at the court? Scanlan can escort me.”

The young warrior needed no further absolution. He was off in a flash. Left to her own devices, she walked past Scanlan, who was holding a piece of molding in place, and into the chapel.

Seated on one of the aged benches, Deirdre bowed her head.
Father, You have indeed worked miracles these last weeks, and I believe—I have to believe—that You are caring for my brother as You have seen to my needs and comfort. Lead Alric to him, I pray, that at least Cairell might return to Gleannmara and our father I do not think father’s health could bear the loss of our mother and both his children.

Straw dust from above sprinkling her hair and clothes, Deirdre kept her quiet vigil in the midst of the work going on outside and above her. The enemy who held her captive had faces now—and
troubled hearts, where she once thought none beat at all. How inadequate she felt to be chosen to speak to them of God’s love, when, like Jonah, she was prepared to condemn her Nineveh rather than seek to save it.

Forgive me my pride and prejudice.
Perhaps she’d learned as much of God’s love in the last few weeks as those she’d been chosen to teach. Christ’s plea to forgive those who tormented Him because they knew not what they did had never seemed so befitting, not just in Galstead, but in Deirdre herself. So many verses she’d studied had taken on a new light since her captivity.

“Excuse me, milady.”

Deirdre turned at Scanlan’s hesitant intrusion.

“I must go to the common now. Will you come with me or will Gunnar return for you?”

“I sent him on without me,” she admitted, “but I’d like to remain here for a little while longer, if you don’t mind.” Scanlan usually spoke for an hour to the men and women coming in from the fields near the day’s end. In increasing numbers, they stopped and listened as time or interest afforded. “I’ll wait for you to return.”

Scanlan pointed to his plain wooden traveling chest. “I’ve books in there, if you wish.”

“Thank you, dear heart.” She’d known the man a lifetime, yet it was only in the past weeks that she realized just how dear a heart her clansman was. “I’ll take a look, though mostly I’ll just enjoy the quiet.”

Deirdre closed the door behind him to shut out as much noise as she could. The door no longer creaked in a spine-raking manner on its one hinge but moved silently on two new ones. She was surprised that among her kinsman’s few precious books was a favorite of her own:
Mythology of Ancient Man.
She chuckled at the idea of a priest fascinated by mythology and she made herself comfortable on the bench against the wall. Aside from being thrown together to work God’s will these last weeks, it seemed they had yet another interest in common.

Deirdre found one of her favorite myths—on how the changing of the seasons came to be—and began to read by the sunlight pouring through the open window. It was warm on her shoulder and, combined
with the solitude, relaxing. Breathing a sigh of contentment, she was drawn into the story of the maid who’d been carried off by her rakish abductor to his dark world. His loneliness and torment in his own kingdom softened her heart toward him, as she softened his, and they fell in love. Deirdre blinked sleepily.

Love. It was always the one thing in both myth and reality that overcame all obstacles. If only …

What startled Deirdre from her inadvertent nap, she had no idea. Perhaps it was the jar of her head as it dropped to her chest. She straightened and folded the book shut. In the midst of a most unladylike yawn, a passing shadow shuttered off the sun outside the window, yet upon listening, she heard nothing. Heavens, how long had she slept?

“Scanlan?” She jumped to her feet, stirring a cloud of dust in the streaming sunlight.

Goodness, she was covered in it, Deirdre shook her skirts and brushed her shoulders and arms, walking toward the door. The market must be closed or closing, she thought. No more had her fingers brushed the door when it opened.

But instead of Scanlan, Ricbert of Galstead stood agape at the entrance.

“Well, well, if it’s not our
perfectly, pious, princess,”
he said, with punctuated mockery.

Alarm snuffed Deirdre’s peace as completely as the man before her blocked the doorway. “What are
you
doing here?”

There were more shops near the chapel than homes. This late in the day, the market was usually closed, now that Scanlan held services on the common. The stories Helewis shared about Ricbert made Deirdre’s skin crawl, exactly as it was now.

“I’ve come to be saved.”

She stepped back as Ricbert ducked under the low header and straightened inside.

“Well, then, I wish you the best,” Deirdre made to move around him, but he planted his hand against the frame, thwarting her.

“You’ve used those sweet lips with such heart to save my father,” the
man drawled. “Surely you might spare a word—or a taste—for me.”

“Milord, you will step aside now, please.” The door bumped against the outside wall as Deirdre’s heart struck her throat. How she spoke, she couldn’t imagine, but her voice projected a deadly calm she did not possess.

Undaunted, Ricbert laughed. “Hah, you seem to forget which court you find yourself in. ’Tis mine, not yours, my feisty little princess, and I have a wedding present for you.”

Deirdre drew away when he reached for her face, but he lunged after her, seizing her roughly Stitches in her dress ripped on the shoulder he sought to expose. The sound grazed her spine like a cold spike of steel, but instead of rendering her weak with panic, it fortified her.

“This is
not
your court!” she ground out, turning her face as he tried again to kiss her mouth. “’Tis God’s.”

She drove the heel of her foot hard into the top of his, eliciting a yelp. His hold loosened, and she elbowed Ricbert’s stomach. With all her strength, she shoved her hand against his sharp, bearded chin, driving his head against the low frame over the door with a nasty crack. As he dropped, dazed and cursing to his knees, she barreled past him and broke into a dead run down the row of abandoned stalls and around the tinsmith’s shop on the main avenue to the gate.

“Milady?”

A man stepped out as she turned the corner toward the town proper. Deirdre glanced over her shoulder to where the bemused shopkeeper followed for a split second. Suddenly, Deirdre slammed hard against a wall of living flesh, just as hard and unyielding as any made of stone. With a startled grunt, she bounced backward, her feet scrambling for footing in the dry rutted thoroughfare.

“Deirdre!” Developing hands, the living wall caught her before she sprawled on the ground.

Stunned and half hanging in its grasp, Deirdre looked up. It had a face as well, and the face belonged to Alric. She made some sort of sound, half laugh, half cry. Then, winded and mad with relief, she threw her arms about his neck and held on in case her wobbly knees gave way completely She was safe at last.

“Frig’s breath, you look like you’ve been rolling in the hay!” He picked at the straw in her hair.

Frig’s
breath.
Alric’s familiar curse had never sounded so sweet to the ear.

“And his teeth and eyes,” she chimed in, a bit hysterical.

“Hers,” he corrected, neither hysterical, nor amused.

“What?” Deirdre tilted her head back to judge the nature of his humor and blinked as he pulled another bit of straw from the hair clinging to her forehead.

“Where in Woden’s world is Gunnar?” The thunder in Alric’s voice sobered her giddy relief. “I forbade you to go anywhere without him.”

She had nearly paid dearly for her disobedience. “I was supposed to wait for Scanlan,” she blurted out, glancing back to see if Ricbert had been foolish enough to follow her. Just as she thought, there was no sign of him. The man was a coward hiding behind a bully’s mask.

“He left me in Scanlan’s care,” she explained, her thoughts tripping ahead of her. All she had to do was tell Alric what had just happened and, in this humor, he’d kill not only Ricbert, but her and Gunnar as well.

“What happened to your dress?” Alric fingered the shoulder seam that Ricbert had ripped.

Father, forgive me, but I’m trying to prevent bloodshed.
“I ripped it in the chapel,” she answered, leaning as close to the truth as she could. “The thatcher was working on the roof while I was inside—you know what a shambles it was—and Scanlan wasn’t back yet, so I left without him to bathe and dress for the evening.”

It really wasn’t a lie … just not the entire truth.

“Alone.”

“Until I ran into you.” At Alric’s scowl, she added, “And I’m sorry I just forgot.”

“I gave you an order, woman,” Alric’s angry snap sent the tinker back into his lodge.

Deirdre bristled at the very idea. “An order?”

“You gave me your word,” he said in a softer tone.

“As you forgot me, I forgot all about you … just as I forgot for a
minute that I was angry at you.” She thumped an accusing finger at the vee of his shirtfront. “You left me here the whole four weeks while you were off having a grand time on your boat.”

“Ship.”

“Toy,” she countered, gathering up her skirts in a building huff. “That’s no way to treat a bride to be, even if she is a bride to be against her will.”

No less filled with righteous indignation, Alric folded his arms across his chest as if to keep them from reaching for her throat. Like two storm fronts about to clash on the horizon, they stood immobile, each waiting for the other to move. Intuition told her there would be no winning with Alric if she took him on as she had Ricbert. The pirate knew her too well.

There was only one thing to do—the unexpected. Abandoning her haughty stance, Deirdre ducked around the broad width of Alric’s shoulders to make a mad dash for the city gates. The cheers of the guards warned her that she was being chased.

She heard only one loud thud that was not of her making, and Alric was upon her. His vicelike grip on her arm nearly yanked it from its socket. The momentum of her interrupted flight carrying her in a circle, and she smashed into his embrace, her cry of protest smothered by the harsh kiss he planted upon her lips.

Nostrils flaring with what wind she had left, Deirdre pushed against his uncompromising hold. Above the roar of the bloodrush in her ears, she made out laughter and crude jests coming from more people than she had seen in her hasty retreat. They seemed to whet Alric’s appetite for a long, torturous revenge, just as it provoked a riot of its own upon her senses.

Deirdre tried to stomp his foot as she had Ricbert’s but only skimmed it, spurring Alric to lift her off the ground in defense. The more she railed against him, the tighter his arms closed around her, until she grew lightheaded from the effort. Only when she surrendered—outmanned, outmuscled, and out of breath—did he offer her quarter.

A hero’s cheer went up as he let her go and stepped back, pleased
as a pig in lavender at his victory. “Is that the way my bride to be wished to be treated?”

Scarlet burning her face, Deirdre squared her shoulders with the dignity he’d so ravaged. “Unlike your townspeople, milord, I am unimpressed,” she declared, once she was certain her knees had regained their worthiness. “Pity you won’t be wed to them.”

With that, Deirdre turned and walked, head held high, through the city gates. Curse his black heart! Nearly four long weeks she’d felt as though she’d grown spiritually. And in four short minutes with Alric of Galstead, she was right back where she started—ready to send at least one Saxon to perdition.

No. Make that two. They deserved an eternity with each other.

T
WENTY
-F
OUR

F
irst she upsets his personal world, Alric fumed as he marched through the vendors’ row, and now all of Galstead. The closer he had come to his father’s town fortress, the more evident it became. Instead of working in the fields, churl and serf alike cleared the ditch banks. In the closest hides of land, water seeped into those ditches already open. While it was no more than knee-deep, it was enough that the crops on those long, rectangular pieces had begun to lose their wilted, dying look. Women and children filled pails from the ditches and carried the precious commodity inland in an attempt to revive even more. Although it looked like futile attempt to him, it seemed to have given something to the people that had not been there the last time he passed this way—heart.

BOOK: Deirdre
3.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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