Temptress (9 page)

By the gods, what was she thinking? ’Twas only her tired mind playing tricks upon her. Besides, ’twas something she could not voice, for if she did, her brother would surely take away her privilege of running this keep. She’d had to beg Kelan, who ruled over several baronies, including Penbrooke, to give her the chance to become the lady of Calon. Now, if Kelan knew she was thinking the castle was haunted, or someone was glowering at her from the shadows, or that there was a chance Carrick of Wybren was sleeping in a bed across the hallway, Kelan would surely interfere and, mayhap, think again about letting a woman be in charge of this castle. Mayhap Kelan would order Tadd, who was off fighting for the king, back to rule. Perhaps he would want Bryanna, sent to Calon as Morwenna’s companion on the hope the girl would grow up, to return to Penbrooke to be with him and his wife, Kiera. Kelan was still the ultimate ruler.

The man lying across the corridor is
not
Carrick. Do not be fooled!

Muttering angrily at herself, she dared not face the demeaning truth that in her heart of hearts, she hoped the beaten man was Carrick of Wybren, that he would recover and realize how far she had come from that silly little girl who had loved him so wildly and that she was now a woman who was his equal, who would no longer leap at the chance to be with him, who would now never willingly abandon all others for the sake of her love . . .

“Stop it!” Her voice hissed and bounced off the thick walls. What had gotten into her? Was she finally believing Isa’s dire warnings, the old lady’s ever-constant muttering of death and doom?

 

The moon was a dull orb shrouded by an ever-thickening fog. Weak light filtered through the bare trees as Isa knelt on the muddy banks of a swift creek and the barest of breezes snatched at her cloak. “Great Mother be with us,” she whispered, her heart heavy. Using a stick to draw her rune, a symbol that looked much like a rooster’s claw, in the damp earth, she prayed for safety. The wind kicked up a bit, bringing with it a chill of something she couldn’t see but something she felt, the very soul of evil.

“Stay back!” she cried as if whatever was out there would heed her. A shiver of pure fear slid down her spine. Reaching into her pouch, she tossed a combination of mistletoe, rosemary, and ash slivers into the air, hoping the particles would catch in the wind and provide protection for Lady Morwenna and all who resided in the keep.

What the devil had her brother the baron Kelan been thinking when he’d given in to his sister’s determination and allowed Morwenna, alone, to become Lady of Calon? ’Twas not a job for a woman. Though Morwenna was smart as any man, she was still a female. Many a woman had run a keep, to be sure, but usually their will was imposed through a man, a baron who knew not that his wife was maneuvering him. But this, to allow a woman alone to oversee so large a barony, was unnatural.

True, Morwenna had promised to marry within the year. Though the wedding banns had not yet been posted, Lord Ryden of Heath Castle had asked for her hand and Kelan had agreed.

Isa frowned and a cold worry settled in her heart. This coming marriage was not a good match.

The baron was good-looking, aye, and athletic, despite his years. The man was nearly Isa’s age, for the love of the Mother Goddess, too old, though he appeared a decade younger. Lord Ryden was used to doing things his way, which did not bode well.

Morwenna was headstrong and opinionated, willing to speak her mind. As had been his other, now-dead wives.

But Morwenna had agreed to the union
, an inner voice reminded her.
Despite your advice, admonitions, and premonitions
.

“Bah.” Isa tossed down her stick and dusted her hands on her old tunic. Morwenna had agreed to marry Ryden only as it was expected that she take a husband. After her disastrous love affair with Carrick of Wybren, she’d turned to an older, steady man, one who had courted her with the intent of a wolf upon prey.

Nay, ’twas not good. And it would not have happened if Morwenna had not given her heart to the rogue of Wybren.

Carrick
.

It all came down to that cowardly beast.

Isa hated the man. It wouldn’t surprise her if he was behind the murderous fire at Wybren. Carrick had no loyalty, no integrity. A bad seed, he was, a rogue who took after his father, Baron Dafydd, who, despite the love of a fine, beautiful woman, had been known to lift the skirts of servant girls, widows, and even the wives of his friends. Dafydd had been a ruler without conscience when it came to women, and all the while his wife, Lady Myrnna, had suffered in pinch-lipped silence and ignored the rumors of infidelity and bastards being born as she had tended to her own brood of five children. Rumor had it that Dafydd, outside the bounds of his marriage bed, had fathered daughters, sons, even a set of twins. . . . Isa wanted to dismiss the stories, or at the very least accept them as exaggerations borne on idle, bored tongues. But the rumors of Dafydd of Wybren’s excursions into the beds other than his own were legendary and, no doubt, had some nugget of truth within them.

The wind slithered through the bare trees, tugging at Isa’s cowl and the hem of her tunic. She felt the cold of winter settle into her bones.

Isa scowled into the darkness, her eyes searching the gloom for any sign of life, of the presence she felt. But nothing moved.

She turned toward the castle.

The crack of a brittle twig breaking echoed through the darkness. Isa spun quickly. She stared in the direction of the sound. Searching the foggy shadows, she saw nothing in the skeletal trees, no movement, no dark figure crouching near the creek. Her old heart clamored, though she reminded herself there were creatures within the forest that meant her no harm, animals who moved in the night and were more frightened of her than she was of them.

Yet something here had shifted. She felt it again, that subtle and dangerous change in the air. Her skin crawled. “Who goes there?” she demanded hoarsely, her fingers slipping into her pocket for the little dagger she always kept with her. “Show yourself!”

No answer.

Just the murmur of the wind through rattling branches, the soft hoot of an owl high above, and the sluice of icy water rushing downhill.

Isa’s ears strained. She licked her cracked lips and told herself she’d been mistaken. No hidden eyes were watching her every move. No one had seen her pagan rite. Fingers clenching around the hilt of her knife, she slowly backed toward the keep. Careful not to trip on the exposed rocks and tree roots, she eased along the path and away from the menace she felt was glowering in the woods.

’Tis only your imagination running wild, Isa,
she told herself,
nothing more. The breathing you hear is from your old frightened lungs gasping for air. The snap of the twig was probably the weight of a passing boar or stag upon the trail.
But she hadn’t heard the grunt of a creature rooting, nor caught the stink of an animal nearby.

Nay, whatever she’d sensed lurking in the darkness had been silently and malevolently watching her, for what purpose she knew not.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Calon looming upon the hill, the wall walks thick and sinister looking, the dark towers spiring high into the night. She had been opposed to Morwenna being sent here and longed for the safer days at her lady’s childhood home of Penbrooke. But Isa’s voice had not been heard. Morwenna had bargained hard and long for her own keep and Kelan had eventually granted her the barony—one that, Isa feared, came with its own history, bloodshed, and peril.

Had she not seen the signs?

Had her dreams of bloodshed not been vivid?

Did she not know that danger lurked within and without the walls of the castle?

“By the saints,” she whispered and, once near the gate, turned and hurried up the muddied road to the gatehouse, half expecting some nightmarish beast to leap out and tackle her.

None appeared.

No dark dragon or messenger from hell assailed her.

As she hastened beneath the raised portcullis without incident, she released hold of her little knife, sent up a thankful prayer to the Great Mother, and tried to calm herself. What she imagined was just her own fear congealing in her mind.

Nothing malevolent lingered in the forest.

Nothing evil skulked through the barren trees.

Nothing unholy was watching over Calon.

Or was it?

CHAPTER SIX

“
I
swear to ye, I left my post but a minute, and the lady, she slipped into the room.” Vernon’s face was red, his jaw set with conviction as he stood nervously in front of Alexander’s desk, his big fingertips rubbing against each other.

Alexander had called Sir Vernon to his chamber in the gatehouse. The door was ajar and the sounds of men’s voices, the clink of chain mail, and the scrape of boots filtered through the crack.

“I was in the latrine takin’ a piss,” Vernon explained, then caught himself, for the excuse was feeble. “Lady Morwenna
is
the lady of the keep. She can go where she pleases.”

And a stubborn one she is,
Alexander thought, though he didn’t say as much. He remained quiet, his eyes steadfast on Vernon’s flushed features; he’d learn more from silence and patience than if he led an inquisition.

The big guard shook his head. “I know I shouldna have left me post and . . . and had I been there I could have tried to dissuade her or accompany her in to see the prisoner—”

Alexander had but to raise one eyebrow for Vernon to quickly correct himself.

“—I mean, to see her guest, but . . . ah, hell’s bells, Sir Alexander, I was wrong. There! I admit it. Take me to the dungeon if ye must, or banish me from Calon, or cut off me right nut, but, Christ Jesus, even a saint needs to take a piss now and again.”

Alexander’s other eyebrow lifted of its own accord and he leaned back in his chair. Vernon was a good man. Simple but true of heart. He would walk through fire if asked but could be distracted all too easily.

As captain of the guard, Alexander had no choice but to punish any disobedience. Leaning forward, resting his elbows on the scarred table, he eyed the soldier who had been so true of heart. “You’re relieved of your duty, Sir Vernon.”

The big man’s shoulders slumped a fraction and he seemed about to protest but wisely held his tongue.

“You can spend the next two weeks on the wall walk,” Alexander said, his gaze holding Vernon’s. “Mind that you don’t leave your post for any reason. If you need to relieve yourself, you can bloody well do it through the crenels.”

Vernon’s heavy jaw worked beneath his beard, but he didn’t argue.

“After a fortnight, I’ll reconsider.”

“Thank you, sir,” Vernon muttered, and as he opened the door he nearly stumbled over Dwynn, the half-wit. “Out of me way,” Vernon said and skirted the smaller man, who watched him pass. Dwynn entered the chamber. There was a slyness beneath his dull expression, a bit of cruelty in his blue eyes. Alexander didn’t trust him. Then again, he didn’t trust anyone.

“Something I can do for you?” he asked Dwynn as Vernon’s bootheels rang down the stairs.

“The lady, she told me to . . .” He paused, scratching his chin, rolling his eyes upward as if to search his brain.

“To . . .”

“To what?” Alexander asked, his patience stretched thin as Cook’s gravy.

“To visit her.”

“Visit her?”

“Yeah. She wants to talk to you.” Dwynn seemed pleased with himself; his eyes were suddenly bright, his thin lips curving into a self-congratulatory smile.

“In the great hall?”

“Aye. The great hall. Yes.” Dwynn’s head was bobbing up and down rapidly as he turned and half ran down the stairs.

Alexander pulled his mantle from a hook and swung it over his shoulders. His heart was beating a little faster at the thought of seeing Morwenna, though he told himself he was being foolish.

Again.

Being near to her was as much a curse as it was a blessing, he thought unkindly as he headed down the stairs of the gatehouse.

From the first moment he’d seen her, he’d been smitten.

He remembered that day all too vividly.

There had been rumors running rampant that a woman was to become the ruler at Calon, and Alexander had received a missive from Sir Kelan of Penbrooke that his sister would be sent to oversee and run the keep. Alexander had thought the idea ludicrous. A
woman
? A woman with no man to guide her? ’Twas foolishness. Laughable. Nearly sacrilegious. To Alexander’s way of thinking, a woman running the keep was sure to be Castle Calon’s ruin. He’d even gone so far as to silently call her Lord Morwenna, for surely she was a woman who had something to prove, a female who thought herself a man. Probably an old hag of a woman who wore breeches, swilled ale, and was ugly as a sow.

And then he’d seen her.

Riding like blazes on that white jennet through the gatehouse and into the bailey. Black hair streamed behind her, crimson skirts billowed as she leaned over the horse’s neck, and she moved as easily as if she were one with her mare. “Run, you miserable beast,” she’d cried, and the little horse had raced faster, gray legs stretching over the grass in the bailey, chickens and geese scattering and squawking, peasants and serfs abandoning their jobs to watch in awe as she pulled back on the reins near the great hall and the horse, panting and wild-eyed, slid to a stop.

With her tangled hair, flushed face, and incredible eyes, the woman had hopped lithely to the ground, her boots sinking into the mud. Even so, she was taller than most women and had a regal bearing she wore as easily as her mantle. She’d seemed oblivious to the fact that the hem of her dress was becoming dirty, or that rain was beginning to drizzle from the sky. A smile unlike any he had ever witnessed had toyed with her full lips, exposing perfect teeth.