“But Father,” she pressed on, “remember, the magician said that should I marry this man of your choosing, the marriage would be cursed, and—”
“Shh, child! I believe not in such devilment!” Ewan grumbled, bellowing as he once had, only to end up in a deep, bone-jarring hack. “ ’Tis against the teachings of the church. Father Timothy said ’twas a trick the cripple played upon you, a trick that toyed with your weak mind.”
“My mind is far from weak,” Megan said quickly, and silently cursed the priest for his false piety. The man was too swift to point to the fault in others, too hasty to give a tongue-lashing, too eager to see punishment meted out when none was needed. Unlike Father Andrew, a kind and wise man who, during his 12 years as chapel priest at Dwyrain, had always seen both sides of a disagreement, Father Timothy was young and all-knowing, with a glint of pleasure in his eye when anyone was caught in a sin. ’Twas as if he enjoyed watching others explain their sins and beg forgiveness.
“Aye, I know you not to be thick-skulled as Father Timothy proclaims, but I cannot believe in witchcraft and the dark arts. What would your mother, rest her soul, think?” With a deft movement, he crossed himself, as he sometimes did when his thoughts turned to Violet and her early death. Then there were other times when he acted as if he’d forgotten she’d left this earth.
“I know not.”
“Well, I’ll ask her, the next time she comes to visit,” he said, and she looked for a hint of humor in his cloudy eyes, but found none. Nay, he believed that his wife, though dead, walked these halls and that she often carried baby Rosalind with her or spoke of Bevan.
“You trust not the sorcerer’s prediction but you speak with Mother’s ghost.”
“Her spirit,” he said, correcting her as he scooted upward on the bed and cleared his throat. The effort caused even more strain on his tired face. “You think I’m addled,” he said, glaring at her through foggy eyes.
“Nay—”
“It is my curse these days. The servants act as if I’m not only blind, but deaf as well, and that I have no mind left. The truth is that I do talk to your mother, Megan, and she asks about you. Aye, I know that she is dead, but believe it or not, at times her spirit glides down from heaven to be with me.” He clapped a broad hand over his heart. “She was and always will be an angel. My angel.”
Megan didn’t know what to say; to argue against something he wanted so feverishly to cling to would be unwise. Why cause him any more pain? If he thought he could speak with his dead wife and children, what did it hurt? “Aye, Father. An angel she is.”
He smiled beneath his snowy beard. “I’m glad you believe me, child, because your mother, she wants you to marry Holt!”
Megan jumped off the bed as if she’d been sitting on the red-hot embers of Cook’s fires. “You tricked me!”
He laughed and the sound echoed in her heart. “No more than that silly prophet did a few years ago. Now, go on, get dressed and, please, daughter, be happy.” Yawning broadly, he waved her away.
“I love Holt not,” she said, and her father grimaced at the words.
“ ’Twas the same for your mother and me.” At the sharp lift of her head, he motioned awkwardly, as if scattering flies. “I know, I know, you thought differently, but love does not grow easily at times, even with your mother and me. Over the years I became devoted to her and she to me. Love sometimes comes with time, daughter, and you have long to live.”
Too long, she thought, if I am to be Holt’s wife. Shuddering inside, she watched as Ewan closed his eyes to rest. Within mere seconds, he was snoring gently, blissfully unaware of the treachery that was mounting against him, the treason she could feel in the hallways. Like rats scurrying through the rushes, the whispers of betrayal darted through the thick walls of Dwyrain.
“The baron, bless him, is not himself these days,” Father Timothy had whispered to the steward months ago as the two men stood beside the miller’s cart in the inner bailey beneath the open window where Megan had sat on the ledge. Their voices had risen up to her like smoke from a fire.
“Aye, and it’s a sad day,” Quinn had responded, shaking his head, his bald pate shining in the autumn sunlight.
“And without Bevan to become the baron … Ahh, I fear the worst and pray that a man like Sir Holt will step forward and marry the baron’s daughter, Lady Megan, so that the castle will once again be secure.”
“Aye. Holt would be a good choice.”
Megan’s heart had frozen for a second, but she had not believed that her father would insist upon the marriage.
Another time, she’d heard one of her father’s most trusted soldiers, Cawfield, confide in the sheriff, “ ’Tis a pity, that’s what I say, when a man’s mind goes. There was a time when Ewan of Dwyrain was a fierce warrior. Who would have thought?” Cawfield had been standing guard and his voice had drifted toward the bakery, where Megan was checking that Llyle was not wasting the flour that he was allotted and that there would be plenty of good-sized loaves of wastel, as Gwayne of Cysgod was visiting. But she’d stopped at the sound of the men and tarried in the rose garden, where Cawfield’s voice could be heard clearly over the honks of geese and ducks waddling near the eel pond and the creak of the chain and bucket at the well. “Ewan was a strong leader,” Cawfield continued. “I pray that he heals soon.”
Others hadn’t been so kind. The mason had grumbled, “Who can rely on an old relic with half a brain to protect us?” and Ellen, a woman who tended to the geese, had crossed herself and asked to be delivered from Satan as well as the protection of so weak a lord. Ellen, too, believed that Holt alone could rule Dwyrain as a strong, fair lord.
Was Megan the only one who doubted him?
Aye, Holt was a handsome man, tall and strong, with shoulders as broad as the handle of an ax and sharp features that had caused many a scullery maid to sigh and swoon. He was quick with his wit as well as his sword and had, in the past few years, wormed his way into her father’s empty heart. From the beginning, he’d noticed Megan, even when she was but a lass, his dark eyes slitting a little as he stared at her, and Megan had always shivered inwardly, sensing that he was trying to imagine what she looked like without her clothes.
She’d overheard him tell ribald jokes to his men and had commented about one of the milking girls—that he would like to drink from her big tits and do his own kind of milking. The m
en had laughed uproariously and Megan had thought Holt crude.
And now she would be his bride. A sour taste rose in the back of her throat.
Realizing there was no escape, she closed the door to her father’s chamber behind her and swept down the hall, her footsteps muted by the new rushes laid upon the stone floor.