by Blake, Laila
Then she heard the soft rasp of a match against wood and a moment later saw a tiny flame at the end of a sliver of wood held in large hands, which brought it to a candle.
“There’s no need to be afraid, milady,” the voice said again and now that he lifted the candle to his face, she recognized the Blaidyn. She should have known, she wanted to scold herself, scaring like a little girl. Of course it was the wolf, her own personal prison guard.
“How long have you been standing there?” she demanded, trying to sound like his superior. Her voice was croaky and still shaking, and she wrapped her arms protectively around her torso. He didn’t look cruel but the candlelight cast a strange glow on his features that wasn’t inspiring trust or safety, either.
“A few minutes, milady,” he answered truthfully. “Since you entered the hallway.”
Her mouth opened and then she closed it again. She wanted to be angry and indignant but in grasping for the emotion through the fog of fright, she came up with embarrassment, of all things. He had heard her slowly, carefully creeping down the long carpeted hallway, holding her breath almost the entire time, taking minutes for a distance usually crossed in less than one. And he had stood there, waiting, knowing exactly what she was up to. The very idea made her neck itch enough to press her hand against it as she tried to make out his features again from lowered lashes.
“Are you going to stop me?” she finally asked into the silence.
“That depends, milady.”
She looked at him again. He was too tall to easily remember her social stature when he physically eyed her from so far above, but she finally composed herself and pushed up her chin in shy defiance before she turned around and quickly made to cross the hall. Each step, she pushed herself a little faster, fearing he’d grab her and pull her back and she didn’t know how she’d cope with another person touching her that day, least of all that stranger; Owain, the man with no family name, the man who wasn’t even human.
It didn’t come. No word, no hand out of the dark to yank back her shoulder. She didn’t try the large entry door. It was heavily bolted and there was little else behind it but the empty square where the guards trained and around which their barracks and servant’s quarters were arranged. It led to the main gatehouse, the portcullis and the drawbridge and none of those places were any good for a fast escape.
The next corridor was even darker and she blinked heavily, slowing down as she paused to look around.
“Would you like my candle, milady?” The voice was suddenly next to her again and Moira jumped once more. She hadn’t heard him follow her or really seen the light approach until he had said something and she bit her bottom lip sullenly. Did he consider this amusing?
She didn’t reply and kept walking until she reached the door at the end. He didn’t stop her when she opened it and stepped into the circular garden. At the other end, there was a small door that led down into the kitchens and to that side, the earth yielded herbs and aromatic flowers but most of the garden was filled with neatly trimmed and shaped bushes and flowerbeds, and a low gnarly tree built as the focal point, just off the center. It blossomed pink in spring but now, at the very end of summer, its leaves were slowly beginning to yellow.
The moon, narrow as it was, offered only just enough illumination to outline the bright stone path that wound through the flowerbeds and Moira followed it slowly, shivering and soaking up the air and the moonlight and the freshness of the plants around her. No stale curtains, no wood long cut and dead, no lifeless cotton long ripped from its stems.
• • •
Owain stopped at the archway that opened up into the tamed spots of nature. He didn’t understand human aesthetics, never had. They planted the same flowers so close together; a small army of tall gladiolus. Each stem carried the same milky pink flowers that melted into peach. Each one was the same. He wasn’t even sure how they achieved this feat. It was a beautiful flower, one he would stop to admire at the side of the road, but here, he hardly saw each one, drowned in the debasing power of uniformity. And wherever he looked, it was the same, here an army of wilting red roses, ready and forever waiting to meet the white ones at the other side of the path, frozen in their uniforms to never meet the day of battle.
He looked up to see her ladyship walk past them, her arm extended so that her fingertips might graze over the blossoms. She had pushed the sleeve of her dress up to her elbow and in a sharp contrast to her white — in the moonlight, almost translucent — skin he could see deep pink scratch-marks, crisscrossing messily from her elbow to the knuckles of her fingers.
Frowning, he leaned against the stone archway and watched her. Still caressing the flowers, her fingers lingered on one wilting blossom for too long, tearing a petal from its unsteady perch. She looked at it for a moment, as though in sorrow or confusion and then let it fall to the ground. It had a slow descent, such a light thing, caught by a breeze that suspended it there for an instant or two. They both followed its flight for the few moments it hung helplessly in the air.
“Stop watching me.” She wasn’t looking at him, nor had he moved to provoke her but there she stood, in half profile looking away from him. Her voice was quiet, but she had learned already that she didn’t have to be loud to make herself heard with him around. It shook, too; raw and haughty and frail like the roses around her.
“Milady?”
“I said stop watching me.” This time, she uttered each word by itself, interrupted by little shivering breaths, like tiny sentences. Owain could see her shoulder twitch a little, saw the tremor in her arms. In that moment, and quite unexpectedly, he felt a rush of warmth in his chest, the desire to protect her from anyone who would want to do her harm quite apart from his sense of duty and his post. She looked so small, so lost. He, too, saw the girl where by nature he should have seen a woman.
“I am charged with watching you, milady,” he answered quietly. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, nor what he wanted to say. The wolf inside of him growled quietly. He understood. He wouldn’t have liked being caged inside castle walls either.
Walking a few steps further away from him, her naked feet made that endearingly vulnerable sound of skin on stone but he knew she hadn’t given up. Her breathing sounded forced and wrong, her movements stiff and aching. He didn’t know what was wrong with her; he certainly hadn’t spent a lot of time around women, least of all around the noble kind. But there was nothing happy or content about the young woman who, rationally and by all rights, had little to fear, had never suffered hunger or plight, had never had to do a hard day’s labor and yet was standing there, one of the most pitiful creatures he had ever seen, ever smelled.
“Please?” He could finally hear her again, even quieter now. “Just turn around. Just leave me be!”
Owain eyed her for a long moment and then nodded. It was such a little thing, such a despondent tiny request he couldn’t deny.
“Yes, milady.” And as he was bid, he turned around to look into the darkness of the hallway. He even breathed through his mouth, trying to pick up as little of her smell as he could. But it didn’t take long until she realized it wasn’t enough and she stormed past him, back along the corridor, up the stairs and back into her chambers. This time, the door fell hard into its frame.
Owain stood there for a little while longer. Her scent lingered in the air, but it tasted as though tinged in salt and iron and fear.
Chapter Five
The Bramble Keep’s Great Hall was lit brightly, oil-torches spreading their spluttering glow over the late afternoon gloom of autumn. The floor was flattened smooth, the stone ground to a buttery sheen by centuries of use, and was scrubbed so clean it shone golden around the torches. The lanterns, candelabras, the high seats and low benches had all been dusted and polished to a dim shine. Maids had spent hours as they smoothed the rough spots on the oak benches and tables, washed
the tapestries and drapings and prepared the welcoming feast down in the kitchens.
None of them were welcome in the Great Hall in the evening, of course. Instead, the Lord Rochmond and his Lady Cecile were sitting on their high chairs on the raised dais at the end of the hall, framed by elaborate candleholders and flanked by the Lord’s favorite greyhound, sitting up on his haunches and sniffing at the tantalizing blend of scents.
Moira had crept up to a side entrance, watching the proceedings. She hadn’t left her room since her nightly run-in with her new guard the night before last. She had kept her door shut when her maid had knocked to remind her of the occasion and to dress her and put up her hair. Feigning sleep, always feigning.
Her small dirty toes were just spying out from underneath the long velvet gown and her hair was tumbling down her back in messy waves of red. It was not how she was supposed to be seen at all, but curiosity had gotten the better of her.
A row of young men stood on each side of the Great Hall, tall, strapping lads standing straight and proud, their hands crossed in the small of their back, chests puffed out in all their splendor. One row was bearing her family’s coat of arms upon their shields; three trees, reflecting in a lake beneath a dual star in the night-sky and a single warrior on the watch. The other row bore the already familiar Fairester crest; the meandering river, the sun and crossed swords.
Her eyes wandered down the row. She could see them without exposing herself, one stoic countenance after the other. Faces hardened by duty and training, their features exaggerated in the flickering light and its stark shadows. She vaguely recognized most of her father’s men. The others were strangers but she failed to see much difference between them. One might have been tall, another broader but they all looked the same; statues to safeguard the peace.
When she heard a shuffle from the far end of the hall, she squeezed herself even further into the shadow, breathed deeply through her puckered lips and watched. Sir Deagan Fairester strode confidently across the hall, the men saluted him but he didn’t seem to register it. If he did, it neither slowed him down, nor caught his eyes and distracted his gaze from the dais and her father’s seat. He looked essentially as she remembered him; of medium height and slim stature but handsome and all too aware of it.
He was brushing his blond hair out of his face as he strode, keeping it cut just that little bit too long as to allow it to fall into his face in the first place. She hadn’t cared for him much when he had first visited and she hadn’t expected him back; they usually didn’t do that. But he had. Moira felt a shiver run down her spine.
“My lady?” Owain announced himself in a low, quiet voice maybe a step away from her. Moira jumped and could only barely resist a making a sound. Owain resisted giving her a little smile.
“Your Lady Mother was looking for you,” he informed her once she had turned around to him, still careful not to be seen inside the great hall. But they were both in a side-corridor, shielded from view.
“So you do her bidding, too?” Moira asked, recovering from her hammering heart. She narrowed her eyes at the wolf and then exhaled a deep breath. Of course, his powerful senses were good for so much more than to just ensure she wouldn’t leave the confines of the castle at night. It would be a talent wasted during the day if Lady Cecile hadn’t found a way to partake in it. “I suppose you can’t tell her that you were unable to find me?”
Owain wrinkled his forehead in a vaguely sympathetic expression. It turned more worried when he saw the woman roll her shoulder, then saw it flex in an unconscious movement and her closing her eyes, breathing in and out in her slow, labored way. She was quite beautiful that day, he noticed almost shamefully. The long sleeves hid the scratch-marks and her hair tumbled free and open. There was always that haunted quality to her face but it seemed more at home the way she looked that day.
“I thought not,” she finally answered and raised her chin a fraction of an inch in proud defiance of his power over her. She raised a brow. “Are you meaning to drag me to her side right now?” Moira asked, with a dry cock of her brow and then nodded back into the room, where Lady Cecile was sitting next to her husband, seemingly content to smile politely while the men were exchanging pleasantries.
“Your chambers, milady. Your maid is waiting for you there.”
Without showing whether or not she intended to follow in the end, Moira kept on watching the proceedings in the Great Hall; the stony faces of the guard, her father’s detached smile and the gregarious gestures of Degean Fairester’s arms and fingers.
“They would have me marry him … ” she said quietly and then bit her bottom lip. She could only see the back of him now, where the gestures and the posturing looked almost funny without hearing the words. But she didn’t have the heart to laugh.
“And you would not?” Owain asked.
Moira shrugged and finally made herself turn around again. She inclined her head at the Blaidyn for a moment in an almost mocking gesture of gratitude before she walked past him down the corridor, and up the next staircase that would lead her back to her chambers.
• • •
“He is a good man, Moira. He’s from a good family … and, between you and me, he is far more handsome than his older brother.” It was a string of comments, launched toward Moira’s general direction. She couldn’t move her head while the maid was braiding and coiling and pinning up her hair but she could feel her stepmother sitting there, watching her intensely enough to make her squirm.
“I’m sorry, milady, did I hurt you?” the maid asked immediately, hands leaving her red hair and Moira stopped herself from shaking her head and ruining the work in progress.
“No, I’m fine, Bess.”
Lady Cecile eyed them both, brows knotted with a sigh caught in her throat. Moira was truly quite beautiful when she tried. They would find a way to redden those sallow cheeks and to make her smile and there was no reason why she wouldn’t look absolutely marriageable. She wasn’t as slim as she could have been, but that brought with it a certain vigor and the promise of children between her wide hips and to nurse at her ample bosom. Moira, of course, had neither vigor, nor did she seem like a woman who would conceive easily, Lady Cecile thought, but there was nothing wrong with attributes, which gave that impression in any case.
“You should feel flattered that he came back; he obviously liked you when he visited last.”
Moira finally cast her eyes over at her stepmother, she still didn’t move any other muscle but she could see her there, drumming her fingers almost noiselessly on the polished wood table. She did not feel flattered and she knew better than to think he’d come back because of her. He’d come back because he had been told that she was his one chance at ruling over his own fief after his father would die and leave the house and the land and the riches to his older brother. If he married the young Lady Moira, however, he would rule over the Bramble Keep, the village of Rochmond and leagues of farms, fields and mountains. He would take the title, the name and the fief — the wife was just another possession.
Moira was more than aware of this, no matter that the frequency with which Lady Cecile repeated these facts seemed to suggest otherwise. She knew. She even tried to convince herself that this, inevitably, was her life; that she had no choice and that she could be happy if she just gave in. If he didn’t care about her, she had little doubt that he wouldn’t insist on seeing her every day, and her life wouldn’t change all that much. But she would be married, would no longer be considered a child and she would be able to ask him to remove her prison guard. And still, as much as she tried, she couldn’t stop her body from locking down at the idea, couldn’t keep it breathing or keep it from crying or get it to sleep.
“I hear that he is a most excellent sword-fighter, a good jouster, too. And in the royal hunt last year, he brought down the second largest stag. He is a good man, Moira. A man you sh
ould be proud to marry.”
When Moira was alone with her maid, she almost liked the soft little tugs at her hair, the way she had to sit absolutely still, and someone else was moving their hands and fingers so close to her scalp; it wasn’t being alone, it wasn’t quiet but wasn’t bad. Being watched while Bess was putting her hair up, however, was setting her teeth on edge and made the little down on her back raise with the need to shake herself, shake it off and just scream until she could drown out the constant drone of her stepmother’s voice.
“Really, I swear to the heavens, child … sometimes I wonder if you are even listening to a word I say.”
“I am,” Moira said quietly, blinking and staring ahead. How could she not? It would have been far easier if she had any way not to, any way to block it out but she had never acquired that particular skill that most other people seemed to take for granted.
“At least give him a chance, will you? You know what happens if heavens forbid, your father should die before you get married.” Lady Cecile exhaled a deep sigh, shaking her head, “What will happen then … to either of us?”
“I know, mother.”
“You are not a child anymore, Moira, and it is high time you started thinking of these things. He is a good catch and I don’t see a better one on the horizon.”
“Yes … mother.”
• • •
Moira did not look at her guard who was waiting for her when she exited her chambers, hair elaborately and intricately styled and wrapped in silks and gold and pearls. It was too much. It wasn’t her, nor did she feel like herself; and his presence there was just another reminder of the utter lack of control she had over her own life.
