To his surprise, the feisty healer backed down and cast her husband an I-told-you-so look.
What she’d told him, Alyn could only guess, for she not only had a healer’s sharp eye, but the gift of second sight. He hoped to speak to Brenna about the visions later. Right now, Kella was utmost in his mind.
“Though, I … we,” he added hastily for Daniel’s sake, “are not at liberty to discuss it.” Truth was, he wasn’t sure how much he could tell his family. That decision would wait.
When Alyn stepped outside, the air was cool enough for a cloak. An instinctive glance at the quarter moon overhead promised favor to the dark clouds gathering in the north. Perhaps even rain. The pitch torches lighting the inner grounds made the shadows dance as Alyn made his way toward the training yard. Only a small number would continue to burn through the night, now that everyone was preparing for bed.
There was no need to guess where Kella had gone. Egan had a house of his own next to the weapons barn, a single room filled to the ceiling with weapons of all nature that the champion warrior had collected from Saxon, Pict, Welshman, and even his fellow Scots—any who’d dare stand up to him in battle or contest. Though little bigger than a horse stall with a circle of stone for heat, it was cozy.
When the fire was lit.
Tonight, when Alyn entered, it was cold, dark, and musty as a tomb from its prolonged abandonment. A hide covering over its only window blocked what precious little light the night afforded, so he found Kella more by sob than by sight. She sat on the bench board at the end of her father’s bed box.
“I’m so sorry, Kella,” Alyn commiserated, joining her. “We should not have celebrated so heartily. Your da deserves better than that from us.”
“Aye.” She sighed, but her head shook contrarily. “Though it’s not my grief that tortures me,” she protested. “’Tis my guilt—”
Alyn started as she pulled away from him and stumbled in haste out the door. He followed her but stopped short when she leaned upon the corner of the hut and retched. Again … and again.
Father God! Much as Alyn longed to comfort her, this was the one area where his best efforts to succeed failed him pitifully. A priest was expected to possess some medical abilities, but God had not given him the strong stomach of a healer. Would that he’d let Brenna come after all.
But Kella was so distraught, he battled the roil of his stomach and warily approached her. At the touch of his hand on her shoulder, she laid her warm cheek against it and leaned weakly against the outside wall. Her eyes were closed, but Alyn feared another outburst building with each rapid snatch of her breath.
“Hush, Kella. This cannot be good for you.” He tried not to get too close, lest his senses trigger and turn upon him. “There is nothing you’ve done that can separate you from the love of God … or from mine.”
Even unto retching, if he must.
“Real—hic—ly?” The hope in her small voice fortified him.
“Ma chroi …” My heart. A sweat broke cold in the wake of the blood leaving his face, but his determination grew. “Really.”
The word seemed to lift the burden off her shoulders. She straightened and rolled against the building until she faced him. The warmth of her palms spread upon his chest reversed the blood flow from his face.
She looked into his eyes as though he alone held the key to her relief. “Then hear my confession.”
Alyn’s mind reeled as though mule-kicked. “Now?” He wasn’t certain he wanted to hear anything about Lorne of Errol and his charms. Besides, Alyn wasn’t a priest. He’d given up the tonsure and dress.
Gwenhyfar’s words came back to haunt him. “We are all priests of God, cousin, whether we wear the tonsure and dress or nay.”
Kella sought out his hand, and his resistance crumbled. She led the way inside and patted the bench beside her for him to sit. Though Egan had fashioned the box extra wide and long, she huddled close to Alyn for his warmth, increasing his consternation by the breath.
He should have thought to bring a cloak. Better yet, let Brenna come. Alyn reached behind them, grappling for a blanket to answer the chill. At least one of them would be comfortable, he thought, wrapping it around her and making certain that it formed a wedge between them.
“I cannot bear this secret any longer. It preys upon my heart like a monster”—her words tumbled out—“ripping it to shreds again and again. And maybe …” With a heavy sigh, she laid her head against his arm.
“Maybe?” God be thanked his voice was calm, even though his mind and body did full battle—logic sorely outmaneuvered by the heart and senses. He knew Egan kept a jug of elderberry wine for when his stomach rebelled with too much merriment. “Go on,” he said, digging around the foot of the pallet in the hope that it might still be there.
“Maybe God will stop punishing me,” she told him.
Alyn latched onto the clay jug and produced it as if she could see it more in the light from the open door. “Here,” he said, uncorking it. “Have some of your da’s elderberry. ’Twill calm the stomach and the soul.”
And wash away the sourness that even the thought of triggered a slight gag in Alyn’s throat.
While Kella obliged him, he formed his answer carefully. “God doesn’t punish us, Kella. If God dealt us what we deserved, we all would suffer worse than we do on This Side. Here, our trials are temporary. God’s punishment will be eternal fire. What you and I face now are the consequences of ill-considered choices. Choices not simply to ignore His laws … but to ignore His love.”
Alyn’s last words stirred the shadows of his own guilt. Had he been so consumed with the past that he had ignored God’s love and rejected His peace?
Kella nearly choked on the sweet wine. She bristled as she shoved the cork into the container and slammed it down. “How can you say that your God did not take Lorne from me as punishment? We did not wait for marriage to give our love and bodies to each other.”
For the love of the saints, this was not for his ears.
“We’d every intent to marry, but God,” she ranted, “didn’t let that happen. How can you call it anything but punishment?”
These were the rants of a starstruck maiden. Lorne of Errol had taken Kella out of wedlock, without love enough to wait and honor her on the marriage bed. Alyn wanted to spit on the cur’s grave. Worse, he wanted to take the man’s life again.
“Perhaps …” Alyn’s mind tripped over his anger. The more he heard, the more he needed forgiveness himself. “Perhaps you would feel more comfortable speaking to one of the priests at Bishop Martin’s monastery.”
“Humph.”
“Kella, I’ve stopped my priestly duties. I struggle over my own folly leading to my teacher’s death. Even if this were not the case, I know you too well.” And to hear of her prince’s love—or lack thereof—was unbearable. “It isn’t proper for me—”
“Alyn!” Kella trapped his face between her hands and shook him. “I care not if you are priest, prince, or struggling sinner. There is no one I trust more than you, Alyn O’Byrne. None to whom I can say that I am with child without expecting condemnation.”
With child.
Now it was Alyn who felt ill. Daniel was right. Alyn’s worst fear for Kella was founded.
She sought one of Alyn’s hands, holding it fast as she turned away. The yard lights silhouetted her head as she bowed like a broken doll, chin to chest. Her words were tortured. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned in the eyes of God. I have lusted, though You know ’twas in love.”
Alyn squeezed the fingers interlocked with his. Father, forgive her rebelliousness, for she bears the pain of her own cross.
“I pray for Your mercy upon me and my child in the name of Your Son, Jesus the Christ.”
Help me to show her that the ways of mankind are not Your ways.
“Still, I accept the consequences as You see fit, but I beg You—” Kella moved Alyn’s hand against her belly. “Spare this innocent, Father.”
Touching a woman who was not his wife with such familiarity, much less one during confession, was unthinkable. “Kella, I am not God’s hand. This is no proper confess—”
“You are a priest,” she wept, “and I n-need God’s touch.” The fingers interlocked with his gripped him so that Alyn could not pull free for fear of harming her. “Tell me that God cannot t-touch me through you, H-his own priest,” she charged brokenly. “I’m lost, Alyn. I and my ch-child are lost.” She strangled with a sob. “Without hope.”
“Glorify Me.”
That voice again, the one Alyn had heard in Carmelide. Compassion rained as if the roof had opened from the crown of his head to the toes of his feet. Doubt and guilt washed away in the flood of living water.
Alyn dropped to his knees before the weeping woman, both his hands spread upon her belly. “Kella, hear me now, for I speak the Word of God. God’s mercy endureth forever. There is nothing—nothing,” he averred, a priest of God, robed and tonsured by the Holy Spirit, “that can separate you or your child from God’s love.…”
Was it his imagination, or had he felt a winglike brush of life through the wool of Kella’s gown? Joy quickened in a place where naught but reticence and doubt previously reigned.
“Or from mine.” Alyn finished his vow a man. A man who knew without doubt that it was meant for him to care for and protect this woman and her child. Whether he imagined the babe reaching out to him or nay, whether he spoke as priest or man—none of those things mattered, not now. Not ever. This was God’s will … and his.
Alyn raised her hand to his lips, whispering against her fingers, “As you have confessed and repented of your sin before God, know now that you are forgiven, Kella O’Toole.”
“You are forgiven, Alyn O’Byrne.”
“God be thanked,” Alyn mouthed as the guilt sloughed away. It had been an accident. He’d gladly have taken Abdul-Alim’s place. But God had another plan. This one.
Hope floated Alyn to his feet. He gathered Kella up into his arms. “And I promise to love your child, Kella O’Toole, as much as I love”—he brushed her lips—“and have loved you, though I was slow to realize it.”
“W-what?”
“Neither of you need suffer. No one need know.” Alyn plunged heart first into the sweet tide overtaking him. “If we marry on the morrow.”
“Oh!”
Kella laid her head against his chest, her silence long enough to give Alyn concern. Surely she had no choice. “I … I haven’t the right words of gratitude,” she whispered at last, “or answer.”
Kella’s resolve and strength drained away with a lengthy sigh. Thinking her about to swoon, Alyn tightened his embrace.
But she gathered herself. “There is no other heart so generous and kind as that which beats beneath my ear.” Kella backed far enough away to plant a kiss over the scar upon his chest. “I do not deserve such mercy.” Her voice caught with emotion. “But I gratefully accept it … for myself and this innocent child.”
The betrothal and wedding plans were announced at once. Many of Glenarden’s people had watched Alyn and Kella grow up together, so the news was received as if the couple were their own kin. Excitement buzzed throughout the hall, even though most of the servants and hearth companions were bedding down for the evening.
Once the women were settled, Alyn found himself in Egan’s hut for the second time that night. This time with his grim-faced elder brother. It was the only private place ready to them. At least this time, Ronan had the forethought to gather a stick from one of the torches to light the bird-beak rush light sitting on a crude table beneath the window.
“Are you absolutely certain this is what you want to do?” Ronan asked once the door’s latch fell into place.
Wrapped in his cloak of the same O’Byrne plaid as his brother, Alyn nodded from the very spot where an hour before he’d kissed Kella until he thought he’d swoon. The spirit that had carried him away still tingled within.
“This is the only thing I’ve been certain of in a long while.”
He meant every word, even though Kella’s response had been reticent. Given the circumstances, how could Alyn expect more? What was the proverb about time healing all wounds?
“Humph.” The tight grimace of Ronan’s lips told he was nowhere near satisfied with what Alyn and Kella had told the family about their decision to marry or the reason for their haste—that they had to deliver a package of immediate importance to the Fortingall.
“Is there anything more you want to tell me aside from the fact that you’re taking your new bride into enemy territory for their honey-mead month at the request of the queen?” In that tone, ’twas no question, but a demand.
In truth, there was a lot Alyn wanted to share with Ronan.
“Does Gwenhyfar know that you and Kella are betrothed?”
If only his brother would stop firing questions at him. “No,” Alyn replied with equal fire. “Just give me a moment to think where to begin.”
Chapter Fourteen
Alyn joined his brother on the bed bench and began his story in the East. Unlike with Gwenhyfar, his voice was not belabored with anguish, for this very night he’d accepted the Word he preached to Kella. He’d accepted the forgiveness he’d had all along. He simply shared the account of the accident brought about by his carelessness, told Ronan of his guilt and doubts as to his worthiness to serve as a priest. But passion gained upon him as he finished with “until I met Kella again.”
“But that was what … less than two weeks?”
Ronan’s derision dug beneath Alyn’s skin. It wasn’t as if he was still a wet-eared pup. “’Tis hardly time to fall in love,” Ronan told him. “When you left, you swore that Kella was too fickle for your liking. What,” he challenged, “changed so drastically in such short a time?”
Brenna’s I-told-you-so look came to Alyn’s mind. Did she know Kella was with child? Was that what she’d told Ronan?
“In case you hadn’t noticed, Kella has matured into a beautiful woman, intelligent as Brenna in her own way.” Perhaps Alyn should remind Ronan of his readiness to kill their middle brother over Ronan’s healing woman.
One thick brow shot up. Though his brother said not a word, it demanded volumes. Although Alyn could not call Kella his woman … yet.
In a burst of frustration, Alyn threw up his hands, switching tactics. “What can I say, brother? No red-blooded O’Byrne male was meant to be celibate.”
The second brow rose, Ronan’s piercing gaze prodding Alyn from beneath it. But the eldest had not inherited all of their father’s bullheadedness.
“The rest is between Kella and me,” Alyn responded.
“Humph.” As though he’d found his answer anyway, Ronan sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “How far along is she, laddie?”
Alyn’s defiance crumbled. He should have realized that Brenna, with her healer’s gift of foresight, would see through the plan, though he’d hoped for Kella’s sake that no one would notice. That Kella might give birth elsewhere where curious minds would not count.
“Going on three months. Her betrothed”—Alyn made sure the word was understood for Kella’s sake—“was beheaded in the same battle where Egan went missing.”
“Oh!” A woman’s gasp betrayed her presence outside and set off the last remnant of Alyn’s tolerance.
With a far-from-priestly exclamation, he jumped to his feet and snatched open the door. Lady Brenna stood there, sheepish and shivering, in a fur-collared cape. But one look at her tear-widened gaze made the flare of Alyn’s anger fizzle. He stepped back, motioning her inside and toward the seat next to Ronan.
“Milady.”
But Brenna stopped, gathering Alyn’s face between her hands, and planted a kiss on the middle of his brow. “You have the heart of a saint.”
“And you’ve the ears of an eavesdropper,” Ronan charged. “Did I not tell you that I would take care of this?”
Oblivious to his annoyance, Brenna sat b
eside him and wriggled beneath the shelter of his arm for warmth. “How she must suffer, anmchara,” she told him.
If calling Ronan soulmate wasn’t enough to dissolve his scowl, the glance she slanted his way was. “Just think,” she lamented, “to fall in love like us and lose her lover to war before they could marry.”
“’Tis tragic, to be sure,” Ronan agreed, “but that means she doesn’t love our Alyn. That my little brother, in an effort to prove himself noble of heart, is marrying a woman to save her honor.”
“And to prevent an innocent child from growing up fatherless,” Brenna finished. She beamed at Alyn. “Yours has always been a tender soul.”
“A tender head, more like it,” Ronan argued.
“My decision makes total sense. It benefits the both of us!” Alyn didn’t mean to shout, but Ronan saw the world in shades of black and white, except when it came to Brenna. Yes, his eldest brother had had to grow up faster than Alyn and Caden. He’d taken over Glenarden as a youth when their father suffered an arm-paralyzing fit from which he never completely recovered. Ronan had been robbed of his carefree boyhood. But that didn’t make him right in this case.
Nor did Alyn’s words anger the beast that Ronan could be. If anything, he acted as if they’d won his argument. “Didn’t I say it?” he gloated.
“’Tis a matter of sense and heart,” the lady replied. “Did you not see it, the way he watched Kella all the evening?”
This was not a new debate, Alyn gathered. The back-and-forth continued, as though he were no more than the proverbial fly on the wall.
“And she,” Ronan said, “looked as if she were dying herself.”
“Why not? What with her father missing and the father of her babe dead?”
“’Twas hardly the look of a woman ready to marry for love.”
“How could she not love a man who would save her and her child? And you know well, they’ve always been fond of each other.”
“You heard what he said.” Ronan did his best impression of Alyn, leaping to his feet as if ready for a fight, hands fisted at his side. “My decision makes total sense. The laddie’s treating this as if it were one of his experiments. Not a single word about love.”
Rebel Page 14
