by Jayne Castel
Gavina stood at the open window of the solar, looking out across the lower ward and the walls, which now smoked in places. Heaviness pressed down upon her; it had been a long, nerve-wracking day.
The attacks had ceased with the setting of the sun. The silence that followed sounded unnatural, hollow. The quietness unsettled Gavina more than the siege had. For with the quiet, Longshanks would be plotting his next move.
Hearing the door whisper open behind her, Gavina turned from the grim view.
A comely woman with a curvaceous figure and a thick mane of walnut hair entered. Heather had visited her, as Gavina requested.
Her friend’s grey-green eyes were wary, even as she favored Gavina with a smile. Ever since Heather had returned to Dunnottar a couple of months previously, the two of them had become close. Gavina had employed Heather as her companion, and they’d spent nearly every afternoon together in this solar weaving and sewing, and chatting. Heather had proved to be lively and interesting company—the sort of woman who drew Gavina out of herself and made her forget her worries.
But there was a reserve between them now.
A reserve that Gavina completely understood.
“How are yer parents faring?” Gavina asked. She hadn’t seen the steward and his wife all day, for they had kept to their quarters high in the tower.
“On edge,” Heather reported, her smile turning rueful. “Da keeps pacing the floor, demanding to be let out on the walls to fight, while Ma tells him he’s too old for such things.”
Gavina managed a tight smile of her own. She appreciated Donnan’s courage. There may come a time when the steward would be forced to join the fight; once the English breached the gates, he’d have no choice.
Her belly cramped then, and she hurriedly pushed the worry away.
“Thank ye for coming, Heather,” she said, moving over to one of the high-backed chairs near the hearth. “I’ve missed our chats.”
“As have I,” Heather replied softly. Did Gavina imagine it, or was her voice tinged with hurt. She moved over to join Gavina, seating herself in a chair opposite. Gavina studied her face. Heather’s expression was usually so open and frank, yet the lines of her softly rounded face were strained this evening. “I was beginning to think ye were deliberately avoiding me … have I offended ye in some way, My Lady?”
Gavina shook her head. “Ye have done nothing wrong, Heather.” The words gusted out of her. “My distance has more to do with my own conscience needling me.” She met her friend’s eye then. “Ye must resent my choice?”
She braced herself to receive the blunt edge of Heather’s tongue. This was what she needed, rather than Aila’s kindness and acceptance. Heather would be refreshingly frank, harsh even.
However, Heather merely swallowed, her gaze widening. “Of course I don’t.”
“I know how much this means to ye,” Gavina pressed. “If I don’t help ye … the curse won’t be broken.”
Heather’s full lips pressed together. “Aye,” she murmured, “but no one would force ye into a marriage against yer will. I would hate to be cornered so.”
Gavina dropped her gaze to her lap, to where she’d clasped her hands. Lord, why do they have to be so kind? She now twisted her fingers together, as a pain rose in the back of her throat and her belly churned. Her gaze lowered then, her eyes fluttering shut.
“Lady Gavina?” Heather’s voice intruded, this time laced with worry. “Ye have gone as pale as a wraith … are ye unwell?”
Gavina shook her head. She opened her eyes, although her attention remained upon her clasped hands. She literally couldn’t meet Heather’s eye. “I’m not worthy of the consideration ye bestow upon me,” she whispered.
“Of course ye are,” Heather countered. “Why would ye say such a thing, My Lady?”
“Ye and Aila are being so selfless. I’m not sure that I would be, in the same situation.”
Heather gave a soft laugh. “We are women of different ranks … born to fulfil different roles … but there should be a sisterhood between us. Ye have been good to me … I would never throw ye to the wolves.”
Gavina’s chin snapped up. A sisterhood. “I never had a sister,” she whispered, her eyes stinging.
Her gaze met Heather’s, and she saw that the woman’s eyes also gleamed with unshed tears. “Well, ye have two now,” Heather replied huskily. “Please know that Aila and I love ye … and we will stand by ye … to whatever end.”
To whatever end.
The words mocked Gavina long after Heather left.
Returning to the window, Gavina watched the last of the light drain from the heavens.
They both knew what the end meant—even if neither woman had spelled it out.
Draco had done a fine job of making things clear to Gavina earlier in the day. If the curse wasn’t broken, Heather and Aila would likely die during the siege, while their husbands would live on, consumed by grief.
The prospect of another loveless marriage, however short, was bleak indeed—but she could at least give the centurions their mortality back, so that they could finally find peace.
Tears escaped then, running silently down Gavina’s cheeks.
She knew how much Heather loved Maximus, and yet she hadn’t said a word to try and convince Gavina to help him.
Eyes fluttering shut, Gavina swallowed the sob that rose in her chest.
Love was what truly mattered. And not just that which existed between lovers, but also the bond between friends, between kin. When the world turned to dust and only the stars and the moon remained, love would live on, woven into eternity. Power, pride, revenge, gold—all of it was meaningless in comparison to the invisible threads that bound them.
A pain rose in her chest. Gavina lifted her hand, her knuckles pressing against her breast bone in an attempt to ease the ache.
She didn’t love Draco Vulcan, and he didn’t love her. But she’d seen the brotherhood between the three centurions, and she knew how much she cared for Heather and Aila.
She couldn’t abandon them—she just couldn’t.
“Very well,” she whispered to the darkening sky. “I will wed him.”
XVI
DESPERATE MEASURES
“A WIDOW IN mourning cannot wed.” The chaplain’s outraged voice rang through the chapel. “Surely, ye realize that, My Lady?”
“I do, Father … but during times like these, surely rules can be broken?”
Father Finlay drew in a sharp breath, his dark eyes widening. He stared at Gavina as if a stranger stood before him. She wasn’t surprised by his reaction. The words she’d just uttered didn’t sound as if they came from her at all.
However, she’d been right about one thing. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
It was shortly after dawn on the second day of the siege, and already Longshanks had resumed his attack. Debris pounded the fortress. Gavina could hear the impact, even through the thick walls of the chapel.
This needed to be done—before the situation grew dire. If Dunnottar fell, Maximus and Cassian deserved the mercy of dying alongside the women they loved.
Draco Vulcan stood at her side, silent and brooding. He’d wisely let Gavina take the lead. A few feet away stood Maximus, Cassian, Heather, and Aila. All of them needed to be elsewhere—the men should have been fighting on the walls—but this meeting had to take place first.
And while the chaplain resisted them, time was wasting.
Gavina hadn’t told Elizabeth about what she’d planned this morning. She was close to her sister-by-marriage, but Liz would have been furious at her decision.
Better to get this done in stealth.
“Ye can’t just bend and break things to suit yer own whims, My Lady,” Father Finlay finally managed. “Ye and David made vows before God.”
“Aye, but he is dead now, and I must wed Draco.”
Outrage rippled through the chaplain’s tall, lanky frame. Her lack of propriety shocked him. She was standing before him
like a harlot, demanding he wed her to her lover.
Humiliation prickled over Gavina. For that was what she’d told him—she’d professed that she’d fallen madly in love with the Wallace’s right-hand, had lain with him, and now carried his bairn. Dunnottar balanced upon a knife-edge, and she had to wed her lover before the end came.
The lies had slipped off her tongue with surprising ease, although she’d been unable to look Draco’s way as she’d said them.
The disappointment on the good Father’s face, and the indignation that swiftly followed, had cowed her a little. She liked Father Finlay and knew him to be a fair and kind man.
And her behavior was outrageous—worrying about her love life while Edward of England catapulted Greek fire over the walls.
It made her look self-centered and grasping.
The urge to laugh bubbled up within Gavina then. If only Father Finlay knew the truth behind this all.
“I love the lady.” Draco spoke up there. His voice was cool and clipped, at odds with the words he’d just spoken. “And wish to make our union right before God.”
The chaplain’s mouth twisted. “Ye should have stayed away from her,” he snarled. “What kind of man takes advantage of a widow?” He swiveled back to Gavina then, his cheeks reddening. “Yer husband has been barely dead a month! It is an offense to the Lord that ye wed so soon.”
Gavina clenched her hands at her sides and cast Draco a warning look. He wasn’t helping. It was an offense, she knew it. Here she stood in a house of God, clad in a sea-blue kirtle instead of her widow’s black, flouting her lover.
The chaplain wasn’t moving; she would have to humiliate herself further if this wedding was going to take place.
“My marriage with David was in name only,” she replied, holding Father Finlay’s eye with a boldness she didn’t feel. “We hadn’t shared a bed in years … and ye know as well as I about all the lovers he took. He’s rumored to have at least three bastards running about the streets of Stonehaven.”
It took all her will not to wince at these words. She sounded so bitter—and she was, for this wasn’t a lie at least.
Her union with the De Keith laird had been empty from its first days.
Even so, to admit such a thing—especially with an audience—made her flush hot with shame.
What a failure of a wife she was.
Gavina felt Draco watching her. Shoulders set, she refused to look his way. This was all too humiliating as it was; she didn’t need to see the scorn in her husband-to-be’s eyes.
The chaplain’s gaze shadowed. He knew she spoke the truth.
“Ye and David weren’t happy together, My Lady,” he said after a long pause. “But that’s nothing unusual. It is a cross ye must bear.”
Panic surged within Gavina, a deep chill that doused her burning embarrassment. He wasn’t going to soften. She had to do something.
“Please, Father.” She took a step forward and sank to her knees at his feet, grasping his hands. “I implore ye … grant an unhappy woman but a short reprieve. I fear we are all doomed here. Let me die as Draco Vulcan’s wife.”
Tears sprang to her eyes as she spoke. They weren’t feigned. She really was this desperate. She couldn’t save everyone in this keep—but she could give the three centurions of a lost legion the end to a terrible curse. She could grant Maximus, Cassian, and Draco freedom to live or die as they pleased.
Staring up at the chaplain, she saw him waver. He was a pious, righteous man, but a soft-hearted one. He hated to see a woman suffer.
Guilt returned, causing Gavina to swallow. Damn this mantle of remorse that she carried around—how she wished to be rid of it. Unfortunately though, in helping her friends, she would hurt others.
“I don’t understand ye, My Lady,” Father Finlay eventually rasped. “If ye wed him, ye will lose yer position here.”
It doesn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now except helping her friends. Aila and Heather had both been shocked by her decision when she sought them out the evening before. But she’d managed to persuade them that this was her choice—a decision she’d made of her own free will.
“I care not about that,” she murmured. “I wish only to be with the man I love.”
The chaplain shook his head, his face sagging. “Very well, My Lady. I shall perform the ceremony,” he muttered. “Even if I think ye are making a terrible mistake.”
Gavina squeezed his hands and dropped her gaze to the flagstone floor. “Thank ye, Father.”
Father Finlay wed Gavina and Draco in the doorway to the chapel, while the party of four silently looked on.
It was a brief ceremony. Gavina continued to play the role of besotted woman though. She gazed up at Draco, a smile frozen upon her lips, as the chaplain wound a length of De Keith plaid around their joined hands and muttered the words that would bind them.
Draco stared down at her, his expression shuttered. However, his hand clasped around hers was warm and strong, providing a steadying influence.
“I now pronounce ye man and wife,” Father Finlay finally intoned. He then unwound the plaid ribbon.
Draco released Gavina’s hand, and she thought he’d step away, now that the ceremony was done. But instead he moved closer, his hands cupping Gavina’s burning cheeks.
And then, surprisingly, he leaned down and kissed her.
XVII
MAN AND WIFE
GAVINA’S BREATHING HITCHED, her body going rigid. She hadn’t expected him to kiss her. However, it was part of the ceremony, and since they were both playing a role, he might as well take it to the limit.
Draco was a striking man with hawkish good looks. As such, she hadn’t thought that anything about him would be soft.
But his lips were.
They brushed hers, as light as a moth’s wings, before pressing gently.
And despite her churning belly and jangled nerves, Gavina leaned into him.
Around them, oily, choking smoke drifted across the lower bailey, but Draco smelled clean, a mixture of leather and lye soap. And as their lips pressed together, the boom and thuds of missiles hitting the curtain walls, the whoosh of catapults releasing, and the shouts and cries of men all faded. The heat of Draco’s body enveloped her, even though they weren’t touching. His palms, cupping her cheeks, felt oddly comforting.
A heartbeat later, he pulled back, breaking the spell.
Whoosh.
A bolus of flame flew over the walls and landed on the roof of the smithy behind them. The thatch roof exploded.
Father Finlay cried out, raising his arm to shield his eyes from the blaze, while on the steps below, Maximus and Cassian hauled their wives to safety. Draco took hold of Gavina’s arm as he did the same, drawing her toward the postern door and the stairs that would take them to the upper ward.
The ceremony had come to an abrupt conclusion.
Reaching the door, Gavina turned, her gaze going to where Aila and Heather now sheltered a few feet away. It was the first time she’d looked at them properly since entering the chapel to convince Father Finlay to perform the wedding.
Both women were watching Gavina. Tears streaked Aila’s face, while Heather’s chin trembled.
Despite her assurances, they both worried for her.
Casting them a wobbly smile, Gavina called out to them, “Get to safety … it’s done now.”
Draco drew her through the postern door then, and they hurried up the stairs. The keep shuddered, throwing Gavina against Draco. He caught her, his arm going around her waist before they continued on their way.
Gavina’s heart started to race then, not just from the fire ball that had set alight the smith’s forge, but from the knowledge of what lay ahead.
Of course, it wasn’t all done.
Gavina and Draco’s union wasn’t complete until he bedded her. And despite the siege that howled around them, the bedding was going to have to take place now. There was little point in delaying it; the sooner the curse was broken, the bett
er.
Wordlessly, they emerged from the postern stairs and crossed the upper ward. Debris littered the cobbled bailey, and chunks of burning matter still fell from the sky. It was dangerous to be outdoors.
Draco had taken her hand, holding it in a firm grip as they negotiated the bailey. But once they were inside the gallery beyond, he continued to hold her hand. Still not speaking, they made their way to Gavina’s quarters: three large chambers that flanked the southern side of the keep, consisting of a dressing room, bed-chamber, and solar.
They entered the women’s solar together to find it dimly lit by a glowing lump in the hearth and a single lantern on the mantelpiece. Usually at this hour, the shutters would be thrown open to let in the morning sun, but today they were bolted shut to keep out the smoke and din of battle.
But Gavina could still hear the roar of the attack, even through the thick wood and stone. The keep shuddered then, a reminder of what raged beyond these walls.
Slowing her pace as nerves danced in her belly, Gavina led Draco across the floor toward a closed door. “My bed-chamber is through here,” she murmured, deliberately avoiding his gaze.
This felt all wrong, as if she were watching the scene unfold from a distance.
This wasn’t happening to her, was it?
Draco continued to say nothing, which only added to her discomfort. His silence had a weight to it.
Like the women’s solar, her bed-chamber was dimly lit. The room was spacious—or it had seemed so before Draco Vulcan stepped into it. He was still holding her hand, and Gavina wanted to pull away, to take a few much-needed steps back from him. Although to extricate herself from him would seem rude. Especially in light of what they were about to do.
