My True Love

by Karen Ranney

  “I didn’t see her again for eight years,” she said, recalling the day Anne had come to her doorway. Her heart had nearly stopped with the joy of it. The first thought she’d had was that Robbie had taken pity on her loneliness and longing and had sent her daughter to her.

  “What did you do all those years, Hannah? How did you bear it?”

  “I went to fairs in the autumn. Tilled my garden.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Grew herbs and learned how to heal broken wings and ease the suffering of an animal that escaped from a trap.” She smiled. “And became a friend to the daughter I loved so well. Those moments were among the most precious of my life.”

  “It is no wonder you’ve a wagging tongue,” he said with a gentle smile. “You’ve no one to talk to all this time.”

  She began to smile, then to laugh, understanding that he used insults the way other men used flattery, to coax and cajole. She didn’t bother to tell him that it worked. Her mood was lighter than it had been a moment ago. By his smug smile he told her he knew only too well.

  He studied her. “You’re afraid it will happen again.”

  She turned and stared at him. “You have an uncomfortable knack of doing that, Richard.”

  “Of doing what? Keeping you off balance? It is my ambition, my dear, since your bandages were removed.”

  “Don’t call me my dear.”

  “I’ve been doing so all along. Have you just now noticed?”

  She frowned at him.

  “Do you think Anne is in danger of doing what you did?” he asked, returning to subject at hand. “Of falling in love with the wrong man? Or of doing something that will lock her up on an island forever?”

  “I wouldn’t have that happen to her, Richard. Sometimes love isn’t enough.”

  “Do you still love him, Hannah?” he asked. His question was addressed to the chessboard. “After all these years?”

  She had wanted, just once, to see Robbie again. To thank him for those years. For allowing her to be part of Anne’s life. If it was true that he’d ruined her, it was equally so that she’d participated in her own shame, had enjoyed the act with him enough so that memories of it had given her hot and feverish dreams for years. Yet he’d rescued her when a lesser man would have turned his back. And had not forbidden his daughter to come to her.

  “I will always love him, Richard. He is Anne’s father. But love is like a flower. Without sun and water it will not grow. And whatever doesn’t grow must eventually die.”

  He smiled at her. “Hannah, that was almost poetic.”

  She could feel her face warm. “You are a silly man, Richard.”

  “No one has ever called me that before,” he said, his smile growing in scope. “My daughter will be pleased. She has been fussing at me to be more daring in my dress and my demeanor.”

  She stared at him, absolutely flummoxed. With only a few words he’d dismissed the tragedy of her life. Not only had he made light of the story, but he’d stripped any shame from it.

  “You warned me once that those who listen at doors never hear any good about themselves. Now I know why,” Anne said, stepping into the room. “I might have learned I was a bastard.”

  Hannah’s blood turned to ice.

  “I came to ask if you would like to come to the garden with me. It is safe enough there. A few moments out of doors seemed like a nice diversion.”

  “Instead, you’ve found another,” Richard said, standing. He looked from one woman to the other. He said something, made his excuses, left the room. Or at least Hannah thought he did.

  She stood slowly, faced the woman she’d known as friend but had never acknowledged as her daughter.

  “Why did you never tell me?” Anne asked, her eyes flashing with anger. “There were numerous times when you might have said something.”

  “What could I have said?”

  “The truth? Ian certainly made it a point to let me know what the gossip was.”

  “What would it have served? The truth was that you were the laird’s daughter. What did it matter who your mother was?”

  Anne looked away, focused on the window and the view beyond. She took a deep breath. “I could not go to my father with those tales, and my mother would have been too hurt by such words.”

  She turned, faced Hannah. It occurred to Hannah that she had rarely seen Anne angry. The emotion seemed to snap in the air between them.

  “But you knew. I came to you with all my secrets. All my fears. You could have eased them with a few words.”

  “And stripped you of a mother’s love.” Her own anger began to build. “What would you have me say to a child? That your mother isn’t your mother? That the woman you knew as friend was your mother? What good would it have done, Anne?”

  “We’ll never know, will we? You never spoke of it. I think, Hannah, it was less to protect me than it was to shield you. I have been grown for years. Does the same excuse suffice?”

  “Why do I think your anger is not solely at me, Anne?” She studied the younger woman.

  “I do not need to be sheltered; I am neither a child, nor am I a fool.” Anne moved away, toward the door, then turned and glanced back at Hannah. “It all makes sense,” she said. “Why you rarely spoke about my parents; why they never asked about you. Why you hardly left the island.”

  “The ruse was done with you in mind,” Hannah said.

  Anne smiled thinly. “I cannot believe that your sole reason was my happiness. My father wanted an heir. My mother wanted a child. You wished security.”

  “You see things in absolutes, Anne.”

  “Do I? Or only as they are?” she asked softly.

  She left the room without a backward glance.

  Chapter 20

  Anne looked up as the door to Stephen’s study opened.

  “I knew you would be here,” Ian said, frowning at her. “You always seek him out. Everyone else is gathered in the kitchen and here you are, pining for him.”

  Her entire life had been turned upside down, her knowledge of herself split in two and joined again in a misshapen ball. But in this matter, at least, things had not changed. Ian still played the bully.

  “Stephen is not here,” she said softly.

  “But you still remain. Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “He does not want you. You may have succeeded in becoming a diversion for him. But there is nothing else for you.”

  There was such anger on Ian’s face that it startled her. Was he enraged at her or at Stephen?

  That question was answered in the next moment.

  “We should have left here before we were trapped,” he said.

  Anne was bewildered. “And you blame me for that?”

  “Who else? It was you who wanted to come here. Why, Anne?”

  What would he say if she told him that she and the English general Penroth had the same motive? Both of them had the same purpose—they wanted Stephen.

  Anne suspected, however, that she would lose, either to Penroth or to Stephen’s honor.

  If she had not left home, would her life be in such shambles? Or would she simply have wondered, for the rest of her days, about the visions that had enchanted her from childhood? Which was better? Full knowledge or blessed ignorance?

  Another question whose answer she knew. She would gladly pay any price for these days.

  “Why did you never return to Dunniwerth in all these weeks, Ian?”

  His gaze never left her face. “I have been charged with your well-being, Anne. I could not leave you here.”

  However respectful he might be of her father, and however seriously he took being entrusted with her safety, there was a part of her that would never trust him. They had never been friends, only adversaries. The lonely child and the bully who’d tried to wound her with words.

  “Come with me, Anne,” Ian said, his voice now kinder. As if he’d heard her thoughts or intuited her misery. “You can sketch those sitting in the kitchen.”
<
br />   “So that we can all pretend to be amused?” She shook her head. She had been unable to draw caricatures these last few days.

  He frowned at her, then left the room.

  She found, oddly enough, that she could not draw Stephen. To place the image of his face on paper was more difficult than it had ever been before, as if her heart was filled to the brim and the act of sketching him would tip out the tears carefully guarded there.

  She often found refuge in his study when he was with his men in the ballroom. That large chamber served as both a training ground and practice yard.

  The room where she sat echoed with his presence even when empty. Many times she went to Juliana’s desk, and simply stood there with her hands resting on the sloping surface and finding a strange comfort in doing so. A connection to this woman who had lived so long ago.

  This morning she went to sit at Stephen’s desk, leaning back in the ugly lion chair that had been the source of his disdain. She suspected that he did not rid himself of the ugly animal chairs because they were part of his history. He was a man who prided himself on his heritage. As her clan did. The behavior of each Sinclair was held in check by rules handed down for generations. A code of honor as strict and inviolate as that Stephen of Langlinais followed.

  Did men live only to fight? She’d witnessed such exuberance on the faces of the men of Dunniwerth when they’d marched off to war. There had been two occasions in the last ten years when they’d left Sinclair lands in order to fight the English. The words they spoke were those of reluctance, but the sparkle in their eyes belied it. They hid their enthusiasm behind such exalted concepts as honor and pride and country.

  It sounded grand. But in the end what did it mean? That they loved the idea of fighting more than they did staying with their wives and children? That it was easier to lift a claymore than it was a hammer?

  Perhaps there was something she didn’t understand. But when it was over, when the siege of Harrington Court was through, when Stephen Harrington, Earl of Langlinais was captured and taken to London, what would be the final result? Would the world have been made a safer place? Would the crops grow better, children live past their infancy? Would men become more wise? Would the world be enriched somehow and made more beautiful? Or would it change anything? Other than his life and hers?

  It would not alter the outcome of the war or make the world a better or a worse place.

  She sat where he had so many times, looked out the window to the right of his desk. Here she could see the vista to the east. If she ignored the signs of encampment, the landscape appeared peaceful. A mist settled over the meadow. A variety of shades of green colored the trees and bushes and grass, from almost blue to emerald. A lovely sight, this land. Not, however, worth the cost of his life.

  The codex was before her, bound tight again within its wooden cover. She placed her hand gently on it, feeling a sense of awe that there had been only three people to touch it.

  Her thoughts were so filled with Stephen that it was with little surprise that the door opened and he walked in. He was intent upon his thoughts, his gaze on the floor. He looked up, blinked at her, and then smiled. A slow, dawning smile that warmed her from her toes.

  She stood up. “I’ve been at your desk,” she said.

  He did not seem irritated or even startled by her admission. Only waved her back in the chair.

  “Perhaps I can tempt you into the role of steward,” he said. “Although I will admit, it’s an easy enough job under a siege.”

  “No survey of the crops to do,” she said, smiling.

  “None,” he agreed, his own smile in place.

  “No sheep to shear.”

  “Or lambs to count.”

  It was silliness they engaged in, the banter of two adults who ridicule a topic the better to tolerate one that is not mentioned.

  “There is little enough to tally,” he said, the words shattering the illusion that it was only play.

  She didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. Nor did she dismiss his words with a smile. “How many more days until we’re out of food?”

  He seemed to study her, as if gauging her stamina for the truth. She wanted to tell him that her quota for bad news was absurdly low at the moment. But she didn’t, sensing in him a need to tell someone else his inner thoughts. So she smiled and returned his look with a steady regard of her own.

  “Less than two,” he said. “It was the devil’s own luck that we were preparing to leave the morning Penroth arrived. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have trapped the entire regiment here.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He closed the door behind him, walked to the window, and stood there looking out at the mist-enshrouded landscape. He stood silent and still, so resolute in that moment that she could have guessed his words. Something daring or profane in its sacrifice.

  But he surprised her.

  He turned and smiled at her. “Do you know, I’ve pictured you as a woman of the court. With your hair in curls and a beauty patch on your cheek.”

  “Have you?” His intent look made her smile.

  He nodded. “But I’ve decided that I like you better as you are with just your hair tied back with that ribbon.”

  “You do?” She should not be so absurdly pleased.

  “And your green dress with its frayed laces.”

  She felt a flush of embarrassment tempered with laughter. “I have hardly the wardrobe of a lady of court.”

  “You don’t need one, Anne. You outshine them.”

  How easily he charmed her.

  He came around the side of the desk, looked down at her drawing board. “What are you working on?”

  “The knight of Juliana’s. Something about him disturbs me, but I cannot place it.”

  His fingers hovered in the air above her drawing. “Have you never worked with paints?”

  She shook her head. “No, although I’ve longed to. Perhaps one day.”

  “I hope you do,” he said. His tone was bemused, his attention seemingly caught by the drawing of the knight. She’d drawn him with the shield across his body in much the same stance as Juliana had portrayed.

  “There is a great similarity between you and Juliana,” he said. “Both of you talented in things that do not interest most women.”

  “Or perhaps it is only that we are privileged to be given the chance to engage in them.”

  He glanced over at her.

  “Circumstance favored our interests. Juliana’s convent fostered both her and her talent. My father would have indulged me in whatever I pursued. I doubt there are that many women who have such good fortune.”

  “An interesting thought.”

  “People are interesting,” she said.

  “Life at Dunniwerth certainly sounds so.”

  She smiled at him. “No less so than at Langlinais. Do you not think of what the castle might have been like in Juliana’s time?”

  “Knights and damsels and codes of honor?” He turned and looked at her. “Our family motto dates back that far. Duty, honor, loyalty.”

  “As onerous as mine,” she said, confessing more than he knew. “A Sinclair is always brave.”

  “Difficult doctrines to accept.”

  “Or live up to,” she said.

  “Must you?”

  “Being a woman, you mean?” She wasn’t even irritated by the question. She doubted, however, that her equanimity might have been the same had another man asked that question of her. “I am the laird’s daughter. An example to follow. Even if you could discount that, the fact is I’m a Sinclair, and Sinclair women and men are supposed to be equally brave.”

  “Don’t Sinclair men protect their women?”

  “Yes, but the women sometimes guard the men. In their hearts if not with their claymores.”

  “What will you do with the rest of your life, Anne?”

  The question was as sharp as she’d known it would be, just as she’d known that he would ask it eventually. He
was a man who felt responsible for those in his care. She’d given her innocence to him, albeit willingly, and therefore he had incurred a debt. One that he felt, even if she did not.

  She was not, however, a parcel to be carefully tied and wrapped and bundled together in order to send it off to its destination.

  She sat back in the chair, faced ahead, her hands curved over the absurd lions’ heads.

  “I will marry,” she said calmly. “Someone who adores me. I will have children and grow old and wise.” The words came sweetly, with no touch of the hurt she felt.

  He said nothing, simply moved away.

  She felt a twinge of shame. Not enough to recant her words. In the next moment she was glad she had not.

  “Select your husband well,” he said, his voice soft. “Make sure he’s of genial temperament.”

  “Like you, you mean?”

  He turned and glanced at her. His smile had an edge to it. “I find I am not excessively genial when it comes to you, Anne Sinclair.”

  She leaned back in the chair and watched him. “You do not show it. I must commend you on your manners.”

  “I have been reared to be polite.”

  “It is a good thing I have not been,” she said. “One of us can be honest at least.”

  “There is a time to be honest and a time to remain silent,” he said, his attention focused on the figurine in his hand.

  Since she had used the same rationalization for her inability to tell him of her visions, she remained silent.

  “Yet I find that I am almost painfully honest with you. I wonder why that is?” He glanced at her.

  “Perhaps because I am simply a traveler through your life,” she said.

  He raised one eyebrow. “Is it the siege that brings out your irritation or my presence?”

  “No…just your absence,” she said, staring straight at him. “Something you’ve refrained from mentioning for all your claim to honesty.” She knew it even as she watched him. An uncanny sense gifted her with the knowledge of what he planned to do. Or perhaps it was only there in his eyes.