Shana Abe

by The Truelove Bride

  But this room must be Marcus’s solar, for she had seen none like it in her roaming. It had a good feel to it; neither too large nor too tight, a nice-sized fireplace, two sets of glass windows with excellent views. She had not noticed it before when she faced the emissaries, but then, there had been more important things to consider.

  The long table they had used was now covered in papers and loose scrolls, even open bound books with scribbled notes on the leaves.

  Avalon watched as Marcus walked over to the mess, rummaged around in it. His profile was to her, intense and sober; he was so heart-stoppingly handsome even in the tartan, enough to make her reason drift loose for a moment.…

  If only their lives had been different. If only he was not the son of Hanoch. If only he did not believe that nonsense of the devil’s curse. If only the horror of her childhood had not forced her to take that vow never to marry.…

  But this man was a part of it, all of it, whether he willed it or not. Avalon thought that even if he had had a choice, Marcus would have embraced that wretched curse anyway. And she would not be drawn into that devouring whirlpool of superstition and lies again. It would be a bottomless death to her.

  She walked away from him, went to examine an intricate stitched scene on a tapestry by one of the windows. It was a noblewoman bathing in a stream, her long, golden hair cloaking her. Maidservants were nearby, watching their mistress with black sewn eyes and necks bent like swans. The water had been given threads of blue and green and white. There was even a school of little fish around the lady.

  “I don’t know,” she heard Marcus say, frustrated. She looked around and found him seated, staring at the pile of papers with aversion. “It was here before,” he said. “It must still be here. All of these papers have been together.”

  “What is this?” she asked of the mess, coming over to him.

  “God knows. I inherited it.”

  Avalon picked up the tattered paper nearest her.

  “ ‘Four barrels good ale,’ ” she read to the room, translating the Gaelic to English. “ ‘In most excellent French oak and iron. Two ploughs with leather. Winter seed for … twenty fields. Thirty lamb in payment.’ ” She looked up. “A statement of account?”

  “So it appears. I would suppose Hanoch had no inclination for such mundane things as record keeping.”

  Five years at Gatting. Five years of Maribel’s diligent tutelage, from fashion to Latin to the complete management of the estate.

  “You have need of a steward,” Avalon observed.

  Marcus let out a laugh that had no humor. “Sauveur has need of many things, my lady, that I do not have to give it. A steward is there among them.”

  Avalon fingered the paper she held, looking down with misgiving at the faded ink. But she still made her offer.

  “I may help you, if you like.”

  Marcus looked up, alert. “What?”

  “I’ve done it before. I studied with the steward at Gatting. I know the way of these things.” She put the paper back on the pile. “He said I had an uncommon mind for mathematics, for a female,” she added derisively.

  “You would act as steward?” he asked, disbelieving.

  “No,” she said, fast. “I will train someone for you. Pick a man. Pick a woman. I will help as I can.”

  He seemed lost in thought, staring at a space behind her, out of the circle of brazier light that flickered around them.

  Avalon picked up a few more of the papers, glancing at them, moving them aside. Without planning to she found she was making deliberate groupings: bills for payment, receipts for bills paid. Miscellaneous and almost laughably disparate notes, some regarding grievances from one man regarding another, some apparently nothing more than opinions of certain people.

  “ ‘Keith MacFarland. A shifty coward. An evildoer,’ ” she read, and put it in her miscellaneous group.

  “That sounds like something Hanoch would say,” Marcus said dryly.

  “Yes, but he felt it strongly enough to write it down. Odd.” Avalon kept sorting. “He did not strike me as the kind of man who thought much of writing for any purpose. It was Ian who insisted I learn to read, in fact.”

  “Ian?”

  “Your father’s friend, Ian MacLochlan,” she said shortly. “The one who taught me to fight. Did you not know him?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You’re lucky.”

  Before he could respond she held out an unfolded note to him. “Is this the missive you received, my lord?”

  Marcus only glanced at the familiar lines. “Aye.”

  She studied it. A swath of ivory hair had escaped from her loose braid and flowed down the line of her neck to curl across her chest. Marcus watched her dissect the words, knowing she was completely unaware of her own beauty.

  “It was delivered by some lad from Clan Murry,” he said, unable to look away from her. “Who said he got it from another clan, who got it from England. That’s all we knew.”

  Avalon d’Farouche is to wed Warner d’Farouche in the next month, she read, at Trayleigh Castle on the second night of the waxing moon.

  The handwriting told her nothing. It had the typical flourishes of a hired scribe, untraceable. The paper was vellum, thick and expensive.

  The chimera yawned and stretched and took Avalon to a dark room, a single lamp of smoking tallow on a bench. A cloaked figure stood over a scribe, who scratched out the words as the woman recited them. The woman was hurried, frightened, thrilled.

  Claudia, Avalon thought. It had to be from Claudia. No one else had both the inclination and the resources to warn the Kincardines of Bryce’s plot, in hopes of spoiling it.

  Marcus’s deep voice intruded on her thoughts. “What do you see?”

  He didn’t ask her what she thought but rather what she saw, a deliberate implication that he knew of her vision, that perhaps he could read her thoughts, as well. Avalon kept her face impartial. “Nothing. Merely a note.”

  “Really? Because I rather thought you might know who sent it.”

  Avalon handed him back the message. “I do know who sent it. And I know why. It is obvious, when confronted with the facts of the matter.”

  He waited, steepling his hands in front of him.

  “Lady Claudia, wife of my cousin Bryce, had much to gain and nothing to lose by preventing the wedding.”

  “Is that so?”

  “She said she didn’t want a war.” Avalon let her hand drift over the stack of papers again. “She was the one who warned me of her husband’s plan the evening before. She indicated she wished me to stop it somehow.”

  “She wanted you to stop it? How?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Stand up in front of everyone, denounce Bryce and Warner.” She shook her head.

  “Would you have, Avalon?”

  He seemed serious, looking over at her, sitting at his table, and she had to look away from the blue light in his eyes.

  “I had a better plan,” she said, and wanted to leave it at that but felt compelled to go on, to satisfy that look he had. “I was going to pretend to agree to a betrothal. I was going to leave as soon as the party was done. But I didn’t realize Bryce wanted a wedding that night, not just an engagement. I had gone to my father’s garden to consider what was best to do.”

  “And that’s when I found you.”

  “Yes,” she said, annoyed for some reason.

  “So, in essence, I spared you from your cousin’s plan, isn’t that so?”

  “If you mean to suggest that by forcibly abducting me—”

  “I actually rescued you from a situation that you could not have escaped so easily on your own.”

  “Rescued me!” she gasped.

  “And it seems to me, in light of these new facts, that indeed, you owe me a boon, my lady.”

  Avalon opened her mouth but couldn’t find the words to express her outrage.

  “It turns out I did you a great service, after all,” Marcus said mildly.


  She stalked away from him, to the door.

  “Good night,” he called, laughter in his tone. “We can discuss my boon on the morrow.”

  She slammed the door behind her.

  Chapter Nine

  You must remember to keep your wrist straight.” Avalon bent over the brown-haired girl, ran her fingers down the girl’s arm and tapped them against her wrist. “Here, you see? If you bend your wrist when you hit, you lose power, and you might hurt yourself.”

  The girl was named Inez, and she dutifully repositioned her hand, following Avalon’s example. She was about thirteen, Avalon would guess, beginning to learn to fight at an age almost as old as Avalon had been at the end of her training.

  Inez had soft brown eyes and a sweet, engaging smile. She was one of seven girls in Avalon’s rather eclectic group who had volunteered to learn the bride’s warrior skills. There were twenty-eight pupils in all, every one of them young. But there were adults lingering on the fringes of the crowd, men and women both.

  When Inez and her friends shyly came forward that first morning to join the class, the boys had moaned and hissed them off, until Avalon silenced them by stating that unless all were welcome to learn, she would not teach any of them.

  The boys had looked at her, and then back at the girls, who were sullen but still hopeful.

  Avalon had walked over to the girls and begun there, showing them the proper stance before a hit. One by one, the boys had come over.

  Every now and again she caught a glimpse of Marcus, watching through a window that looked down on the bailey, walking by with a group of men, even standing and just looking at her, the wizard at his side. His face had been dispassionate, his expression mostly matter-of-fact, but underneath that exterior the chimera told her he was pleased, greatly so. She probably should have found that disturbing, but couldn’t.

  Over two weeks had passed since he told her she owed him a boon. Sixteen days, and he had not mentioned it again. Nor had he talked to her of marriage. In fact, he seemed content to allow her a measure of freedom, to discover Sauveur on her own, apparently taking her at her word when she said she would stay. For now.

  The door to her room was never locked now, and this gave her some comfort at night, knowing she could walk out any time she wanted. There was no guard trailing her. People still stared, yes, and they still talked and thought about her; she was still a novelty here. But in these two weeks she had had time to gradually come to know both the castle and its inhabitants, and they her. It was taking some of the shine of mysticism off her arrival. She was a woman. She did normal things that women did. Well, she tried to, at least.

  She had gone down to the buttery to visit Tegan and her helpers. She had joined in the making of a meal. She had kneaded dough herself over the protests of the kitchen women, who had ended up standing back, watching her work with a kind of scandalized delight.

  She had gone down to the woolen mill, watched the weavers at their looms, watched their hands work in steady rhythm, turning lines of thread into blankets, tunics, tartans. Small children knelt on the floor at their mother’s feet, sometimes helping, more often just playing. Avalon had not tried her hand at weaving; she had more sense than that. But she had praised what she saw, words honestly given, and the ladies had begun to open up to her and tell her bits and pieces of their lives as she watched them work.

  She had talked to sentries, to the men who had taken her from Trayleigh. She had gone to the stables—what there was of them—and seen for herself the care of the horses, the stable lads who put aside their pitchforks and took her around to introduce her to each animal, including the cats.

  And now this. Sixteen days of lessons, and the men were doing more than observing. Some of them were repeating her instructions to themselves under their breath, were moving their hands in a small imitation of her actions.

  Soon, she thought, they would step into her circle. Until then she would rather have them watch, grow more comfortable with her at their own speed. Not to mention her own. She had abandoned the sling days ago, but her shoulder was still sore, and she moved it carefully. Her ribs were almost healed.

  Inez was getting tired. It was no surprise to Avalon. They had been working for over an hour now in the late afternoon. An hour had been but a small portion of what Ian had demanded of her in training, but Avalon was not going to repeat his unrelenting schedule.

  These students of hers had chores on top of this. She would not wear them down any further than she had to. They already seemed to be slips of children to her, too thin, too weary.

  Not enough grain, not enough fish, chanted the chimera, as if Avalon didn’t already know.

  “That’s enough for today,” she said, curter than she meant to be. She softened her tone. “You’ve all done extremely well. Tomorrow I’ll show you something new.”

  The children were slow to scatter, a few running to their parents, more walking off in thoughtful steps, discussing what they learned.

  Marcus had come out to witness the end of the lesson, leaning against the wall of the keep with his arms crossed. He watched only her now. She felt his look as a singeing awareness, as if he could peer into the heart of her, as if he could see her chimera and was curious about it—he wanted to examine it, know her every thought, her dreams. Her soul.

  In the mists of her mind the chimera looked back at her, offered a toothy grin. Not enough, not enough …

  Avalon lifted her face to the sky, letting rays of the distant sun warm her cheeks, her eyelids, for a moment. The smell of burning pine came to her on a breeze, perhaps from one of the fireplaces in the great hall. It was sweet and smoky, blending impeccably with the briskness of the day.

  The children had dispersed into pockets of laughter, good natured, warmly clad in their tartans, off to finish their duties in their own world.

  Not enough.

  Well, why not? Avalon demanded of the chimera. Why wasn’t it enough? What was she supposed to do about it? She could not make grain appear with the wave of her hands! Salmon would not jump from the rivers at her command! What was she supposed to do?

  Marcus was still watching her. The sun had come out and wrapped him in slanting rays. It made glossy rainbows in his black hair. It showed her the stubble of a day without shaving, enhancing the square line of his jaw, the contrasting smoothness of his lips. It turned his eyes the color of the sky reflected on snow: not blue, not white, yet both.

  Their eyes met across the golden grass and dirt. They turned as one in the next heartbeat, looking out to the road a scant second before the scout appeared, galloping toward them.

  More news, Avalon thought, and a feeling of dread flowered in her stomach. What if it was the emissaries, back so soon with news of her betrothal? What if Bryce had won? What if she was to be commanded to marry Warner?

  Avalon picked up her skirts and joined the gathering crowd waiting for the scout. They parted and made room for her, surrounded her without thought, kept her in the middle, safe.

  Avalon politely pushed her way to the front to stand beside Marcus, who threw her one look before facing the man riding up the road.

  The horse was sweating, lathered to a foam. “A caravan,” called the scout, before he had even come to a halt.

  The crowd began to murmur, a rise and fall of sound. “How many men?” Marcus asked.

  The scout swung down easily from his saddle, slapping the horse on the neck. The animal lowered its head and shook it as if to rid itself of the wetness on its coat.

  “Not many,” said the scout. “No more than half a dozen. They carry Malcolm’s flag. And another. I don’t know it.”

  Avalon tried to see what the scout had seen, as she had before, but the chimera turned its back to her, refusing.

  “What colors?” she heard herself asking.

  The scout looked down at her, then over to Marcus, who nodded.

  “Green and white,” said the scout to Avalon. “With a beast of red.”

  “A lion
with a poppy?”

  “Aye,” said the scout. “That’s it.”

  “Bryce,” Avalon said to Marcus, and the crowd exploded with comment. They pushed forward, began to pluck at her sleeves, taking her back into themselves. Hide the bride, don’t let them take her.…

  “Wait,” said Marcus, freeing her from the hands all around. His voice echoed off the stone of the keep, capturing the attention of them all. “Six men are not an army. Six men are not coming to take the bride. This is something else.”

  “What could it be?” asked one of the women.

  “An edict!” shouted someone.

  “They were at the Valley of Kale when I left. They will be here shortly,” said the scout.

  “Take the bride into the keep,” suggested a man, and many voices seconded him.

  “I’m not going!” Avalon shouted over them.

  Everyone quieted, all eyes fell on her.

  “I said I would stay at Sauveur, and I will,” she said now, quieter. “But I am remaining here to meet the party.”

  Marcus stood behind her, at her shoulder, tall and indisputably the laird. “Aye, she stays,” he said. “She has a right to hear what is said.”

  The caravan was visible now down the winding road, just one wagon pulled by a team of four horses, four outriders flanking it. Two held the flags.

  The d’Farouche heraldry covered the wagon’s load. Avalon marked their progress up the hill with a sinking heart.

  It was not possible that all her trunks would fit on that one cart. Not even a third could. Not a fourth.

  The horses clambered up to the gate of Sauveur; Malcolm’s men were in front.

  “Who among ye is the Kincardine?” called out the lead man, a grizzled warrior in a tartan of a clan Avalon did not recognize.

  “I am.” Marcus stepped forward.