by Darci Hannah
“So,” I began, looking skeptically at him, “are you trying to make me believe that you were coming to my defense?”
“I’m not trying to make you believe anything. You’ve proven time and again that you’re perfectly content believing what you like.”
While I attempted to process this accusation, he grabbed the pillow from my arms and thrust it back under his head. His arms were crossed and he was looking overly relaxed when I finally replied, “That’s not true. And you’re right about Sir George, he did go too far, but his life is not forfeit. He’s also a nobleman and a knight of Scotland. Yet more important, he wasn’t trying to rob me.”
“I wasn’t trying either. I succeeded.” A gloriously smug grin lit his face.
I ached to hit him. Instead I yanked the pillow away again. He wasn’t expecting it and cracked his overinflated head against the bed frame. “Are you utterly mad?” I said. “If you were in need of money so desperately, couldn’t you have just sent a message or something?”
“And forgo the pleasure of seeing you and Sir George together in the same room?” he replied cheerfully, rubbing his head. “Why, I’ve paid good money to see lesser spectacles.”
“Get out,” I said, seething. I had suffered enough of him and his wicked tongue for one day. “Get out of my castle, or I swear I will call the guards!”
He moved quickly, with the grace of a cat, and before I knew it my trembling hands were cradled in his irritatingly steady ones. Julius had remarkable hands, long-fingered and elegant, yet I could see that they were marred by fine silvery scars, speaking of untold hardships suffered after his exile. And there was something else too: a ring. Feeling the coolness of the gold band on his middle finger, my hand stilled. I looked at Julius; his animated face was void of all expression. And then, slowly, I turned his hand over. The sight of the ring took the breath from me, for it was the Blythe Angel, the signet ring of our father, with the motto JE SUIS PROTÉGÉ written in reverse beneath the winged warrior. Our eyes met and held. It was then that I saw, for the second time in my life, a look in Julius that caused my heart to ache. It was a naked vulnerability that he had worked hard to conceal beneath a mask of indifference. But it was there now, as we both beheld our father’s ring, in a look suffused with all the pain, hope, and loss I had ever felt. Julius was a master at the art of deception; yet even he could not deceive me this time.
“Isabeau,” he uttered, and for once there was no irksome grin or ironic sneer on his face as he spoke. “I was going to speak with you later, but since my little nocturnal blunder, I shall tell you now. I have not come here to dredge up the past, if that is your concern. I have returned to protect the future of our race, and in order to do that, I’m going to need your help.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, watching him carefully, for I half believed the knock on his head had done some real damage.
“It’s late. I’m late, and it’s far too complicated to explain now. The truth is that I have come to ask for your help. No, wait, that’s a lie too. I believe we can help each other,” he corrected, and offered a forced smile.
“Really? How so?” I was utterly befuddled, and I believed he was a little as well.
“I need you to help me find somebody, and in return I will help you maintain peace and appearances here.”
“What? I don’t need …”
He let go of my hand to hold up a cautioning finger, stopping my protest.
And then I had another sinking feeling. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, be thinking of blackmailing me?” Unfortunately the use of blackmail was all too common in the Borders.
“Don’t be silly.” He waved off my suggestion. “I’m simply offering my help in return for yours. I’m quite anxious to help, really. After all, I have a band of idle mercenaries, remember?”
“And if I don’t help you?”
“Again, I have a band of idle mercenaries.” He smiled sweetly. “I would hate to make you look the fool.”
“You are blackmailing me!” I cried, and yanked my hands from his. “My own bloody brother has come home to blackmail me. I’m certain I’ve never heard the like. Well, let me save you the trouble, brother. If it’s Sir George you want, I know where he is. You’re welcome to him. Just do me the courtesy of leaving my castle before you conduct your ugly business.”
The mirth, the air of insouciance, returned, and he replied, “God as my witness, I wish it were that simple! But no, the man I’m seeking, Isabeau, is a very elusive being. Do you understand me?”
It wasn’t the words he spoke so much as the manner in which he spoke them that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Ah,” he uttered, studying me intently. “I believe you have guessed it.”
“No.” I shook my head, refusing to believe him. “No. You have not come here for that.”
“Oh, but I have. I have returned because I have need of something only you can find. I have need of an angel, my dear. And what better place to find such a creature than within the walls of our unchancy home, this monument built by the mad to worship the divine: Blythe Hall.”
Chapter 5
THE ALTAR OF ANGELS
ALTHOUGH I LIKED TO THINK THAT I HAD MANY COMMENDABLE qualities, I was, by nature, a stubborn and prideful person. The good sisters at Haddington had stumbled upon this sinful defect in my character a time or two and, bless their misguided hearts, had tried to correct it. Yet eventually even they recognized a lost cause when they saw one; for I would not suffer being made to look the fool by anyone, and I certainly would not do so now at the hands of my estranged brother.
And Julius was planning to do just that. Like a sickening wave of nausea it had hit me, as I stood listening to his ludicrous demand, that he had amassed and flaunted his merry band of outlaws for a reason far more devious than I had at first imagined. It was for my benefit that he and his men had rendered the cream of the King’s Guard helpless in the Great Hall. It was for my benefit that Sir George had been exposed for intercepting the king’s messenger, regardless of his more personal motives. Julius, like the consummate manipulator he was, had been subtly letting me know who was really in control of Blythe Hall and the people of Blythemuir. And he would do his utmost to shatter all the confidence I had worked so hard to build in defense of the family madness by reducing me to a crazy woman who chased after angels. It was, I had to admit, maniacally brilliant.
I was seething with this new wave of hurt and anger. How was I to manage anything if I couldn’t even manage my own affairs? It was shameful enough knowing I was being played, yet I somehow found it even more humiliating to learn, in the manner I had, that Julius had infiltrated my home a second time—in the space of mere hours—just so he could satisfy his lust. In truth, there were a good many women in the neighborhood who would likely have welcomed him; he had a bit of a history in these parts. Some women, I had even heard though hardly believed, found debased outlaws such as Julius to be particularly appealing. These were definitely the weak-willed, morally deficient sort, the favorite prey of one such as my brother. Yet still, given all this, the fact that he had chosen to practice his vile sport in my castle—which was doubly guarded, no less—was not just another slap in the face but the height of irreverence.
It was then that I noticed the room had grown suddenly quiet; his near-silent footfalls had all but vanished. I had promised not to watch him leave, but I could listen, and I strained to hear the direction in which he headed as he slipped from the room in silk-clad feet. I assumed he would not venture toward the room where Mme. Seraphina slept, nor would he head out the door and risk waking Sir George, although Julius would have reveled in doing just that. No, I believed his only choice, having had another objective this night, would be to slip out the high window the way he had come. In this, however, I was wrong. I distinctly heard him head in the direction of the solar, but there was no sound of a door opening. I sat up, crawled to the end of the bed, and lifted the curtain. The room,
awash with moonlight streaming through the open window along with the effervescent scent of dewy grass, was empty; however, the door to the solar stood wide open. I eased myself off the bed and silently made for the door. The big room, with its plush furniture, bookcases, and settle by the fireplace, was vacant; both doors, the one opening onto the hallway and the other leading to the laird’s study, were locked. Julius had quite literally vanished.
Dejected, and more than a little frustrated, I went back to bed, where I consciously fought to control my breathing, for my lungs, heaving as though I had just run across the unforgiving moors, threatened to explode with the anger building inside me. I had learned over the years to master my emotions, to temper them as a lady ought to, pushing aside messy, unnecessary feelings that got in the way of common sense and clear thinking. But I could not quell this flood of white-hot rage. It was too raw and powerful, even for my great abilities; that fact alone angered me all the more. Yet with this impotent rage I experienced an equal amount of sorrow, and this I found to be just as devastating. I collapsed onto the bed, burying my streaming face in the coverlet, muffling my anguished sobs in the thick quilted folds of linen and down, so that no one would hear me—so that no one would see how low he had brought me. After years spent living a fiction of self-preserving denial, I was finally made to accept the dark and spiteful nature of my brother. Julius, with all his God-given gifts—the keen intellect, the athleticism, the winsome smile, the rapier wit—had squandered them all in his perverse desire to expose and exploit weakness. And he had come to expose and exploit mine. Like a long-forgotten nightmare, he had resurfaced, hell-bent on punishing me for that day long ago, that day he had never fully forgiven me for. The day I convinced our father that I conversed with angels.
It had always been said that our father had the strength of ten men in battle, for he, like the five other Lord Blythes before him, was a guardian of the kingdom of Scotland. He had been a man renowned far and wide, on both sides of the border, for his vast intelligence, his ability to prosper and even flourish in a troubled land, his keen observations and wise counsel, and the quiet strength with which he led those who followed him. He was a man who garnered the respect of his king, a loyal man and a brave one, and he had always been a good father. But the man who finally emerged from the long-forgotten tower room, after weeks of self-imposed isolation, could have been a stranger, so greatly was he altered. During his mad vigil he had allowed no one but Mme. Seraphina to enter, and ate only enough to sustain him. So it came as quite a shock when we first saw him, a man once gifted with graceful movements and a powerful frame; for he had emerged grossly diminished in girth and haltingly timid. His hair, the mane of thick, tawny curls, had lost its luster and hung in lank ropes at his shoulders, heavily streaked with gray. But it was his eyes, those wise, intelligent pools of ocean blue, that my memory has never shaken. My father’s eyes had always sparkled with life and mischief, but on that first day I spoke with him after he emerged from his sanctuary, I saw how they had changed—how the spark had altered—only to be replaced with a burning desire for something that could never be attained on earth. Even then I understood that he was straddling two worlds, hanging onto life with but a toehold in reality and one foot already firmly planted in the ever-after, the mental leap already made in an attempt to be with her once again.
Having never met my mother, I never fully understood the hold she had on him, but he would talk of her often. He especially delighted in telling me stories of her, of how beautiful she was, how kind she was, what a good mother she had been to Julius. And then he would tell me that she was a good mother to me too, for she watched over me, always, because she was an angel. By the time I was six I wanted to believe my father’s words, for by then I had grown quite jealous knowing that Julius, and just about everyone else in Blythemuir, had known her. I wanted to know her too, and not just in stories. That’s when I ventured for the first time up the many flights of stairs that led into the old peel tower. The tower was still in use, but no one lived in it anymore, not since the Great Hall and adjoining wing of apartments had been built. But I had learned from Mme. Seraphina that my mother had lived in the tower for a time, twice as a matter of fact, because she had chosen the highest room for her birth chamber. When I questioned the logic in this, not knowing much about birthing at the time, she assured me it was a usual practice, for the tower room was the highest place in the entire castle, and therefore closest to God. I liked hearing this, and it made perfect sense, for if my mother really was an angel, then naturally she’d want to be close to God. I believed the stories I was told, and when I discovered the room, fitted with a magnificent stained-glass window and still containing a large bed, painted chests, and beautiful clothes of the finest fabrics, though hopelessly covered in dust, I believed she still lived there. It was my little secret, going to the tower room, and when I’d play in her clothes, or rummage through her chest, or slip on a pair of her exquisitely beaded slippers, I imagined she was with me. I imagined that she would sit and talk with me as I played. In my imagination she was an angel, and sometimes she would bring the little winged boys with her, but they could be naughty. And I never called her Mum; I didn’t call her much of anything for that matter, because I hadn’t needed to. In my mind she was the white lady: a pure spirit.
However imaginative I was, the sad truth of it all was that my mother had been gone a long while. She had died in childbirth. It was, as everyone knew, the risk one took when entering the marriage bed, and if truth be told, it was partly the reason I was cautious to enter myself. But most men, after losing wives in such ways, replaced them soon enough. Our father never did. And all the women clamoring to be the next Lady Blythe eventually gave up trying and went away. Her death had affected him in a way I could never imagine and, as a child, hardly understood. Yet up until that day, our father had been an exemplary parent. That was why we didn’t understand his refusal to see us during his isolation. And when, weeks later, we were finally summoned, Julius and I, who had once been everything to him, seemed little more than physical reminders of a distant, shadowy past. Alone in the tower room, haunted by memories and convinced of miracles that never were, he had a new objective in life, for he clung to the belief that our mother had been, and still was, an angel.
I remember when he told us of his revelation. We had been brought to his apartment, the same opulent chambers I had taken as my own. He had been sitting at the desk in his room talking softly with Hendrick, a great pile of books and papers strewn on the table before him. At the sound of our arrival he turned from the conversation. That’s when we saw he had been holding Rondo in his lap—Rondo, the little collie pup he had surprised me with after the spring shearing. The puppy had endured some rough handling by the wicked Englishmen but had fully recovered, and because of it he held a peculiar fascination for our father. The dog grew excited at the sight of us, yet our father didn’t let him down. Instead he sent Hendrick and Mme. Seraphina from the room, for what he was about to tell us was for our ears alone.
Lord Blythe was convinced he had witnessed two miracles, the first occurring the day I was born, while the second, and most recent—the vision he experienced in the tower room—had been too fresh in all our minds to contemplate. He brushed over this recent miracle with a strategic lack of detail, for his real purpose in bringing us to his chambers was to explain, as he had never before, the mysterious circumstances surrounding our mother’s death. I remember sitting close to Julius on the cushioned settle, my hand clasped tightly around his, for there was a desperate elation about our father as he spoke that unnerved me. I knew Julius could feel it too, for I saw how his eyes, narrowed in a look of guarded inquiry, followed him as he paced before the hearth, clinging to the little puppy in the same way a mighty ship clings to a small anchor. And we had good reason to be frightened; for the story he told us revealed the depths of his madness.
I was reminded again that there is good reason men are not normally privy to the mys
teries of the birth chamber. While no one would dispute a man’s brave nature or his ability to remain strong and focused in the heat of battle whilst fighting alongside his men, impervious to the blood and death moans of dying comrades, the same cannot be said when the woman he cares for goes into labor. First, there’s the matter of an heir, which is no small trifling, especially for a lord. Second, when a woman’s pain elevates to the unthinkable horror it does in the last stages of the ordeal, there is no sword to wield, no enemy to battle but for time and the unknown. A man in the birth chamber is helpless to do aught but watch, and it fair drives him, and everyone around him, insane, or so I’ve been told. That’s why the secrets and struggles of birthing are reserved for midwives and the womenfolk of a household, and my mother’s birthing had been no different. In her eighth month she had taken to her birth chamber in the old tower room, just as she had with Julius. And when her pains had started on that day in late October, my father, thankfully, was well outside the castle walls working alongside our tenants to bring in the fall harvest. However, when word reached him that his wife was laboring to bring me into the world, he rode home at once and waited in the Great Hall, pacing and fashing away like a skittish horse, until he could see her.
He told us that at first everything appeared normal, for my mother had brought Julius into the world with little trouble and it was assumed it would be the same for me. It was Seraphina who came to tell him the news, shortly after midnight. There was no midwife by then, for the birth had gone well and she had already left. Lady Blythe had a healthy daughter; but there was something amiss—something untold in the elderly woman’s eyes.
