DarkWolfe

by Kathryn Le Veque

  “Are ye leaving, lass?” he asked.

  Rhoswyn nodded her head. She was trying very hard not to look at him, afraid she would embarrass herself with an emotional display.

  “Aye,” she said. “He wishes it.”

  “Ye mean yer husband?”

  “Aye.”

  The hand Keith had on her arm gave her a reassuring squeeze. “’Twill be all right, lass,” he murmured. “The Wolfe says that his son is the finest of men. He’ll make a fine husband. Be worthy of him. Obey him and be a good wife.”

  She looked at him, then. “If he is a good husband tae me, then I’ll be a good wife tae him.”

  Keith shook his head. “Yer husband can do as he wishes,” he said quietly. “Remember that ye’re a Kerr; we hold honor as the most valuable thing there is.”

  Rhoswyn looked at him, pointedly. “If that is true, then ye should have told me about yer plans tae marry me off. Ye should have been honest, Pa.”

  Keith wouldn’t admit that there was some truth to her words. But he didn’t regret what he’d done or how he’d done it. “’Tis over now,” he said quietly. “Ye’re married tae a de Wolfe now, the most powerful English family on the border. Ye’ll be respected and important now.”

  That wasn’t exactly what Rhoswyn wanted to hear. She was about to leave her father, perhaps forever, and she wanted to hear something sentimental and reassuring. But she knew that was too much to ask. Ever since her mother’s death, Keith hadn’t been able to speak on his feelings.

  Perhaps it was just as well.

  “Think of me once in a while, Pa,” she said as she turned away, her throat tight with emotion. “Think of the daughter ye gave over tae the English.”

  “Ye’ll thank me for it someday.”

  Rhoswyn wasn’t so sure. All she knew was that she felt she was heading to her doom. As she stood there with her sack and bedroll clutched up against her chest, she realized that Troy was standing next to her, waiting. When she looked at him, uncertainty on her features, he gestured to the hall entry.

  “This way, my lady,” he said.

  He led and she followed, wandering through a maze of inebriated English soldiers, hearing strains of music somewhere as someone strummed a mandolin. It was a smoky hall, filled with dirty men, and the stench was enough to make her eyes water. But she clutched her possessions to her, terrified, as she followed her new husband from the hall.

  They exited into the bailey beneath a clear sky and brilliant stars. The storm that had threatened earlier in the day had blown off somewhere, leaving a crisp evening. As soon as Troy hit the dirt of the bailey, he stopped and turned to Rhoswyn. But she came to a halt because he did, looking at him with suspicious eyes. He tried not to smile at the look on her face, as if waiting for him to do all manner of terrible things to her now that they were out of the hall and alone.

  “I was waiting so you may walk beside me,” he said. “I do not expect my wife to walk behind me.”

  Hesitantly, Rhoswyn closed the gap, looking the man in the face, wondering if he was really as kind and understanding as he seemed to be. This was the same man she’d beaten in a fight, the same one who had hit her on the side of the head and nearly knocked her senseless. The same man she’d kneed in the groin, as the young English knight had so thoughtfully pointed out. All of those terrible things had happened, but he didn’t seem to hold a grudge; at least, on the surface. Who knew what would happen once he got her alone.

  She was apprehensive for that moment.

  Troy could see the utter anxiety in the woman’s expression. He’d seen it all evening, since the priest had married them. She’d been silent and still all night, hardly moving, and he didn’t think she’d eaten very much, if at all. Not that he blamed her. Perhaps he was old and hardened, so much so that even a marriage didn’t get him too worked up. He had seen nearly forty years; he couldn’t imagine that his new wife had seen half of that. She was young, he was old. She was beautiful and he had wrinkles on his face.

  It was going to be an interesting evening.

  “My brothers have made up our bedchamber,” he told her as he led her towards the tower. “I cannot vouch for the comfort of the bed, but I know they did what they could. After the siege, there wasn’t much left to work with.”

  Rhoswyn was walking beside him but she was about five feet away, clutching her possessions to her chest as she looked around the compound. “This is me first time tae Monteviot,” she said. “I canna see much tae it.”

  Troy looked around, too. There was a big stone wall, an oddly large bailey, the tower, outbuildings, and a hall built next to the tower. Most Scottish towers didn’t have a hall, but this one did.

  “It is not spectacular, but it is strategic,” he said after a moment. “But I am sure you already know that.”

  She nodded. “Me pa said so.”

  Troy pointed off to the east. “My father’s seat of Castle Questing is about twelve miles that way,” he said. “My own castle of Kale is five miles to the north, but Monteviot sits close to the English border. It is barely a mile to the south. The reivers that had settled here were making great misery for the English villages.”

  They had reached the darkened tower and it loomed over them. But the stench of smoke and death was strong, and Troy reached out to open the entry door that had been repaired from scraps of wood that they could find. He started to go in but noticed that Rhoswyn wasn’t moving. He paused.

  “Is something the matter?” he asked.

  She was looking up at the tall, bulky tower. “The siege,” she said. Then she paused, hesitantly, before continuing. “That smell… me pa said ye were burnin’ men.”

  Troy was honest with her; there was no reason not to be. “It was not by choice,” he said. “It was by necessity. The tower was the last holdout; we had control of the bailey, the outbuildings, and the hall, but there were about thirty Scotsmen holed up in the keep. We tried to get them out; we even promised to release them unharmed if they would only leave the tower. They refused so we burned them out.”

  Rhoswyn understood; she knew battles. She knew how Scotsmen thought. “They would rather die than surrender.”

  Troy nodded but he didn’t reply. She seemed to be rather depressed by the thought so it was better to not comment. He reached out a hand to her.

  “May I take your baggage?” he asked.

  Rhoswyn shook her head, miffed that he would think her so weak. “I’m capable of carryin’ it.”

  So much for being polite. Troy led her up to the floor above the small solar, the level that had the two undamaged rooms on it. But the smell of smoke was heavier than usual and when Troy opened the chamber door, he could see why; the hearth had malfunctioned and there was a blue layer of smoke in the room. Coughing, he opened the door and went straight to the hearth that was happily blazing away.

  “Damnation,” he muttered, coughing and kneeling down to tend to the chimney. “Did no one check the chimney when they started this blaze?”

  Rhoswyn followed him into the chamber, her eyes burning from the smoke, and quickly set her possessions down against the wall. She noticed there was some kind of oil cloth on the mattress, which was lying on the floor, and she picked up the cloth, waving it briskly and driving the smoke out of the room. She coughed, Troy coughed, as they both struggled with the smoke.

  “This was not how I’d hoped the chamber to be,” Troy said. “I cannot offer you much comfort, but I’d hoped we’d at least be able to breathe.”

  It was meant to be a quip, but Rhoswyn missed the humor completely. She continued to fan, moving a good deal of the smoke out of the door. There were two small windows that someone had covered with oiled cloth, and she ripped the cloth free, letting the air from outside suck into the room.

  “The smoke will be gone soon enough,” she said, though she coughed as she said it. “Considerin’ that the rest of the tower smells of smoke, I suppose it willna matter much. There is smoke everywhere.”

&nbs
p; Troy wasn’t oblivious to the fact that she’d jumped right in to help with the smoke situation. She hadn’t stood by the door and cowered; this was a woman who was used to action. She’d loosened up through the evening and he thanked God that he wasn’t dealing with a wife who needed to be bound hand and foot in order to keep her from hurting others or herself. Moreover, she wasn’t trying to run anymore.

  He saw that as progress.

  “I think the smell of smoke will be here for some time to come,” he said, rising from the hearth, which was now properly evacuating the smoke out of a chimney that had been partially blocked. “We shall have to become used to it.”

  Rhoswyn stopped waving the oiled cloth around because the air was much clearer now. She watched Troy as he went to the door and quietly closed it. Their eyes met when he turned to face her and an awkward silence settled. Troy lifted his eyebrows, thinking he should probably say something that would make them both feel at ease.

  “Well,” he said, clearing his throat softly as he moved back towards the hearth. “Since we both find ourselves in an unexpected situation this night, mayhap it would be best if we learn something about one another. It might make you feel more comfortable considering we know virtually nothing about each other.”

  Without the hundreds of English soldiers surrounding her, Rhoswyn was easing up considerably. It was just her and Troy now, and it was natural that she should be curious about him. They were to spend the rest of their lives together, a concept she was having a difficult time with. In truth, she’d never been close to anyone in her life, not even her father, so it was an odd notion. She had no friends, and she had no idea where to even start.

  “I dunna know what more I need tae know of ye,” she said quietly. “Ye’re a de Wolfe. Me pa said that ye’re a fine man. What else is there?”

  Clearly, she had no concept on what a marriage was like. Troy scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Much more,” he said. “More than you know. You should know something of me and I should know something of you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Who taught you how to fight?”

  Her chin lifted in a gesture that hinted at defiance. “Me pa.”

  Troy folded his big arms across his chest, leaning back against the wall. “And how long have you been fighting?”

  “All me life.”

  Troy’s eyebrows lifted. “Even when you were a young lass?”

  She nodded. “Having no sons, me pa taught me how tae wield a sword and how tae fight. He said it came naturally tae me.”

  “And you like to fight?”

  Rhoswyn had to think about his question; it confused her. “What else is there?”

  He shrugged. “I simply meant that most young ladies do not lift swords,” he said. “There are many things young women do that do not involve sharp blades or drawing blood.”

  There was that dry sense of humor again, but Rhoswyn was oblivious to it. Her brow furrowed and Troy could see that she really had no concept of what he was saying.

  “But… but this is what I do,” she said. “This is me.”

  Troy studied her a moment, wondering what to say next. She didn’t seem to be much of a conversationalist, nor did he see much depth to her personality. He hoped she wasn’t some dullard; it would be terrible to be saddled to a senseless, foolish woman for the rest of his life, no matter how lovely she was.

  “Did your father educate you?” he asked. “What I mean to ask is what more do you know other than fighting?”

  She knew what he meant. “Me ma taught me tae sew and sing,” she said. “I can read and speak English, Gaelic, and Latin.”

  That surprised him. “Who taught you that?”

  “Me ma. She died when I had seen eleven summers.” Now, she was becoming bolder. She didn’t want to talk about herself anymore. “Can I ask ye a question?”

  He nodded. “Aye.”

  “Ye told me earlier that ye did not want tae marry again. Does that mean that ye’ve been married before?”

  Troy thought on her question; he had said that, hadn’t he? He supposed there was no harm in telling her the truth. She would find out, eventually, given that everyone who knew him knew he’d been married before. Someone would tell her if he didn’t.

  “Aye,” he replied, averting his gaze as he turned to look at the fire. “I was married very young. I had seen twenty-two years and she had seen fifteen years. We had three children together but only one has survived. My wife and two youngest children were killed two years ago.”

  Rhoswyn found herself inherently sympathetic to that news. “Oh,” she said solemnly. “What… what happened?”

  “They drowned.”

  That sounded quite tragic to her. “But ye have one child left?”

  He nodded. “My son, Andreas,” he said. “He has seen seventeen years and he is fostering at Norwich Castle.”

  “Ye must be proud of the lad.”

  “He is my shining star.”

  Rhoswyn watched him as he spoke, his subdued manner. Even though his answers were without emotion, it was his expression that gave him away. Speaking about his dead wife and children was still upsetting to him even though he tried to cover it up. But oddly enough, his confession somehow made her more sympathetic to him.

  It made him more human.

  This wasn’t a single-dimension Sassenach warrior. This was a man who had suffered great loss but continued to push through it. She wondered if he felt terribly lonely, though. He seemed that way to her.

  Then, the guilt began to set in.

  This was the same man she’d fought, kneed, hit, and humiliated. Then, she’d refused to marry him so strongly that she had to be carried to him in ropes to their wedding. In her defense, she hadn’t cared what the man thought at the time. She still wasn’t sure she did, but now she was sliding into that gray area of awkward guilt over her behavior. Something inside urged her to show him she wasn’t the wild animal his father had accused her of being.

  “Norwich Castle,” she said, attempting to continue the conversation. “Is that near London?”

  Troy nodded. “It is not too far from it,” he said. “About a day’s ride.”

  “Have ye been tae London, then?”

  He grinned. “Many times. Have you?”

  She shook her head as if she would rather be dead than set foot on the streets of London. “Nay, laddie. Never.”

  He laughed at the way she said it, the term she called him. Laddie. His father called him that on occasion, but no one else had dared refer to him as a lad in a very long time. He rather liked to hear it in her sultry voice, so much so that he didn’t mind at all.

  “Then we shall go sometime,” he said. “Surely you would like to travel out of Scotland and see other places, other people.”

  She looked at him as if he’d just asked her to go to the moon. “Out of Scotland, ye say?” she asked, astonished. “What would I do out of Scotland?”

  “You do not wish to travel?”

  She shrugged. “I… I wouldna know how.”

  Troy’s gaze lingered on her a moment. “Did you never go anywhere with your father?”

  She shook her head. “Me pa doesna leave Sibbald’s. ’Tis our home, ye know.”

  “I know. But why does he not leave?”

  Rhoswyn shrugged. “He just doesna,” she said. “I canna recall him leavin’ more than just a few times in me life, so comin’ tae Monteviot was rare for him. I think he feels anxious when he leaves. He always wants tae go home.”

  Troy already knew that about Red Keith Kerr; they all knew that the man rarely strayed from home. It could be because he simply loved his home too much to leave it, or it could be because he was afraid when he left home. Troy had seen men who couldn’t leave their homes or lift a weapon, anxieties of men who had seen too much battle. It wasn’t uncommon. Pushing himself off of the wall, he turned to the fire one last time.

  “Well,” he said, “if that’s the man’s choice, so be it. But you may li
ke to travel to London someday. Or we do not have to go to London; we can go to York or Carlisle, or anywhere else you might like to go.”

  Rhoswyn had never considered anything like that in her life. Leaving her home, her father’s lands, had never even occurred to her.

  “I say it is enough that I’m here,” she said. “I canna think on goin’ anywhere else. I’ve never spent a night away from Sibbald’s in me life.”

  Troy poked at the wood, settling it down into a warm blaze. Her mention of spending the night outside of Sibbald’s reminded him of what was to come this night, of what was to be expected. He hoped she had an idea of it, too, because she seemed to have lived a rather sheltered life. He didn’t want her going mad with what he was about to tell her.

  “Speaking of the night,” he said as he stirred the fire, “you understand what it is that married people do on their wedding night, don’t you?”

  Rhoswyn looked at him sharply, realizing what he was asking, and then feeling her cheeks flame at the mere thought. Did she know? She certainly did. This was the moment she had been dreading.

  “Aye,” she said. “I know.”

  “What do you know?”

  She frowned. “I havena done it before if that’s what ye’re askin’.”

  He tried not to smile at her outrage. “That is not what I meant,” he said. “I simply meant… since I have done this before, if you would like me to explain the situation, I will be happy to.”

  Rhoswyn had never been so embarrassed in her life. To speak of such personal things with a stranger! But Troy wasn’t any stranger; he was her husband. As of tonight, he would be a stranger no longer. But so much about this day had been in upheaval – her entire life was in upheaval, now with a husband who wanted to take her to London and explain the ways of men and women to her. It was almost too much to process and for the first time all evening, her composure was fracturing. Not in the sense that she wanted to run away again, but in the sense that she couldn’t comprehend a man who would be so understanding. Not after the day they’d had.

  “Why?” she finally hissed, unable to look at him. “Why would ye do this?”