Robert the Brus had held the position of tanist to the king, the next to take the throne if the king died childless. He and Lord Hugh had served as regents when the king was a child. They both stood high in the king’s respect. That much her parents had told her, knowing her true origins. And this man was part of that other family.
“William de Brus? Is that your name?” she asked.
“Aye, though a distant cousin to the one who served with Lord Hugh as regents and as guardians to the king in his minority.”
She could not speak. He was not simply a knight; he was a nobleman and a warrior, with as many connections to the king as Lord Hugh. What was he doing here, and why did he pursue her?
“I see the fear is back in your eyes, and I like it not,” he said, shaking his head. “I am a simple knight in service to my king,” he explained. Something in his words did not ring true to her. He held a secret or secrets back, from her and from the world, she suspected. But then, so did she.
“Here in Yester? What brings you here?” She watched for signs of a lie in his answer or his voice.
“Aye, I must meet with your lord on a private matter.”
The truth. Every fiber within her said he spoke truly.
“He has been gone for a fortnight.” She offered him that bit of truth in return, sensing that he did not wish to reveal a single detail to her.
“Do you know when he will return?” he asked. The softness of his tone did not fool her for a moment, but it did surprise her.
A man such as this was used to getting what he wanted and did not have to be nice to get it. Still, he needed to know, for whatever this matter was. The one that had him staring up at the hillside when she’d arrived. From the intensity of his expression at the time, it had appeared as though he was making a plan or worrying about an attack from above.
Even knowing all that and suspecting more, Brienne felt as though she wanted to tell him. She wanted to help him. This man who was so far above her and could have no place in her life, who would do his duty and leave her life forever, made her want to tell him whatever he needed or wanted to know.
She nearly laughed aloud as she realized it. For it went against everything her parents and experience had taught her about the consequences of speaking about Lord Hugh to outsiders. And yet . . .
“Soon, I think. It is not his custom to leave the castle for much longer than that.” The words tumbled out, in spite of her doubts about sharing them. He smiled at her, and it eased her fears a bit. She let out the breath she did not know she held inside and nodded.
“Are the lady and her daughter within?”
A terrible thought struck her at this question. Was he to marry her half sister, Adelaide? Had the king sent him to propose the match with their father? No! She wanted to scream out and stop him, if that was his intent. But the sight of Gavin standing a few paces away stopped her from uttering another word.
“Father,” she said, nodding to him. Sir William faced him as well.
“Brienne, come with me. Your mother needs you,” he said. He crossed his massive arms over his chest and waited for her to move.
Sir William did not seem surprised or bothered by the order given her. He stepped aside without a word and without looking away from her father and allowed her to walk from his side. When she reached him, she turned back and met the knight’s gaze. Once more, he smiled at her, and Brienne knew her fear of him was gone. She nodded her reply to the question he last asked and waited for him to indicate he’d understood before looking at Gavin.
“Go, child,” her father said softly, nodding in the direction of their cottage. “I will follow you.”
What was he going to do? Try to protect her from this knight? This man of power? This knight sent here on the king’s orders? Such a man could take anything or anyone he wanted and answer to almost no one—certainly not the blacksmith. A few coins paid to the lord would address any loss of honor, if it came to that, and it had before to other women here. Her lord, her true sire, used his people ruthlessly and cared little if others did as well.
Gavin moved so that he once again stood between her and Sir William, and she was forced to begin walking away. She would have to have faith that Gavin would not insult this warrior over any threat he thought the man held for her. Sir William had, other than one kiss, done nothing untoward, and Gavin should have no argument with him.
Only as she walked away did she realize how far from the truth that thought was.
This man had already changed her life, and he would change it more. She knew it in her bones. The fire in her blood knew it and teased her with it. Brienne simply had no sense of how it would happen or when, but it would be soon.
Very soon, the fire whispered.
* * *
William watched as Brienne left, and that strange feeling in his blood began anew. This man was her father and offered no threat to her, and yet something inside him knew that the man stood in William’s path to claiming her. He fought against releasing whatever pushed from within, repeating to himself that this man protected her as well. And he would protect her until she belonged to him. The heat racing in his veins eased and the redness in his gaze faded then.
“I would ask ye to keep away from my daughter, my lord.”
Though there was no disrespect in this man’s tone, there was a hint of guilt there. Or another emotion that William could not identify.
“What is your name?”
“Gavin, my lord. Gavin the blacksmith.”
“Gavin, I have done nothing to harm her. I would not dishonor or hurt her.” The man’s brow rose on one side, challenging him without a word. Others had tried; he knew that now. This man had kept her from harm. “I will not seek her out,” he offered, knowing the words to be a lie as soon as he uttered them.
“Thank ye, my lord,” the man said, bowing to him, at what William could tell was great cost. “She is our only child, and I would not see her abused or hurt.”
This man would do what he needed to in order to protect his daughter, whether that meant challenging a nobleman or humbling himself. He loved his daughter.
A tightness fisted around his heart, squeezing it and reminding him that no one had done that for him. As a bastard raised by a man who knew him to be the son of the king, no soft words were spared for him. A nuisance and an inconvenience to his mother, he’d interfered with her time with the king, shortened more so then by the king’s need for a legitimate heir. He’d learned early to depend only on himself and to expect nothing from even those he called parents. With only a small gesture, this man showed him all that was lacking in his life.
William could not force words past the tightness in his throat, so he nodded to Gavin and watched the man leave the clearing, following his daughter as he said he would. He wondered if she would be punished for being caught alone with a man, but then he remembered the glimmer in Gavin’s eyes as he spoke of her. She was safe in her father’s care.
As he made his way to return to his camp, waiting until he was certain no one could follow him, the pit of his stomach began to churn. William reached the camp and found that more of his men had arrived, so he spent the rest of the day organizing their weapons and supplies. Throughout the day, he thought about the cause of the pain he felt. Lying on his blankets that night, awaiting the rest of the troop, the truth of it struck him.
Brienne was not safe. Neither Gavin nor he himself would be able to protect her from whatever they would be facing. And chances were, William would be the one to hurt her worst of all. For if she were part of those endangering the king or his kingdom, William must stop her as well.
But the next morn, against his own better judgment, against the advice of his closest friends and his word to the blacksmith, William positioned himself along the path he knew she would walk.
And she did.
This time, she approached h
eading toward the valley, carrying a basket on her arm. He’d been waiting a short time when she passed the place where he sat, next to the stream and not far from where he’d met her the day before. When she noticed him, her step faltered a bit before she stopped and bent her head down in a respectful gesture.
“My lord.”
“Good morrow, Brienne,” he said, remaining where he was. She’d become frightened of him the last time, and he did not want that to happen again. “How do you fare this morn?”
“I am well, my lord,” she said, watching him without moving toward or away from him.
“More chores?” he asked, nodding at the basket on her arm.
“Aye. They never do seem to end,” she said, smiling. Then she spoke to him. “You seem at your ease, my lord. Have you no tasks to fill your hours?”
He laughed at her words and shrugged. “My task is waiting on your lord to return,” he explained. “So here I sit, enjoying the cool breezes and the warm sun.”
Now it was her turn to laugh as she looked above and around them at the customary Scottish weather—cloudy with an ever-present mist. Not the sunshine and breezes he’d said.
“Mayhap you are thinking yourself elsewhere than here? Mayhap your home in the south?” She walked closer and put the basket down on the ground. “Is it always warm there? In Normandy?” she asked.
“Nay, not always. But our land is tempered by the warm seas. It is sunnier there more often than here, though I know that some areas of the kingdom are more blessed than others,” he said as he rose and walked toward her. “I have heard of places that have golden sands and turquoise waters.”
“As your homeland does?” William picked up the basket and looked at her before answering. “I take that to the men working the fields.”
“Come. I will carry it,” he offered. “And tell you of my homeland as we walk.”
Though she hesitated for a moment, she did not refuse. Brienne walked at his side away from the village, clearly not apprehensive nor obedient to her father’s wishes.
William began with a description of his favorite places in the lands held by his mother’s family and those of her husband, his father-in-name. The rows of grapevines and other fruits. Verdant fields producing all manner of crops. The beaches and sea that he could see from the highest places on their lands.
“Tell me of the sea,” she said softly. There was such a wistful wanting in her voice, it made him smile. “I would like to see it.”
“You have never seen the sea, Brienne?” he asked.
As a nobleman and a warrior, serving a king who traveled his kingdom and owning lands here and across on the Continent, William found it difficult to conceive of not traveling. Whether on land or sea, his travels had taken him wide and far. He forgot for a moment that those who lived tied to the lands and the lords who held them rarely left them. She shook her head.
“Do you like the sea, my lord?” she asked.
“Aye, though it can be as fickle as the weather here in Scotland. And ’tis no place to be when it turns dark,” he said. “Though on a sunny, warm day, I like to swim in it.”
“Swim? In the sea?” Her tone was curious and horrified at once.
“Have you never swum in the rivers here?”
“Nay. Some of the children do, when the river is high, or in some of the deeper pools that gather at the turns, but I cannot swim,” she said, with a forlorn expression on her face.
In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to take her to the sea. To let her feel the waves coming in and washing up against her feet and legs. To be there when she first viewed its expansiveness and might. William did not know why he reacted this way to her—to this village girl who belonged here and who had no place in his life.
But, then, watching her face come alive and her eyes sparkle as he spoke of his recent voyages, he wanted it to be so. They walked and he answered her never-ending questions about how it felt and how it appeared and sounded. By the time they reached the edge of the forest, she’d impressed him with the questions she’d asked and her interest and curiosity and enthusiasm about a number of topics.
Though he found himself staring at her mouth and remembering the innocence in her kiss and the taste of her lips, he held himself in check, for he had said he would not pursue her, and that would cross that line. From her blush, she remembered it as well. Instead he handed her the basket and nodded at the fields before them.
“One day, you will visit the sea,” he said, somehow knowing it was true.
“I hope so, my lord,” she said. “My thanks for carrying this for me.”
The silence surrounded them then. He wanted to kiss her with every fiber of his being. He stepped back, breaking the spell, and bowed slightly to her.
“See safely to your chores this day, Brienne,” he said, turning to leave before he acted on his desires. At this point, he would have given anything just to be able to continue to talk with her.
“And you as well, my lord . . . when you remember what your tasks are.”
With a soft laugh, she walked off, leaving the shade of the forest and entering the open fields where men and women worked, preparing the fields for planting.
His heart pounded as he realized that, if he carried out the king’s duty, he would oversee his own lands soon. By next spring, he would have fields to plant and a manor of his own. William headed back to the camp on the hill, not wishing to think on the rest of it. For now he would think only about the wonder in her vibrant amber eyes as he spoke of the sea.
Two mornings later, as he tracked a large group of mounted men riding along the road to Yester, he knew that the time when she would be in danger had just arrived. And when the leader of the riders stopped in front of where he stood hidden by the dense trees and brush and stared in his direction, William knew that Lord Hugh was back at Yester Castle.
Although he was careful about being out of sight of anyone down in the valley, the helmed man nodded at him, acknowledging his presence. Then heat filled him, and the warrior within pushed against its bounds, forcing William to fight to keep it controlled. He blew hard, like a winded horse, and clenched fists that even now grew larger, barely containing the growing power. The sound that echoed up the hills shocked him.
Laughter.
Deep, full laughter traveled through the air, mocking and challenging him at the same time. Struggling against the need to release whatever this power was that now lived inside of him, William practiced his meager control, knowing that the time was coming when he would not be successful in holding it back.
The time was coming . . . soon.
* * *
Hugh felt one of them with each passing mile. Opening up his senses as they crossed the last few miles between Gifford town and Yester Castle, he attempted to discern who his opponent was. To determine from which bloodline this enemy had come to face him and test his resolve to free his goddess. Though close, he was yet too far to tell.
Hugh smiled first, relishing the thought that his plans and those of his creator were under way and there would be no more delays. If one had arrived, others would come. Others who knew not the location of the circles. Others who knew of the prophecy. More of the bloodlines who had no idea of their powers or his.
But they would learn quickly that he would not be refused. He had perfected the ways to find a man’s weakness and use it to gain their compliance before he destroyed them. All he needed was to open one gateway, and then the goddess would be freed and could destroy the others.
One.
Surely two of these ignorant fools, untrained in the ways of the ancients, would bend to his will . . . and to hers. Once the gateway opened and the sacrifice made, they would be useless and he would see to their deaths. They, and anyone who stood in his way, would die, be they serf or king.
Pulling his horse to a stop, he stared up at the hills that
surrounded his lands and castle. He was there, up there, watching and waiting. The first of those who would challenge his faith and resolve. And most likely the first to fall and be crushed for resisting the will of the goddess.
He leaned his head back and laughed, loud, hard, and long.
The game had begun and he was its master.
Chapter 8
They landed on the east coast of Scotland, having journeyed by water from their island to the west. Once there, Marcus led them as he was led in his dreams, toward the lands of Lothian. Not a one in their group remained unaffected by the power of evil that drew them closer and closer.
But Aislinn suffered the most.
Terrible dreams filled her nights and even crossed into her days. She revealed only small bits of them to him and said nothing to the others. Struggling to find the rest of the prophecy, she made him promise not to wake her when the dreams made her cry out or struggle in her sleep.
It was not fair that such a young, fragile woman should bear the cost of her gift in this way, but believing and being faithful to the old gods’ ways had nothing to do with fairness. The old gods could be cruel, and this showed that eons had not changed that part of them.
The only thing Marcus could do was hold her when she screamed in the night and guide her faltering steps during the days that followed. Which he did and would continue doing until he was physically and mentally unable. In the years since she’d come to him, he thought of her as the daughter he never had and, like any father who loved his child, he wished he could take her burden on his shoulders.
The gods would have none of that, so he eased the pace of their journey so she would not be too weak when the time came for her to carry out her part of the prophecy and ceremony.
As the seer, she would understand the words of the prophecy and direct them to the right place and the right descendants needed to safeguard the gateways. Aislinn would chant the words and prayers necessary to seal the barriers. She would recognize the signs and the right stones and would heighten the powers of the warriors of destiny so that they could carry out their task.
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