by P. J. Fox
And how nervous.
Some wedding night she was going to have, she thought morosely, if by the time she got to Darkling Reach she couldn’t even move.
That was, if the wedding ever took place.
Her own fears aside, they were so behind schedule that from a merely pragmatic point the fact that they might never arrive had to be considered. By rights, she should’ve been at Caer Addanc a week ago. Leave it to her father and the rest of his equally useless retinue to botch something so simple as preparing for a journey when their belongings had been packed for them—and then to actually make that journey.
It wasn’t like packing had been so onerous, either. There was no dowry; no beds to move or banded chests of gold to protect. Isla’s dowry, such as it was, was her inheritance.
Her father, however, acted like he’d been tasked with the greatest challenge faced by man since Gideon the Conqueror had invaded Morven. He dithered over every little thing and contradicted himself so constantly that he had the servants running back and forth at cross purposes. Some tasks had been repeated five times while others hadn’t been approached at all—like packing food, which no one had thought to do until the last minute.
When their bloated and bloviating party finally did leave, it was only because the new overseer had almost forced them out the door.
Isla’s companion, Eir the erstwhile tailor, had also been a factor in their departure. When Isla’s father had balked, claiming that he needed yet more time to prepare—in truth he’d purchased himself a fine new suit and was waiting for its creator to have it delivered—Eir had threatened to eviscerate him. And he’d believed her.
How like Peregrine Cavendish, Isla thought wearily, to take the funds he’d been given to settle his debts and purchase a new suit instead. And boots. And jewels. And a wig.
Silas, the new overseer, kept the accounts now. Isla suspected that once she’d been safely removed from her father’s orbit, the axe would fall on his unauthorized expenditures. Silas had only held back this long, out of concern that the earl might vent his indignation on his offspring. But, Isla reflected with a small and humorless smile, Peregrine the Boastful was about to discover that his worth had greatly diminished.
As soon as he got back to Enzie. If he ever got back to Enzie. Which, naturally, necessitated arriving at Darkling Reach.
Isla sighed. As much as she recognized this fact as true, it brought her no joy. Only sorrow that now, having departed her childhood home forever, a door had closed. She grieved, not for the relationship she’d never had with her father but, rather, for the relationship they’d never have. For the fact that between her and her family lay an uncrossable chasm. A chasm created by the choices that each of them had made.
Tristan had taught her a word in one of the tribal tongues for which there was no direct Morva translation: the feeling of being homesick for a place that one has never visited. Isla was homesick for a home, and a family, she’d never had. And she knew that, now, weeks gone from Enzie and trapped in the middle of nowhere and with things getting worse and worse between everyone involved in this stupid trek, she’d never have a chance to create the family she’d always longed for. To convince them that she had value, and worth.
She sighed again, rubbing at her throbbing temples. Why had it been her job, in the first place, to hold her family together? Couldn’t anyone else at least have tried?
And to what—and to whom—had she committed herself?
Part of her worried that she’d thrown herself into marriage to fix her problems. Or to escape them, depending on how one regarded the situation. She knew very little about Tristan Mountbatten. Very little, indeed. And she’d neither seen nor heard from him since that night at the battlements, although she wore his ring faithfully. Even to bathe, as he’d asked. But who was he? And what, truly, did he want from her?
In addition to saddle sores, she’d developed a host of anxieties that kept her up at night. And bedeviled her during her endless hours in the saddle. The product, she knew, of too much solitude. Too much solitude, and too much time to think.
Because, even surrounded by people, she’d been alone. Her association with the duke had made her something of a pariah, even to those who weren’t swayed by the fact of her own sister’s rejection. To many, both Rowena’s and the earl’s refusal to so much as glance in Isla’s direction had been proof enough that the rumors were true: that Isla, herself, practiced the dark arts. After all, how terrible must a person be for their own parent to reject them?
Isla saw no point in fighting these rumors. She’d tried, at first, but she only came across as a harridan. Desperate. The more she denied any wrongdoing, the more guilty she appeared. Headstrong, prideful, these were some of the politer descriptions she’d heard used behind her back. When she went into the woods to relieve herself at night, when people thought she couldn’t hear.
It didn’t help that her constant companion was a gnome. Eir was a creature from legend come to life, who loved terrorizing people for her own amusement. She’d catch them staring at her and flash her teeth, or whisper things to them that made them pee themselves.
Isla had remonstrated with her, begging her not to cause more trouble than she already had. Eir’s mere presence, first around the manor and then on the journey north, was—the kindest term was a distraction. She’d been accused more than once of poisoning their stores and all the dogs barked at her. Eir’s response had been that she was here as Isla’s protector; Isla was her only concern and if these people couldn’t appreciate her than Eir in turn owed them nothing. Perhaps, she’d pointed out on one rather memorable occasion, a dose of fear would help them remember their collective place.
The only two bright spots in an otherwise horrendous journey had been Rose and Hart. Both had jumped at the chance to leave Enzie; Isla was certain that, so great was their desire to be elsewhere, they would have gone anywhere. Theirs was no fixed plan to go north but, rather, a determination to evacuate a home that had brought them both nothing but disappointment.
Rose wanted a marriage, and the pickings around the stable yard were slim. She, as she’d pointed out to Isla, needed a bigger pool of fish. Hart’s ambitions, meanwhile, were more complicated. He was a brave and capable fighter; in the West, his birth would ever hold him back.
Isla heard movement and stopped. Instinctively, she pressed herself back against a tree until their shadows merged. The moon was out, and there was more than enough light to see by. To see her by.
She waited.
Rustling became boots, which became Hart. Speak of the Dark One, she thought. Hart, like Isla had been a few moments before, was walking with his head down. And he looked tired, as well. They had, so far, been blessed; encountering nothing very serious on the road. But still, the constant vigilance was exhausting. Hart spent most of his days alert, scanning the trees for a possible threat. A threat that was, to be honest, long overdue. Bandits, even wolves; something should have set upon them by now. And it was the waiting, the constant unending waiting that grated.
Hart walked past her, across the edge of the clearing and to Apple’s tent. Apple had come, of course; she wouldn’t miss the opportunity to see a place like Darkling Reach or be part of what was, to her, an opportunity to see and be seen. Whatever her feelings about Isla—or her husband, for that matter—Tristan Mountbatten was the most powerful peer in the realm and his wedding would be a political occasion as much as anything else.
Apple and the earl kept separate tents. The earl’s was on the far side of the camp, with several other campsites within campsites separating him from her. Guardsmen and retainers had set up their own tents in rings around campfires; there was no military-style grid system here, no organization to speak of. Each night, everyone more or less pitched their tents where they pleased. Hart was sharing a tent with some Northman whom Isla didn’t know.
Hart pulled back the flap, ducked into Apple’s tent and was gone.
Isla didn’t understand how a
nyone could want to be with Apple. If be with was even an appropriate description. There was no sense in being coy: Hart and their stepmother fucked, and that’s all they did. They barely talked to each other outside of the bedroom, and Isla doubted very much that they talked inside. What Apple got out of the arrangement, Isla didn’t know. She supposed, much as she disliked thinking about these things, that Hart was an able lover. Hart, she thought, had sought his stepmother’s bed to get back at his father. More and more, as time went on, the anger between them took on a life of its own.
Hart blamed the earl for his mother’s death. And no child could help but resent being a second class citizen in his own home. Hart had simply been expected to understand, from birth, that he was less. An embarrassment. His entire childhood, he’d fought to become the kind of son that any man would want—fought, and succeeded. He was both virile and strong, an excellent fighting man who’d more than earned the respect of his peers. He had many friends. To any other parent, he would have been both joy and comfort. But the earl had remained oblivious to these things, bemoaning only what Hart was not. And what Hart, in spite of all his labors, could never become.
Isla separated herself from her tree, and walked back to her tent.
TWENTY
A crisp, windblown morning had ripened into a glorious day but Isla didn’t care.
She was thinking about Alice.
Around her, the unwieldy caravan marched on. Drivers yelled at the bearer animals, and at each other. Wagons bounced over the ruts, axles protesting. Once in awhile a wheel fell off and the whole procession had to be halted. The earl wasn’t famous for keeping his wagons in good working order. Not imagining that he’d leave his home for any reason, he’d never seen fit to spare the funds. He hadn’t, Isla thought darkly, put all that much effort into the idea that his daughters might get married. No dowry, and no means of ferrying them to their new homes.
It was, under the circumstances, a miracle that either she or Rowena were getting married at all.
A miracle…or a curse. Beside her, Eir said nothing. Eir always said nothing.
Hart rode on a little ahead, the tense set of his shoulders belying his easy seat. He was scanning the trees. Rose rode along beside him, and beside her was a mule bearing, among other things, Mica the cat. Mica, crouched at the bottom of a wicker cage, protested her situation loudly. Had, indeed, been protesting her situation ever since that first morning when Isla had coaxed her out from under the bed and announced that they were going on a little trip. By this point, Mica’s howling had become so ubiquitous that for the most part it faded into the background. Isla only really noticed when, on occasion, she found herself wondering how it was that Mica hadn’t worn out her vocal chords.
Rose said something cheerful to Mica and the cat hissed. The mule brayed and its driver hit it with a stick and Mica started howling again. The mule relieved itself.
Isla could have laughed, but for the memories that plagued her.
Of Tristan’s eyes as he studied her; of his hands on her, caressing her. Pulling her to him. Of his voice, the whispering rustle of dead leaves as he told her he wanted to be with her. Of Alice’s eyes, silently pleading, as he’d ripped her throat out.
She’d stood there and watched him kill and eat another human being. A human being, just like her. To Tristan, Alice had been nothing more than food. But what made Isla so different? Isla was the same: mere flesh and bones, a mortal like Alice. Or like any of the hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe tens of thousands of men and women he’d eaten over the course of his lifetime. And, really, what creature, man or beast, wanted to have a romantic relationship with its food?
She realized she was fingering her ring, and stopped. It was common in the West for men to give their betrothed some sort of token and that’s what everyone had assumed this was. A lover’s gift, if an unusual one. Hart had examined the ring on her finger, testing its weight, and announced that Isla must have given the duke a thrilling night indeed. Isla, chagrined, had snatched her hand back and made a face. Which only made Hart laugh.
And cemented, in everyone’s minds, the belief that Isla and the duke had exchanged more than words. Not everyone was judgmental like Rowena; Hart and Rose were both openly congratulatory. Hart, too, hadn’t been the only one who’d asked her if her recent moodiness were because she was with child. A notion that Isla could scarcely credit. For her to even know, she would have had to practically leap into the duke’s bed the minute he arrived!
Still, she had been moody. She knew that. She couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened. About all the things that had changed, and in such a short amount of time. About Alice. About Rowena. About what all of these things meant for her future and whether they were signs. Omens, really—but of what doom, she didn’t know.
She’d been furious at him, when he’d left. Furious at him for not taking her with him and, irrationally, at the fact that he had somewhere to go and she didn’t. She hated the feeling of helplessness that came over her upon realizing that, now, all she could do was wait. That she was dependent on him—had gone from being dependent on one man to being dependent on another. She’d dreamed her whole life of having adventures, and meeting Tristan had been an adventure. A greater adventure than, only a season before, she could ever have imagined having. Except, looking forward into the future, she knew that any further adventures would be at his sufferance. If he wanted to keep her at home, locked in a closet, he could.
Under the law, a woman and her husband were the same person. A woman had no claim against her husband for rape, or spousal abuse. She couldn’t testify in court. Isla had seen the calm complacency in women whose husbands were decent men; they didn’t understand the feminist argument, and thought these women zealots, because they spoke of problems that for happy women simply didn’t exist.
Would Isla be a happy woman?
She didn’t know.
As the days crawled by, anger had melted into sorrow. And fear. Sorrow that her lover was gone and fear that she’d been lying to herself this whole time about what their courtship had meant to him. About what his intentions truly were. In her darker moments, she couldn’t help but remember back to when he’d told her that she’d be happier if she just learned to relax and enjoy herself. And that the trick to seducing a woman was making her want it.
Was that all this was? A trick? Had he talked her into believing herself in love, to suit his purposes? And, too, talked her into believing that he felt something for her? Just to—to what? To get her to do as he wished? A woman in love was certainly easier to manipulate than a woman still possessed of her right mind. And that, in the end, was what love was, Isla decided: taking leave of one’s senses.
Had her initial assessment of Tristan, in fact, been correct? That he was nothing more than a heartless monster? She remembered that sense of revulsion, that she’d felt so strongly during their first meeting. And when he’d taken her on a walk in the woods. She remembered it, but she didn’t relate to it. She loved him too much, now, to see him as the man she’d first met. But still, she couldn’t help but wonder if she should.
If she’d end up like his other wives.
Asher had been frank in his dislike of the last Lady Mountbatten; as, indeed, had Tristan. Tristan never claimed that that marriage had been a love match. But had his young, lovely bride felt differently? She, unlike Isla, was a sophisticate. A woman from the capital, possessed of both training and wit. Isla, meanwhile, was no one. If she hadn’t been able to hold his interest, then how could Isla possibly hope to?
Hart had pointed out, reasonably enough, that Isla was different; that her future husband could have married another sophisticate, had he so chosen. He was powerful and rich, and handsome to boot; he could have almost any woman—or man—he wanted, were he to crook his finger. And Isla would have liked to believe Hart’s explanation. It was simple, and compact, and exactly what she wanted to hear.
So why couldn’t she?
Lost in thou
ght, it took her a minute to realize that they were stopping.
She glanced up at the sky. Lunch. Pulling up, she dismounted and hobbled Piper. Piper, calm as ever, regarded her with a baleful eye. As if to say, where, exactly, do you think I’d go? Which was a good question, really: they were trapped in the wastes that separated the highlands from the approach to the true North. A no man’s land of peat bogs and stunted, gnarled trees where what fields there were lay fallow. A frightening and unappetizing place to visit, that smelled.
Having left the protection of what around here must pass for forest, a close and close-smelling glen of crab apples and blackthorn, they’d emerged into an open meadow where their large party would be the perfect target for every thief within fifty miles. But considerations like safety had never been the earl’s strong suit, and he was somewhere in the milling crowd calling for more corn plaster. The worst part, too, was that now that they’d stopped they’d dither here for hours. The earl’s constant complaining, and demand for rest stops, was part of what had thrown them so badly off schedule. And rather than fighting to make up for lost time, he seemed determined to delay their arrival in the North for as long as possible.
Which, Isla thought resentfully, made no sense. The earl wouldn’t get the rest of his prize until she’d been married. He—she had trouble thinking of him as her father, now, and even more trouble convincing herself that he deserved the term—had ever seen little use for women.
Her lips set in a grim line, she set up Piper with her feed bag.
Piper, seemingly immune to her mistress’ ill humor, chewed placidly.
“You look like you’re about to murder something.”
At the unexpected voice, Isla whirled around.
Hart, stepped back, his hands up. “Not me!” he protested. Only half-jokingly.
Isla deflated. “I’m sorry, I’m just….”
