Impostress (27 page)

"Oh, nay!" Nevyll shook his head quickly. " 'Tis a grand idea, Lady Wynnifrydd. I'll alert the cook—"

"Stop. Do not." Her father shook his head, and she noticed his face was so flushed with rage that she could see his red scalp through his thinning white hair and beard. " 'Tis too late. We had an arrangement," Lord Seth insisted, pointing a beringed finger at Brock's father. "And if your son has shirked his duties and embarrassed all of us in the process, there will be no marriage, no alliance, nothing. My daughter has had her choice of suitors, from Wybren to Rhydd, and neither she nor I will suffer this kind of humiliation. If Brock doesn't appear with an apology within the next three hours, consider the wedding never to take place."

"Father! Nay!" Desperation clutched Wynnifrydd's throat, nearly strangled her.

"You will not be compromised, daughter, nor mortified." His head snapped toward the soldier who was in charge of the search party. "Find him," Seth ordered, "and find him fast. I'll have a word with him."

Wynnifrydd wanted to collapse into a pile of tears. She wanted to kick and scream and gnash her teeth. Oh, Brock would pay. Whenever she looked upon his handsome face again, she would make sure he would never forget the raw disgrace she'd suffered at his hand.

Someone rapped upon the closed door.

Wynnifrydd's heart soared. Brock had been found! Surely this was all a horrid mistake.

"Who is it?" the guard demanded.

"Willis. I've got John, the stableboy, with me."

The guard opened the door. Two men, one yet another soldier, the other a lame little man with one droopy eye, bustled into the room. No Brock.

Wynnifrydd wilted inside.

"You've found my son," Lord Nevyll said hopefully.

The soldier shook his head. "Nay, m'lord, but John, 'ere, 'e knows something that might help. Go on, tell 'im," he said to the crippled little man.

"There be a horse missin'," the man said, seeming about to jump out of his own skin. "I work with the stable master, and Dafydd, he's worried sick about it."

"What horse? Brock's steed?" Lord Nevyll asked angrily.

"Nay, the big sorrel, he's where he should be, with the others. But Sir Brock, he had another horse, a high-strung little mare he swore he won in a game of dice a few nights back and ... she's missin'." The man was sweating profusely and Wynnifrydd suspected he was lying or was somehow responsible for losing the horse, but he continued rambling on.

"Now, it could be that she ran off. God knows, Dafydd, he sometimes sleeps on the job, but Dafydd, he claims the mare was locked up in a stall, and just today when he awoke, the mare was gone. He figured Sir Brock had taken her out for a ride, but now everyone says Sir Brock's missin', too, and I thought ye should know about the mare."

"So what are you saying?" Wynnifrydd demanded of the little worm of a worker. "That Sir Brock left me to wait for him at the altar, just to embarrass me?"

"Oh, nay, nay, m'lady," John was quick to answer. "Mayhap he took a ride or hunt and an accident befell him. That's what I'm sayin'."

Now this made more sense. A second's relief washed over her. Of course Brock wouldn't leave her alone on the wedding day intentionally. Why, she'd seen him earlier today ...

Lord Nevyll took the man's word as that of the Bible. "Assemble the troops," he ordered the soldier. "I want every man available to start looking in the surrounding forest." Lines of worry etched his face. "But be careful. Brock is an excellent horseman, so it could be that he's not been involved in an accident, but that someone has attacked him."

"Who?" Wynnifrydd's father scoffed.

"Mayhap an outlaw who recognized him as my son and would hold him for ransom."

Lord Seth raised a dubious eyebrow as he glanced around the sparsely furnished room with its threadbare tapestries and cracked walls.

Baron Nevyll was undeterred. "Or ... or perhaps someone did not want the marriage to happen."

"And who would that be?" her father again snorted.

"I know not, but mayhap someone who had his own reasons for not wanting an alliance between Oak Crest and Fenn."

Wynnifrydd stopped short. This was a new wrinkle. And one that was even more plausible than the excuse that Brock had been out riding and had an accident. The skin on her scalp prickled, for she felt a new fear.

"You are covering up for your lazy son's impudence, rudeness, and disrespect. But whatever the reasons for his absence, I suggest you find him and soon," Seth countered.

Elyn,
Wynnifrydd thought in a moment of sickening clarity. Somehow Elyn was behind Brock's disappearance. Either she'd come back to haunt him from the grave, or she was very much alive, and the two lovers had played Wynnifrydd for the worst kind of fool.

She felt suddenly sick. Disgusted. Mortified beyond belief. This was far too great a dishonor to allow to happen. By the gods, she wouldn't allow it, wouldn't suffer the injustice and humiliation. Wynnifrydd's fists bunched in the skirt of her fine white dress. Whatever the reason, be she dead or alive, Elyn of Lawenydd wouldn't get away with it.

* * * * *

Feeling the winter cold seep through her cloak, Kiera listened to the priest as he intoned a final prayer over the coffin of Lady Lenore. Just the day before, she had spent time with the woman and made a vow she couldn't possibly keep. Now Kelan's mother rested in a grave next to that of her husband. The funeral had been rushed at Kelan's insistence. He couldn't bear the thought of his mother's lifeless body lying within the keep's walls.

Lady Lenore of Penbrooke's band of mourners was large, everyone in the keep standing around the freshly turned earth. Peasants, knights, tradesmen, servants, friends, and family had gathered on the slight rise outside the bailey as dark, ominous clouds scudded over the sky. They whispered their own soft prayers and held the hands of their loved ones as the chapel bells pealed plaintively.

Kiera made the sign of the cross and, with her head still bowed, stole a glance at the Lord of Penbrooke. Dressed in black, his tunic decorated with stripes of leather and silver, he stared into the grave. His face was set in stone as he quietly grieved, his gray eyes darker than usual, his hair as black as his boots as it ruffled in the brisk breeze. A timid sun dared peek from behind the roiling of clouds, and frost covered the bent, trodden grass of the cemetery.

Kelan had been distant from her since his mother's death, caught up in his private thoughts as, through his grief, he saw that the castle ran smoothly. His siblings, too, were quiet and had kept their distance from Kiera. Which was expected, but it gave Kiera too much time alone with her own morbid thoughts, her own guilt. She'd passed more hours than she cared to think of in prayer, hoping for divine intervention from her dilemma and, beyond that, the courage to face the man who thought he was her husband. She'd tried to broach the topic of their marriage since Lenore's passing, but late last night in bed, it seemed all Kelan wanted to do was lose himself in desperate, passionate lovemaking.

As the crowd dispersed and two workers began to shovel dirt over the casket, Kelan let out a long, shuddering sigh. "Find peace, Mother," he whispered so low that Kiera barely heard the words. And then it was done. Lenore of Penbrooke was finally at rest.

The mourners filed through the gates of the castle into the outer bailey, where most of the horses were penned. Standing taller than the rest, his head turned toward the mourners, Obsidian let out a quiet neigh.

Kelan glanced in the stallion's direction. "Shh, Ares," he said, though he sounded distracted, his thoughts far away.

"He's a fine steed," Kiera said, hitching her chin toward the destrier.

Kelan nodded as if jarred from his dark thoughts. "Aye. One of the best I own."

"How long have you had him?"

"Only a few years." He managed a thin smile. "I won him in a game of dice."

Desperately Kiera wanted to believe him. "From whom?"

His eyes slitted with an evil glint. "From one of your old suitors, wife. Did he not tell you?"

"Who? Tell me what?"

"Brock of Oak Crest."

"Brock?" she repeated, stunned. Brock had owned Obsidian? How? Had he bought him? Found him in the woods that night ... ? And suddenly she understood.

" 'Twas a few years back when I ... when I was out of favor with my father." Kelan shoved a wayward lock of black hair from his forehead as the first drizzle of sleet hit the ground. "I was drinking at an inn not far from Castle Fenn and Brock arrived upon Ares. He'd been in some kind of battle and was healing from a nasty wound, but he began drinking and clamoring to wager, so I agreed."

"And what did you wager?"

"My horse, of course. At the end of the evening I had two and Brock had none."

Kiera's mind was spinning. Had Elyn ridden into the woods that night not, as she'd said, for fear of Kiera's safety, but because she was going to meet Brock? Was the man who attacked her, who had nearly raped or killed her, Brock of Oak Crest? Had Elyn shot her own lover, then left him in the forest to die? Why? Oh, God, why? Jagged memories, bits and pieces, cut through her brain. It had been so dark that night, too dark to see the face of her attacker clearly, but somehow Elyn had been near enough to wound the man with her arrow. Kiera's stomach clenched painfully. Was Brock not trying to rape a woman he'd come upon in the forest? Or did he think she was Elyn and ... and what? Was he angry with his lover? Planning to make her pay for some slight against him? Her knees began to quiver. Why had Elyn shot the man she loved?

Because she saw him attacking you, and either out of jealousy or fear for your safety, she saved your life, or at the very least your virginity.
"Did Brock tell you where he'd got the horse?" she asked, forcing her voice not to quaver and hoping to hide her warring emotions.

"I didn't ask."

Brock hadn't been trying to rape her as much as teach his lover a lesson, and Elyn had been jealous and angry and decided to shoot him and save Kiera ... that's how it was. How it had to have been. Walking quickly as the storm began in earnest, they passed through the smaller gate to the inner bailey. Kiera, lost in her own revelations, barely noticed all the activity though the peasants and servants were already back at work, hammers banging, bellows blowing, wheels creaking from carts that were moving through the keep again.

Kelan's voice lowered. "Mayhap I didn't want to know where the horse came from. It mattered not and I knew the stallion to be a prize. Those were dark days, Elyn. Days when I was banished from Penbrooke and cared for no one but myself. If the horse had been stolen, it was not of my concern," he admitted, with a self-deprecating twist of his lips. That he rued those murky days was evident in the shadows in his eyes. "In truth, I thought Brock had probably taken Ares from his own father." He glanced her way and managed a thin, humorless smile. "There is much we don't know of each other. Now come." He glanced at the darkening sky. "The storm worsens."

She withered inside but kept up with his faster pace as icy pellets rained from the sky. She thought of the night she was attacked and the horse was lost, how Elyn had lied and deceived her, and how she, in turn, was deceiving Kelan. Her legs were leaden and her heart was heavy as they hurried up the steps to the great hall. Finally, to start untangling the intricate and painful web of lies, she said, "The steed is my father's horse."

Kelan stopped at the door and his countenance tightened as if he didn't believe her. "Ares is from Lawenydd?"

"Aye." She nodded as a servant opened the door and they stepped inside to the warmth of the keep. "But his name is Obsidian. I recognized him from the scars upon him when I saw him in the stable yesterday. I called to him and whistled and he responded, just as had my horse. You see," she said, unwrapping the scarf that had been tied around her neck and forcing the damning words past her lips, "three years past, I went against my father's wishes. I took Obsidian from the stable behind my father's back and went riding in the woods. He shied and threw me and then he was gone."

"Gone?" They walked into the great hall, where servants were already setting up tables for the next meal.

"Disappeared. My ... my sister helped me back to the keep."

"She rode with you?" he asked, and she thought about the answer, deciding to hedge.

"Yes, she was in the forest with me."

"Kiera?" he asked, and she nearly jumped at the sound of her name. It had been days since she'd heard it. Rarely from Kelan's lips. "Did she steal a horse as well?"

"Yes, Kiera was there," she said carefully, her heart pounding with dread as she began to reveal parts of the truth. "I didn't think of it as stealing the horse, more like borrowing him. We ... my sister and I ... were together. But losing the horse was my fault." She didn't tell him about the rest, about the attack. Perhaps she would later, but not now, not until she'd finally revealed her own secret, that she was not his wife.

"The next day we found no sign of Obsidian. 'Twas as if he'd disappeared into the night. I feared that something wretched had happened to him, that he'd had a horrible, tragic accident, mayhap that he'd somehow run upon the ridge only to stumble and fall over the cliffs by the sea." Shuddering at the mental image that had haunted her, she added, "But his carcass was never found. I never knew what had happened to him. Until I saw him in the stable yard."

"And you're certain this is the same horse?" he asked, obviously skeptical.

"Aye." She nodded and explained in detail about the scars and Obsidian's traits, but again she didn't mention the fact that someone had attacked her, nor did she admit to her identity. That would all come in time. As soon as she knew what had become of Elyn.

And what if you never know? What if she is like the horse, and has disappeared without a trace? What will you do then? Sooner or later you will have to tell him the truth.

And she would. When the time was right. She could not live this lie forever.

Had she misread them?