SECRETS OF THE WIND (4 page)

Shaking his head, Ruan refused the offer. “She will be going with me,” he managed to say.

“With you?” Kaspar asked.

“With me,” Ruan stated firmly. He laid the backs of his fingers against her cheek and frowned when he felt warmth he thought too high.

“The pairilis is causing her a slight fever, but other than the cut on her hip, she is in very good health. She should be up and about in a day or two.”

Nodding, Ruan stepped up to the bed and pulled the blanket over the sleeping beauty on the healer’s cot. He tucked the coarse wool around her, flinching at the feel of it. Nothing, he thought, save silks and satins should touch this flawless flesh. Gently, he picked up his burden and held her high against his chest.

“Let my man know your fee, dochtúir. There will be a bonus for you. You have my gratitude for taking such good care of my lady.”

Kaspar smiled and inclined his head. When the prince had left and his guard deposited a hefty sack of sterlings in the healer’s hand, Kaspar chuckled aloud. “My lady, eh?” he repeated, tossing the sack of coins into the air and catching it. “Well, now. That bodes well for our little Riezell Guardian, it does!”

Chapter Three

Chas opened her eyes to find her bold corsair sitting astride a chair beside her bed, his arms braced along the chair’s back. Her right hand was being held in both of his and his lips were placing the softest of kisses upon her fingertips. As he looked up at her through the falling sweep of a thick lock of his dark hair, his eyes shone with a light that took her breath away.

“I was beginning to worry,” he said, and reached out to smooth the hair back from her forehead.

“What time is it?” she asked, for the room was dark with shadows.

“Nearly ten of the evening,” he replied, and rested his palm on her head. “Your fever is gone.”

“Thirsty,” she said, and realized her voice was scratchy.

He was quick to release her hand and stand, swinging the chair aside. He took up a carafe and filled a goblet. “I have had them bring in iced water every half hour in anticipation of your awakening,” he said, and stepped up to the bed. Gently, he slid his left hand under her neck and lifted her head, placing the rim of the golden goblet to her lips.

Chas drank greedily for her mouth felt encased in cotton. She closed her eyes as she swallowed the icy water. When she had taken her fill, she grunted and he removed the goblet, lowering her head once more to the pillow.

“Are you hungry?”

“No,” she whispered, and drew in a long breath. The mattress beneath her gave her the impression that she was floating on a cloud, so soft was it. The sheet covering her was silk and the gown touching her body was of the softest muslin.

She frowned and opened her eyes. “Who dressed me?” she asked, looking up into his hooded eyes.

“A maid, although I swear to you I was this close…” He held up his hand with thumb and index finger only a fraction apart. “…to doing it myself, lass.”

“For shame, Your Grace,” she said, making herself blush on cue as she had been taught at the Academy.

“I am a man first, lass, and a prince second,” he admitted.

“And a very inappropriate prince at that!”

The middle-aged woman who came striding into the room was beautiful, but her face was set in a disapproving frown. Two other women—equally strict in appearance—who were obviously her ladies-in-waiting accompanied her.

“You are well, young woman?” the older lady asked.

“I am, Your Majesty,” Chas said and tried to rise, but neither mother nor son would allow it. The son stepped toward her only to have the mother push him aside. “Make yourself scarce, Ruan,” she ordered.

“Mother, I…”

“Go!” his mother commanded. “This is woman’s work and you will only be in the way!”

Grumbling to himself, the prince shoved his hands into the pockets of his britches and sauntered lazily from the room. His attitude was one that his mother was apparently accustomed to for she made no further demands on him but rather bade one of her ladies to shut the door behind him.

“And lock the damned thing,” the queen snapped. “I would not put it past that poggleheaded son of mine to eavesdrop!”

Chas threw aside the covers and would have stood but the queen narrowed her eyes at her.

“And just where do you think you are going?” the queen asked.

“It is unseemly for me to be abed in the presence of…”

“Your employer?” the queen cut her off.

Brought back to why she was there, Chas settled back against the head of the bed.

“My son is a very brave man,” the queen began as she took the seat Ruan had vacated. “But he is also a stubborn man.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “Far too much like his father, I fear.”

Chas smiled, but had no comment to make to that statement.

“I have been parading females before that boy for three years now and he has disdained every last one of them,” the queen continued. “He says he will never marry but that is ridiculous and well he knows it. He is the heir-apparent and, as such, must marry and produce little Ruans to sit upon my knee. Do you not agree, Major Neff?”

“If that is what he wants, Your Majesty,” she replied cautiously.

“Doesn’t matter what the boy wants!” the queen disagreed. “He has obligations. He must marry and reproduce. That’s all there is to it!”

“But he has yet to find a woman he would be comfortable with?” Chas questioned.

The queen flung out a negligent hand. “They have all been ninnies,” she declared. “Knew them to be when I put them before him, but where was I to find the kind of woman he prefers? I certainly cannot be expected to traipse around the kingdom inspecting all the harlots that boy pumps, now can I?”

Chas did not need to practice the art of blushing for deep color came to her cheeks at such an unseemly remark by the queen.

“A strong woman, he tells me,” the queen went on as though she had not seen Chas’ embarrassment. “According to my son, he wants a woman who can hold her own against him in a horserace or on a chessboard. He desires one who isn’t afraid of her own shadow and has no great desire to own every gown ever created. He certainly doesn’t want one who will spend his money as though water through a sieve and neither does he want one who is so meek she can’t ask for what she wants or needs. In other words, he wants a woman who will give as good as she gets, or so he challenged me. Where was I to find such a woman, eh?”

A shrug was all Chas could display, for she had glimpsed the merry twinkle in the Gaelachuan queen’s eye and realized the woman was baiting her.

“And while I am guarding him, you want me to help you find such a paragon, Your Majesty?” Chas asked.

“Oh, I’ve found her already!” the queen stated. “Had a hell of a time doing it, too!”

“Then you want me to watch her,” Chas suggested. “To make sure she is the right mate for him.”

“Oh, she’s the right mate, I’ve no doubt! I had the runes cast over a month ago and that is when we learned who she is. Twice more the runes were cast, but on the third casting? The third shocked even the mystic, for it told us this woman had been my son’s mate many times over the millennia. Do you understand?”

Chas shook her head. “I know little about divination, Your Majesty, and I don’t put any store in the old ways.” She raised an eyebrow. “Does not the Caitliceachs’ hierarchy teach such things are wrong?”

“As though we women would listen to a bunch of prattle from hateful old men who have never married nor are likely to!” the queen said, settling back in the chair. “We women hold to the old ways even while we smile and nod at the priests and pretend we accept their restrictions on our lives. What they don’t know won’t annoy us!”

Chas smiled. “And is this woman you have found for the prince a woman who won’t buckle under to your priests?”

“Damned right, she won’t!” the queen stated. “She’s her own woman, she is!”

“And the mystics say she is the right one?”

“Lass, I am not a woman to leave things to chance. I believe in the old ways, but sometimes the mystics read the runes incorrectly. So I have had the woman investigated left to right, north to south, upside, downside and inside out. There is nothing I don’t know about her and I—as well as my husband—have come to the conclusion that she will suit him admirably.”

“So the runes were read correctly.”

“You be the judge,” the queen offered. “The first time the runes were thrown, two oak trees came up. That signifies what is. We knew we’d found the woman for him—strong like an oak just as he is. The second time the runes were cast, two mirrors came up.”

“Doesn’t that mean what was?”

“Aye, that it does. It means my son knew her in the past. According to the mystic, such castings are very rare where after two passes identical stones are thrown in the same positions.”

“Then they should get along very well, don’t you think?”

“One hopes so but…” The queen leaned forward, her face intent. “When the runes were cast the third time—and that’s the charm or so they say—the mirrors came up again signifying what was to be. That casting astonished the mystic, let me tell you!”

Chas shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“What do you see when you look into a mirror that is in front of another mirror, lass?”

The Riezell Guardian thought about it for a moment then nodded. “A multitude of reflections,” Chas said. “To signify that there will be numerous reincarnations of them both and will always find one another.”

“Precisely!” the queen said.

Chas held up her hands. “How do I fit into this, Your Majesty? I was told I was to guard him against a potential assassin. Is there really an assassin or am I here to help you procure this woman for your son?”

“Oh, the threat to Ruan is real enough, lass,” the queen said, sobering. “There are those among the Order of Taibhse who would like to see my son in an early grave so they can be about their own wicked agenda.”

“Which is what, Your Majesty?”

“Forming an alliance with the Storians to overthrow the Court of Cosaint and put a despot upon the throne instead.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time the Storians have tried something like that,” Chas said.

“Well, it won’t happen here and it certainly won’t happen to Ruan! He is a prince, aye, but he is a warrior well-trained.”

“I saw that today,” Chas said quietly, remembering the headless corpse at the open-air market.

“When he slips into the wraith persona, Ruan is a man with whom to reckon and I have no fear for him. It is when he is being careless of his life that another score of gray hair shoots up from my scalp!”

“Every mother’s worry,” Chas said.

“Remind me of that when
you
have a passel of his brats tugging at your skirt hem, lass!”

Chas’ mouth dropped open. She could only stare at the queen.

“Have I shocked you, lass?”

It took effort for Chas to clamp her mouth shut and even more effort to speak.

“You think I am this woman of whom the mystics speak?”

“I know you are. Your name was spelled out to us upon the fourth casting done at midnight under the dark of the moon. It was but a matter of finding the woman who possessed the name.”

“Your Majesty, I am a commoner. How could you possibly expect your Tribunal or your son…”

“You were adopted at birth by a Meiriceánach family though you were born in
an Ghréig
,” the queen said as she folded her arms over her chest.

“How do you know that?” Chas gasped, her eyes as wide as saucers.

“The Court of Cosaint has access to all the data contained in Tribunal records, lass. It was not hard to learn who your real parents were.”

A deep chill went down Chas’ spine. All her adult life, she had tried to discover her heritage but had been blocked by bureaucratic red tape at every turn. The laws that should have been changed centuries earlier had kept her from learning her true identity. She had long since given up trying to discover her roots.

“Well? Do you want to know?” Queen Annalyn asked.

“Who am I?” Chas whispered, afraid of what she’d learn.

“You are Gréagach. Your Gréagach name was Mylena Kolovos,” the queen stated. “Your father was a prominent member of the Gréagach Tribunal. Lord Mykos Kolovos, I believe was his name. He and your mother, Katelina, were killed in a boating accident off Aegia while on holiday. The captain of the boat managed to save you though your twin brothers drowned with your parents.”

“Captain Charlton Neff,” Chas provided, seeing her long-dead adoptive father in her mind’s eye.

“The captain’s wife was infertile and they had long wanted a child. Rather than turn you over to Tribunal to be sent to a nunnery until you were of age, they left
an Ghréig
and immigrated to Meiriceán. Both were vehemently opposed to the Caitliceachs, the True Faith, so they saw no harm in stealing you away and letting your distant relatives think you had drowned with your parents.”

“But I am Protastnúach,” Chas protested. “Surely your Court will not…”