Shana Abe (21 page)

Everyone loved him. It was so obvious, everything she had seen on this island—nay, even before, from his soldiers—had cast that love and respect he commanded from his people back into her face with indifferent vigilance. It baffled her, the contrast. Didn’t they know about him? Had they no idea what he had done, what he might do? He was a ruthless killer, he was the vengeful sword of the sovereign, he had no soul.

So who was this gentle man now, talking kindly to children and animals? Basking in everyone’s admiration?

Suddenly, irrationally, Kyla was angry. They had no right to treat him with love. He didn’t deserve love, he deserved fear. Couldn’t they see? Were they all deluded? How could anyone not hate the Hound of Hell?

She
should hate him. She knew she should. She had that right, more than anyone, perhaps. She should hate him every single day for the rest of her life, she should make him feel her anguish, since he had handed it to her.

But as suddenly as the anger came, it was spent. The hatred that should have filled her, in fact, never had. And never would. Because threading through her pain was confusion and doubt. There were too many inconsistencies in the man
before her. Too many contradictions to what she thought had been plain truth: a hunter but a savior. A killer but a protector.

Try as she might, Kyla knew she could not point to him and declare, “Yes, there is the villain. He fully deserves his title.”

And then came a whispering voice in her mind, teasing her under that moral posing, the most troubling aspect of all. Had he the blackest heart on earth, she feared it would make no difference to her desire. Her body had a claim on this judgment of him. She wanted him, sweet heaven, she did.

The sky was taking on a peculiar greenish-silver cast, the smell of rain became heavy and strong. A breeze was picking up, pushing her skirts back and forth in teasing gusts, making the veil Kyla wore dance around her shoulders.

“Eleanor was her mother,” said a quiet voice behind her.

Kyla turned her head to see Marla, who had approached silently on the grass.

As cryptic as the sentence was, Kyla pieced it together immediately. “Eleanor was Elysia’s mother,” she said. It made sense.

“Yes. Your husband’s sister. Harrick’s half sister.”

No wonder Seena and Harrick had reacted so strangely to the child’s talk of the deer. Marla met her look, then shifted her focus past Kyla, back to the children. Kyla followed her glance.

“She named this doe herself?”

“Yes. It worried quite a few of us at the time. The doe is young, and Elysia had never shown an interest in naming any of the others. Just this one. It happened about seven months ago. As soon as the doe was born, Elysia insisted upon coming here and naming her. She rejected any other suggestions.”

Elysia was leaning back now in Roland’s arms, still talking, staring up in her vague way at the treetops, and Roland was responding thoughtfully.

“He’s like a brother to me,” said Marla, nodding her head toward Roland. “I helped raise both of them, you know.
Madoc and Seena and I. Their father had his hands full all the time, it seemed. Such a busy man, was Harland. Always so busy, especially after his wife died. Roland was only nine when it happened, Eleanor had just turned one. A fever took Rachel.” Marla looked down. “Such a simple thing to take a life.”

Kyla frowned. “Where was Harrick?”

“Harrick is the natural child of the old earl, a by-blow from his past glory days with King William. He was raised in a monastery on the mainland. He only came to the island a few years ago at Roland’s insistence. It was supposed to be a visit, but he has stayed on.”

Harrick laughed out loud, a deep, bellowing sound, causing all the animals to twist their ears to him and several children to imitate him.

“You see the ragged end of a noble line, my lady,” Marla said lightly. “An earl, a bastard, and a blind child. For a long while all had thought this would be the end of the family.”

She turned her head to Kyla, her eyes filled with pale blue mystery. “Of course, you will change all of that.”

“What happened to Eleanor?” Kyla heard the question leave her mouth but almost didn’t believe she had asked it. Something told her she didn’t really want to know about Eleanor, the missing sister, the mother. A woman whose daughter would memorialize her with the name of a deer, a pet.

Marla stared at her for a heartbeat, measuring her, Kyla thought, considering her response. Kyla felt the weight of her judgment, a baffling thing since she had no notion of its basis. But still she must have failed this silent test because the other woman only shrugged before saying, “She died.”

Marla walked over to the children, leaving Kyla alone again.

Eleanor, the doe, was looking at her, being patted on all sides by small hands, immobile, a wild thing despite her human name, enduring the touch of the children. Her eyes were liquid blackness, endlessly deep, and though Kyla knew
it was impossible, she had the impression that the doe
did
know her, that she really was looking at her, looking
into
her, seeing things, making her dizzy with the contact.

One of the women moved between them, and when she had passed the doe had turned away, nuzzling a child, and it was just a doe again.

Kyla heard the rain before she felt it, a fat plopping sound coming from above. The drops were hitting the leaves of the crowns of the trees, shaking them, spreading beads of water in diffused showers that landed gently on her nose, then her cheeks, and turned the ground to a patchwork of wet and dry earth.

Before she could fully take in the fact of the rain it turned to a downpour, pelting them all, making the children scream with laughter, the deer bounding up and away into the woods for deeper shelter. Harrick, Roland, and the women were attempting to gather the children, all of them running in circles, chaos in the storm.

A bolt of lightning split the sky with a mighty
crack!
, blinding her, making her squeeze her eyes shut as she stumbled backward. The rain had already drenched her all the way through. She was a waterlogged mass of skirts, the veil clung to her neck and cheeks with a clammy foreignness that made her skin crawl. There was more lightning; each bolt coming with a fierce announcement from the heavens, the howl of the sudden tempest filling her ears.

It was like being abruptly tossed into the middle of a hurricane, blinded, alone and vulnerable in the fury of the heavens.

Her arm was taken. Through the rain she could make out a woman beside her, guiding her somewhere, but she couldn’t see the others past the downpour, she couldn’t even see the trees any longer, so heavy was the storm.

The woman was making her run, she was pulling her along and Kyla was trying to keep up. It was Marla. If Marla was here, then where was Elysia? Roland had been with her last, surely she would be fine. Kyla was unable to go back to
look now, anyway, she was completely turned around; but Marla wouldn’t have left the child alone, Kyla knew that.

Through the rain, through the woods, Marla’s grip on her arm shifted, until they were holding hands, running side by side, and suddenly something happened.

From nowhere came the feeling of freedom once more, a joyful, uncontainable thing, filling her up and bursting from her lungs with every breath she took. The rain was a liberating friend, it stung her skin but felt wonderful. The moss and the grass bowed before it, showing them the way home. Her legs were strong, she could run all day, she could run forever!

Kyla couldn’t stop the smile that took her lips. Beside her, holding on with her cold, wet hand, Marla was smiling too, blinking up at the sky, matching the joy in Kyla as surely as she matched her pace.

All around them now Kyla saw the others, the children safe, frolicking as the rain lightened to gentleness, Roland carrying Elysia on his shoulders, Harrick guiding his flock of youngsters, all of them heading back to the keep without distress, the children skipping playfully.

Marla laughed out loud, a contagious happiness, her face still upturned, and she was singing as she ran with Kyla, the grip between them unbroken, Lorlmar waiting for them up ahead.

Chapter Ten

T
hey were expected back at the castle.

As they approached, the children playing games around the adults, Lorlmar’s occupants came out of the keep to meet them, not quite scolding, mothers and nurses and a few soldiers, as well. Everyone remarked on the storm, the brief flurry of tumult at midday, the loudness of the thunder, the closeness of the lightning. Soon the children could be heard describing the danger in great detail, how brave they were, how they rescued the others, each tale more expansive than the last.

Marla had released Kyla’s hand and exchanged it for Elysia’s as they reached the gate, swinging off into the interior of the keep with one last farewell smile and then a guiding glance over to Roland, who was with his men, laughing, brushing his wet hair out of his face.

The children were dispersing in twos and threes, going off to their nursery to get dry. It seemed a good idea. Other than one look on the way back—she supposed to ensure that she hadn’t been left behind—Roland had not bothered with her again. In fact, he seemed to be going to great pains to avoid even being near her. He was standing now with his back to her as the people swarmed away, and after an uncertain moment, Kyla joined them and went inside.

Through sheer luck or just persistence she managed to find her chamber again, entering with relief that her memory
had not failed her, and even greater relief that she had not heard any further mysterious footsteps trailing her.

The bedroom held the last light of the storm, blurring the edges of the shadows, darkening every color with misty illusion.

Off came the wet gown, the bliaut, everything, laid out to dry over a pair of chairs by the fireplace. She rubbed herself dry with a soft blanket from the bed, wrapping it around her, patting her still-braided hair with the trailing ends of it as she crossed the floor, intent on finding another gown.

But to get to the chest with her clothing—all neatly put away now, she noticed—she had to pass the main window, which held a view she had not yet examined. It arrested her, the tops of trees, emerald bits of the sloping hillsides, the jagged edge of a line of cliffs. Off to the right was the ocean itself, a pewtered sweep of water stretching away until it became lost in the horizon.

The clouds were rolling up into themselves, flat on the bottoms with puffed curlicues on the tops, the lavender of them now growing stained with glorious purple and scarlet and orange from the sinking sun.

She was leaning against the base of the windowsill, lost in her reverie, when the door behind her opened.

Roland passed through, almost having to duck his head down to clear the arch of the doorway. “Kyla? I’ve been looking—”

He stopped when he saw her and she stood frozen as well, half turned, both of them captured in the perfect harmony of the moment: her standing alone against the sky, barefoot, wrapped in the blanket; him amid the warming light of the sunset, turquoise and gold and masculine beauty, looking stunned to see her, immobile.

Roland didn’t know what to do. He hadn’t been able to find Kyla, he had seen her arrive with Marla but she wasn’t with Marla any longer, and Marla hadn’t known where she had gone. He had terrible visions of her lost in the castle. It was still unfamiliar to her, and there were so many dangerous secrets at
Lorlmar she could stumble across. Concealed doors, hidden passageways, trapdoors leading down to the depths of the dungeon …

But she was here. Of course she was here, this was the logical place for her to go. This is where he should have thought to look first. She was standing before him, his druid, just a blanket wrapped around her, the red satin of her hair still brighter than the sky behind her, tucked up and away, plainly showing him her bare shoulders, and oh, God, lower down the blanket lay open so innocently, exposing the line of her leg in teasing clarity.

He tried to look away and couldn’t. He tried to turn around and leave but his body would not obey him. He was locked on the vision of her leg, long and shapely, he could see that now, and he could not move. No, he couldn’t move to save his life.

She shifted, making some soft, dismayed sound, and the blanket shifted with her, opening up higher, showing him the creaminess of her thigh until she covered it in a hasty grasp, letting another corner go dipping dangerously low over her breasts.

Roland found he could move, after all. He turned around and closed the door behind him, slamming home the bolt, locking them both inside.

She stood still as he came over to her, tilting her head back to look at him. There was no trace of the fear he had been dreading seeing in her; the silver and black of her eyes remained calm, their seduction holding him as a pagan would worship at the moon. But she was the moon, and he was her vassal. He could just sink away in her eyes, lost in them forever, surrounded by her perceptive candor, living in the flicker of desire he found there now.