Page 22 of For a Wild Woman’s Heart (Ancient Songs #3)
T he hunting party came home at nightfall, soaking wet. Darlei happened to see them from the front steps as they came riding in through the gates looking disgruntled and carrying little game.
She and Orle had spent much of the long afternoon listening to Master Coll play upon his harp in the hall beside a good fire. The rain had sent damp creeping through the keep. Autumn now came in earnest.
She half hoped Deathan might come in to hear the impromptu concert, but he had not. Duties to which he must see, so she supposed.
Her next glimpse of him would be at supper. Indeed, Master Coll had been chased out now so the servants could set up for that meal, as if they knew their master headed home.
She would go mad here with nothing to do. With nothing to think about save her impending marriage.
To the wrong man.
Ah, and from whence had come that thought? She frowned. It had been there all the while.
“Let us go.” Orle laid a hand on her arm. “Before they come in.”
Very wise. Darlei did not want to be caught here by Father. By Rohr.
“Let us go up to the little room Mistress MacMurtray bade you use,” Orle suggested. “It will be warm there.”
“Yes.” Mistress MacMurtray had a small chamber she no longer used, due to her infirmity. She had instructed her woman to keep a fire there, and offered the refuge to Darlei that very morning.
“I used to spend my days there, and do my weaving. It will be your haven now.”
The lingering sadness in the woman’s eyes had struck Darlei to the heart. Did she suppose she would never again rise from her bed?
The chamber was indeed small, a mere nook a few steps from Mistress MacMurtray’s bedchamber, with but a single window. But the fire warmed it, and Darlei took a seat on a low bench, grateful for that.
Orle had been suffering all day from headache, no doubt brought on by the rain. Once in the tiny room, Darlei sent her off to lie down. “So that you will feel better by suppertime.”
Orle looked torn. “I do not like to leave you alone.”
“I will be content here.”
But with Orle gone, Darlei did begin to feel restless. The room, so quiet and with the rain dashing against the stones, seemed to hem her in.
How many future days would she spend here like this? Orle could not be always at her side. Indeed, sweet-natured and pretty as she was, Darlei did not doubt that Orle would soon marry some brawny member of the guard.
Deathan MacMurtray’s guard.
And begin having babes of her own.
Darlei would not deny her that. Certainly not for the sake of her own loneliness. She might bond with Mistress MacMurtray, but—
She paused as her ears caught a string of sounds above the rain. Orle, returning? Nay.
Someone—two someones were having a conversation. A quite fervent one.
The door to the little chamber stood open a crack as Orle had left it. Darlei moved away from the window with its drumming rain and over behind the panel to listen.
She knew one of those voices, surely?
Master Rohr. Master Rohr, it was, with a woman.
She would not ordinarily try to overhear. Nay, she would not. In this case, she needed all the knowledge she could obtain.
The woman—the young woman—was very upset. So much so that she did not keep her voice as low as she might. A woman pushed past endurance, she sounded, and Darlei felt a flash of sympathy.
Indeed, the first words Darlei heard from her were, “But Rohr, wha’ am I to do?”
“I canna be seen talking wi’ ye here,” he told her harshly, dismissively, which just ramped up Darlei’s curiosity.
What was this?
“Nay,” the woman cried, her voice trembling, “ye will no’ deal wi’ me. Ye will no’ give me answers, even though—”
“Caragh,” he growled, “I ha’ given ye an answer.”
“No’ one I can accept.”
“There is naught to be done. My hands are tied. Och, dunna weep.”
His voice softened a bit on the last two words.
Darlei just had to see. Body flattened against the door panel, she peered around.
They stood as close together as any two could be in the otherwise deserted hallway, obviously believing themselves alone. He dripped with wet, but she had hold of him, gripping both his forearms.
A pretty girl. A very pretty girl with hair of red gold falling in ringlets and a heart-shaped face, now twisted in misery. Darlei had seen her round the place before. With Rohr?
“I trusted ye!” the girl told Rohr plaintively. “I lay down wi’ ye.”
What ho!
“Now that somewhat has come o’ it—”
What had come of it? What usually did. Well, and was this not a nasty snarl in an already-tangled thread?
“It canna be helped. D’ye no’ think I would get myself’ out o’ marriage wi’ that savage wench if I could? There is no way out. Caragh, dearest”—now he almost caressed her name—“I would ha’ wed ye if I could.”
Darlei’s heart throbbed. She caught her breath. Rohr would not like to know that she had heard. But so wrapped up in one another were they, neither of the couple so much as glanced at the door of the room Rohr no doubt believed stood unused.
“Ye still must.” Caragh’s voice throbbed with emotion. “I carry the heir to the clan, the Murtray who will follow ye.”
“If the bairn be a boy,” he cautioned her.
“It is a boy. Could a man o’ yer virility gi’ me aught less?”
Well … Darlei thought.
“Ye maun tell yer father the truth,” the girl urged.
Rohr went silent for a weighty moment before he said, “Caragh, love, he knows.”
“What? Ye told him?”
“I did. It does no’ matter. The marriage is by order o’ the king. Even my father canna prevent it.”
“Does he no’ care that I carry his grandson and heir?”
“I believe he does. He will no’ defy the king.”
“Och! Then marry her.” Caragh’s voice had turned sharp and vicious. She lowered it a bit so Darlei had to strain her ears. “Marry her if ye must, and then make sure she does no’ survive.”
“Wha’?”
“Kill her. Make it look like an accident, if ye will. Then ye can wed wi’ me.”
All Darlei’s incipient sympathy for the woman died swift and hard.
Rohr said nothing.
“Why d’ye hesitate?” Caragh demanded in a fierce whisper.
“’Tis murder.”
“So? Ye do no’ have soft feelings for her, do ye? Ye do no’ care about her?”
“Ha’ I no’ told ye so? I detest her. But Caragh—”
“Otherwise ye will be tied to her forever.”
“God forbid.”
“Then—”
“Caragh, there is no honor in murder.”
Darlei’s chest hurt from holding her breath.
“Not murder, surely,” Caragh suggested insistently, “so much as extermination. Ye ha’ said yon Caledonians are naught but vermin.”
Darlei’s cheeks flushed with anger. That nasty-tongued she-viper—
“Still and all.”
“Wed wi’ her as ye must. Then rid yoursel’ o’ her. Whose child would ye rather raise? Hers or mine?”
“Yours.” The answer came quick. “List, I canna talk wi’ ye here.”
“Later, then? The usual place.”
They parted. Darlei pressed against the wall, sure they must see her now, that Rohr might notice and glance into the firelit room.
But he walked past. Bound for his own chamber to change his wet clothes, no doubt.
Unmoving, Darlei squeezed her eyes shut. What to do now? Caragh was carrying Rohr’s child and wanted her dead.
She must tell someone. Father. He would back off from the marriage.
Or would he? Could he, yet?
Father might perhaps approach King Kenneth, inform him how things stood, that there was another woman—and child—already in the way of a worthy match. The king could reconsider his order.
She could go home.
Her eyes flew open. Still she could not breathe.
To be sure, she wanted to go home, wanted it more than anything.
But what of Deathan?
An image of him invaded her mind. Tall and somber, with that mane of honey-brown hair. Those green-specked sea-blue eyes, and the smile that came so gravely to them.
Something grew between them. Like a frond of bracken just unfolding in the spring, it barely knew as yet what it needed to be.
But the roots, the roots went deep.
She could not imagine what to do. But she unpropped herself from the wall and went back to her seat by the fire.
When Orle returned, saying she felt better and bringing her spindle, Darlei told nothing of what she’d overheard, even though it was all she could think on.
Best she keep Master Rohr’s secret a while, till she decided what best to do with it.