Page 48 of For a Wild Woman’s Heart (Ancient Songs #3)

T he days crept by, all back-breaking labor and short rations, deeper into autumn. Deathan lived in the stables with the animals for which he cared, and ached for a glimpse of Darlei.

Ardroch kept him on because he worked hard and was indeed a good hand with the ponies. Deathan doubted MacNabh knew he was here. He had not seen the man but in passing.

He saw Darlei not at all. No one in the household so much as spoke of her. Deathan began to think she was not still here after all.

How could it be that the master of the place had a new wife and yet no one spoke of it?

He did not see her, nay, nor hear of her, but sometimes he could swear he felt her. There behind the face of the sheer stone wall. Shut away from him.

It might be fancy, and more than once when his heart flagged, he contemplated leaving. The wheel of time upon which they both rode may have turned, taking them away from each other, to meet no more.

The very idea made him ache, and he rejected it. Leaving here without knowing, without seeing her, felt like abandonment. He must be available and close at hand, if she needed him.

A rumor circulated that the high king might be going to visit as part of an autumn tour, though why the man should want to view such a squalid place as this, Deathan could not imagine.

But MacNabh must be held in some favor, or King Kenneth never would have chosen him to wed the Caledonian king’s daughter, in Rohr’s wake.

Those with whom Deathan lived and worked were quite excited by the prospect of a royal visit, despite the fact that there was much to be done in preparation. A large measure of the routine work fell to Deathan, as the others were called upon to repair walls and even perform work inside.

“Though I hate to say it,” stated Ardroch, “the hall smells like a killing field. I canna imagine welcoming in a king.”

Ardroch had taken to speaking to Deathan as he might to himself in unguarded moments. Since Deathan rarely answered and merely absorbed what information came his way, the man no doubt did not consider such talk indiscreet.

“I could maybe help in the hall,” Deathan did say from time to time. He had to find a way to get inside. To lay eyes on Darlei, if she were still there.

“Nay, nay, ye are best keepin’ to yer own patch.”

The members of MacNabh’s guard were a taciturn lot who did not speak much either. Despite the excitement over a proposed royal visit, they did not appear happy to be taken from their regular duties to tote stone or, worse, be compelled to help with women’s work inside.

Deathan labored. He watched. He ached. Sometimes late at night, when he lay alongside his charges, he willed Darlei to know that he was here.

Close at hand. Defiant of her orders to leave.

How could he leave when it had taken him a lifetime to find her?

Until the turn of life’s wheel proved they had been truly parted, he would not stir. No matter how grim his life became.

*

Darlei had slipped into a state of despondency so deep, she did not know how to climb out again. A pestilence, she discovered, having nothing to do. She and Orle devised a few games to pass the time in their imprisonment—for she could term it naught else—but soon tired of even these.

Her heart longed endlessly for Deathan. For his touch. For the scent of him and the smile in his eyes. For his kisses dropped into the palms of her hands.

She had sent him away.

Yes, and it was for the best. He could not save her from this—and, were he here, he would try. Risk himself yet again. Her greatest fear.

She imagined him back at Murtray. Picking up the pieces of his life.

Moving through his days. Would Rohr marry?

He must, for Caragh’s pregnancy would have progressed by now.

Clan life would go on, and people would forget to talk.

Eventually they would forget their future chief’s first child had arrived early.

But none of that concerned her now. She lived in a constant state of boredom mixed with dread, always listening for MacNabh’s heavy step.

Only her anger sustained her, and she fanned it as she could. Was she not a Caledonian princess? Proud enough and strong enough—so she hoped—to save herself.

But not too proud to cry. For some nights while Orle slept, tears trickled down into the bolster like rain.

So close had they come, she and Deathan, to spending this lifetime together. Only to be parted. And she was to endure this life without him.

One afternoon, a step did indeed sound outside the door. An order was given to the guard stationed there and the bar lifted. Darlei’s heart leaped with apprehension.

It was not MacNabh come calling, but Roisin.

The woman wore a sour look on her face and had a bundle of garments in her arms. Their bright colors seemed to make her look older by contrast, her complexion turned sallow.

Her dark eyes snapped at Darlei as she pushed her way in.

“MacNabh has sent me. I would no’ be here otherwise, so ye may be certain.” She paused, the clothing clutched to her chest, and drew a breath. “We ha’ had a message. Fro’ the king’s herald.”

“Oh?” Darlei exchanged a swift look with Orle.

“We are on his planned route, though the messenger was no’ able to tell us when His Majesty will arrive.

No matter. We maun be ready when he does.

Ye”—Roisin raked Darlei with a glance of pure hatred—“maun be presented to him then, and ye canna be wearing any savage Caledonian clothing. Ye being a proper MacNabh woman and all, now.”

Darlei was nothing of the sort, but surprise kept her from saying so.

“I will fit ye for proper dress. These garments are mine that no longer fit me. We shall see wha’ may be done.”

“You?” Darlei managed.

“I was a seamstress once before I caught MacNabh’s eye, and am still a good hand wi’ a needle.”

Incredulity nearly kept Darlei silent. She gazed at Roisin and said, “I do not want you touching me.”

“List to me, mistress. I would as like see ye dead and cold as look at ye, but I am doin’ this for Dunstoch’s sake, none other. Now, strip down.”

Darlei did, down to her chemise and not without embarrassment.

Roisin eyed her disparagingly. “No’ much to ye under that garb, is there? No doubt ye are no’ increasing—yet. I doubt ye’ll be able to gi’ him the son he craves, scrawny as ye be.”

Darlei said nothing.

“Here, come to the window that I may see about this color for ye. Face the light.”

Darlei did so, gazing past the woman in an effort to combat her humiliation, reaching for what little freedom she could see. The afternoon sunlight slanted from the west. She had but a glimpse of green lawn, here at the side of the house away from the yard. And there…

Nay, it could not be.

A man pushed a barrow, one heavily loaded with manure, on an angle that just caught her line of sight. The afternoon sun shone down on him, pricking out copper lights in a mane of dark-blond hair.

She knew him. Knew the way he moved. The bunch of muscles in his arms and back. Her heart knew and her soul did and—

Nay, she must be mad. She must indeed have lost the last of her senses. He could not be here. She had told him she did not want him.

But she had lied, and he knew it. If he knew anything, it was that.

She threw herself at the window, brushing Roisin aside from where she stood trying to use the light. The woman swore and stared in affront.

“Wha’ are ye doing? Ye be a madwoman.”

The man was gone, moved out of the narrow view on offer. Darlei’s heart pounded so hard that she thought for an instant she would pass out.

“Are ye ill?” It was Orle moving forward to Darlei’s side, speaking in their own tongue.

“Yes,” Darlei said. “I do not feel well.”

Orle turned on Roisin, speaking now in her heavily accented Gaelic. “She is ill. You will leave her alone.”

Roisin’s features drooped with offended dislike. “Do no’ speak to me so. Ye upstart! I will no’ be ordered about in my own home.”

“It is her home, is it not? Darlei is the chief’s wife.”

“I maun get her fitted for a gown. When the king comes—”

Orle plucked a gown at random from the lot. “This one. Alter this one to fit her.”

Roisin harumphed and glared at Darlei, who now leaned against the narrow stone windowsill like a woman who had been struck to the heart.

“Just go.”

Roisin flounced out, and the door clanged shut behind her. Orle swiftly put her arms around Darlei. “Princess, what is it?”

“I think—I think I am going mad.”

“Small wonder, with all you have had to bear. Come sit down. There is some water yet.”

They were strictly limited on daily water being provided—but one ewer a day for the both of them. A prison.

Darlei allowed herself to be led away from the window where she had seen—

Nay. It could not be so.

Yet everything within her leaped with belief, and she felt the wheel of her life turn.