Claire Delacroix (42 page)

A lump rose in my throat that I should tread the same land occupied by the king and falconer so revered by my family. This was a land of legend and one filled with the history of the birds I knew as well as my own blood.

I thought of my dream and understood something I had missed. Like a peregrine, I had traveled far to find my true home. Like a peregrine, there could be only one mate for me, and I was content to be wheresoever he was content to be. I had journeyed to find him, and what was of import was that we be together, for wheresoever we were together would be our home.

I turned to Gawain, my heart nigh bursting, daring him to see the truth of my love for him. “I have chosen a name for our son,” I said. “And I hope you will agree when you know the reason for my choice.”

“I know you favor naming him for the champion Niall,” he said tightly.

I shook my head and crossed the distance between us. I halted before Gawain and held his gaze. “I thought to name him Niall, it is true, because the name itself means ‘champion’.”

“You would not name him for Niall of Glenfannon, your lost love?”

“No. Niall and I were friends.” I smiled. “I covet only his name. Our son will need the strength and the cunning of a champion to reclaim the legacy that is rightfully his own.” I shook my head then. “But that is not the name I favor now, for I have thought long upon the matter.”

Gawain said nothing.

I laid a hand upon his arm. “I would name him Michael, in memory of another boy who deeply touched the heart of my son’s father.”

I thought I glimpsed a glimmer in Gawain’s gaze, but he turned away from me.

I pursued him, though this time I did not touch him. “I have realized something else, as well. Perhaps an illness has its merits.”

Gawain glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes dark.

“I have done all that I will do for the sake of my forebears,” I said quietly. “The rest remains with our son. No doubt, if he resembles his father, he will savor the challenge of making what he desires his own. I will aid him in reclaiming Inverfyre, when he chooses the time.”

Gawain seemed uncertain what to make of this. He shoved a hand through his hair, his composure slipping. “What will you do? Where will you go? Where will you make a home for yourself?”

I smiled with a confidence I did not quite feel. “I would remain abroad, to raise our son in exile. Tarsuinn recommends two decades for the birds to recover their numbers and our son will need that long to grow to manhood and learn what he needs to know of lairdship.”

Gawain watched me in silence, his gaze dark with intensity.

“There is an old tale that the Armstrongs of Inverfyre are part peregrine,” I continued softly. “And I can see some truth in that. There can be only one partner for a peregrine, only one tiercel with whom she will consent to mate. They mate for life and return to each other, regardless of the obstacles between them.”

“Like Aphrodite, the gyrfalcon you released,” he said.

I took the last step between us and placed my hand upon his jaw. My touch seemed to soften his resolve and I felt the tension ease from him. “You killed to see me live,” I reminded him. “I know the import of that.”

“Three I killed that night,” Gawain admitted with a shuddering breath. “And Alasdair as well. Still it was not enough.” He touched my cheek. “I feared you lost, my lady fair.”

I turned and kissed his palm. “But I am found and I am here.”

“Will you stay here?” he asked with uncharacteristic urgency. “Will you stay, Evangeline, if I pledge to return to Inverfyre with our son twenty years hence that he might claim his legacy?”

I fought against my smile. “You seek the challenge of stealing it from whosoever might claim it in the interim.”

Gawain smiled, then sobered anew. “It would be unfitting for a man destined to be laird to sully his hands with any dark deeds. I will do this for him, that he might nobly claim his birthright. I will do this for you, that you might fulfill your parents’ expectation of you.”

I cupped his face in my hands and leaned against him, well content with what he offered. “I accept your wager, Gawain, but you should know the exchange in full.”

“What is this?”

“Wheresoever you dwell, Gawain Lammergeier, there is my home. In claiming my heart, you are entrusted with it for all time.”

“I believe I can accept your terms.” Gawain grinned mischievously, then cupped my chin in his hand. His voice dropped low, his eyes gleamed with affection. “Will you always challenge my expectations so?”

I laughed. “I hope so.”

“As do I.” He bent to kiss me then, all the confirmation of his own love resplendent in his kiss. Our wager was sealed, and I was well content.

Or perhaps matters were not as fully resolved as I thought. Perhaps my beloved scoundrel had yet one more surprise in store for me.

* * *

I awakened when the evening’s cool air touched my brow. The silk curtains around my bed fluttered in the breeze, their gold and red hues shimmering in the light cast by a dozen candles. The windows were open to the stars and that curious warmth of a southern night. I rose from my bed, drawn to the window by the sound of women singing, and looked out upon a sea of stars.

No, not stars, candles. I looked again and saw the faces of unfamiliar woman, all touched with the gold of the candles that they carried. There were hundreds of them, their lips curved in smiles, their burning candles and glowing faces reflected in the pool beneath the palace windows. I could not discern their words, but their joy was evident.

I turned and spied a length of cloth that gleamed with the same shimmer as my bed curtains. Something gleamed atop the array of sapphire silk and a note was perched there.

I called out but no one answered, the house silent but for the singing of the women beneath the window. I crossed the chamber and caught my breath to find my mother’s amber crucifix glinting in the light. Gawain had claimed it, for me, before leaving the chapel. God in heaven, but I loved this man!

I read the note, my heart in my throat.

There is a matter left unfinished between us, my lady fair.

I glanced back to the window, to the gem, to the note, and smiled in understanding. I donned the silken dress, feeling as resplendent as a queen, put the crucifix around my neck and wrapped a golden veil over my hair. I slipped on the fine stockings and leather slippers of red leather, arranged the folds of silk over my belly and took a deep breath before I left the chamber.

I descended into the sea of stars. The women laughed and smiled, they caught at my hands. We did not speak the same tongue, but it was no obstacle between us. They led me down the hill like a tide that cannot be denied, their jubilation making my heart sing.

A lump rose in my heart when I saw Gawain, waiting with the priest on the steps of the cathedral. Tarsuinn and Malachy stood beside him, beaming with pride; Anna bounced Rosamunde; the rest of the crew stood in ranks on either side.

I had eyes only for the man I would wed. His hair was golden in the candlelight, his tanned features glowed with vitality. He was garbed richly, in black and gold, like a man attending great festivities.

He offered his hand and I laid mine within his palm’s warmth, loving how his fingers closed over mine with surety.

“It is tradition here that women escort the bride to her nuptials with song and candlelight,” he informed me quietly. “My mother was escorted thus, and it is a custom that I find most enchanting.”

“As do I. This is magical.”

Gawain bent and kissed my hand. “Wed me, my Evangeline, as you agreed to do once before. Wed me and we shall ensure together that our son fulfils the prophecy of his birth.”

The babe stirred within me then, as if he too agreed with this scheme. I seized Gawain’s hand and pressed it over my belly that he might feel his son’s activity as well. We shared a smile, marveling at what we had wrought, then Gawain sobered anew.

“I love you, Evangeline. I love the vigor with which you greet every challenge afore you and I would share my days and nights with you for all time.”

I leaned closer to him. “I love you, Gawain, though you are less a scoundrel than I had believed.” I pressed the seal of Inverfyre in its chamois sack into his hand and smiled when his eyes widened in surprise. “One might expect as much of the Laird of Inverfyre.”

He snorted even as he tucked a tendril of hair behind my ear. “Only a lady wrought of surprises such as you could have awakened a slumbering nobility within me,” he teased, “though in the end, it is you, Evangeline, who have proven to be the more agile thief.”

“Me?”

Gawain chuckled. “Yes, you, for you have stolen the heart that no other even guessed I possessed. That was a feat indeed.”

I might have laughed but the priest cleared his throat, recalling us to the celebration at hand. We exchanged our vows hand in hand, stars above and candles around, our hearts filled with a glorious variant of the song that filled our ears. We made our version of tradition, as I guessed we oft would in years ahead, and it was far far better than ever I might have hoped.

And when Gawain kissed me soundly, setting a thousand fires alight within me, I knew those thousand fires would burn through all eternity. This love was the fate I had been born to feel, and I welcomed it with all my heart and soul.

* * *

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* * *

Ready for more
“Rogues of Ravensmuir”?

Please read on for a taste of THE WARRIOR,

now available in both a digital edition

and a print edition.

* * *

An excerpt from THE WARRIOR ©2003, 2011 Claire Delacroix, Inc.

Prologue

Inverfyre, Scotland - November 1390

His father had been right.

Every step Michael took into the forests of Scotland made it more impossible to evade the astonishing truth. He had always assumed that his father’s tales of Scotland had been whimsy, heavily embellished with a nostalgia that his mother would find appealing. Gawain Lammergeier was not above stretching the truth, especially when his tall tales prompted Eglantine’s laughter.

But all of those tales had been true. The land was so beautiful as to leave Michael breathless and it could be as mercilessly cruel as a beauteous woman with a heart of ice. What he had not expected was his growing sense that these lands were not quite earthly. He might have stepped into the domain of the fey. Michael was uneasy with this awareness, for he had never heeded such tales and knew not what the rules of this land might be.

There had been frost this morning when his company awakened, and all the trees were etched with silver filigree so fine as to rival the work of a master jeweler. The sky was a blue so bright as to hurt one’s gaze, but the shadows in the forest yielded their secrets to none. Michael surveyed his surroundings constantly as they rode, unable to dissuade himself of the conviction that they were being watched.

And not by mortal eyes.

Certainly not by friendly eyes.

He urged the party onward, fighting to ignore the oppressive feeling that the forest disapproved of his intrusion. He was the seventh son of Magnus Armstrong, the heir of Inverfyre, the warrior destined to fulfill an old prophecy, and the son of the greatest thief in Christendom besides.

Fortune would not dare deny him his due.

Or so he told himself.

At least, Michael was not alone. Tarsuinn had been invited to join this journey, his half-sister Rosamunde had not, but they both rode behind him all the same. (He knew that he should have anticipated that Rosamunde would have her way.) Sebastien and Fernando, two good friends from Sicily who had proclaimed themselves in dire need of an adventure, accompanied him, as well. A dozen stalwart men from his father’s household and ship comprised the rest of the group that had sailed north.

Michael might have stolen his father’s vessel - a feat he did not doubt his father savored - but he was not fool enough to embark on a quest without information. He had commanded the crew to drop anchor at the Lammergeier stronghold of Ravensmuir to seek the counsel of his uncle, Merlyn. But Merlyn and his wife Ysabella had been away - in lieu of Merlyn’s counsel, Michael’s cousins Tynan and Roland had insisted upon accompanying the party to Inverfyre, along with their trio of squires.

The company comprised more than twenty in all, but the sound of their passing was almost naught. The young squires had ceased their chattering as soon as the shadow of the woods closed around them. By the time Stirling had fallen into the forgotten distance, none of them dared to make so much as a whistle.