Fairest Of Them All (30 page)

On a whim, she rose and tugged the garment over her head, hugging it against her skin as if she could absorb Austyn’s essence through her pores. The coarse wool made her tingle. She could not resist a giddy twirl to admire the way it belled around her calves.

She stumbled against the table.

And had to grab its edge to keep from falling when she realized the tower door stood ajar, beckoning her into the misty morning.

Holly crept down the stairs, keeping her back pressed to the wall without realizing it She picked her way gingerly over the handful of castle dwellers who had chosen to sleep on benches and blankets in the great hall. The main door was cracked ajar, inviting in a sliver of pallid light.

She slipped through the narrow breach and padded into the inner bailey, pausing at its boundary to search the sky as if seeing it for the first time.

The brooding vault delivered no vain promises of sunrise. Twas the sort of late summer day more easily mistaken for early autumn—the whisper of a cooling breeze blowing off the river, the skittering surprise of a leaf forsaken too soon, a glimpse of ruby in the verdant emerald crown of an oak. Twas a subtle reminder to savor the sighs of summer while they lasted, for winter’s icy breath was drawing nigh.

Holly had forgotten how immense the world was. With no walls to enclose it, it sprawled in an unbroken vista of soaring peaks, vast moors, and impenetrable forest, all bound by the pewter thread of the river flowing through drifting veils of mist toward the mighty sea.

Her breath caught in her throat She was seized by a shiver, a primal fear that such an unbridled wilderness would surely swallow her whole. She longed for the familiar walls of her tower cell, the cozy nest of her blankets. She might have gone creeping back into her hole like some timid mouse frightened by the castle cats had she not seen the man standing at the crest of the bluff overlooking the river.

The sight of her husband standing with one foot braced against a rock, his dark hair sifted by the caress of the wind, would have given her the courage to walk through the flames of hell itself.

Her fear lessened with each step that drew her nearer to him, until finally her invisible fetters fell away, making her limbs feel lighter than air. She wanted to run and skip and frolic across the dewy grass like a newborn colt But Austyn’s curious stillness stopped her. He seemed oblivious to her approach. His eyes were glazed, as if he could see beyond the bend of the mist-shrouded river to the distant sea.

Not wanting to startle him, Holly reached out a hand and gently rested it against the curve of his lower back.

At the tentative touch, Austyn looked down to find Holly smiling up at him. Holly somehow managing to turn his graceless tunic into the robes of a queen. Holly with bare feet, tangled curls, puffy eyes, and lips still faintly swollen from the voluptuous kisses they’d bestowed and been granted during the night She’d never looked more beautiful, which made what he was about to do both easier and far more difficult than anything he’d done before.

Holly knew the instant she saw the expression on Austyn’s face that something was wrong. As her smile faded, he drew her into his arms and kissed her softly. There was something so wistful, so inexplicably sad, about that kiss, that instead of allaying her apprehension, it only worsened it

He caressed her shoulders with wrenching gentleness. “I’m sending you home.”

She took a step away from him, as if distance would provide a shield against further blows. “I am home.”

“But you’re not safe. You’ll never be safe at Caer Gavenmore.” Anguish flickered across his face as he cupped her throat, gently fitting his fingertips to the faint necklace of bruises gifted to her by his father’s hands. “What happened last night only proved that.”

“I’m not afraid of your father. You’re strong enough to protect me from him.”

Austyn’s shell of calm determination shattered. “But who will protect you from me!”

Holly flattened her palms against the beguiling warmth of his chest and gazed up into his haunted face, praying her eyes reflected the tenderness and trust brimming from her heart “I’m not afraid of you either.”

“Then you’re a merry fool!” A tiny crack shot through Holly’s heart as he caught her wrists and pushed her hands away from him as he had done so many times before. Sinking to a sitting position on the rock, he drove his fingers through his hair. “Have I not already proved that my love is capable of bringing you naught but disaster and death? Oh, ‘twould start out innocently enough. You’d get a speck of ash in your eye from sitting too near the hearth and I’d accuse you of winking at Carey. The next thing you know,” he drew a finger across his throat, “you’d both be lying dead on the flagstones and I’d be left to finish my supper alone.”

Holly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Only yesterday she had planned to entreat Austyn to return her to Tewksbury this very morn if he could not love her, and now he was determined to send her away because he did.

He buried his head in his hands. “How am I to make you understand? This jealousy is like a crippling sickness that flows through my veins. It poisons everything I touch and twists love into something monstrous and hurtful.” He lifted his dark-lashed eyes, letting her see for the first time the full extent of his despair. His voice lowered to a defeated whisper. “I can’t even look at you without thinking about losing you.”

A tremulous sob of laughter escaped her. “But you won’t lose me if you grant me leave to stay here by your side. I would never willingly abandon you.”

She knelt beside him, resting a hand on his knee. “R» dare to love is to court hazard, is it not? Tis a risk Tin more than willing to take.”

He cast the grave behind them a dark look. “My mother took such a risk and it cost her her life.
Ill
not imperil you so.”

Holly was slowly coming to fear that there would be no swaying him. She had fought so hard, but it seemed her heart’s blood had all been spilled for naught. The realization made her both furious and afraid. “So what you’re truly trying to say is that no matter how much you claim to love me, you could never find me worthy of your trust.”

Frustration sharpened his voice. “ Tis not you I find lacking, but myself.”

She curled her lips in a haughty sneer that would have done Nathanael proud. “And if this dreaded ‘Curse of the Gavenmores’ turns out to be naught but a lot of superstitious gibberish?”

Austyn sighed. “It matters naught if the curse is true, so long as I believe it to be.”

Holly could not dispute his twisted reasoning. She swallowed her pride, bowed her head, and whispered, “You could keep me locked in the tower. If ‘tis the only way . . .”

He tilted her chin up with one knuckle, his eyes smoldering with that same frosty fire that had first drawn her into his arms. “I’d wrap myself in chains and cast myself into the deepest dungeon in hell before I would cage you again.”

Holly rose stiffly to her feet, savoring the fleeting sensation of towering over him. “Then I shall cage myself. If you want me removed from your household, sir, I suggest you order Carey to fetch the battering ram and catapult For 111 not set one dainty foot outside that tower until you cease this nonsense.” She whirled around and began to march toward the castle. “If this Rhiannon wants you so badly, she’s going to have to fight me. The witch crosses my path and 111 pluck off her little faerie wings and give her a taste of ‘mortal doom.’”

“If you won’t go to save your own soul, then go to save mine.”

Austyn’s voice tolled in her ears like a death knell. Holly froze, allowing herself the brief luxury of hating him. Hating him for knowing her so well. For issuing the one challenge she did not have the armor or the weapons to resist He could have cut her no more deeply had he slapped her across the face with his steel gauntlet

She spun around to find him standing, his feet braced for battle. Her impotence made her want to lash out to hurt him as he was hurting her. “If you were going to request such a noble sacrifice of me, perhaps you should not have risked getting me with child. What if you’re sending me back to my father with the Gavenmore heir in my womb?”

Austyn’s jaw clenched as he inclined his head. Whether at being reminded of the tender communion their bodies had shared or at the thought of bidding farewell to his unborn child, Holly could not say.

“If you should bear a male child, then keep it as far away from me as possible. I’ve naught to offer him but a birthright of damnation.”

Holly set her chin defiantly and dashed a tear from her cheek. “I know ‘tis not uncommon for a husband and wife to reside in separate households, but what if I am not content with this mock marriage you propose? What if I choose to offer my hand to another?”

She knew it to be the crudest blow she could have dealt him. Austyn’s reply when it came was soft and edged with bitter resignation. “If you choose to remarry, I shall lie before both God and king to see that you’re granted an annulment There’s no reason you should spend the rest of your life paying for my folly.” He lifted his eyes to her face. “But you are, and always will be, the wife of my heart.”

Twas as if his vow split her heart asunder. Holly felt her face crumple into a mask of pain. “The only folly I ever committed, sir, was loving you!”

With that impassioned cry, she turned and ran blindly toward the castle, seeking the refuge of the tower for the last time.

The cracked oval of the hand mirror reflected a flawless oval face. The dark brows were lightly winged, the arch of the cheekbones high and pure enough to survive for decades without betraying a trace of wear. Only the violet eyes betrayed the hollow soul of the mirror’s owner.

Holly rouged her pursed lips to an inviting pink, then ran her tongue over them, thinking absently that rouge tasted much more pleasant than ashes. She adjusted the ruby at her throat and slipped a gold fillet over her curls. Let her husband accuse her of thievery if he dared! The woman who had once owned these gems and trinkets bore more kinship to her than to him. If he protested, she would simply claim them as payment for pleasures rendered.

Ruthlessly stamping down an urge to steal a last wistful glance at the rumpled bed, she drew a thin line of kohl beneath each eye to enhance their feverish glitter. You mustn’t cry anymore, she chided herself sternly, lest it smear and streak down your cheeks like a mummer’s face paint.

Twas just as well Austyn was sending her away, she thought, touching the tip of her pinkie to the fragile depressions beneath her eyes. Another sennight in his contentious company would have doubtlessly worn irreversible creases into her skin. No woman could be expected to endure such dizzying flights of joy and despair without displaying the scars of it And she hadn’t spent all of those years avoiding the sun and anointing her skin with sheep fat just to end up as wizened as Elspeth.

As if the unkind thought had invoked her, a quavery voice behind Holly said, “My lady, Master Carey has prepared the horses.”

Holly laid aside the mirror and swept her ermine-trimmed mantle in a graceful bell as she rose from the stool.

Elspeth could not contain a gasp. She had been present at Holly’s birth and witnessed the cream-and-pink miracle that had slipped effortlessly from her mother’s body with a perfectly rounded head and tiny, dark eyelashes as fine as feathers. She had gripped Holly’s chubby little hand on her third birthday when a visiting Arabian prince had demanded the honor of her hand in marriage. The twelve-year-old lad had wept and stormed when her papa had refused, but Holly had simply tossed her silky, black curls in disdain and toddled off to dig for worms in the garden.

Elspeth had studied Holly’s beauty in all of its guises, but she’d never seen her mistress look quite so breathtaking. Or so brittle.

Twas as if she were a princess sculpted from ice. The notion made Elspeth afraid for her. Ice might be hard, but ‘twas also fragile—vulnerable to heat and apt to shatter under pressure.

“Would you please bear my train, Elspeth?” Holly asked, drawing on a pair of miniver-lined gloves. “I should so hate for it to get dusty in this tomb.”

As Elspeth dutifully fell into step behind her, Holly set her shoulders to a haughty angle. She refused to crawl away from Gavenmore with her train between her legs. Her heart might be shattered, but she was determined to leave with her pride intact Let her beauty be a slap in the face to Austyn and all of his faithless kinfolk, dead or alive!

Both the great hall and inner bailey were crowded with onlookers. A gasp went up at her appearance. Some, like Winifred, were openly weeping. Others did not bother to hide their relief. Perhaps now their precious master would be safe from the destructive wiles of comely women, Holly thought bitterly. She held her head high, long accustomed to the impolite stares of those less lovely than she.

Carey waited with the restless horses—a piebald gelding, a small bay, and a dainty gray palfrey perfectly suited to Holly’s height Carey’s face was somber. Twas impossible to miss the reproachful look he cast the hilL

From the corner of her eye, Holly saw Austyn—a shadow garbed in black standing beside his mother’s grave. His very presence there was a silent testament to the righteousness of what he was doing.

Without so much as a disdainful glance in his direction, Holly accepted Carey’s hand and mounted the palfrey sidesaddle, spreading her skirts in a pretty fan over the beasf s flanks.

As Elspeth settled herself on the bay, Carey looked as if he would have desperately liked to say something, but Holly flared her nostrils with such aristocratic scorn that he did not dare.

She folded her gloved hands over the reins and announced with the aplomb of a young queen, “We may proceed.”

Proceed they did, past the gawking spectators, past the crooked gatehouse, past the rubble of the abandoned curtain wall. Past the point on the road where one could look back and entertain the childish illusion that Caer Gavenmore was a celestial palace perched on a bed of clouds.

Holly no longer believed in castles in the clouds, nor in the princes who inhabited them. Under the guise of smoothing a rebellious curl, she lifted the back of her hand to her eye, leaving a single smear of kohl on the pristine silk of her glove.