The Rose Red Bride JK2 (3 page)

Could it be that love was only for those women as composed as Madeline and their mother, Catherine? What if men only found tidy women alluring? The prospect was terrifying to Vivienne.

Hope is a potent elixir, especially for those such as Vivienne who have drunk heartily from its cup, but even Vivienne’s hope began to waver as August evenings took winter’s chill.

If only she still had the chance to make her choice!

* * *

As a result of this fretting, Vivienne had so little appetite at the board on Friday night that her mood did not escape notice. Even the absence of Ross and Malcolm had not diminished the teasing between the siblings who remained at Kinfairlie, and Vivienne was convinced that her three younger sisters had vision like hawks.

“Do you not want your fish?” Isabella demanded. Already as tall as Vivienne, Isabella had recently begun to grow with vigor, and her appetite showed similar might. “The sauce is quite delicious. I could eat another piece, if you intend to waste it.”

Vivienne pushed her trencher toward her sister. “Consider it your own.” Isabella attacked the fish with such enthusiasm that she might not have eaten for a week.

“Did you not like it?” quiet Annelise asked, her concern evident. Annelise was the next youngest sister after Vivienne, the two absent brothers between them in age. “I suggested to the cook that she use dill in the sauce, as it would be a change. It was not my intent to displease you.”

“The sauce is delicious, as Isabella said,” Vivienne said with a smile. “I am not hungry this evening, that is all.”

“Are you ill?” Elizabeth, the youngest of them all, asked.

Vivienne fought her frustration as every soul in the hall turned a compassionate gaze upon her. Nothing escaped comment in this household! “I am well enough.” She shrugged, knowing they would not look away until she granted a reason for her mood. “I simply miss Madeline.”

The sisters sighed as one and stared down at their trenchers. Even Isabella ceased to eat for a moment.

“Perhaps you have need of a tale,” Alexander said with such heartiness that Vivienne was immediately suspicious. Their eldest brother, now Laird of Kinfairlie, had played so many pranks upon his sisters over the years that any gesture of goodwill from him prompted wariness.

“He will tell you of the sad fate of a maiden who refused to wed at her brother’s dictate,” Elizabeth said darkly.

“At least Malcolm and Ross are not here to aid him whatever jest Alexander might plan,” Isabella said. The maid that the girls shared clucked her tongue, as Isabella had spoken around a mouthful of fish.

“Ross will be home from Inverfyre at Christmas,” Alexander said heartily. “Doubtless he will bring greetings from our uncle’s abode.

“Malcolm is too studious to venture the short distance from Ravensmuir, even to visit us,” Elizabeth complained.

“Uncle Tynan is a demanding tutor,” Alexander said quietly. “You may be certain that Malcolm is too exhausted each night to think of much beyond better pleasing his lord on the morrow.”

Vivienne stole a glance at Alexander, for he seldom spoke of his experience in earning his spurs beneath Tynan’s hand. He snared her gaze and granted her such a winning smile that she blinked. “What do you desire of me, that you would so court my favor?” she asked abruptly.

Alexander laughed. “I desire only to see you smile again, Vivienne. I am not the only one who has noted your sadness in recent weeks.”

“Doubtless though you are the only one who thinks a babe in Vivienne’s belly and a ring upon her finger would see the matter resolved,” Isabella said. The younger sisters rolled their eyes at this notion, their response only making Vivienne feel more alone.

“He will tell a tale of a maiden made joyous by the arrival of her first child,” Elizabeth suggested and the sisters giggled at the absurdity of that.

Vivienne did not laugh. She was, after all, the only one who thought Alexander’s scheme had some merit.

“You know how much I love a tale,” she said to Alexander, sensing that perhaps their motives were as one. “Though I cannot imagine that you know one I do not.”

“Ah, but I do, and it is a tale about Kinfairlie itself.”

“What is this? And you never told it afore?” Vivienne cried in mock outrage.

Alexander laughed anew. “I but heard it this week, in the village, and have awaited the right moment to share it.” He cleared his throat and pushed away his trencher.

He was a finely wrought man, this brother of theirs, and already Vivienne saw the effect of his recent responsibility upon his manner. Alexander thought now before he spoke, and he spoke with new care, considering his words before he cast them among the company. He treated the servants fairly, and his authority was respected. His courts were reputed to be among the most just in the area, his reputation already rivaling that of their father. He stood taller and was more of a man than he had been merely a year past when their parents had died.

Her younger sisters, however, were less enamored of the change in him. Once Alexander had been the favored playmate of all, and Vivienne knew that her youngest sister Elizabeth, in particular, resented Alexander’s new role, no less his demands that they all comport themselves with decorum. It was a remarkable change in the one who had been least concerned with proper behavior of all eight siblings.

But Vivienne knew that it had been no small challenge Alexander had faced since the sudden demise of their parents, and she felt a sudden fierce pride in her brother’s achievement. She did not doubt that there was much he had resolved or shouldered without ever sharing the fullness of the truth with his siblings.

“You all know of the chamber at the summit of Kinfairlie’s tower,” Alexander began, at ease with every eye in the hall upon him. “Though you may not know the reason why it stands empty, save for the cobwebs and the wind.”

“The door has always been barred,” Vivienne said. “
Maman
refused to cross its threshold.”

“It was Papa who had the portal barred,” Alexander agreed. “I have only the barest recollection of ever seeing that door open in my childhood. I fancy, given the details of this tale, that it was secured after Madeline’s birth, when I was only two summers of age.”

The sisters leaned toward Alexander as one. Elizabeth’s eyes were shining, for she loved a tale nigh as well as Vivienne. Isabella, who had made short work of the second piece of fish, wiped her lips upon her napkin and laid the linen aside. Annelise sat with her hands folded in her lap, characteristically still, though her avid gaze revealed her interest. Even the servants hovered in the shadows, heeding Alexander’s tale.

Alexander propped his elbows on the table, and surveyed his sisters, his eyes twinkling merrily. “Perhaps I should not share the tale with you. It concerns a threat to innocent maidens...”

“You must tell us!” Isabella cried.

“Do not tease us with a part of the tale!” Vivienne said.

“What manner of threat, Alexander?” Elizabeth asked. “Surely it is our right to know?”

Alexander feigned concern, and frowned sternly at them. “Perhaps you demand the tale because you are not all such innocent maidens as I believe...”

“Oh!” The sisters shouted in unison and Alexander grinned with the wickedness they all knew so well. Annelise, who sat on one side of him, swatted him repeatedly on one arm. Elizabeth, on his other side, struck him in the shoulder with such force that he winced. Isabella cast a chunk of bread at him, and it hit him in the brow. Alexander cried out for mercy, laughing all the while.

Vivienne could not help but laugh. “You should know better than to cast such aspersions upon us!” She wagged a finger at him. “And you should know better than to tease us with the promise of a tale.”

“I cede. I cede!” Alexander shouted. He straightened his tabard and shoved a hand through his hair, then took a restorative sip of wine.

“You linger overlong in beginning,” Elizabeth accused.

“Impatient wenches,” Alexander teased, then he began. “You all know that Kinfairlie was razed to the ground in our great-grandmother’s youth.” He pinched Elizabeth’s cheek and that sister blushed crimson. “You were named for our intrepid forebear, Mary Elise of Kinfairlie.”

“And the holding was returned by the crown to Ysabella, who had wed Merlyn Lammergeier, Laird of Ravensmuir,” Vivienne prompted, for she knew this bit of their history. “Roland, our father, was the son of Merlyn and Ysabella, and the brother of Tynan, their elder son who now rules Ravensmuir where Malcolm labors to earn his spurs. Our grandfather Merlyn rebuilt Kinfairlie from the very ground, so that Roland could become its laird when he was of age.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell us some detail we do not know!”

“And so Kinfairlie’s seal passed to Alexander, Roland’s eldest son, when Roland and his wife, our mother Catherine, abandoned this earth,” Annelise added quietly. The siblings and the servants all crossed themselves in silence and more than one soul studied the floor in recollection of their recent grief.

“My tale concerns happier times,” Alexander said with forced cheer. “For it seems that when Roland and Catherine came to Kinfairlie newly wedded, there were already tales told about this holding and about that chamber.”

“What manner of tales?” Vivienne demanded.

Alexander smiled. “It has long been whispered that Kinfairlie kisses the lip of the realm of fairy.”

Elizabeth shivered with delight and nudged Vivienne.

“Nonsense,” Isabella muttered, but the sisters elbowed her to silence.

Alexander continued, ignoring them all. “Though Merlyn and Ysabella had not lived overmuch in this hall, there were servants within the walls and a castellan who saw to its administration in their absence.

“And so it was that the castellan had a daughter, a lovely maiden who was most curious. Since there were only servants in the keep, since it was resolved that she could not find much mischief in a place so newly wrought, and since - it must be said - she was possessed of no small measure of charm which she used to win her way - unlike any maidens of my acquaintance -” The sisters roared protest, but a grinning Alexander held up a finger for silence. “- this damsel was permitted to wander wheresoever she desired within the walls.

“And so it was that she explored the chamber at the top of the tower. There are three windows in that chamber, from what I have been told, and all of them look toward the sea.”

“You can see three windows from the sentry post below,” Vivienne said.

Alexander nodded. “Though the view is fine, the chamber is cursed cold, for the openings were wrought too large for glass and the wooden shutters pose no barrier to the wind, especially when a storm is rising. That was why no one had spent much time in the room. This maiden, however, had done so and she had noted that one window did not grant the view that it should have done.

“Clouds crossed the sky in that window, but never were framed by the others. Uncommon birds could be spied only in the one window, and the sea never quite seemed to be the same viewed through that window as through the others. The difference was subtle, and a passing glance would not reveal any discrepancy, but the maiden became convinced that this third window was magical. She wondered whether it looked into the past, or into the future, or into the realm of fairy, or into some other place altogether.

“And so she resolved that she would discover the truth.”

“It was the portal to the fairy realm!” Elizabeth said with excitement.

“There is no such place,” Isabella said with a roll of her eyes.

“It is but a tale, Isabella,” Annelise chided. “Can you not savor it for what it is?”

Vivienne eased forward on the bench, enthralled by Alexander’s tale and impatient to hear more. “What happened?”

“No one knows for certain. The maiden slept in the chamber for several nights and when she was asked what she had seen, she only smiled. She insisted that she had seen nothing, but her smile, her smile hinted at a thousand mysteries.”

Vivienne’s attention was captured utterly then, for she suspected she knew how that maiden had smiled.

Alexander continued. “And on the morning after she had slept in that chamber for three nights, the damsel could not be found.”

“What is this?” Isabella asked.

“She did not come to the board.” Alexander shrugged. “The castellan’s wife was certain that the girl lingered overlong abed, so she marched up the stairs to chastise her daughter. She found the portal to the chamber closed, and when she opened it, the wind was bitterly cold. She feared then that the girl had become too cold, but she was not in the chamber. The mother went to each window in turn and peered down, fearing that her daughter had fallen to her death, but there was no sign of the girl.”

“Someone stole her away,” Isabella said, ever pragmatic.

Alexander shook his head. “She was never seen again. But on the sill of one window - I suspect I know which one it was - on the morning of the maiden’s disappearance, the castellan’s wife found a single rose. It appeared to be red, as red as blood, but as soon as she lifted it in her hands, it began to pale. By the time she carried it to the hall, the rose was white, and no sooner had the castellan seen it, than it began to melt. It was wrought of ice, and in a matter of moments, it was no more than a puddle of water upon the floor.”

Alexander rose from his seat and strode to the middle of the hall. He pointed to a spot on the floor, a mark that Vivienne had not noted before. It shimmered, as if stained by some substance that none could have named.

“It was here that the water fell,” Alexander said softly. “And when an old woman working in the kitchens spied the mark and heard the tale of the rose, she cried out in dismay. It seems that there is an old tale of fairy lovers claiming mortal brides, that the portal between their world and ours is at Kinfairlie. A fairy suitor can peer through the portal, though they all know they should not, and he could fall in love with a mortal maiden he glimpses there.”

Alexander smiled at his sisters. “And the bride price a smitten fairy suitor leaves when he claims that bride for his own is a single red, red rose, a rose that is not truly a rose, but a fairy rose wrought of ice.” He scuffed the floor with his toe. “Though its form does not endure, the mark of its magic is never truly lost.”