Deirdre (34 page)

Alric felt the promise at the core of his senses. His undoubted physical desire for Deirdre had given way to spiritual attraction in the course of the last day or so of soul-searching, but now it blindsided him like a traitorous dog. Body flushing and tensing all at once, Alric hardly heard Scanlan’s prayer above the cacophony within himself. His breath was short and mouth too dry to add his “amen.” Were her words just a turn of phrase, or did she mean …?

“You may kiss the bride.”

Although the priest spoke passable Saxon, Alric stared at Scanlan, trying to make out the meaning of his words.

“Well, go on, Son! We’re not getting any drier!” Lambert waved his arm. “Tis a curious time for shyness now.”

It wasn’t until Deirdre snickered beside him that Alric’s wits returned, riding high on a wave of embarrassment.

“Her chatter will bring you delight.”

With a perfectly wicked quirk of his lips, Alric gathered his precocious bride in his arms. Ignoring the heady sway of her figure against him, he steeled himself for his attack. First a feign, a brush of lips to belie the desire she’d stirred …

A disjointed cheer rose around them.

Then a peck on the forehead where her gold-threaded veil folded back.

The cheer gained voice again, only to fade as Alric bestowed another and another, first on one cheek, then the other. As he eyed her chin, it hung uncertainly in the air. Gently, he left a peck of homage there as well.

Deirdre’s eyes were wide open, swimming with uneasiness and anticipation. Surrounded by a collective holding of breath, Alric swept in and laid his claim upon her lips. When he at last offered her
reprieve, she gasped with shortened breath, and he grinned at her flushed cheeks and dazed demeanor.

For the moment, he’d caught her off balance—but a lifetime lay ahead of them in which she would undoubtedly even the score.

T
he first son to produce a grandson will become my heir,” Lambert proclaimed, lifting his goblet first to Alric and then Ricbert. The red wine sloshed over the king’s fingers, but well into his cups, he was beyond caring. He not only celebrated Alric’s wedding, but the fact that Alric finally accepted his wedding gift—the villa in Chesreton.

It wasn’t the first time it had been offered, but, until now, Alric needed no home, nor the ties that went hand in hand with such a gift. But a proper bridegroom prepared a house for his bride, and Alric was determined to be that, despite his reluctance to be beholden to anyone, particularly his father. Much as Alric tried to love the king, Lambert’s penchant for stirring strife, especially between his two sons, troubled him. While Alric could fend well enough for himself with Ethlinda and her offspring, he now had a wife to be concerned about—one who’d been separated from him by the endless stream of well-wishers.

He looked to where Deirdre sat next to Helewis, her cheeks as flushed as the other woman’s were pale—like a red rose and a white one. Frig’s breath, had this new faith made a poet of him?

“The sooner we leave this place, the better.” The grumbled comment came from Gunnar to his left. Rather than the mischief it spawned in Lambert, the heath fruit worked a morose spell on his friend. “I’ll not bear it another moment, knowing your weasel of a half brother is back in her bed after
that
little announcement.”

It would suit Ricbert’s nature to drag poor Helewis off on the instant, but Gunner’s familiarity with the loneliness of the princess’s bed set Alric on his heels. “Back?”

Gunnar apparently pulled his wits together and cleared his throat. “Everyone knows your dear brother prefers any bed but that of his wife. Until now, at least things were tolerable.”

This was all Alric needed—his best friend drinking himself into a
confrontation with his half brother over a woman lost to him.

“Lambert just toys with our minds,” Alric disdained. “Ricbert is heir, always was, always will be.”

He would not allow himself to even entertain the thought that he might become ruler of Galstead in lieu of his half brother Although a second thought niggled. If Gleannmara—with its present king on the throne and its heir still alive somewhere between Britain and Rome—was not to be his kingdom, that left only one other to fulfill Orlaith’s vision.

Not that even kingdoms mattered to Alric’s love-besotted mind. It had to be love. What else could turn a man’s head so that he hardly knew himself? He had wealth enough accumulated to live with his bride in ease, even if he never made another trip to sea.

“Unless the
heir
should happen to topple off a cliff,” Gunnar mumbled under his breath.

The wistful remark brought Alric’s wandering thoughts back to the present. Thankfully, the merriment threatening to raise the roof from its planked walls kept Gunnar’s words from carrying. Alric was in full sympathy, knowing, perhaps for the first time, just how deeply his friend felt about Helewis. Were their positions reversed, he’d have made off with Ricbert’s bride before—

He caught himself. He hadn’t exactly rushed into this union with Deirdre. He allowed that it was his mother’s prayers and God’s grace that moved him in time to keep from losing her forever.

“You ask too much of me.” Gunnar laid his head upon folded arms on the table.

Aye, Alric commiserated with his friend’s plight, but Deirdre came first. Gunnar was needed here with her, while Alric followed up on Hinderk’s lead regarding Cairell of Gleannmara.

Just where the prince was depended on which source one believed. A short conversation and a tidy reward of gold revealed that Deirdre’s brother had been taken to Gaul—or he’d escaped—either one conveniently at the moment Hinderk began his discreet inquiries around the bretwalda’s court. There was no doubt in Alric’s mind now that the bretwalda knew nothing about Cairell, for Ecfrith would hide nothing.
One of his thanes had been bitten by greed and now hastened to cover his subterfuge. Regardless, Alric was obliged to at least try to find Cairell.

“You ask too much of me.” Clearly, Gunnar was too far gone on heath fruit to know he repeated himself.

“I know, but—” Alric broke off and nudged his dazed companion. With a short nod, he motioned to where Ricbert and Ethlinda spoke in dead earnest with the Mercian envoy and several thanes, mostly relatives. Alric suffered their company on too many occasions. For all its benefits, the kingship carried curse as well.

“Snakes like to coil and huddle together.”

“I thought Hinderk’s companion had left for the Mercian court upon our refusal to pay their blood protection.” It was bad enough having his stepmother’s relatives slithering about …

“Another toast to the cap’n,” Wimmer chortled from his table with
Wulfshead
’s crew a few yards away “Come on over, ye lucky dog, and have a last drink with us as a free man.”

“More likely he sent a messenger. That way he can keep an eye on us.” Gunnar rose unsteadily and, seizing Alric’s arm, steered him toward the
Wulfshead
’s faction.

Alric dismissed the notion that something was amiss. The queen and her son always kept to their own at such occasions. It was normal to gather with long-missed kin.

Instinctively, he cast a protective eye to Deirdre’s last whereabouts and was vexed to see that the princess was no longer at the head table. But then, neither was Helewis, he noted, taking a measure of comfort in the notion that the two women had retired momentarily from the king’s hospitality. Females never left in solitary number but in packs. He supposed it was either because they were schooled by their mothers to take comfort in numbers, being the weaker sex, or nature mysteriously called them by instinct all at once.

The imported ale glittering in the sterling and gilt goblets Lambert had specially crafted for the bride and groom was no better for taste, nor for the way it settled in Alric’s gullet. He suffered an uneasiness that would not abate, yet he could not pinpoint the source.

He endured his crew’s jibes and more serious comments, processing them on a separate track of attention from which he focused on his bride’s whereabouts. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her, Deirdre of Gleannmara had commandeered a permanent block of his attention that none other could erase. She was with him, wherever he was, if not in physical presence, certainly in his mind.

Some of the guests got up to indulge in a dance, which kindled a plan in Alric’s mind. He’d suffered court etiquette enough to try the patience of a saint, much less that of a bridegroom. He’d have his bride to himself with no more of this nonsense.

Taking up his discarded cloak, he leaned over and whispered in Gunnar’s ear, “Play the fool for me, friend, and we’ll both escape this drudgery.” With that, he threw the blue garment over Gunnar’s head and shouted good-naturedly. “That’s it; enough is enough for you, mate. Time you walk this off.”

For a moment, Alric wondered if Gunnar was drunker than he thought, for the man stood still as a statue. Then, of a sudden, he came to life, struggling and cursing fit to singe a smith’s ears.

“We have him, Cedric,” Alric called to Gunnar’s father, who rose upon hearing the ensuing ruckus. “We’ll tuck him in and be back anon.”

With a conspiratorial wink at Wimmer, Alric steered his rowdy friend toward the door and out into the night air and freedom.

The cook fires at Galstead continued to put forth food for all the guests, including the unexpected ones who camped beneath the makeshift shelters of vendors’ row or shared such shelter as could be had among the townsfolk. There was enough, no more, no less. Truly God’s handiwork was everywhere this day, in the heart of the town and, increasingly in its people.

Scanlan, who’d remained outside in the baptizing rain for as long as there was someone to come forward to claim God’s redemption, walked on air. Thrice he embraced Deirdre as his partner in triumph—how her faith had changed the man she married! And he, then, led others to
accept Christ. Then there was the rain, the long-prayed-for rain, falling still, yet soft enough that it did not dampen the spirit of the celebration.

Caught up in God’s spell of wonder, Deirdre shared Scripture’s accounts with the cooks and their assistants of a wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine, and when He fed five thousand using five loaves and two fish, then she slipped out with Helewis to be certain that none be turned away without food. The king’s steward had matters well in hand, but her friend had been on the verge of hysteria ever since Lambert made that ridiculous announcement regarding Galstead’s heir.

“Would that God would deliver me from this life, for I haven’t the courage to take it myself,” Helewis said woodenly as they passed a wagon under which some dogs and children had taken shelter from the wet mist.

The smile on Deirdre’s face at the sight of a waif and a hound gnawing on opposite ends of a rib of beef faded. “You mustn’t give up, Helewis. Surely your situation is no more hopeless than mine was when I was captured by Alric and forced into this marriage.”

“But you love the man you are married to.”

“Only by God’s grace and answer to my prayers … not what I prayed for, mind you, but for what was best for me.” How far she had come in the last weeks, not in understanding, but in faith. Alric was not the only one who’d changed. “God has brought about the impossible for me—”

“Ricbert will kill me when he finds out I’m with child.” The poor soul was deaf to anything but her own despair. “Which is the worse fate, I don’t know—being killed outright or having that animal return to my bed.”

Deirdre shuddered, not wanting to even imagine what her friend experienced at Ricbert’s hands. “‘For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the L
ORD
, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end,’” she said with conviction. “You must believe that. You mustn’t lose hope.”

“God does not reward sin, and I am an adulteress.” Helewis fell to her knees in the light rain, sobbing.

“Helewis, your gown!” Deirdre struggled to raise the distraught soul to her feet. “Come with me to Abina’s lodge. You must hold together, if not for your sake, for the sake of the babe you carry.”

“Father, save us!” Helewis pushed Deirdre into the shadows, fear displacing despair on her face. “It’s Ethlinda! She spies upon us.”

Deirdre watched as the queen made her way toward the kitchens, snapping her fingers to summon the wine steward and admonishing servants who did not move fast enough to suit her. “It appears she’s doing what we did, checking on the kitchen to be certain her guests are being well fed and their cups remain filled. Our extra guests put her into a tizzy,” she pointed out. “But God’s taken care of them, just as He will you and your baby. Now come along. I doubt she’s even noticed our absence.”

The lodge was pitch black, save one of the lanterns strung about for the sake of the celebration and Galstead’s guests. Deirdre lit a small candle lamp inside the shelter, all the while searching her mind for words of comfort.

“You are right,” she said, still pensive as she put the lamp on a shelf near Abina’s bed. “God does not reward sin. He forgives it. David was an adulterer and a murderer, and yet God forgave him.”

“This is your wedding day. We mustn’t stay—”

“We’ll join the others just as soon as you are fit.” Deirdre took a cloth and wet it with water from a pitcher. “Hold this on your eyes to take the redness and swelling down while we pray.”

Father, give me the words, for I am barely saved myself, but by Your grace.
Even as her plea formed in Deirdre’s mind, her scramble of thought cleared. His Word was all she needed.

“God, we know You have plans for us, and they are for our good, not our harm, but Father, we are surrounded by darkness and fear, knowing we have not been as faithful and upright as You would have us be.”

Helewis began to sob again. Deirdre hugged her friend to her.

“But Father, You know our circumstances, our pain, and our remorse for our weaknesses. You do not expect us to be perfect, for only Your Son was without weakness or flaw. You have said ask and ye
shall receive, and so we are asking God, for Your forgiveness and Your support as we deal with the earthly consequences of our sins. Be with Your child Helewis now. May she know Your presence and peace—the peace of Your forgiveness and hope in Your Word. Amen.”