Keeper of the Dream (51 page)

Not any longer,
Raine thought. He had learned that in France, when he had never been more scared of dying. Because now he had something to live for.

“Raine …” Her hand moved up his arm to cup his cheek. “I never stopped loving you.”

The words should have warmed him, but they did not. He realized with a sudden, sharp pain that was like a spearpoint in his gut that they were being spoken by the wrong woman. I
love you….

Arianna. It was from Arianna’s lips that he wanted to hear those words.

He looked down into Sybil’s face, with the tiny pleats at the corners of her mouth and the freckles across her nose,
and he saw a young girl who had cared for him when no one else had. He owed her so very much, and he didn’t want to hurt her.

He brushed her cheek, once, lightly, with his curled knuckles. “Sybil … It was so long ago. We were children.”

She shook her head so hard, tears splashed out the corners of her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve never stopped loving you.”

He looked past her and up, to a twilight sky, of soft and shadowed lavender. The color of her eyes. He had loved her once, but it had been a boy’s love, not a man’s. Yet he couldn’t help wondering….

He spanned her pointed chin with his fingers and tilted her face up, and he kissed her.

Her mouth was still sweet and soft. But the passion was no longer there. Perhaps it had never been there, except in his memory.

He heard a small sound. It might have been a bird, or even the wind, brushing across the hedges. But somehow he knew that it was not. He let go of Sybil and slowly turned.

Arianna stood at the edge of the pond, so close she might almost have risen from its dark, green depths, like the lady in the song. Though he wasn’t close enough to see the hurt on her face, he felt it.

She brought her fist up to her mouth as if to stop a scream, or a sob. Then she turned and ran.

“Arianna, open the bloody door!”

“Go to hell, Norman.”

Raine rubbed his fist, which throbbed from beating uselessly on the iron-banded, oiled, and slightly worm-rotted slabs of wood. He considered trying to kick the door in, then thought better of it. He spun around and tromped back down the stairs to the hall.

He found what he was looking for immediately, hanging, along with a broadsword and pair of crossed spears, on one of the mighty pillars that supported the rafters—it was a battle-ax with a three-foot shaft. Its thick, trumpet-shaped blade was a bit dull, but would suffice.

He hefted the heavy weapon in his hand and smiled grimly. The wench needed to learn that he would never tolerate her locking him out of a bedchamber, any bedchamber. It was important that she learn this now, for he suspected there were going to be many more little rough spots like this in their marriage in the years to come.

He took the stairs two at a time and strode down the length of the gallery, tossing the ax from hand to hand. “Arianna!” he called out. “Will you quit behaving like a child and let me in?”

This time she didn’t even bother to curse him. He allowed five beats to tick by, and then he swung the ax with both hands and all his strength at the door.

He thought he heard a scream, abruptly smothered, but he could not be sure, for the wood cracked with a loud splintering wail. He pulled back the ax and swung again. A dozen more whacks and the door sagged in the middle like a deflating bladder, hanging by one hinge. He punched it in with his foot and burst across the threshold.

And nearly skewered himself on the tip of his own sword.

She held the weapon out in front of her with both hands, for it was heavy. But she held the blade true, and he had never seen her angrier.

They stood facing one another, both breathing heavily, he with the ax in his hand, she with the sword pointed at his middle, and he realized he had no idea what he was going to do next.

He tried a smile. “Will you kill me with my own sword, little wife?”

She did not smile back. “I ought to geld you with it.”

He tossed the ax aside. He took a single step toward her. The sword did not waver. The muscles of her wrists and arms tightened.

“What you saw … it was not what you think.”

She gave him one of those sneers she could do so well. “What do I think?”

“I have been faithful to you, Arianna. Even through those long months when we were parted, I lay with no other woman, not even a whore.”

“I’m sorry you suffered on my account. But then Sybil was not in France to tempt you.”

“Sybil is a childhood friend and that is all.”

“You are lying in your teeth!” She flung the sword down into the rushes and spun away from him.

“I am not lying about this, Arianna, and you know it.”

She walked the length of the room, then turned back.
She folded her arms across her breasts. “I’m going home to Rhuddlan.”

He drew in a deep breath of relief that she had said home to Rhuddlan, not Gwynedd. He didn’t want to have to keep her by chaining her to his bed. But he liked even less the idea of another confrontation with the Prince of Gwynedd, should he have to fight his way through Wales again to drag her back.

“We’ll leave soon,” he said, trying to make his voice sound calm and rational. “I’ve a brood mare to buy first and some other things.”

Her head snapped back and forth. “I’m going now. You may stay if you like. Stay forever. I care not what you do.”

This time he caught the telltale quiver in her voice. Her eyes were wet and dark, filled with pain. He ached to hold her—hell, he ached to do more than hold her. But part of his success in war was due to an ability to know when to press on and when to retreat.

“Go home, then, if you want, and I’ll follow you in two days,” he said. “But I won’t let you leave until the morning. It’s already growing dark and it’s too dangerous to travel at night.”

“What do you care what happens to me?”

“I have said you may leave tomorrow, Arianna. Do not push my temper further.”

Her chin jerked up and he expected her defiance, but instead she said, “Very well. But I will not share a bed with you this night.”

His jaw tightened. “Aren’t you afraid I will spend the night with Sybil?”

“I’ve told you. I no longer care what you do.”

He kept his face blank as he turned away from her and started out the room. Splinters of wood and split bands of iron were strewn like giant jackstraws over the floor. He pictured the look on Hugh’s face when he saw the ruined door, and he almost laughed. He paused with his hand on
the jamb and looked back. She stood at the window, her back stiff, her eyes focused on the distant blue hills of the Tegeingl.

“On my honor, Arianna, she is not my lover. Nor will she be.”

Her shoulders jerked, but she did not turn around. But then her voice, proud and strong, came to him as he stepped over the broken door and into the gallery.

“I’ll be waiting for you at Rhuddlan, husband.”

Arianna reined in her horse and looked back across the Cheshire plain. A gust of wind whipped at her mantle, bringing with it the smell of rain. Thunderheads billowed thick on the horizon, the flat gray of steel. The color of his eyes.

Just then, clouds of orange-and-black striped butterflies, sensing the coming storm, rose up from the flattened grass, obscuring her last sight of Chester’s pink towers.

Taliesin’s saddle creaked as he leaned over to study her face. “This is not like you, my lady. To run like a corncrake over a little competition.”

“I am not running away, for Sybil is not my competition.”

His red brows arched up. “Oh? Why, then, are we leaving the battlefield?”

“The battlefield is not here, it’s at Rhuddlan. And it is not another woman I must fight, but a man’s fool pride.”

“You do mean to fight for him then?”

She pulled her horse’s head back around, kicking him into a trot to rejoin her escort and Edith, who carried Nesta. “God’s death, you fool wizard. I love the man. Of course I’m going to fight for him.”

Taliesin cantered to catch up with her, then eased down to her gait. He rode well, but then he did everything well, as was to be expected of someone who had doubtless lived for centuries.

He heaved a huge sigh, his eyes on a stray butterfly that
danced between his cob’s ears. “I am not a wizard, my lady. Where you acquired this ridiculous notion, I do not know, but if my lord comes to hear of it the blame will be mine. He will string me up by my thumbs—”

“Stop flapping your jaws, churl. I need quiet to think.”

Taliesin let her think for the space of two heartbeats. “What are we going to do to get him back into your bed?”

“We
will do nothing.”

“I was thinking a love philter might suffice.”

“You would. And I would have a husband on my hands crazed with lust and trying to tup every female within a day’s ride. Nay, you will have one small part in this plan, boy, and see that you do not bungle it.”

Taliesin did not look pleased to be relegated to a small part of any plan. “What is it I’m supposed to do?”

“Bring him to me at the standing stones at midnight on Lugnasa night. Get him there if you have to use magic to do it.”

“I know no magic, my lady.”

Arianna snorted so loudly her palfrey craned its head around to see what was making the racket.

They rode in silence awhile, then Taliesin began to hum the chorus of a bawdy song. He tried again, “I still think a love philter might help—”

“Do you wish to be flung from a catapult into a cauldron of boiling oil, you worthless wizard?”

“Nay, my lady, please! And, my lady, I am not a wiz—”

“Or spitted on a pike and roasted over a slow fire like a fat goose? No love philter, do you understand me?”

He sighed. “Aye, my lady.”

They crossed Offa’s Dyke and there, beside the road, was the chestnut tree where she and Raine had eaten their dinner two days before. She thought of the vision she’d had on that day—of a young Raine bearing Sybil down to the grass, his man’s sex hard for her. There had been a violence in his masculine need, she remembered, a
fierce and raging urge to possess. But there had been softer feelings there, too, a yearning to give pleasure, to protect and cherish. Once he had not been too proud to reveal his love.

“Taliesin? Would your goddess send Raine to me if she never meant for him to love me?”

“I fear I do not understand what you mean, my lady. The Black Dragon loves you. Even the most witless of females could see that.”

Sighing, she turned and looked at him. “I do know he loves me, but I want to hear the words. For only when I hear him say the words, will I know that he has at last admitted the truth of them to himself.”

He thought how very good it felt to be home.

The setting sun washed the castle with a soft orange color. The wail of a horn echoed over the flat marshlands and the smell of burning oak and green yew came to him on the wind. Normally the hayward’s horn marked the end of work, but today had been one of rest, a holiday to celebrate the festival of Lammas and the beginning of the rye and wheat harvest. This evening the peasants would dance caroles around bonfires and drink the lord’s ale.

And perhaps, Raine thought, perhaps the lord and his lady will do a little private feasting of their own.

He smiled as he patted the purse that hung from his belt, heavy with the trifle he had bought at the Chester fair. It was a very expensive trifle—a brooch in the shape of a dragon, set with pearls, rubies, and emeralds. It was a trifle he really couldn’t afford, but then it was a known fact that a man lured no hawks with an empty hand.

She was not in the hall where he expected to find her. The hall, in truth, was empty but for Sir Odo’s page and Rhodri, who were heating pokers in the fire to mull cider. He called out a cheerful greeting to the boys and actually smiled. At this uncharacteristic good humor, their mouths
fell open in shock, then they looked at one another, shrugged, and went back to their cider.

He was about to ask them the whereabouts of their mistress when Sir Odo came lumbering in, tally sticks and abacus in hand and a scowl on his brow, to discuss the expected income from the harvest. Raine spent the next hour with his bailiff—it wouldn’t do, anyway, he thought, to appear overanxious. But when he finally mounted the stairs and entered their chamber, she wasn’t there.

Taliesin was, sprawled on the padded chest beneath the window, a harp in his lap. “Where is the Lady Arianna?” Raine asked of his squire.

“Out and about.”

Raine flexed his jaw. “Out and about where?”

The harp erupted into a sudden tinkling glissando. Taliesin glanced up through a veil of fox-red lashes. “Do you want your wife back in your bed, my lord?”

“She never left my bed.” Raine strode the length of the room. He took off his sword and sent it sailing with a clatter onto a table, then pulled off his
broigne
and flung it at a stool, missing. He spun around. “What is it to you, anyway, where Arianna sleeps?”

“You are horn-mad and irritable with it, and I grow weary of putting up with your foul temper.”