Laura Strickland - The Guardians of Sherwood Trilogy (20 page)

Her voice whispered into his consciousness, soft and gentle.
You need not worry, dearest one. I love no one but you.

Gareth knew it. He even believed it. That availed him nothing when he burned to hold her.

Bitterly, he spoke into her mind,
Yet he is there with you. And your duty may eventually call you to accept him.

He ached for her to deny that swiftly and completely. She did not, but fell so silent he feared she had deserted him.

Linnet, my love?

You work on my behalf. This I know. You need to trust me as I trust you.

He knew that also, but the feelings inside him did not answer to reason.

And the next words that reached him pierced him to the heart.
Even should the times and events press me to take a step that would strengthen and solidify the triad, it would indeed be at the bidding of duty. Whatever may happen in the future, be certain that my heart belongs only and ever to you.

Gareth closed his eyes on a wave of pain. She did mean to accept Scarlet, to bond with him, lie with him, bear his children. Torture would be easier to endure.

Nay!
He threw the protest at her through the gathering darkness.
Say you will wait for me.

Wait for you? My love, my dear one,
her regret poured into him,
we have no future for which to wait. The water between us runs too deep and is too wide.

We will build a bridge.

Of what?

Of magic, if we must. In the forest that man, your grandfather—Robin Hood—bade me follow my heart. So have I done! There must be some purpose.

There is, my love.
A curious warmth curled through her and, thence, to him. But she pushed him away before he could identify it.
Stolen moments in Sherwood make wonderful memories that will stay with me always, but life and duty must be faced.

You do mean to accept him—Scarlet. But nay, Linnet, you are meant to be mine and only mine.
He drew a breath.
I will find a way. Do you hear me?

But she had gone from him, withdrawn determinedly and shut the door in her mind.

He spoke aloud into the cold silence, “Whatever it may cost me, I will find a way.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“What is amiss with you, Linnet?” Lark asked impatiently. “You mope about like a bird with a broken wing. Are you sickening for something?”

Linnet, startled from the fog that lately seemed to possess her, looked up at her sister. Nearly a month had passed since Gareth had left her in Sherwood and, save for his voice in her mind, he began to feel like a dream. She woke in the morning listening for him and stole away by herself at noonday so she might sit in stillness and catch his awareness.

At night, sometimes, he whispered her to sleep, allaying if not answering her torment. She thought she had concealed her ravaged state of mind, but it proved difficult to hide anything from Lark, so close were they.

What would Lark, unsympathetic at the best of times, say if Linnet confessed her love for the Norman, if she spoke of the conviction that haunted her—that she might even now carry his child? Linnet had no certainty of it, not yet. A month proved too soon. But her heart sang—and trembled—at the possibility.

She met her sister’s implacable stare. “I think I need some time away from all this madness and strife. I thought to go stay with Ma and Pa a while, in Sherwood.”

Lark eased herself down beside the fire, which burned on the bare hearth of what had once been their home. “Do not bother. I have just been out searching for them. I wished to seek some wisdom from Ma, but they are not at the hermitage or anywhere I could find them.”

That made Linnet stare. “They must be. Where else would they go?” Linnet and Lark had spent much of their lives away from their parents, but Linnet always knew how, and where, to reach them.

Lark’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Where, indeed? I spoke to the Old Ones about it.” Lark delivered the statement, which might seem incredible coming from anyone else so matter-of-factly. By the Old Ones Linnet knew she meant certain of the ancient gods and spirits who dwelt in Sherwood.

“And what answer did you receive?” No need to question whether there had been an answer: those who sought with a faithful heart always found. And, above all else, Lark possessed a faithful heart.

“Ma and Pa have gone.”

“Gone?” A spear of fear pierced Linnet through. “Gone where?”

Lark shrugged awkwardly, and Linnet felt her grief. “Withdrawn into the magic, into Sherwood itself, into the fire and the air, the water and the deep loam.”

All the breath left Linnet’s body. “No. They would not.”

“Aye, that was my first reaction. But then I got to thinking on it. The hermitage was left all tidied, Lin. Ma’s healing supplies were all put away or burned, some of them, for I sifted the ashes of their last fire. And Pa’s supplies for making arrows—you know he always had ash wood and fletchings on hand.”

Linnet felt the blood drain from her face. “Would they take such a dire step without telling us?”

“I thought on that, as well. With Martin gone, I believe they think it best for the three of us to take up ownership of the triad in earnest. We would not do that with them still available to us. I do not know about you, Lin, but one of my first impulses is always to turn to Ma or Pa with any need or trouble. If they told us they meant to withdraw, we would have fought tooth and nail. This way, ’tis just a thing done, a fact with which we must deal.”

“But,” Linnet protested as panic flowed through her, “they must know how difficult this will be for us and how we will miss them. Ma can be brutal when needs must, aye, but Pa is never so unkind.”

The rueful expression in Lark’s eyes sharpened. “He will follow her anywhere. You know that.”

Linnet acknowledged this also. Her thoughts raced over possibilities and eventualities. “Have you told Fal?”

“I just came from him.”

“What did he say?”

“He took it hard. He has barely got over the loss of his father—now this.” An unnamable expression flickered in Lark’s eyes. “He wishes to speak with you. I do not doubt why.”

Neither did Linnet. She reflected, with longing, on that last carefree day before Gareth de Vavasour had been captured and brought to Oakham—Lark and Fal playing together, tumbling like wolf pups and spoiling her morning’s work. What would she not give to have that simple time back again?

“Fal knows his duty,” Lark went on, not without bitterness, “as do you. Will you accept him now?”

Linnet lifted her hands, helpless. How could she, when her heart belonged so completely to another? When she might be carrying Gareth’s child? And yet, how could she fail to take up the duty for which she had been bred and raised?

“You do not even want him.” Lark said viciously. “Just as he does not want me, even though I would give my soul for him. By the Green Man’s horns, Lin, could life be more unfair?”

****

“Lin? Have you a moment?” Falcon appeared out of the gathering darkness of early evening and, moving softly as a shadow, took the place at Linnet’s side. All day long, ever since speaking with Lark, she had been awaiting and dreading this encounter. She and Fal had grown up together, yet she felt uncertain of him now.

“Lin.” He spoke only her name. The two of them sat, looking out over what had once been Oakham. Much of the rubble had been cleared away and, like Linnet, folk now made their homes in the open air around their old hearths. Children ran and played until their mothers called them home to bed; hens pecked, and dogs slept with one eye open. Over it all the trees swayed and the breeze played its eternal song.

Linnet said into the deepening dark, “I wonder if this is what it was like when the ancients came here, the first folk who made the forest their home and found the magic.”

“Found the magic”—Fal took it up—“and made it their god. The god has had so many names over the centuries, just as he has had many faces.”

Linnet shot him a surprised look. This was a Fal of which she had seen little lately. While growing, the three of them had often mused over such things and spoken of their sacred bonds with Sherwood. She needed to remember the heart of that lad, now a man. Falcon had been ever a dreamer whom his father had called, innumerable times, to duty.

Linnet thought, again, she might have loved that lad, as a woman loves a man, had Gareth de Vavasour not entered her life. She wondered how much of Fal the gentle, the mischievous, remained.

“We need to speak together,” she said softly.

He lifted his hands, broad-palmed but graceful. “Aye, and so I have come.”

“The future, it seems, has rushed upon us.”

“It has.”

“Too sudden, Fal. I should have been prepared; I find I am not.”

His hand stole over and clasped her fingers; his grasp felt warm and strong. “You are not alone. None of us is. The present may be unbearable and the future daunting, but the three of us must prevail. We have no choice.”

From where had come this flint she sensed in him? Fal had ever been one to tease and play, to put things off, to tread the light path.

“So we journey on together. Wed with me, Lin. Let us take up our lives in earnest.”

She squeezed his fingers. Sitting here with him as the night came down felt good. She might claim it as her future, would her heart but let her.

“There is something I must tell you, Fal.” There were many things she should tell him—that she had lain down in the forest with Gareth de Vavasour, that she was not sure she could ever be the wife Fal deserved. “It must be kept in strictest confidence between us, only you and me.”

“Aye?” he looked at her and, through their linked hands, she felt his caution.

“I love you, Fal, but not in the way you might wish, as a woman loves a man.”
Full and rushing, filling every breath and every heartbeat...
“I love you like a brother, nay, more than that. I love you like kin, to the bone.”

His eyes searched hers. Through their fingers, she felt his emotions stir: regret, protest and longing. “That will do for now, Lin; it is enough.”

“It is not.” She knew now what love should be—bright and consuming. “You deserve someone who will give you her whole heart, love you, and breathe only for you. And there is such a one standing before you.”

“Eh?”

“It is Lark who loves you, Fal, and desires you as a woman should.”

“Lark?”

“I am not surprised you fail to see it. She hides her feelings well behind that fierce shield. But I know what is in her heart.”

“Madness! She is like a brother to me, a companion.”

“Then you have not looked at her properly, for she is a woman in every way that matters. Take her for your wife, Fal, bond with her and leave me to the forest.”

“I want you. I always have.” She could no longer see his face clearly, but despair filled his voice.

“And she has always wanted you,” Linnet added honestly, “as I do not. A tangle, indeed. What is to be done?”

“I will tell you what: you are to put these foolish notions from you and accept me now, and the future will be what was always meant.”

“I no longer know what is meant.”

“I do, Lin. I have always known. True, it has rushed upon us betimes. My father’s death has brought it, and your parents push us to it with their absence. But I see in a way they were right to leave us, sorely as I miss them. For it forces us to grow up and accept what we were born to be.” His fingers clenched hers, hard. “Bond with me, Lin. Let our strengths become one.”

“I cannot.” Linnet blinked into the darkness.

“Because you think you do not love me, or desire me as you should? I will prove you wrong, Lin. Once we lie together—”

She could feel his emotions so strongly they swayed her. She distinctly felt her heart break over his longing. “No.”

He turned toward her and strained to see her in the gloom. “Lin, love,” he said with an edge of passion, “there is naught else for us. We were conceived and bred for this. How can you think to reject it?”

How, indeed? She did not seek to reject the duties inherent in the triad—only him. But she could not tell him that.

“Let me go to the forest,” she begged, “and you go speak with Lark.”

“No.” Now he spoke the word. “I cannot lose you, too, atop all the other losses.” Emotion roughened his voice. “Do not do this to me, Lin. I pray you, do not!”

“Fal—”

“Trust me, Lin. Put yourself in my hands. You are like a flower that has never been touched by the sun. I will show you what may lie between a man and a woman. I will win your heart.”

Before Linnet could draw a breath, he kissed her, his lips claiming hers and his arms drawing her fast against him.

All his desire lay in that kiss, a vast river of it, unstoppable as a spring flood. It brimmed with sweetness and erotic power. It should have melted Linnet—or, indeed, any woman—to her bones. Instead it left her wracked by dismay.

In that instant, tasting his feelings, she knew she could not hope to lie to him or deceive him in any way. He deserved better, deserved all she had to give. She could at least give him honesty.

Somehow she drew her lips from his and planted both hands on his chest where she felt his heart racing.

“Lin.” He dove for her mouth again.

“Wait.” She sucked in a painful breath. “There is something more I must tell you, something you do not know about me.”

He laughed unsteadily. “I know everything about you, beautiful girl.”

“You do not know that I lay with Gareth de Vavasour.”

Falcon froze for the span of ten heartbeats, twenty. “What? Say that again.”

Linnet forced herself to hold his gaze, even though it cost her dear. “I gave myself to him. We lay together as man and woman, in Sherwood.”

Rage blossomed in Falcon’s eyes. She felt his body stiffen with it, as with the lash of a whip, and for an instant she did not recognize the man who looked at her.

“In Sherwood?” Being Falcon, and destined for guardianship, he grasped the significance of that. Vows were made in Sherwood and magic garnered there.