shadow and lace (41 page)

"You know, don't you?" she asked. Rowena would have sworn there was a note of wry tenderness in her voice. "I was the last to come. I killed her, then I pried you out of her stiff and bloody lap and took you to your father."

Marlys spun around. The abrupt motion flung the dark mop of hair out of her face. Rowena flinched, struck anew by the magnetic force of a beauty Marlys could never completely hide. Their gazes locked. Marlys offered her a smile of sweet and terrifying proportions.

Rowena held her ground. "You have to tell him. He has been punished enough. Last night, I was punished for my own silence. How long can it go on? You were only nine years old. You were a hurt little girl. He will forgive you."

Marlys sneered. "You're as bad as Mortimer. Always bringing back the old story, making it all new again."

"Mortimer?" Rowena breathed. She took a smooth step backward.

"Ro," Marlys said warningly.

Another step. Rowena's heel came up against an overturned kneeling bench. Rowena whirled and broke into a run. Before she could reach the door, Marlys's weight crashed into her, slamming her to the flagstones. Tears stung her eyes as Marlys wrapped a fist in her hair and jerked her head back with vicious strength.

"Chin up, pup. Your first whimper will be your last."

Rowena's muscles went limp as she felt the icy blade bite into her throat.

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Marlys and Rowena strolled arm-in-arm through the bailey, chattering cheerfully.

"What shall it be, Marlys?" Rowena ground out between teeth clenched in a smile. "Will you stab me like Elayne or throw me into the moat like poor Mortimer?"

Marlys gave the chief porter a friendly wave as they passed beneath the arch of the main door. The sharp tip of her dagger poked beneath Rowena's ribs. "Mortimer never knew when to bridle his flapping tongue."

Rowena threw the stable a longing glance. There was no sign of a hulking figure or a cap of silver-blond hair. "You shan't get far without a mount."

She yelped as the blade pierced the thin linen of her kirtle and dug into her bare skin.

"It seems you and Mortimer share many traits."

They started across the drawbridge. Rowena kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to look at the oily sheen of the moat waters. She heaved a sigh of relief when they stepped off the drawbridge into the damp grass. Her relief was short-lived. Marlys doubled her pace down the slope, and Rowena realized all of her hopes lay in the castle behind them. With each jog of Marlys's gait, the dagger blade jabbed beneath her arm.

Red and yellow pavilions were scattered along the lawn. Marlys gave a group of squires a careless salute, tugging Rowena toward the gentle arch of the bridge. The bloated lake shimmered beneath the caress of the afternoon sun. Rowena's flesh stung as the blade nicked her side.

"Sweet Christ!" she exploded. "Could you not grant me a quick death like the others? Must you torture me?"

Glancing nervously behind her, Marlys abandoned her ruse of kindness and gave Rowena a hard shove. The slick grass slipped out from under Rowena's feet. She careened down the slope to land on her rear. From where she lay, there was nothing visible but an endless vista of rolling meadows and the crenellated edge of one tower peeping over Marlys's forbidding shoulder. Marlys sheathed the dagger. She stumbled down the hill, jerked Rowena up, and pushed her toward the open meadows. Her hands held the strength of a man's, all calluses and sinew.

Rowena whirled around, her back stiffened with rage. Marlys drew a length of rope from her jacket.

The anger seeped from Rowena's body as a darker memory touched her. "You good folk of Caerleon are always prepared, are you not?" she said ruefully.

She stood stiffly while Marlys bound her wrists, noting the sweat that beaded Marlys's upper lip. They started across the fields with Rowena trudging behind, bound to Marlys by the rope twisted around her captor's fist. As they slid through a ditch, Marlys gave the rope a vicious jerk. Rowena stumbled, but straightened before Marlys could cast a mocking glance over her shoulder. The rope chafed her wrists, increasing Rowena's irritation with each step.

"Why, Marlys? Whatever do you hope to accomplish?"

"Gareth cannot know," Marlys replied without turning around. "He would never, ever forgive me if he knew I let him take the blame all these years."

"Do you think he will forgive you for killing the woman he loves?"

Marlys whipped around and strode back to Rowena. She slapped Rowena hard. The hand she raised to mop her own brow trembled violently.

Rowena did not speak after that. They traversed the long miles in silence. Marlys led and Rowena slogged behind until her feet felt as if they were mired in iron. She lost one of her pattens in the muck of a stream bank but refused to ask Marlys to halt so she could retrieve it. She limped along for several miles in one shoe, then kicked the other away. The soles of her feet had once been as tough as leather, but after her sheltered life at Caerleon, she felt the bite of stones and the keen sting of the thistles with each step. The worsening slump of Marlys's shoulders revealed her own exhaustion. With a meanspiritedness that surprised her, Rowena hoped she would fall. Some gleeful sprite within her imagined pouncing on Marlys and choking her with her own rope.

She had been watching her feet for so long, entrenched in her pleasant fantasies, that she stumbled into Marlys's back without even realizing she had halted. The tangy fragrance of pine wafted to her nose. She lifted her head, surprised to find they had reached the top of a steep hill.

The sun splintered the clouds in a burst of lavender and pink. A twilight wind dried the sweat on her brow.

They stood side by side like old friends, the rope hanging slack between them.

Marlys's voice was husky and musing. "I found this place when I was a child. We spent each summer at Ardendonne. Blaine and Gareth were always play jousting or riding their new ponies. I was left to my own devices. I would lay at the top of this hill with my chin on my arms and imagine what it would be like to be a knight, to come thundering across that plain on a powerful charger."

"It must have been lonely."

Marlys shrugged. "I had the hawks and the wind for my companions. Some days those were enough."

"And other days?"

Marlys turned her face away. The impending night cast a shadow over her profile. Branches rustled as she ducked into the trees. Rowena followed before she could be jerked along. A ring of low-lying pines made an almost impenetrable shelter. A perfect circle opened at the top. A handful of brave stars scattered their feeble light against the dusky sky.

Rowena peered beneath the shadowy branches. "Have you a privy pot tucked away somewhere?"

Marlys unsheathed her knife.

"Never mind. I can wait."

Marlys swaggered toward her.

Rowena backed away until she reached the end of the rope. "If you are going to sacrifice me, couldn't you at least find a rock to do it on? I am deserving of the same courtesy Moses showed to Joshua, am I not?"

" 'Twas Abraham and Isaac, idiot. How my brother fell in love with such a lackwit, I will never understand." The blade traveled down Rowena's throat in a tender caress. "Or maybe I do."

Rowena flinched as the dagger slid downward, leaving her hands bound but slicing the rope that lashed her to Marlys.

Marlys flicked a wheaten strand of hair out of her eyes with the gleaming blade. "Go find the privy pot, puppy, while I find supper."

After a few moments, Marlys returned, tossing a limp squirrel and an armful of brush in the center of the clearing. Rowena sank down cross-legged while Marlys built a fire, skinned the squirrel, and roasted it on a clumsy spit.

Marlys tore the meat into hunks and squatted in front of her. Rowena glared at her, but her stomach betrayed her with an angry whine. She opened her mouth reluctantly. Marlys poked a bit of meat inside.

The meat was tough but tasty. She had eaten much worse in her days at Revelwood.

"Why bother to feed me if you are going to kill me?"

Marlys grinned. "Have you not heard of the fatted calf?"

Marlys fed her until she would eat no more, then wiped the grease from Rowena's chin with a tender swipe of her own sleeve. She settled on the other side of the fire and tore into the meat with relish.

"Will you let them hang Gareth?" Rowena asked.

Marlys sucked grease from her fingers. "He will find a way out of it. He always does."

"But at what price, Marlys?"

"Why should you care?"

Rowena lowered her eyes to the fire.

Marlys set the meat aside. "I would have never treated you as he did last night."

Rowena met her dark gaze, realizing that Marlys had not bothered to veil her face since fleeing the castle. "How do you know how he treated me? Have you a hiding place in the cupboard at Ardendonne?"

"Nay. But I had a chamber next to his. And I had ears."

Mortification warmed Rowena's face. "I am surprised we did not hear your shrieks of laughter."

"How could you? You were making enough noise of your own."

Rowena trembled with impotent anger. Marlys lifted a mocking eyebrow. "You are a fool, Rowena Fordyce. When will you come to understand that you are no more to my brother than any woman is to a man? You are a piece of property to be possessed, traded, won, stolen or sold to the highest bidder to make a desirable alliance."

"Is that what you were to your father?"

"I was nothing to my father. Only Gareth existed for my father. I couldn't even be bad enough to goad him into beating me. Lying, stealing, cheating, fighting. I tried them all but Gareth got more attention for one carved bird or a well-done turn at the quintain."

"So you tried murder?"

Marlys's smile was chilling. "Father was stiff in the ground by then. But no less loving toward me than he was in life."

A branch shifted on the fire, sending up a shower of yellow sparks. Marlys yawned and cracked her knuckles. She stretched out on the bed of pine needles and closed her eyes. Rowena flopped to her side, devouring Marlys's unveiled features with unabashed curiosity, searching for traces of Gareth in the curve of a stubborn jaw, the mocking slant of heavy brows against an ivory forehead. Marlys's beauty was a dark and palpable thing, pulsing with substance and allure. Rowena understood why Blaine had pursued her so heatedly in his younger days and had learned to hate her with a passion equal to his lust when she spurned his suit. What might have bloomed between them had Marlys not sought to retreat within the ugly shell she had fashioned for herself?

"I could have been your friend," Rowena said softly, hardly aware she had spoken aloud.

Marlys opened her eyes. They stared at each other through the shimmering firelight. "Not enough, Lady Precious. Never enough."

Rowena rolled over. She lay staring into the darkness long after Marlys had lapsed into careless snores.

Rowena burrowed her nose into the nest of softness beneath her head, believing she was back at Caerleon, tucked beneath the pelts of Gareth's bed. She rooted in the soft linen, finding somewhere within a hint of Gareth's clean, musky scent. Snow drifted down in her dreams, burnishing her world with a fresh, sweet frosting of white.

"Wake up, you silly bitch. I haven't all day to coddle your precious ass."

Rowena bolted upright as a booted foot slammed into her rear. She knuckled her eyes with her bound hands. Marlys stood over her, snarling like a rabid harpy. The sky behind her head was a startling blue, as if God had dipped his brush in a fresh vat and painted the world anew. The wrens chirped a cheerful morning song.

Marlys drew back her foot again, and Rowena scrambled to her feet. Before Marlys could snatch it up, Rowena saw that Marlys's overtunic had been folded and tucked under her head sometime in the night.

Marlys shoved her hard. "If you have any needs to take care of, do it now. We won't be stopping again until nightfall."

Rowena stumbled into the shelter of branches, her back to Marlys. She met her needs in an agony of embarrassment, hearing Marlys's short laugh as she struggled with her tattered skirts, her bound hands tingling to life. She straightened. Pine needles caressed her cheek. She lifted the curtain of branches, lured by the gentle wind stirring their limbs into creaking song.

Dawn was long past. The sun had started its arc through the morning sky. In the meadows below, the last tendrils of mist drifted into oblivion in the warmth of its slanting rays. Her breath caught in her throat.

"God's blood, Ro!" Marlys exploded behind her. "It should not take you half the morning. Am I going to have to—"

The voice died abruptly as Marlys burst through the foliage and saw what Rowena saw. "Sweet Jesu," she breathed. Her nails dug into Rowena's arm.

Far below them, a knight and stallion came charging across the meadows, melded into one like some mythical creature out of Marlys's fantasies. Gareth bent low over Folio's back, shifting the horse's path with the slightest tightening of his thighs. Rowena knew the power of those thighs. A shaft of sunlight struck the steed's golden bridle. Folio's mane streamed behind him just as Gareth's own dark mane whipped at the air, gilded to blue by the sun. Five horses poured over the horizon behind Gareth, but neither Rowena nor Marlys paid any heed. They only had eyes for Gareth and his irrevocable drive toward their hill.