Temptress (31 page)

His heart pounded and his fingers twisted the reins as he pictured his cousin, the man who had always thought he’d been somehow cheated out of his lot in life, a man, he knew now, who would do anything to further his own ambition.

Lord of Wybren.

A black rage stormed through his bloodstream.

Bile climbed up his throat, the bad, bitter taste of betrayal spreading into his mouth.

He leaned to one side and spat into the undergrowth.

’Twas time to face the enemy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

M
orwenna had no appetite as she sat at the raised table and surveyed the great hall, where soldiers and peasants were eating. When meals were served, there was usually a buzz of conversation, outbursts of laughter, and a sense of joviality, but not today. Everyone was subdued. Quiet as they ate from shared trenchers. Even the castle dogs seemed to notice the change in the air and their begging seemed less frantic, their eyes and ears straying toward the doors, as if they, too, expected to hear something,
anything
about the missing captive.

Morwenna barely touched her salmon pie or coddled eggs, and the gravy that covered her food soaked into the bread of her trencher. Nor did she have any interest in the bites of roasted eel and onions that were usually her favorite.

She wasn’t the only one whose appetite was missing. Bryanna had sat without saying a word throughout the meal. She hadn’t tried so much as one bite, not even tasting the almond pudding decorated with honeyed dates, the cook’s pride and joy. She’d sat white-faced and morose, and the instant the last dish had been served, she was on her feet, quick to leave the table. She had offered no excuses as she hurried though the great hall and upstairs to her private chamber.

Morwenna picked at the pudding but anything she ate seemed to curdle in her stomach. Her thoughts were both with Isa and the last terrified moments of her life, and with Carrick and how he’d somehow slid out of the bed she’d shared with him and slipped past the guard at the door. Had he bided his time, waiting until he was certain Sir James was dozing? Or had he just been fortunate enough to push the door open at the right moment so that no one in the keep, not the sentry at the bedroom door, nor anyone awake, nor the guard at the main door, would have seen him?

Was security in the keep so loose that anyone, including Carrick and Isa’s murderer, could come and go at will? Or were they all working together—a band of traitors and cutthroats who were not only undermining but rebelling against her authority? Hadn’t she felt it often enough? That unseen eyes were watching her? That there was a malevolent presence within the keep? Had not Isa herself warned her of just that kind of treason—omens of death and destruction?

And Isa was the one who had ultimately paid.

Had the old woman been right?

Was this keep cursed?

Was it possible that everyone she trusted was a traitor?

Morwenna’s stomach tightened and she looked up quickly, her eyes scanning the large room and everyone within it. Was it her imagination or did the tanner avoid her gaze? And the atilliator, did she not see rebellion in his glare whenever she spoke with him? She’d thought it because she was a woman. . . . And where the devil was Alexander, the captain of the guard, the man supposed to keep the castle safe? He’d been gone all morning supposedly on a mission of justice, but could she really trust him? Had she not heard the people who were supposed to pledge themselves to her gossiping about her, talking behind her back, sniggering that she’d been left by her lover again?

She couldn’t stand sitting at the table another second. Leaving her barely touched meal to congeal, she wiped her hands on a napkin and crumpled it into the boat-shaped nef sitting on the table. Before the the cupbearer could pour more wine into her mazer, she pushed past him and headed upstairs. To think. To figure out what to do.

She couldn’t wait for everyone else in the keep to come up with ideas and plans; she, as the ruler, would decide what course of action to take. She started for her own room and then paused and walked into Tadd’s chamber, the room she’d shared with Carrick.

Her face reddened when she noticed the bed, now freshly made. No candles or rushlights burned in the room; no fire had been built in the grate. She walked around the bed, remembering entering the room the night before, seeing him lying there, touching him, feeling the heat of his lips, surrendering to the magic of his touch.

She’d thought she could fall in love with him again.

And she’d been wrong.

Sighing, she left the chamber. She spent the next hour in the solar, standing at a window, gazing down at the bailey and wondering how Carrick had escaped so easily. Did he have conspirators? Others who aided in his flight? Did one of them stumble upon Isa and kill her, leaving the ring of Wybren as a sick souvenir?

 

“Great Mother, forgive me,” Bryanna murmured, grief tearing through her soul. She closed her eyes to block out the image of Isa lying on the physician’s table, her skin cold and ghostly white, her throat crusted in her own blood, but the impression remained as if burned into her brain.

As she knelt beside the woman who’d raised her, the wet nurse from whom she’d suckled when her own mother’s milk had dried, she touched Isa’s stiff fingers and felt something, not life but the remains of it, as if Isa’s soul still lingered.

“Do not leave me,” Bryanna whispered as her tears ran onto the dead woman’s fingers.

More startled than frightened, Bryanna’s gaze flew to the the dead woman’s lips. Isa had spoken! Yet words had not been uttered.

Heart thudding, Bryanna asked timidly, “But how?”

She heard Isa’s voice as if from within herself:
In your memory, child, and in those things that I’ve taught you. Not in embroidery, nor hemming, nor spinning, but in my teachings of the old ways, of the spirit world, of the heart.

“I believe not in such things.”

Bryanna could scarcely breathe. “The sight? Nay, nay, I see only what is in front of my eyes.”

“You are wrong about me!”

“Yes!”

Bryanna dropped the lifeless hand. “ ’Tis a trick,” she cried. “Only a voice in my head. I—I am going mad.” Scrambling to her feet, she started to make the sign of the cross over her breast as she had a thousand times before, but her hand stopped in midair and she gazed down upon the one they had called a sorceress.

She listened hard over the pounding of her heart against her ribs, and though Isa was no longer speaking, she heard the rustle of the wind outside, the pepper of rain upon the roof, and something else . . . something that trapped the breath in her ears. ’Twas the whisper of something dark and malevolent.

She glanced down at Isa’s corpse. “Who killed you?” she asked, and though she quivered inside, she linked her fingers with those of the dead woman. “Who, Isa?”

“I will,” she swore, bending low to kiss Isa’s forehead, and she knew just where to start. Carrick of Wybren had disappeared on the night Isa had been killed.

She would start with him.

Leaving Isa’s body, she stepped outside, where the day was as gray as twilight and rainstorms rolled in one after the other. ’Twas gloomy and dark, perfect for her task. She walked quickly through the kitchens to a back staircase, and the scents of smoke and rendering fat followed her to the third floor. She passed by her room and eyed the doorway to her brother’s chamber, the room where Carrick had lain, supposedly ailing for so long.

Once inside she surveyed the chamber with its high ceiling, large fireplace, and raised bed. Closing her eyes, she concentrated, hoping for some sign, a hint of the sight Isa had sworn was hers.

Concentrate
, she told herself when nothing came.

She knelt as Isa would have, placed her hands on the stones beneath the rushes as if she could divine something about Carrick from this chamber made of mortar, stone, daub, and wattle . . . yet nothing came to her. Heart pounding, she approached the bed and sat on the edge. As she did she imagined Carrick and Morwenna together last night, two long-lost lovers reuniting. There was a magical, romantic quality to it.

Except Isa died and Carrick disappeared
.

Running her hand over the bedclothes, she thought perhaps a vision would strike her. But all she saw was the room as it was, cleaned and fresh, the maids having erased all evidence of the coupling.

She waited and nothing happened.

“You’re wrong, Isa,” she growled. “I have no sight. I see nothing here. Nothing!” Flinging herself back onto the pillows, she gazed upward to the ceiling, her eyes searching for answers in the sturdy timbers.

As she did she noticed cracks in the mortar high overhead. The same kind of even slits between the stones that she’d observed in her own room. She’d always assumed that when the castle had been built, the slits had been allowed to help air move through the chambers, to keep them from becoming stale, but it was odd, she thought, for they did not vent to the outside. This was an inner wall.

She walked to her own room and eyed the narrow crevices, then went to the solar and Morwenna’s room. All the chambers had the same strange pattern cut into the wall just below the ceiling.

But so what? ’Twas not a revelation. She wasn’t reading in bloody letters the name of Isa’s killer. She had no visions of Carrick sneaking through the bailey or slicing Isa’s throat. At that thought she cringed.

She remembered Isa was forever lighting candles and tying them with string and sprinkling herbs upon them, and then gazing at the flame. Well, so be it. She’d heard the old woman’s prayers often enough.

Quickly she hurried to Isa’s room, where she filled a sack with candles and stones and dried herbs and colored string. She spent the next half hour setting up a tiny altar in Tadd’s chamber.

She didn’t bother wondering what would happen if anyone found her—they’d either think her distressed and mad with grief, or dismiss her as a silly goose, just as they always had. So behind the closed door of her brother’s room, she lit candles, rushlights, and the fire. Once flames were crackling in the hearth and emitting a glow around the room, she sent up prayers to the Great Mother, sprinkled pinches of herbs into the tiny flames of the candles upon the altar, and waited for a sign that did not come.

Do not be discouraged,
she told herself and tried again and again to hear the words of the spirits, to envision some kind of signal from Isa, to start her quest.

And yet she failed.

An hour passed and all she got for her prayers was an aching back and sore knees from kneeling before the fire.

“A bloody mistake,” she growled.

Disgusted with her feeble attempt at sorcery, Bryanna doused the flames of the tapers at her altar and walked to the corner of the room to extinguish the candles in the wall sconce.

And then she noticed a scratch on the floor—no, several scratches, even scrapes that arced from the wall, as if someone had repeatedly dragged something from one wall to the next. Except that the scratches ended several inches from one wall, but on the other, they seemed to go to the wall . . . even through it. Using a candle for light, she knelt and examined the floor more closely. Was it her imagination or was there the slightest draft beneath this section of wall?

Heart in her throat, she picked up a piece of straw from the floor and began pushing it against the wall where it joined the floor. The straw bounced back at her for a while until she came to the place where the floor was scraped. At that point and for nearly a foot farther, the straw slid beneath the stones, as if there was another chamber on the other side of the wall.

Her heart was racing as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. Biting her lip, she rocked back on her heels and observed the wall. Could it be? Was this the vision? Or was she making something out of nothing?

She saw no doorway, no perfectly cut stones . . . and her fingers found no slice visible to her eye . . . but somehow . . .

Bryanna pried at the rocks, tried to force her fingers into the minuscule opening beneath the wall, but she found no latch, no secret key. All she got for her efforts were broken nails and bloody finger pads.

It has to be here
, she thought, though the first doubts crept into her mind. Carefully she began to run her hands along the wall as high as she could reach and all the way to the floor. She started at the corner and worked her way to the far side of the room.

Nothing.

Back to the corner.

Inching her way down the wall again, concentrating on the rough texture of the stones, she closed her eyes, listening, feeling, centering her thoughts on her task, closing out all other thoughts, noises, smells. . . . Slowly she felt each stone, and after fifteen minutes she found it, a small latch hidden in one of the stones near the corner.

Finally!

Her breath nearly stopped.

What now?

Eagerly she worked the tiny piece of metal, pressing, pushing, pulling . . . to no avail. Nothing happened. “Oh, for the love of Saint Jude,” she whispered and then remembered Isa’s advice. “Mother Morrigu, help me,” she said. “Guide me and please aid me in finding the monster who took Isa’s life.” Then she took a deep breath, pushed hard on the little finger of metal, and heard a soft, distinct click.