Chapter 13 #2
Ede scoffed, then leaned close to Swannoc to confide, “I think she’s a Weepy Winifred.”
Swannoc shuddered. “There’s naught worse than a grown woman who bawls like a bairn.”
Ede clucked her tongue. “Sir Gellir isn’t goin’ to like that.”
Swannoc nodded in agreement. “Men hate lasses who sob all day.”
“He doesn’t hate her,” Merraid insisted. “He chose her.”
Ede shrugged. “That was before he found out she was a Weepy Winifred.”
Merraid thinned her lips. “Just because her eyes welled a bit…”
“‘Burst into tears,’ Davy said.” Ede crossed her arms authoritatively.
“Once…”
Ede held up two fingers. “Twice.”
“That doesn’t mean she hates him.” Ede rolled her eyes, and Merraid scowled back at her. “She’s probably just afraid.”
Swannoc arched a brow. “Men doubly hate cowardly lasses.”
“’Tis true,” Ede agreed.
“They should break off the betrothal now,” Swannoc said.
“What?” Merraid stabbed her spade into the ground. “Ye don’t even know what ye’re talkin’ about. Ye two should mind your own affairs and keep your noses out of it.”
“We just want what’s best for Sir Gellir,” Swannoc explained. “He needs a bride who’s strong.”
“And brave,” Ede said.
“One who can take care of a keep while he’s off fightin’.”
“Not a Weepy Wi-”
“Enough!” Merraid snapped. “Sir Gellir’s made his choice. ’Tis up to all of us to see this weddin’ through.”
Swannoc and Ede exchanged disappointed glances.
“The clouds are gatherin’,” she said, “so let’s get the peas in ere the rain starts. And I’ll hear no more gossip about who hates who.”
But even though the lasses complied, retreating into silence, they’d planted a seed of doubt in Merraid’s brain. One that ruined her concentration and made the last row of peas skew crooked.
Were they right? Did Lady Carenza dislike Sir Gellir? Was she not suited to him? Was Merraid doing a bad thing? Encouraging a marriage that would become unbearable for both of them?
She had to find out for herself.
After she finished planting, she fetched oatcakes and butter from the kitchens. Then she knocked softly on Lady Carenza’s door.
“How are ye feelin’, m’lady?”
Though her pallor looked healthier, the lady’s eyes were red and swollen. Perhaps Ede was right. Perhaps she was a Weeping Winifred.
“Better,” Carenza said with a wan smile.
“Good enough to eat a bit o’ somethin’?” She set the tray on the bedside table.
The lady nodded, but didn’t touch the food.
Against her better judgment, Merraid said, “I hear ye got another missive from Sir Gellir.”
The lady’s chin trembled. She nodded again.
Merraid gave her an encouraging smile. “He must care about ye a great deal.”
The lady’s eyes filled with tears.
Merraid bit her lip. Bloody hell. What had she said? Why was the lady upset?
“He’s a most decent man,” the lady choked out. “So noble. So kind.” And then she did the inexplicable, just as Davy had reported. She covered her face and burst into tears.
“Och dear, m’lady,” Merraid said, wringing her hands, at a loss as to what to do. “Whate’er troubles ye?” Then, suddenly inspired, she asked, “Is it your monthly courses?”
The lady paled and gasped.
Merraid bit her tongue. Perhaps that was too intimate a subject for the noblewoman to discuss.
Too upset to reply with words, the lady waved away Merraid’s concern.
Moments later, when she finally got her sobs under control, she apologized. “Prithee forgive me for this foolishness. I fear my sickness…and Sir Gellir’s lovely words…and these upcoming nuptials…have made me overwrought.”
Merraid nodded. “Beggin’ your pardon, m’lady, but perhaps meetin’ him face to face would dispel your—”
“Nay!” she burst out. “I mean… I do not wish him to see me like this. All blubbering and sickly and fraught with emotion. Men despise such weakness.” She lowered her eyes. “I’m sure ye understand.”
“Aye.”
“On the morrow perhaps.” She nodded at the oatcakes and struggled to smile. “I’ll fill my belly and get plenty of sleep. Once I have my temperament under control, I’m sure I’ll be happy to converse with my husband-to-be.”
Merraid hoped so. She was in danger of running out of verses.
“Moved?” Gellir murmured around the bite of hard cheese he’d pilfered from the buttery shelf.
“Aye,” Merraid confided. “She was quite moved by the missive.” He didn’t need to know the truth—that Lady Carenza had been moved to tears.
“You don’t think ’tis too soon to send another?”
“Nay,” she said, patting her satchel, which contained a bit of parchment, a sharpened quill, and a bottle of ink. “We must forge the blade while the steel is hot.”
Gellir had to reassure Lady Carenza that her tender emotions were not only acceptable to him, but welcome. That was the only way the lady would have the courage to face him. The only way she’d fall in love with him.
Merraid dragged a stool across the floor of the buttery. Moving aside a wheel of cheese and several bottles of wine, she cleared a space on the lowest shelf. Then she smoothed the parchment atop the shelf and set the quill and ink beside it. She gestured to him to take a seat.
He glanced around the chamber in recognition. “Is this where…?”
He remembered. She smiled. “Where ye looked after a wee maidservant with a broken nose? Aye.”
It seemed like half a lifetime ago. But she recalled that day in the buttery as clearly as the day it had happened. The fierce battle. The close quarters. Fighting for her life. Throwing cheeses. Throwing punches. Being saved.
“You were attacked by those wretched brutes,” he recalled.
“Fergus and Morris,” she said. “And ye came to my rescue.”
“Not soon enough to save your nose.”
She shrugged. “And afterward…”
He scowled. “My cousin stole my clothes.”
“To disguise herself.” Merraid winked. “I can’t say I was unhappy about that.”
He clucked his tongue. “You know, a polite lass would put it right out of her head.”
“I’m not a polite lass.”
He smirked.
Besides, she thought, that memory had sustained her while Gellir spent four long years traipsing across Scotland. Fighting in tournaments. Putting her out of his head.
It was that memory—of Gellir’s kindness and honor and empathy—that would inspire her now as she dictated what she hoped was the last missive he’d need to seal his marriage to Lady Carenza.
Gellir hoped he wouldn’t have to transcribe too many more missives to the lass.
For one thing, he had a fierce reputation to uphold. He didn’t mind revealing his thoughts to the one he meant to wed. But if anyone should intercept his tender notes… He shuddered. The thought of his fellow warriors chuckling over such softhearted sentiments was too awful to consider.
And for another? Hearing words of powerful passion and deep devotion, knowing they came from Merraid’s lips, her heart, her brain… That fascinated and—what word had she used?—moved him, more than he wished to admit.
Years ago, in this very place, he’d been coerced to bare himself to the young maidservant. Now it seemed she exposed her heart to him, leaving herself likewise vulnerable. When she spoke, he felt as if he peered into her very soul. And what he saw there made his pulse race and his breath catch.
He was beginning to have feelings he should not. Feelings for Merraid. Feelings that were sinful. Tempting. Destructive. For a man loyal to the king, such feelings were distracting. For a man promised to another, they were deadly.
Perspiring despite the cool air of the buttery, he settled onto the stool. He opened the ink, dipped the quill, and braced himself.
She began with, “If ever I give cause to make ye grieve…”
Merraid had already given him cause to grieve by bringing him here, where lusty memories danced about like taunting tongues of flame.
But it was too late to change that. With a sigh, he copied down her words.
“Go on,” he said.
“I pray ye to forgive my careless tongue.”
He nearly strangled on that line. A vision of what he’d like to do to the lass with his careless tongue blinded him for a moment. His quill hovered over the parchment.
She didn’t seem to notice. She picked up a cheese, sniffed it, and put it back.
He wrote down the line without repeating it. “Aye?”
She tapped her lip. “’Tis true…nay…I know…nay…I fear. Aye. I fear I wear my heart upon my sleeve.”
He frowned. He didn’t like fear so much. Fear indicated weakness.
But if the words moved his bride, as Merraid reported, he supposed he could be forgiven a moment of weakness.
“All right.”
She hesitated a moment, then murmured the next line over her shoulder. “And cannot bear to leave my love unsung.”
That was exactly what he was being forced to do. Leave his love unsung. Deny his feelings for Merraid. It felt wrong. And yet he supposed that silence was just the price of chivalry. He was not the first to suffer unrequited affection.
“Love…unsung,” he finished.
She picked up a bottle of wine, blowing the dust from its shoulders. “For though at first I may seem hard as steel…”
His eyes widened. She obviously didn’t intend the lusty reference. But the beast in his braies understood it all too well. Even now he swelled to steely hardness.
When he finished the line, he nodded for her to go on.
“’Tis only armor for my tender heart.”
As he copied down the words, he felt a twinge of remorse. He hoped Carenza wouldn’t expect him to continue writing verse for her after they were wed. He had no talent for it. And he couln’t very well invite Merraid along to be his scribe.
The lass dictated two more lines of the verse. Then she asked him to read them back.
He cleared his throat and read, “My knightly pride forbids me to reveal…the gentleness I would to you impart.”
“One more verse should do,” she said softly.
He sighed, grateful. Looking at her in the candlelight, he tried to recall the wee lass with the bloody nose. Then he’d assured her the injury wouldn’t leave a scar. He’d been right. Her nose was straight. Her face was beautiful.
“I yearn to give ye comfort in my arms,” she murmured, casting her gaze toward the floor.
He swallowed hard and lowered his gaze to the page as he wrote.
“Aye?” he rasped out.
“To catch your mournful tears upon my cheek.”
Mournful tears? He hardly thought his bride-to-be would be mourning. After all, she was winning the hand of a respected warrior. Marrying into a legendary clan.
But when he completed the line and looked up at Merraid, he saw her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears. Before he could wonder why, she turned aside and delivered the next line.
“To soothe and save and shield ye from all harms…”
Gellir nodded in satisfaction. That was his life’s purpose. Even as a younger lad, defending a wee maidservant from tyrants and tormenters, he’d known it was his calling to protect the innocent and helpless.
“And welcome ye with warmth when next we speak,” she finished.
He gazed down at the parchment as he wrote and asked her bluntly, “Do you think the warmth will be returned?”
“How could she resist?” she said. “Ye’re everythin’ a woman could ask for. An undefeated tournament champion. A noble as rich as Midas.” There was sorrow in her voice as she added, “But ye’re more than that. Ye’re kind. Decent. Honorable. Surely she’ll see that at once.”
Gellir had been flattered before. By ladies seeking his bed. Or his coin. They remarked on his dark good looks. They applauded his prowess on the field of battle. They raved over his brain. His brawn. His bravery. Some even called him a god.
Their praises had always felt as lasting as the night mist on a loch, burning away at dawn. They were brief, empty, meaningless.
But the simple observations Merraid made—calling him kind, decent, honorable—affected him more than they should. And that she thought he was “everything a woman could ask for” moved him beyond words.
That was how a wife should feel about her husband. It was the way his parents felt about each other. And it was how he wanted to feel about his bride.
Maybe once they were better acquainted, his heart would warm to her. Maybe time would draw them closer together. But at the moment, he didn’t feel moved by Lady Carenza. And despite Merraid’s optimism, he wasn’t sure he would ever feel that way.