Chapter 24 #2
It was the lie she’d been telling for a sennight now. The truth was she didn’t have the stamina to wear her usual mask of sunny disposition over her pervasive melancholy. And it was easier to claim she felt physically ill.
“Sir Gellir will miss ye at the bonfire,” Merraid said, clucking her tongue.
“Ye can give him my apologies.”
“I won’t leave ye here alone, m’lady. Not on Beltane.”
“Nonsense. I’ll be fine. Ye go on and enjoy the festivities for me.”
Merraid’s eyes lit up. “Are ye sure?”
Carenza thought at least one of them should have fun this eve. “Och aye. Go on.”
Merraid nodded to the hearth. “Ye’ll want to douse your fire soon, so they can light the bonfire.”
“Ye can douse it now if ye like.”
“Ye won’t grow too cold?”
She shook her head. In a few hours, someone would return with a brand from the Beltane bonfire to ignite her hearth, in the hopes of ensuring a fortuitous new beginning to the season. Until then, she should probably get used to the chill. After all, it was no colder than her icy heart.
Hunched over in a ragged cloak and without his famous axe, Hew found it ridiculously easy to blend in with the clanfolk at Darragh. He supposed that was the difference between living in the neighborly Highlands and on the border at Rivenloch, where one kept the gates locked against strangers.
Everyone was so preoccupied throughout the day with picking flowers and stacking firewood, decorating doorways and gulping down ale, he was able to slip through the crowd without drawing attention.
Neither his cousin Feiyan, her husband Dougal, nor his cousin Gellir spotted him as he wandered the bustling courtyard at twilight.
The Darragh clanfolk he hadn’t seen in years, though he recognized one red-haired beauty, Merraid.
Four years ago at the battle of Darragh, she’d been the brave wee lass who’d followed Gellir about like an orphaned pup.
Watching Merraid’s comings and goings, he discovered she’d been assigned to Lady Carenza as her personal maidservant. But it appeared Carenza rarely left her bedchamber.
And now, at this late hour, when the bonfires were ready to be lit, the keep was nearly deserted, and Merraid disappeared upstairs, he figured Carenza must have decided to forego the festivities altogether.
He sighed from the shadows of the darkened hall. It seemed he’d come all this way for nothing. He was never going to get a better opportunity to speak with Carenza. And after tonight, she’d never be alone.
He had just pushed off the wall when he saw the glow of candlelight coming from the stairwell. Fading back, he watched the flicker dance into view.
Merraid emerged from the stairwell. She was by herself. She passed by without seeing him. And she seemed intent on exiting the great hall as soon as possible to join the others.
As the door closed behind her, Hew shifted his focus to the stairwell.
He took the spiral steps two by two.
He knew as soon as he tried the door that he had the right chamber. The soft floral scent that wafted out of the lightless room was all hers.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
He wasn’t sure what to say. If he told her who he was, would she sob with joy? Or scream for help?
“A friend,” he mumbled.
She gasped. He heard rustling from the bed. “Hew?”
He frowned. How had she recognized his voice? Even his cousins had no idea he was among them.
“Is it ye?” she breathed.
He closed the door behind him. “Aye.”
“Och, Hew.” They were only two words. But into them was poured a deluge of emotion. Grief. Hope. Sorrow. Relief. Misery. Gratitude. Heartbreak.
Despite his intentions to remain aloof, to work things out logically, to have a calm conversation, his heart immediately went out to her.
He rushed to the bed, groping his way along the coverlet in the dark until she threw herself into his arms.
For a long while they said nothing.
She wept against his shoulder.
He cradled her head, growing more and more determined with every pitiful tear to play the hero and steal her away—his cousin, his clan, his king be damned.
Curse his cousin! How could Grim Gellir have made his sweet and precious Carenza so miserable? God’s eyes! He hadn’t even wed her yet.
Hew ground his teeth. He should never have let her go. Never have let her out of his sight.
Until now, Carenza had been able to conceal the strongest of her feelings. Aside from a few slipped confidences to Merraid, she’d bottled up her sorrow, her frustration, her heartbreak, her despair. And labeled them as sickness.
But now, in the arms of the one at the root of all those emotions, she collapsed into a puddle of raw emotion. All the heartsickness she’d hidden spilled out in its purest form as Hew held her. She no longer felt alone. She felt heard. Seen. Understood.
She didn’t know exactly when the change happened.
But in one moment she was raining tears upon his throat.
And in the next she was lapping them up with tender kisses.
The fists she’d clenched so desperately in his plaid found their way around his neck.
Her hitching sobs became gasps of awe and need and urgency.
And then he began to respond.
With a low growl like a hungering wolf, he feasted on her again and again, savaging the tender flesh of her throat.
His hands clasped and squeezed and caressed her, brushing aside linen to graze her bare skin.
He tumbled her onto her back and fumbled beneath her leine, slipping his fingers up her thigh, closer and closer to where she wanted him most.
She couldn’t wait. If she waited, she’d start thinking. If she started thinking, she’d hesitate. If she hesitated, she’d begin to regret. And she wanted to regret nothing.
So she took the reins. She scrabbled at his clothes in such a wild frenzy, he had no choice but to tear them off. She buried her face in his delicious flesh, kissing his chest, bathing his stomach, nuzzling lower.
He groaned and rolled her beneath him. Then, with a whisper of “I’ll love you fore’er, Carenza,” he sank deep inside her, sheathing his hungry cock and filling her thirsting womb.
It felt like coming home. Like he belonged inside her. Like this was right.
When they moved together, it was natural and perfect.
And when they gathered speed, it was with the grace and power of a falcon, its wings beating faster and faster, thrumming against the forces of nature to defy the pull of the earth and fly high into the heavens.
They dove together as well. He grunted, and she gasped out a shrill cry of need before they dropped from the sky, shivering and circling and settling into a downy nest of release.
Their breath mingled and swirled as they clung to each other in the dark.
Carenza was afraid to speak. She wanted to preserve this moment just as it was. A moment where she would forever be with the man she loved. Where they had just experienced sublime happiness. Where it was their precious child growing inside her. Where the future was bright.
But Hew ruined that in four words.
“Come away with me.”
Those four words brought the truth crashing down on her.
What they’d just done was not a divine act of love. It was practically adultery.
She withdrew from him, and it felt as if a chill wind instantly rushed in to separate them. A wind composed of remorse and disgrace, of horror and shame.
“I cannot,” she said.
“We can leave tonight. This moment.”
He made it sound so tempting. So simple.
But she knew it wasn’t.
“I can’t.”
“Do you love him?” he asked.
“Gellir?”
“Aye.”
“Nay,” she admitted. “But he’s a good man. I shall be content enough.”
“God’s eyes,” he bit out. “You deserve happiness, Carenza. Do you not know that? You deserve a man you love with all your heart. Who loves you with every ounce of his being. Who will live for you. Fight for you. Die for you.”
His words were like salt in her wounds, for she knew he believed that was true. But she also knew it was not true for her. If a nobleman was the king’s pawn, a noblewoman was that pawn’s slave. By royal decree, she belonged to Gellir. To defy that would bring dishonor to everyone she cared for.
“Even if ’tisn’t me,” he said quietly, “you deserve to be with a man you love.”
Her heart cracked at that. She loved no one but Hew. But she couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t enslave his heart in that way. She had to let him go. Give him permission to move on and find a wife of his own.
“I can’t,” she said.
When he would have argued, she seized his forearm to silence him.
“I can’t,” she insisted, “because I’m with child.”
Hew’s heart started racing. It shouldn’t have been racing.
“You are?”
“Aye.”
“Ah.” At least his voice was calm.
But he was particularly grateful for the dark. It hid his ridiculous grin and the tears that were inexplicably filling his eyes. All at once, simultaneously overjoyed and distraught, he couldn’t get words past the lump in his throat.
“I have to wed as soon as possible,” she told him. “This child cannot be born a bastard. ’Twill already be early. I dare wait no longer.”
He couldn’t stop smiling over the idea that their love had made a bairn.
Or weeping over the fact he wouldn’t be allowed to claim the child.
Unless…
“Who else knows?” he asked.
“No one. But I won’t lie to Gellir.”
Hew understood that. A marriage couldn’t begin with deceit. “You won’t have to.”
Hew knew something about Gellir that Carenza didn’t.
More than anything, his cousin was a man of morals. Without principles, without virtue, he was nothing. He would rather die than sacrifice his honor.
Even if she tried to hide it, Gellir would never be fooled into believing the bairn was his.
He’d always know the child was not his true heir.
He’d always know his bride had not come to his bed a virgin.
While chivalry might prevent Gellir from interrogating Carenza, that knowledge would haunt him.
He would be miserable in their marriage. As miserable as Carenza.
The clan would count the months. They’d assume either Gellir had planted his seed long before their marriage or Carenza had taken a lover before him.
Either assumption would be a blow to Gellir’s pride. A stain on his spotless reputation. And that was something the illustrious Sir Gellir Cameliard of Rivenloch could not abide.
But Hew?
He wasn’t the heir to Rivenloch.
He wasn’t a tournament champion.
He wasn’t a paragon of virtue.
Indeed, most people thought he was a philandering wastrel.
He had nothing to lose.
Suddenly inspired, he dug in his satchel and pulled out the wee parcel he’d been saving for months. He opened her palm, placing on it the gold ring he’d bought from the goldsmith’s widow.
“Keep this until your wedding day.”
“What?”
“Don’t say anything to Gellir. Not yet.”
“But—”
“I might have a remedy.”
It took all his will not to sweep her up in his arms and bellow in triumph. But the fear that he might fail, that the odds were against him, that his efforts might be for naught, kept him from celebrating prematurely.
“Promise me,” he begged. “Promise me you won’t breathe a word to Gellir.”
“If ye don’t return before the wedding…”
He would. But he understood her reticence.
“If I don’t return by your wedding day, then do as you must.”
“Because I don’t want him to get hurt,” she explained. “Or disgraced. Or caught off-guard.”
His heart melted. Carenza was so kindhearted and considerate. She’d already admitted she didn’t love Gellir. Yet she was compassionate enough to want to keep him from harm.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll look after him.”
Gellir would be grateful to be spared the humiliation.
Hew wished he could linger at Darragh. With the Beltane fires burning outside, he and Carenza had the castle all to themselves.
He yearned to make love to her again. To feel their hearts beat together.
To let their moans mingle on the air. To run his hands over her belly, imagining the new life growing inside her.
But there was much to do.