Ware frowned but didn’t seem relieved. “We’ve come here for your help, brother.”
“Help?” Morgana whispered, and her voice faded on the wind. “You are not staying?”
Wolf shook his head. “We have not the time.”
Hagan was restless. The hours slipped by. Even now, Sorcha could be married to Darton. His fists clenched silently and his mind was back at Erbyn imagining the horror that his brother had brought upon the castle. He ate the Baron of Abergwynn’s fine meal of salmon, venison, fruit pies, pigeon, and custard, yet he hardly tasted a bite, and it was all he could do to keep from storming out of the great hall, climbing upon his horse, and riding back to Erbyn as fast as the beast could run, though he knew as one man, he could accomplish nothing. He needed the strength of Garrick’s army as well as Wolf’s bravery and cunning.
The brothers and Morgana talked long and hard, and from the pieces of their stories, Hagan learned that ten years before, Garrick’s son, Logan, had been kidnapped. His most trusted knight, Strahan of Hazelwood, Garrick’s cousin, had suggested asking Morgana of Wenlock, whom some believed possessed the gift of sight.
Garrick had resisted the idea, but he was desperate to find his son, especially after loving his wife. He never expected to fall in love with raven-haired Morgana, but fall he did. Not only did Morgana help find Logan, she won Garrick’s heart completely. She and Garrick eventually wed, but Ware, Garrick’s younger brother, and Cadell, the brother to Morgana, had been feared dead. Morgana had seen them tumble off the cliffs and into the sea, presumably to their deaths.
“Sometimes,” she said, leaning over the table and dabbing at a spot of gravy at the corner of her smallest daughter’s mouth with her napkin, “I feel as if Cadell is calling to me. When the wind is silent, I hear his voice.”
Ware sighed and shook his head. “I saw him not that night. ’Twas as if the sea had swallowed him whole. I waited until morning, searching the rocks for either him or his body. But I found nothing, no hint of what had happened to him. I was half-dead myself, but a fisherman found me.” His voice lowered a bit. “The fisherman, Alan, took me back to his village, where I worked for him until I was ready to leave.”
Hagan sensed that there was more to the story, but Wolf fell into silence, and Morgana dropped scraps of venison to the wolf that was always at her side.
“You chose not to return to Abergwynn,” Garrick said, his frown becoming more pronounced.
Ware drank long from his cup, and though there was much more he could tell them, he kept his silence. Only Hagan knew of the hatred he harbored for Tadd of Prydd, though the rightful Baron of Erbyn knew not why. No one would ever know the truth, for ’twas too private—just between Tadd and the outlaw Wolf. Mayhap he should have slit the bastard’s throat and slain him when he’d posed as a messenger to Prydd, but Wolf had sensed that the time was not right. He’d waited nearly ten years, he could wait a few more days.
His eyes narrowed in the candlelight. He’d been happy working with the fisherman, learning a trade and falling in love with Alan’s pretty daughter, Mary. Even now, as he thought of her, his heart lifted, then he remembered how it ended. Mary w
as but fourteen when Tadd of Prydd had ridden through the village, seen her, and decided that he would like her to warm his bed.
Alan objected loudly, defending his daughter’s virtue, and for that crime Tadd had used his sword to sever Alan’s arm at the elbow. Ware, too, intervened, and Tadd’s sword felled him, slicing his face, sending him nearly to his death. They hadn’t been able to save Mary, and Tadd, in front of his men, in her father’s bed, had raped her. When Ware had finally come to consciousness, she cowered in the corner, half-dressed and shivering on the bloody sheets. Ware had tried to comfort her, but she’d screamed at his touch and would let no man near her.
Weeks had passed into months and Mary retreated into herself, not speaking to anyone, cowering at the very voice of any man other than her father. During a storm with Mary aboard, Alan’s boat had disappeared in the ocean, and Ware, who had stayed ashore upon the fisherman’s orders, had vowed that he would seek vengeance on Tadd of Prydd. From that day forward he’d called himself Wolf and had become an outlaw. He shuddered at the memory and silently pledged that he would finish it with Tadd, make him suffer as Mary had, or end up dead himself.
As he stared into the flames of the white tapers of Abergwynn, he felt his brother’s gaze and he pulled himself from the depths of his memory.
“You did not answer my question. Why did you not return?” Garrick asked.
“I felt that I had failed you, Garrick. Strahan had taken over the castle when you’d entrusted its welfare to me.”
“You were foolish,” Morgana said. “No one blamed you.”
Wolf lifted his shoulder and finished his wine in one long swallow. “Now I am back. And I need your help. Lord Hagan needs your help.”
Hagan leaned forward so that he could look the lord of Abergwynn straight in his eye. “ ’Tis important that we move quickly,” he said with all the patience he could muster. “If you help me quiet this rebellion, Lord Garrick, I pledge that should you ever need my help, my entire army will stand with you.” Looking at each person sitting at the table, Hagan shoved up his sleeves. “Gaining entrance to Erbyn will be difficult. Darton will be wary. But I have a plan …”
Anne had never been more frightened in her life. In truth, she wished she’d never met Sorcha, that she felt no obligation because of her brother, but she had no choice. What Darton had done to Hagan was horrid, and now, as she realized that all the rumors about her brother—the very rumors she’d denied—were true, she knew it was up to her to preserve her family’s honor.
Darton’s kidnapping and rape of Leah were hideous, his plan to hang Bjorn just plain cruel. He could never be allowed to rule Erbyn. So, despite her fear, she was duty-bound to go through with her part of the bargain. Sorcha had told her what to do; it was just a matter of drinking the potion that she’d made from the roots and herbs she’d begged off the apothecary.
The apothecary, John, hadn’t been pleased to give away his precious herbs, but he hated Darton and was loyal to Hagan. John’s son was one of Hagan’s soldiers who was still missing, and John would do anything to wrest the power of Erbyn from Darton. “These medicines are dangerous,” he’d warned Anne as he’d reluctantly handed her the vials. “I wish there was another way.”
“There isn’t, John. This will work.”
His spotted forehead had wrinkled over bushy gray eyebrows. “Be careful.”
“I will,” she’d promised. Noting the worry in his old eyes, she’d tucked the vials into the folds of her tunic and turned toward the door.
“God be with you, Lady Anne, and with Erbyn.”
“And with you, John.”
She’d hurried back to the castle and waited until dark. Now the time had come. With her heart thudding in fear, she prayed God to give her strength, lifted the cup to her lips, and drank the bitter liquid. Camphor and narcissus, jasmine, and herbs she couldn’t remember the names of, concocted into a horrid-tasting brew. Despite her urge to retch, she drank it all, gagged, but forced the vile concoction to stay in her stomach. Then she lay back on the bed, waiting … feeling her heart begin to slow and her breathing become heavy.