Jenny's stomach twisted into sick knots at the thought of committing her body, her entire life, into the hands of a man she instinctively recoiled from, but she lifted her head and bravely met her father's gaze. "Aye, father," she said quietly. "Shall I come with you now?"
The look of pride and relief on his face almost made the sacrifice worthwhile. He shook his head. " 'Tis best you stay here with Brenna. We've no horses to spare and we're anxious to reach Merrick and begin preparations for battle. I'll send word to the MacPherson that the marriage is agreed upon, and then send someone here to fetch you to him."
When he turned to remount his horse, Jenny gave into the temptation she'd been fighting all along: Instead of standing aside, she moved into the rows of mounted clansmen who had once been her friends and playmates. Hoping that some of them had perhaps heard her agree to marry the MacPherson and that this might neutralize their contempt of her, she paused beside the horse of a ruddy, red-headed man. "Good day to you, Renald Garvin," she said, smiling hesitantly into his hooded gaze. "How fares your lady wife?"
His jaw hardened, his cold eyes flickering over her. "Well enough, I imagine," he snapped.
Jenny swallowed at the unmistakable rejection from the man who had once taught her to fish and laughed with her when she fell into the stream.
She turned around and looked beseechingly at the man in the column beside Renald. "And you, Michael MacCleod? Has your leg been causing you any pain?"
Cold blue eyes met hers, then looked straight ahead.
She went to the rider behind him whose face was filled with hatred and she held out her hand beseechingly, her voice choked with pleading. "Garrick Carmichael, it has been four years since your Becky drowned. I swear to you now, as I swore to you then, I did not shove her into the river. We were not quarreling—'twas a lie invented by Alexander to—"
His face as hard as granite, Garrick Carmichael spurred his horse forward, and without ever looking at her, the men began passing her by.
Only old Josh, the clan's armorer, pulled his ancient horse to a halt, letting the others go on ahead. Leaning down, he laid his callused palm atop her bare head. "I know you speak truly, lassie," he said, and his unceasing loyalty brought the sting of tears to her eyes as she gazed up into his soft brown ones. "Ye have a temper, there's no denyin' it, but even when ye were but a wee thing, ye kept it bridled. Garrick Carmichael and the others might o' been fooled by Alexander's angelic looks, but not ol' Josh. You'll no' see me grievin' o'er the loss o' him! The clan'll be better by far wit' young William leadin' it. Carmichael and the others—" he added reassuringly, "they'll come about in their thinkin' o' you, once they ken yer marrying the MacPherson for their sake as well as your sire's."
"Where are my stepbrothers?" Jenny asked hoarsely, changing the subject lest she burst into tears.
"They're comin' home by a different route. We couldn't be sure the Wolf wouldn't try to attack us while we marched, so we split up after leavin' Cornwall." With another pat on her head, he spurred his horse forward.
As if in a daze, Jenny stood stock-still in the middle of the road, watching her clan ride off and disappear around the bend.
"It grows dark," Brenna said beside her, her gentle voice filled with sympathy. "We should go back to the abbey now."
The abbey. Three short hours ago, Jenny had walked away from the abbey feeling cheery and alive. Now she felt—dead. "Go ahead without me. I—I can't go back there. Not yet. I think I'll walk up the hill and sit for a while."
"The abbess will be annoyed if we aren't back before dusk, and it's near that now," Brenna said apprehensively. It had always been thus between the two girls, with Jenny breaking a rule and Brenna terrified of bending one. Brenna was gentle, biddable, and beautiful, with blond hair, hazel eyes, and a sweet disposition that made her, in Jenny's eyes, the embodiment of womanhood at its best. She was also as meek and timid as Jenny was impulsive and courageous. Without Jenny, she'd not have had a single adventure—nor ever gotten a scolding. Without Brenna to worry about and protect, Jenny would have had many more adventures—and many more scoldings. As a result, the two girls were entirely devoted to each other, and tried to protect one another as much as possible from the inevitable results of each other's shortcomings.
Brenna hesitated and then volunteered with only a tiny tremor in her voice, "I'll stay with you. If you remain alone, you'll forget about time and likely be pounced upon by a—a bear in the darkness."
At the moment, the prospect of being killed by a bear seemed rather inviting to Jenny, whose entire life stretched before her, shrouded in gloom and foreboding. Despite the fact that she truly wanted, needed, to stay outdoors and try to reassemble her thoughts, Jenny shook her head, knowing that if they stayed, Brenna would be drowning in fear at the thought of facing the abbess. "No, we'll go back."
Ignoring Jenny's words, Brenna clasped Jenny's hand and turned to the left, toward the slope of the hill that overlooked the abbey, and for the first time it was Brenna who led and Jenny who followed.
In the woods beside the road, two shadows moved stealthily, staying parallel with the girls' path up the hill.
By the time they were partway up the steep incline, Jenny had already grown impatient with her own self-pity, and she made a Herculean effort to shore up her flagging spirits. "When you think on it," she offered slowly, directing a glance at Brenna, " 'tis actually a grand and noble thing I've been given the opportunity to do—marrying the MacPherson for the sake of my people."
"You're just like Joan of Arc," Brenna agreed eagerly, "leading her people to victory!"
"Except that I'm marrying Edric MacPherson."
"And," Brenna finished encouragingly, "suffering a worse fate than she did!"
Laughter widened Jenny's eyes at this depressing remark, which her well-meaning sister delivered with such enthusiasm.
Encouraged by the return of Jenny's ability to laugh, Brenna cast about for something else with which to divert and cheer her. As they neared the crest of the hill, which was blocked by thick woods, she said suddenly, "What did Father mean about your having your mother's 'look about you'?"
"I don't know," Jenny began, diverted by a sudden, uneasy feeling that they were being watched in the deepening dusk. Turning and walking backward, she looked down toward the well and saw the villagers had all returned to the warmth of their hearths. Drawing her cloak about her, she shivered in the biting wind, and without much interest, she added, "Mother Abbess said my looks are a trifle brazen and that I must guard against the effect I will have on males when I leave the abbey."
"What does all that m
ean?"
Jenny shrugged without concern. "I don't know." Turning and walking forward again, Jenny remembered the wimple and veil in her fingertips and began to put the wimple back on. "What do I look like to you?" she asked, shooting a puzzled glance at Brenna. "I haven't seen my face in two years, except when I caught a reflection of it in the water. Have I changed much?"
"Oh yes," Brenna laughed. "Even Alexander wouldn't be able to call you scrawny and plain now, or say that your hair is the color of carrots."
"Brenna!" Jenny interrupted, thunderstruck by her own callousness. "Are you much grieved by Alexander's death? He was your brother and—"
"Don't talk of it any more," Brenna pleaded shakily. "I cried when Father told me, but the tears were few and I feel guilty because I didn't love him as I ought. Not then and not now. I couldn't. He was so—mean-spirited. It's wrong to speak ill of the dead, yet I can't think of much good to say of him." Her voice trailed off, and she pulled her cloak about her in the damp wind, gazing at Jenny in mute appeal to change the subject.
"Tell me how I look, then," Jenny invited quickly, giving her sister a quick, hard hug.
They stopped walking, their way blocked by the dense woods that covered the rest of the slope. A slow, thoughtful smile spread across Brenna's beautiful face as she studied her stepsister, her hazel eyes roving over Jenny's expressive face, which was dominated by a pair of large eyes as clear as dark blue crystal beneath gracefully winged, auburn brows. "Well, you're—you're quite pretty!"
"Good, but do you see anything unusual about me?" Jenny asked, thinking of Mother Ambrose's words as she put her wimple back on and pinned the short woolen veil in place atop it. "Anything at all which might make a male behave oddly?"
"No," Brenna stated, for she saw Jenny through the eyes of a young innocent. "Nothing at all." A man would have answered very differently, for although Jennifer Merrick wasn't pretty in the conventional way, her looks were both striking and provocative. She had a generous mouth that beckoned to be kissed, eyes like liquid sapphires that shocked and invited, hair like lush, red-gold satin, and a slender, voluptuous body that was made for a man's hands.