Outlaw (Medieval Trilogy 3)

Had it not? Most of the servants would no longer look her in the eye. Even some of the peasants avoided her. ’Twas as if she were a leper or worse. She’d been blamed for the armorer’s son falling off the north tower, and for the baker’s wife delivering stillborn twins—even Bevan’s death, from drowning in the creek, was said to have been her fault. It mattered not that he’d been brought back to the castle barely alive and she and the doctor had tried to nurse him back to health, nor that she’d spent hours in the chapel under Father Timothy’s watchful eye, praying for her brother’s life.

Yet, despite all the horrors blamed on her, Holt wanted her.

Guilt chased after her as she hurried onward, toward her chamber and the cold, brittle fact that she was to become Holt’s bride.

“Oh, would I were you!” Cayley eyed her sister with envy and Megan squirmed, uncomfortable in the long silk tunic that had been altered for her wedding.

She wanted nothing more than to shed this finery and ride Shalimar as fast and far away from the castle as she could. “If you want to be me so badly, then you marry Sir Holt,” she said, mindful of Rue, the old nursemaid who was fidgeting with the hem of the tunic, her needle and thread working steadily.

“Shame on ye,

lass,” Rue muttered, but when her gaze met Megan’s, there was no gladness in her tired eyes, and she quickly glanced away again, turning her attention and the conversation back to her work. “I know not why Nell could not mend this hem. Look at the way it droops! Sometimes methinks that girl has her head elsewhere!” Clucking her tongue, she worked swiftly.

Cayley pushed aside the window covering. A shaft of pale winter light slipped through the tanned hides and the noisy honks of geese rose up from the yard. There were shouts and the creak of wagon wheels and Megan bit her tongue, knowing that the few straggling guests who hadn’t arrived the day before were now filing into the keep.

“Aye, Holt’s a handsome one,” Cayley persisted as she hoisted herself up to the window ledge. Tucking her knees beneath her chin, she stared down at the inner bailey and eyed the new visitors anxiously, searching, no doubt, for Gwayne of Cysgod.

“A handsome man does not a fine husband make.”

“Oh, but it helps! Why not marry someone who is pleasing to the eye rather than an ugly old toad like Sir Oswald?”

“At least Oswald is kind.” Megan finger-combed her hair and Rue squawked loudly.

“I spent hours on those plaits! Don’t you be undoing them now; all the flowers will fall out!”

Megan cared not. Her worries about Holt were too deep for her to be concerned about the braids that were wound around her head.

Cayley was right, he was a handsome man with his thick brown hair, eyes as dark as midnight, and a quick, cold smile. Strong and able, Holt was considered her father’s most trusted knight. He had courted Megan for nearly a year, and in that time, he’d done nothing but swear his undying affection for her and his loyalty to all that was Dwyrain. Yet she doubted him and didn’t trust the glint in his eyes when he looked at her.

You will marry … at the bidding of your father … marriage will be cursed—The cripple’s words rang in circles in her head, round and round, spinning ever faster on this, the day of her wedding. There will be trouble at Dwyrain. Sickness. Deceit. Betrayal. The blame will be placed on you.

“Your Holt will make you happy, as Gwayne will me,” Cayley said dreamily. Always a romantic, Cayley had envisioned herself as the lady of Castle Cysgod from the moment she’d met Gwayne when she was but 4 years old and he a boy of 8.

“Holt is Father’s choice, not mine!”

“Shh, child!” Rue hissed, shaking her graying head as she straightened and rubbed the small of her back. “I would be careful were I ye,” she said, giving advice as she always had. “The castle walls sometimes have ears, do they not? Holt would not be pleased were he to hear your thoughts.”

“He will hear them soon enough,” Megan said, for if she was to wed this man, he would find she had her own mind, her own plans, her own life … or did she? Her heart sank. Whereas Cayley had forever wanted to marry, Megan had longed for something other than being a soldier’s or a baron’s wife.

“Here, slip your arms through,” Rue instructed as she held up a wine-red quilted surcoat with threads of gold. Megan did as she was bid, including donning a mantle of forest green that was trimmed with gold lace. The old nursemaid trained a practiced eye on her handiwork. “ ’Tis lovely ye are, Megan girl.”

“Aye,” Cayley said, frowning slightly, twin little furrows growing in the skin between her honey-colored brows. “You are prettier than I thought you’d ever be.”

Megan should have been pleased, but she was not. She’d looked forward to this day as if it were the beginning of her death sentence. She would no longer have this bedchamber to herself. Holt had been given Bevan’s room and would share it with her. He was not a wealthy man and owned no keep of his own, but he had sworn to her father that he would take care of Megan for all her life and be true to Dwyrain.

Ewan believed him.

Megan did not.

Without much grace, Cayley hopped down from the ledge. “Think ye this keep is cursed?” she asked, biting her lower lip and running a hand along a bare, whitewashed wall.

Rue snorted. “Ye’ve been listening to idle gossip again.”

“Well, I believe it!” Cayley said, staring at her sister with silent, unspoken accusations in her eyes. “Were it not, Mother, Bevan, and Baby Roz would yet be alive!”

“You blame me,” Megan said, the knowledge as painful as a hot knife twisting in her heart. Even her sister had fallen prey to the curse.

“Nay, not you, but surely that monster of a cripple who you met in the forest. I remember that day, Megan, when you came riding into the castle, your skin the color of curdled cream, your eyes round and frightened, as if you’d just seen your own ghost!”