Then she gasped. “Has he been hurt?” she cried, trying to push past her uncle.
He barred the way. “No, he’s not hurt. He’s going to choose his bride this morning.”
She stopped struggling and stared at her uncle in stunned disbelief. “Now?”
She backed away as Uncle Fergus entered the chamber. He closed the door, and when he turned to her, he was as serious as she’d ever seen him.
“My beauty,” Uncle Fergus said sorrowfully, “something’s happened…something I didn’t expect from an honorable man. It seems, Riona, that he’s not waited until Lammas to bed the woman he wants.”
He couldn’t be thinking of her, or he wouldn’t be speaking in that way. Percival must have lost his patience and demanded that Nicholas wed Eleanor without waiting until Lammas, and told everyone why.
Uncle Fergus rubbed his chin. “Wheest, I wouldn’t believe it myself, except that I saw her, wrapped in a sheet in his bedchamber.”
“He took Eleanor to his bed?” she whispered in dismay. Was it possible Eleanor wasn’t the naive girl she seemed? Yet what of Nicholas? How could he…after they had…after she…?
“Eleanor?” Uncle Fergus repeated incredulously. “Of course not Eleanor. How could you even think it was that sweet child? It was that Joscelind.”
Joscelind?
Everything changed, and Riona knew without doubt that Nicholas was innocent. This was a trick, a scheme like Percival’s, to force Nicholas to marry.
Energy flooded through her body, as well as determination, and love. “Uncle, I’m sure Nicholas didn’t seduce her. I’m sure she came to his chamber without his knowledge or consent, as a ploy to make him marry her. He was probably already asleep when she slipped under the sheets like an adder to make it look like they were lovers.”
Uncle Fergus regarded Riona with neither relief, nor disbelief, but with a searching, steady gravitas. “Why do you say that, Riona? Are you so sure Nicholas wouldn’t bed a willing and beautiful woman whether they were married or not?”
Seeing her beloved and trusting uncle’s grave demeanor, shame trickled through her. She had deceived him, and she became achingly, keenly aware of the disappointment she would bring to the man who loved her like a father when he learned the truth.
Yet the time had come to be honest, for Nicholas’s sake, and Eleanor’s.
She sat and patted the bed beside her. His expression puzzled and worried, her uncle joined her. She took his hands in hers and looked into his questioning eyes.
When she was with Nicholas it was so easy to have no regrets. When their love was a secret between them, it was easy to believe it would always be so. But that could not be.
“Uncle, I know she’s not his lover. I am.”
“You?” he gasped with disbelief. “You’re his lover?”
She nodded. “Aye.”
“Then…he’s going to marry you? That’s what he’s going to say in the hall now?”
It tore her heart, but it had to be said. “No. He’s going to marry Eleanor.”
She waited for him to look at her with disgust, with shame, with revulsion, hoping those feelings would fade and he would be kind to her, even if she’d lost his good opinion forever.
Instead, an ire such as she’d never seen arose in Uncle Fergus’s eyes.“Eleanor?He makes love with you but he’ll marry another?”
She held his hands tighter, willing him to listen and understand, a little. “Hemustmarry her. He needs her dowry and her cousin’s influence, or he could lose Dunkeathe, and she needs Nicholas to get away from Percival. I knew that before I went to his bed, Uncle. I’ve never expected him to change his mind, and I still don’t.”
“Well,Ido!” Uncle Fergus cried, jumping to his feet. “That bastard! He never even handfasted with you, did he? That I could understand. He’d have a year and a day to make up his mind and share your bed. But this? Do these Normans think our women are theirs for the using?”
“Uncle, he didn’t use me,” she protested, trying to hold him to make him stay. “I gave—”
“Hetook!”Uncle Fergus bellowed. “He took you and he took your honor and he took myfeileadh!I’ll show him what we do to men like that!”
He charged out the door.
Gathering up her skirts, Riona ran after him and begged God to help her stop him before blood was shed.
