“I am not sure I can.” Helpless now against the feelings that assailed her, she shook her head. “I feel, here—” She pressed both hands to her chest.
He captured them in his. “Wha’ did I tell ye about faith? About believing? Darlei, if ’tis true we ride on the wheel of destiny, then wha’ has been must be again. D’ye no’ see?”
She wished she did. “I believe inyou.” Her faith in him had become absolute. “In any promises given by destiny, not so much. I fear—I fear—”
“Do no’ fear, darling. Do no’ fear, love.”
Suddenly she wanted to weep. Because she could not make him understand what she felt coming, how dire and terrible it might be.
He was a warrior, this man she loved. His instinct was to fight. Fight for her, if need be.
She knew to her heart that all such battles did not end well. And she could never bear to see him fall.
“Och, now,” he told her, “do no’ weep.” Only then did she realize her eyes brimmed with tears.
Gravely and deliberately, he raised each of her captured hands to his lips, dropping kisses in the palms. Bestowed soft, sweet kisses at each side of her lips, her cheeks, her brow.
“Trust me,” he bade her.
And she whispered, “So I do.”
But the future frightened her still.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Caledonian partyreturned a fortnight later with King Caerdoc riding at their head and Urfet close behind. Deathan was himself among the first to sight them, as he was on the walls at the time, and he called out the order to open the gates even as his heart began to pound.
Their answer, his and Darlei’s, was upon them. From the moment they heard what news King Caerdoc had to tell, the fates would lie cast. Everything would change.
He knew very well that Darlei feared so. As the days had stretched out, her apprehension had only grown. Naught he said seemed able to shift it from her, no reassurance, and no promise.
Though she refused to come out and say so, she expected some dark and terrible outcome upon her father’s return. One that would serve to separate them. It was why she would not choose a pup. It was why even when they were alone together, he glimpsed apprehension in her eyes.
“Do no’ borrow trouble,” he’d told her. And yet it came to him that mayhap she borrowed it from the past.
If they had known each other before, on some previous turn of the wheel, and if it had ended badly, would not the fear carry over just like the love? It did not mean their lives would end the same way this time. He would make it right. He would, for her, no matter what he had to do. Had he not proven that?
But aye, he understood her fears. He’d been naught but a second son all his life. Second to a brother he no longerrespected as once he had. For, aye, he had discovered where Rohr had been hiding out all the while—in a private place up the shore, most often with a jug of heather ale and sometimes, he suspected, with Caragh, though Deathan could not prove that last.
He’d expected better of Rohr. Ah, well, he would now have to surrender his hiding place, so Deathan thought as he watched the Caledonian party ride in.
He, like Deathan himself, would have todree his weird, as the old ones put it. Accept his fate.
But his stomach turned sour as he ran down the narrow steps from the wall and went to meet King Caerdoc. Did the man look grim? Or merely weary?
“Run and get the chief,” he told one of the men standing by. “And Master Rohr.” If they could find him.
And the princess?Och…
Hurrying forward, he caught King Caerdoc’s bridle. The man’s dark gaze swept over him as if he did not exist.
“Send word to the chief we are returned from Forteviot.”
“Word is already sent, King Caerdoc.”
“I will need to meet wi’ him at once. And my daughter.”
The king swung down. Urfet followed and took the pony’s lead from Deathan with a disdainful look. The bailey bustled with activity.
