Once they’d tended the stallion’s wounds, they tried to get him up. Without success.
Father came by, eyeing dubiously the door of the stable beside which Alan stood.
“Where is Evan?” Alan asked him.
Father grimaced. “Back in his bed and asleep, if ye can call it sleep.”
Their eyes met. All Alan’s life he’d had a strained—and strange—relationship with his father. He was a second—a spare, as so many second-born sons must feel. All care, all attention, all notice had gone to Evan and little enough to him. To Evan would go the estate. The hope for the future.
A bleak hope, as it turned out to be. Evan had always been difficult. His parents, Alan, and all the servants and tenants had learned to work around him, to dodge his moods, to avoid provoking him at all cost.
What good had it done them? Here they stood with Evan a score-and-six years of age, Alan barely two years younger, the country in turmoil and a steady hand needed to guide them through without losing everything. Did they have that steady hand?
Evan had grown to be a madman. A monster, as Annista had labeled him. Alan doubted that even his father could deny it.
Was that what working around Evan’s foul moods, tiptoeing past his rages, had earned them?
All these words were exchanged in the look between Alan and his father. They’d never seen as one, nay. But danger brought even strangers together.
They lived now on the sharp edge of danger.
“Where is the lass?” Father asked.
“The lass?”
“Yer wife.”
Alan jerked his head. “Inside.”
“That beast will kill her.”
The horse? Or Evan?
“She will no’ agree to leave Tempest.”
“Ye can bid her awa’.”
Alan raised an eyebrow and Father continued, “Ye be her husband.”
In name only. Sworn to do not so much as touch her, lest by accident or necessity.
His wife was fierce. She was brave, if foolish. Her courage made her—well, beautiful, even if that beauty proved of an ilk Alan had never before contemplated. Or appreciated. A man might be fiercely attracted by such a woman.
The thought shocked him. He could not go there. He dared not.
He jerked his head toward the stable again. “Go on in,” he told his father. “Tak’ a look at wha’ your precious lord and heir has done. Then mayhap ye can persuade Annista awa’.”
Father gave him a long glare. Went in. He did not immediately emerge.
Alan stood contemplating the rear of the house as he had for the past hours unnumbered, counting the chimneys—thirteen, an unlucky number surely—and trying to sense Evan’s presence. Like a disturbance in the weather, his brother was. A storm one could feel approaching in one’s bones. All remained quiet yet.
A maid came out from the kitchen and emptied a pail into the garden. A lad carried two buckets across the yard.
Alan listened for voices from within. He could hear nothing, even though Father and Annista must surely be speaking to one another.
What would Father do about Evan? What could he do? Any discipline should have been handed out years ago.
Alan dimly remembered that once upon a time it had been attempted, aye. No discipline, punishments, or consequences ever seemed to take with Evan. They only tended to fan the flames of his inner rage.
