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A girl child. We shall welcome her together.
Daigh’s words muttered in the security of Gwynedd’s vast forests. She would see to it he held to them.
Tremors shuddered through him, chattering teeth, making fingers numb and jittery. Even his skull ached as if his brain had rattled itself loose. He tried swallowing, but his throat felt scraped raw, his tongue swollen and useless. He opened his eyes, squinting against a blinding glare. Sending new shocks of pain through his sloshy, scattered mind.
Slowly his sight returned. His surroundings fading into a cell-like room lined with cupboards, a low shelf running the perimeter. A sink with a pump. His pallet jammed into one corner. A cane-backed chair drawn up close.
But this time he remembered.
Everything.
“Back where I started,” he croaked, attempting a smile.
“Not quite.” Sabrina leaned forward, face aglow, tears sparkling upon her dark lashes. “You are free of Máelodor.” Her hand found his. “We are free of Máelodor.”
Her lips found his. Her kiss intoxicating as wine. His body stirring with heat separate from the mountain of blankets heaped upon him.
“The life I remembered,” he murmured. “You really were there. It was true because you made it so.”
“It was. And it can be again.”
Movement caught the corner of his eye. A shadow against the wall. A body in the corridor. Listening. Awaiting his answer.
His smile faded as reality burst the dream like sun through cloud. He eased her away, his heart breaking at the doubt surfacing upon the gem blue of her eyes. “Nay, Sabrina. You have given me my life. But I can offer nothing in repayment of such a debt.”
Lines furrowed her brow, tiny creases beside her down-turned mouth. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple. My crimes against your family remain unanswered. I’m a man without hearth, livelihood, or country. It’s best if you simply forget.”
Her hand fell to her stomach as if he’d punched her, her gaze hard. “Best? For who? You? Me? My brother?”
He rolled away from her, wincing at the echoes of old pain beneath his tightly wrapped chest. Stared at the wall, hoping she’d leave before he changed his mind and to hell with the honorable thing. He felt her glare like a push against his temples.
Her final words came brittle with confusion and pain. “I told you once that my body and my love were mine to bestow where I chose. I had thought you were worthy. I thought wrong.”
He did not reply.
Lady Sabrina Douglas.
Sister and daughter to earls.
Bandraoi priestess.
How could he let her throw herself away on a landless, penniless sword for hire?
He couldn’t. And so he lay hunched with tension until the door closed quietly and he was once again alone.
They had gathered in Ard-siúr’s office. Sabrina, a reluctant addition. She had not wanted to come this afternoon. Despite her bold words, she had wanted only to curl up in her bed and be gloriously sick. But Sister Brigh had not taken a polite no for an answer.
So instead, Sabrina had donned her baggiest gown, a camouflaging apron, and walked with rounded shoulders, hoping to disguise her condition. She had counted up the cycles. Checked her math. Five and a half months gone. It wouldn’t be long before no amount of disguise could conceal the child within her.
Daigh’s child.
The gods must be truly laughing at her. She had but to open her mouth and Aidan would repudiate her. Release her from the stranglehold of familial ties. But it was far too late. She’d snared herself in her own conniving and now must pay the price.
Miss Roseingrave parted the curtains, glancing out upon the feathery afternoon clouds. “We searched east and north as far as Cork and Macroom. West to Baltimore, but no sign o
f him. He could have sailed from any harbor or simply faded into the west country.”
