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“Why do you fight your love for him?”
Reena turned to her friend. “I ask myself that question. How can the Legend love me?”
“Why would he not?”
“Gossip says the Legend knows not of love, and look at me.” Reena held out her arms as if offering herself for inspection. “I am not exactly the type of woman the Legend would find appealing.”
“You never did pay attention to gossip, nor cared about it. Foolish tongues make for foolish minds, you would say.” Brigid’s tone turned adamant. “And why would the Legend not find you appealing? You are truly beautiful.”
“True enough about gossip,” Reena agreed. “But me appealing to the Legend?” She shook her head.
“You have come to know the Legend—”
“Nay,” Reena corrected. “I have come to know Magnus.”
“They are the same.”
Reena shook her head. “They are not.”
“Then you do not look close enough.”
Brigid’s words startled Reena, and she stared wide-eyed at her friend. “I looktooclosely?”
“What is in front of our eyes is usually what is the most difficult to see.”
Reena turned away to stare at the flames and think on her friend’s words. The Legend was not in front of her long enough for her to know him—or was he? Was she failing to see what was in front of her? And if she did, was she failing to see the possibility of love? She turned her eyes to her friend, when suddenly she remembered something, and her gaze shifted quickly to the concealed door in the wall.
“I had forgotten.”
Brigid looked at her strangely.
“I have been so busy mapping the keep that I forgot about the chests in the concealed room.”
“Of what do you speak?”
“Secrets,” Reena answered and sat forward. “There is a concealed room here, and when first I saw the tower room the door to the concealed room was ajar. Inside were two chests. One of the chests contained journals.”
Her voice lowered to a whisper, and Brigid sat forward, the better to hear her.
“One journal was written in French by a woman who wrote, ‘Today I gave birth to a son and I named him Magnus.’”
Brigid gasped. “Magnus’s mother?”
“I had the same thought.”
“Could Magnus have brought the chests here?”
“And placed them in a concealed room in the tower?” Reena shook her head. “That would not make sense. Besides, the room looked as though it had not been opened in some time.”
“Unless he did not want anyone to know about them.”
“Or the chests had been here all this time.”
Both women grew silent in thought.
Brigid broke the silence. “Thomas has made mention that Magnus does not allow anyone to take from him what is his. Could this land, this keep, be rightfully his?”
“The king granted him this land for a favor well done.”
