Читать книгу The Knight's Redemption - Joanne Rock - Страница 8

“I don’t know if there is a woman to meet your needs about Glamorgan, Sir Barret. If you would be willing to extend your stay in Wales, perhaps, we could find someone suitable in the outlying areas.”

Thomas Glamorgan’s words from the great hall caught Ariana’s attention as she hastened through the keep toward her bedchamber. Too intrigued to consider the impropriety of her actions, she paused just outside the entrance. If she did not listen to her father’s conversation herself, she would certainly never hear news of it otherwise.

“A fortnight?” A deep masculine voice rumbled through the hall and tripped over Ariana’s senses. “I will be in Wales less than a sennight ’ere I sail for France on a mission for the king. I assure you, my lord, I have the ear of King Henry and if you can be of help to me, he will no doubt remember the kindness. But I cannot wait for days to find a wife. I have been granted a Welsh keep, but only if I can find a Welsh wife to go along with it.”

Her fingers froze in the midst of fiddling with her amethyst bracelet. The voice in the great hall could only belong to one man—the foreigner Eleanor fore-saw.

And he was looking for a bride.

Sweet Arianrhod, the situation seemed too good to be true. Hadn’t she promised herself she would not indulge in hopeful flights of fancy anymore? Hadn’t she tucked away her fairy-tale dreams of marriage and family?

Yet she couldn’t suppress the happy tune that danced about her head any more than she could still her racing heart as she strained to hear their conversation.

“But Barret, surely you jest.” Her father spluttered in indignant surprise. No doubt the notion of undertaking such a task in a rushed manner galled her father. The Lord of Glamorgan was a man of cherished routines, as predictable and full of gloom as his daughter was eccentric and full of life.

Still, Ariana knew her father to be a man who both feared and respected politics. He would be swayed to help the man if only for a small assurance his borderland keep would be at peace in any disputes between the Welsh and their more powerful English neighbors.

“Glamorgan boasts no highborn ladies traipsing about on a daily basis,” Thomas managed between incensed coughs. “It will take time to invite the most eligible girls for your inspection. You would not want some serving wench for a wife when you seek a mistress for Llandervey.”

“I do not seek an heiress, merely a reasonable, biddable woman with many childbearing years ahead of her.” The stranger’s tone rang clipped and sharp, as if annoyed.

Had he honestly just said he sought a biddable woman? Dear heaven, but that wasn’t a good sign. No one had ever accused her of being compliant.

Still, the richness of his voice itself piqued Ariana’s curiosity enough to draw her glance around the door-frame. She yearned for a quick glimpse of the man who might be the key to breaking the curse—or simply dispelling the myth of a ridiculous family legend.

Easing around the archway, her mouth promptly went dry at the sight that greeted her eyes.

Utterly imposing, her father’s uninvited guest commanded attention. Stalking the great hall, impatience and frustration evident in every line of his large, muscular form, the stranger dwarfed her father by two hand spans. Ariana guessed his shoulders to be twice the width of her own, while his waist and hips narrowed under the swirl of his midnight-blue hauberk.

He looked entirely too ominous in his unrelieved dark garb and road-dusty chain mail, especially standing beside her father whose hunched posture and ill-fitting attire announced to the world his broken spirit.

“Barret” as her father called him, did not look like a man who would appreciate being tricked into marriage. Yet, as intimidating as the man appeared, Ariana couldn’t break her gaze as she stared at him.

Sable brown hair fell across the shoulder of the foreigner’s dark hauberk, nearly blending in with the black wool of his tunic, which looked surprisingly clean for a knight. Warriors of her acquaintance were all so concerned with fighting and weaponry they appeared to have little time for bathing.

Too bad she could not make out his features from her hidden observation spot.

“What of your own girls, Glamorgan?” The stranger pressed. “Have you no daughters ready for marriage?”

Ariana’s heart faltered in her chest for one hopeful moment, though she knew her father would never allow her to wed an unsuspecting stranger. Consumed with his own bitterness, Thomas Glamorgan seemed to enjoy seeing everyone else around him suffer.

“None of interest to you,” her father snapped, recovering himself.

Surprised at the depth of her disappointment, Ariana squeezed the bag of Eleanor’s charmed herbs still hidden beneath her sleeve. Nothing gave her courage like the reminder of Thomas Glamorgan’s insistence that his daughter remain as cursed and unhappy as he. If she did not take fate into her own hands, how would she ever escape her oppressive family seat? Worse, how would her brother’s daughters elude the same barren existence?

“Very well.” The knight’s jaw clenched in obvious affront. “My one concern is to return to France and complete a mission for my king. Garner any women you think might be remotely pleasing and I will view them this eve.”

Ariana felt as shocked as her father sounded.

“You cannot mean that,” the Lord of Glamorgan returned. “A man of your stature and prestige could command a wealthy heiress. You can surely wait a few days if it means a hefty gold dowry?”

“No.” The knight raised his hand to forestall further discussion. “I have my reasons.”

Wishing the man would have related those reasons, Ariana wondered what could make him so careless about choosing his spouse. Did she truly want to wed a man who seemed so unfeeling?

Then again, suitors were not exactly lining up at Glamorgan’s gates. She could scarcely afford to be choosy about her husband.

Suddenly aware the stranger would see her on his way out if she did not escape the corridor, she attempted to pass the hall and gain the privacy of her rooms when her father’s voice halted her.

“Ariana! Come in, my dear, and greet our guest.”

Her heart hammered in her chest, as much from being caught skulking about the door as from nervousness at meeting the knight. Flustered hands straightened her surcoat as she cleared her throat and strode forward. Heat rose in her cheeks.

Hope sparkled through her when the stranger turned green eyes upon her. For one shining moment, it seemed as if the veil of the curse had lifted. His gaze penetrated her with the intense scrutiny of a man seeking a mate, and in that moment, she connected with him on some unspoken, fundamental level.

And then it vanished.

His brow furrowed, and she knew he felt the bond fade, too. He looked at her then as all men looked at her, with vague, unseeing eyes.

The curse still loomed, but by God, this man had seen through it for one incredible instant.

Thomas Glamorgan scarcely bothered to look at her, however. “Roarke Barret, this is my only daughter, Ariana. You’d be most welcome to take her for your bride if she weren’t—”

“No.” The knight interrupted him just in time to prevent her father from revealing her affliction. He peered at her for a long moment before shaking his head. “You have made it clear you do not want to give up your daughter. I will see the other women tonight.”

With those words, the English knight brushed past her with such abrupt quickness she barely noted anything else about him besides a vague impression of heavy brows and a stony set to his jaw. Mostly, she recalled fascinating emerald eyes.

The stab of disappointment caught her off guard. Except for her father’s perpetual misery and bitter resentment toward her, the curse had never bothered her before this year. She never envied her friends the lustful looks men bestowed upon them. But as her twentieth summer loomed, her deathbed promise to her mother began to prey upon her mind. And in truth, her feelings began to change on the matter, too. She did not want to die a spinster like all of her aunts had for the last hundred years. She wanted a family of her own, with children and the freedom to pursue her music whenever she wished.

And a handsome man to notice her.

It was a strange and new feeling, this disappointment. And it suddenly hurt very much to be passed over as if she were worth less notice than the keep’s hounds.

“He did not see you, of course.” Her father’s voice interrupted her thoughts as he stared at her through the cloudy white film encroaching over his failing eyes. He looked down his hooked nose at her, a difficult feat considering his shorter stature and stooped shoulders. Yet Thomas Glamorgan could lift his chin just enough to glare at his daughter in such a way that made her well aware of her unworthiness. “The curse prevents any man but me from seeing you as you really are.”

Determined not to raise his suspicions by allowing him to know how much the knight’s rebuff stung, Ariana straightened. She wasn’t cursed, by God. The Glamorgan legend was a myth perpetuated by rumor and gossip.

She hadn’t just dreamed that moment of elemental connection with Roarke Barret. The knight had admired her for a moment. Perhaps it had been a sign that he was the man destined to dispel the long-standing fable surrounding the women of her line.

She mustered a smile for her father, unwilling to anger him and risk not being allowed to participate in the evening meal. She had plans to cross paths with Roarke Barret again. “I am hardly invisible.”

Although she often wondered why she never warranted a second glance from any man. She had often seen the most humble village women chased with lustful enthusiasm by suitors. Yet, despite what she considered a mildly attractive exterior, no man ever looked at her with anything more than a fleeting glance. Before her mother died, Lady Glamorgan declared the curse utter nonsense, insisting men would travel far and wide to beg for the hand of her beautiful daughter.

But her mother’s prediction had yet to come true. Indeed, men were more apt to look right through her.

She awaited her father’s answer while he called for messengers to be dispatched to every nearby nobleman regarding the English knight’s visit. Preparations would be made to find the man a bride, and from her father’s expression, Ariana had no doubt that he would not allow that woman to be her.

His mouth hardened into the thin line that constituted his version of a smile. “My sister once compared it to being as attractive as a lovely tapestry upon the castle wall. A man might observe beauty in her, but not the kind that was in any way tempting.”

Did her father take malicious glee in hurting her? Sometimes it seemed that way, but Ariana maintained a smooth mask of indifference, assuring herself that Welsh men were merely too superstitious about Glamorgan women to look her way. Curses were not taken lightly in a country shrouded in mists and legends.

“Fortunately she found fulfillment in the convent.” Her father began a familiar diatribe. “’Tis a shame you have not yet joined her.”

After dutifully listening to his lecture on her shortcomings and an adamant declaration that he would not suffer her under his roof much longer, Ariana departed the hall.

For once, she hoped her father was correct. She did not want to abide in the dark gloom of Glamorgan Keep any more. If only the stranger could be persuaded to take her to be his wife, she could leave her wretched household forever.

Surely once one Glamorgan woman married, all talk of a curse hanging over the females of their line would quickly fade. Her nieces would one day wed and have babes of their own.

Ariana prayed this stranger was The One. The man who would be her destiny.

The knight of her dreams.

Roarke Barret stomped along yet another darkened interior corridor of Glamorgan Keep in search of the kitchens, wondering if the miserly lord had deliberately misled him about the whereabouts of the food rations. The stoop-shouldered Welshman and his gloomy household had cast a pall over a previously fruitful day. In the ten years since Roarke had left his birthplace on the Barret lands in England, he’d met men more cruel and wicked, but none more wretched.

The fact that he had entrusted the sour-faced knave to find him a bride didn’t exactly fill him with confidence, but he was running out of time to accomplish the matter and Glamorgan’s keep had been the last substantial holding on his way to the coast. Roarke had foolishly delayed his nuptials so long that he had little choice now but to rely on Thomas Glamorgan. Still, heaven only knew what manner of women would be paraded before him this night.

Not that he expected to discover wedded bliss with his new wife. Far from it. He had stopped believing in dreams—especially the love and marriage kind—on a rainy day ten years ago when his mother’s perfidy had come to light. The same day his world had crumbled beneath him and revealed him as a bastard instead of a true Barret.

And although he’d searched for a true place to call home ever since, he’d discovered only a power-hungry lord for a true father and other half brothers who lacked the sense of honor that had always been second nature to his mother’s other son, Lucian.

A man five times the man Roarke had ever been.

Now he tread the endless corridors of Glamorgan, certain he was at last on his way to securing his own lands and his own place in the world. Squinting into the shadowy passages, he tried to decide if he should forsake the rations until he returned to the keep later that night for supper, when he heard a light footstep on the stone walkway.

The footfall was accompanied by a fanciful love song trilled out in soft, sweet notes.

For a moment, he envisioned that delicate feminine voice accompanied by his lute. A musical harmony that would feed the soul more than any hunk of day-old bread he might find in the kitchen.

But then the voice halted along with the feet, bringing him back to cold reality and the need to distance himself from whimsical thoughts.

He discerned the slender female form in the corridor a few feet away, the memory of her song making a greater impression upon him than any visual image of the young woman.

“My lord.” She couldn’t hide the surprise in her voice. “I did not expect to meet anyone else in the living quarters.”

He recognized the voice of Glamorgan’s mysterious daughter he’d met earlier and regretted not being able to see her more clearly. Her raven-dark hair and striking amber eyes had snared him for a moment, making him wish he could choose a wife on the basis of attraction.

A foolish notion.

No doubt, he was better off being blind to Ariana Glamorgan’s enticement in this dim hallway.

“Perhaps I misunderstood your father’s directions to the kitchens,” he began, realizing his voice took on a gruffer note than necessary. “I seek rations for my trip but am unable to find the stairwell your father described.”

She surprised him by laughing. A rich, musical sound that caught him off guard. “Perhaps my father misled you on purpose, my lord. He is reputed to have acquired much wealth through unrepentant stinginess. The kitchens are on the other side of the great hall, and I would be glad to show you the way myself.”

The desire to walk alongside this enigmatic woman churned through him with palpable force. All the more reason to deny himself the pleasure. A beautiful woman held too much power over a man. Even his own mother’s beauty had made her a target for another man’s lust.

Nay. He would not allow himself to be tempted by such a woman, no matter how alluring her siren’s song. Not now, and not tonight when it came time to choose a bride.

“I will not detain you any longer.” He inclined his head just low enough to catch a whiff of her rose-scented hair. Another tactical error. Straightening, he brushed past her, seeking freedom from the dark intimacy of the shadowed corridor. Freedom from his own hungry thoughts. “Thank you, my lady.”

And although he managed to escape their conversation, Roarke knew her haunting song would echo in his head long afterward.