Healer (15 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Something was wrong. Brenna knew it the moment she set sight on Brother Martin’s face. Yet he insisted that Rory had gone off to pray after his confession.

“He’ll be back soon, and we’ll proceed as planned.”

Confession,
Brenna thought as she made tea to pass the time. What had Rory confessed? A child’s part in the murderous raid on the Gowrys? Surely God had not held that against him.

The questions plagued her as she carried the tea out to Martin … until she spied Rory and Faol making their way up the almost hidden path to the cave.

“I’d begun to think you’d turned coward and run,” she called out to him, smiling.

But Rory did not smile back. Nor could she see beyond the hard wall of his expression. Dread ran Brenna through. “What is it, Rory?”

Rory motioned toward the cave entrance. “I need to speak with you.”

Brenna glanced at her mentor, hoping for some semblance of reassurance, but like Rory’s, Martin’s expression was masked.

“Go on. I’ll enjoy my tea in this long-awaited sunshine.” Martin shifted his gaze to Rory. “You are doing the right thing, son.”

“Spare me, Priest.” Rory’s words dripped with bitterness.

Brenna felt the blood drain from her face and limbs with each step she took. Rory was married. That had to be it. She could think of no other reason why there was a problem.

Father
God, please spare me that.

Yet she knew in her heart this marriage was God’s will. There were fanciful dreams soon forgotten, if remembered at all. Then there were the visions, indelibly etched not just in her mind, but in her soul.

She went straight to the hearth, hoping busywork would help stay the trembling of her hands. “I made some tea—”

“None, thank you.”

Brenna clutched the skirt of her dress, gathering courage as she spun to face him. “Then tell me what you must, for my heart can bear no more of this.”

Ronan cursed the day he was born. He cursed his father. He was tempted to curse God for allowing this to happen, yet he could not. Not as he had before meeting Brenna. Not if Brenna was right: that God had brought them together.

Though He had left them in a black muddle with little light that Ronan could see. Except for this.

“Know first that I love you with all my heart and soul, Brenna of Gowrys.”

But was it enough? Could Ronan accept it if she rejected him once she found out the truth?

Her shoulders squared. She lifted her chin to receive the anticipated blow.

“But I cannot marry you under false pretenses.”

It struck full on.

“Oh.” Brenna sank onto the bench next to the table.

That morning they’d shared breakfast there, swathed in love’s giddy light. Ronan never dreamed he’d ever feel so young and reckless. But he’d been deceiving himself. He couldn’t escape his past, nor bind her to it without her knowledge.

“Are you already wed?” she asked in a small voice.

“By my father’s wretched bones, no!” His plight could be worse, Ronan thought. “No,” he said, more softly. “You are the only woman I have ever loved. My heart and soul belong to you.”

Relief released the breath she’d been holding. She struggled to smile. “I would have your heart, Rory, but your soul is God’s.”

She was as naive as the priest who taught her. Yet Ronan would give anything to experience such faith. To believe God really cared.

He clenched his fists. Just be out with it, and let God have His way. Then he’d see if God was working on their behalf. If God really cared about a man cursed from birth by his father’s sins. Or if God existed at all.

“I am not Rory, nor am I a soldier of fortune. I lied to you.”

“Because …”

Already he could see the hurt trying to contort her face, and he hated himself for it.

“Because you believe I am your worst enemy, even though I could never be. No one who knows you could
ever
wish you harm.” Ronan reached for her, but she recoiled from his outstretched hand.

“You’re … you’re an
O’Byrne?”
Her voice clung to disbelief even as the bitter truth registered on her face and cast accusations at him.

But I trusted you.

I saved you, and you repaid me by lying.

You let me fall in love with you.

And he was guilty of them all.

“I am Ronan O’Byrne, eldest son of Tarlach. I was there when my father murdered yours. I saw your mother fall on her own blade rather than submit to my father’s mad ravaging. I received this scar”—Ronan pointed to his face—“defending myself from the blade of one of the Gowrys men. And I killed him.”

Brenna covered her ears with her hands. “Noooo …”

“I have led raids on your people to keep them confined to the highlands, subservient to mine,” Ronan shouted. He stepped into her path as she rose to run. And when she tried to duck around him, he grabbed her arm. “I was the monster you feared, spawn of the Devil himself—”

“Let me go … please …”

Ronan couldn’t deny her. Couldn’t blame her. He dropped his hand and watched, helpless, as she raced out of the chamber. She passed Faol on his way in. Instead of attacking him, the wolf stopped, seemingly bewildered by Brenna’s hasty exit. After an assessing glance at Ronan, he turned and followed his mistress.

Ronan wished the beast had torn out this throat. Such a fate was far more merciful than this.

The sun moved past midday before Brenna returned to the cave, her eyes red and swollen with the toll of Ronan’s betrayal. She’d argued with him over and over in her mind. Try as she might to win, to make him a monster, she couldn’t. Had she been in his place, she would have done the same thing.

Faol agreed.

Sometimes the best counsel is a quiet one, and Faol indeed was that. One who listened and showed her nothing but unadulterated love and support, enduring her hugs and soaking in her tears, while she foundered in a maelstrom of confusion and emotion.

And hadn’t she kept a secret from Rory—
Ronan,
she amended—to protect herself? Had he done any differently? If she were the wolf-woman-witch hunted by his clan each year, he’d have good reason to fear her.

That is what reason told her.

God told her to forgive him as she’d expected him to forgive her.

And there was the vision. Was it from God—or a hopeful, lonely heart? For the first time, Brenna began to doubt, for it had not shown the whole truth.

One step that thou might see.

Brenna groaned. That small, still voice was ever at odds with her impatience.

Ahead, Brother Martin waited on the stone near the mouth of the cave, head bowed in quiet contemplation. Earlier, she’d blindly brushed past her old friend and mentor, too upset by Ronan’s confession to make sense of anything, much less speak. Desperate just to get away from the pain, to run until she could run no farther, until she could hear no voice except that of God.

“When did you know?” she asked, looking about for Ronan.

“He’s inside,” Martin replied to her unspoken question.

“Good.” It was Martin she sought, now that she’d had time to think. Now that her emotions had been wrung dry. “When?” she prompted softly.

Guilt grazed the priest’s face. “I suspected, even feared it, when you came to me a few weeks ago. After seeking all the information I could, I concluded your stranger could be no other.”

“Yet you came to marry us?”

Martin glanced away from her accusation. “My superiors are in agreement that this is a good marriage.”

His superiors. The same lot who arranged for her mother to marry the man who eventually murdered the one she loved and drove Joanna to suicide.

“How can you trust such men?” she asked. Had Martin betrayed her, too?

“I sought their counsel, child, but I was not convinced that this was a good match until Ronan did right by you and told you the truth of his identity.”

Brenna hiked her brow. “And you are convinced now, that this is right in God’s eyes?”

“He loved you enough to tell you the truth, even though that truth could drive you away from him,” Martin assured her. “He loved you enough to risk losing you as Christ loved us enough to lose His life.”

Brenna’s heart staggered within her chest.

Did she love Ronan
that
much? Enough to let him go?

Yes. She’d already said as much when she thought him a soldier of fortune.

Did she trust him with her life?

Yes. He could have done her harm, had he wished. Yet, foul humors aside, he’d treated her with utmost tenderness and care. Even after she’d stopped giving him the barrenwort.

A blessed assurance settled over her. “Then marry us, Brother, for I have seen it and trust God and my heart on this.”

“God be thanked.”

Brenna turned to see Ronan standing in the mouth of the cave. His jaw was seized as tight as his fists. As if he held back a fierce tide, one that might break free if he so much as twitched. But his bright gaze bridged the distance between them, reaching for her, beckoning her with the signal fires of his soul.

Brenna glanced down, suddenly conscious of the clinging wolf’s hair and the brambles caught in the fine weave of her mother’s dress from her headlong plunge into the woods. Reaching up, she felt for the flowered wreath she’d painstakingly made, only to find it gone. What a sight she must—

“Like a wild rose,” Ronan assured her.

Brenna’s eyes widened in surprise, not that he’d just read her thoughts, but that he could still find her pleasing in such disarray.

“Indeed she is,” Brother Martin agreed. “But I’m accustomed to the bride and groom being close enough to bind in matrimony with my belt … that is, if there is to be a wedding this day.”

Yet Ronan didn’t move. Not until Brenna tilted her head in silent invitation. And suddenly his embrace was real, his kiss taking her breath away, lifting her off her feet. Like a leaf falling from a treetop, spinning helpless, yet reveling in the flight.

Until, from somewhere outside the sweet gale of emotion, someone cleared his throat. Ever so reluctantly she drifted back to the earth. But Ronan’s warmth was still there. And his eyes still refused to let her go.

“That is usually reserved until
after
the ceremony,” Martin reminded them wryly.

“
That,
good Brother,” Ronan said, “was gratitude for the grace I do not deserve.”

“None of us do, son,” the priest replied. “None of us do. And so,” he announced, assuming a posture of authority, “the two of you come together under God’s sky this day to enter into the holy alliance of marriage. No longer alone, but together, you will take on life’s joys and life’s heartaches, clinging to one another and offering each other comfort in prosperity and woe.”

Brenna had only seen a wedding from afar, heard bits and snatches of what was said. Had she been closer at that time, tears would have pooled in her gaze at the beauty of the soul-melding words ringing beneath the canopy of the trees, accompanied by birdsong.