WINDKEEPER (24 page)

Conar refused to answer.

"Conar, look at me." When his brother stared adamantly away, Legion lowered his voice to a plea. "Will you please look at me?"

Conar turned his head and fused his gaze with Legion’s.

"Have you held to the bargain?"

"No."

Legion sighed. "I didn’t think so. This woman you had me send men out to find, this woman you say was traveling with you, is she the reason you have not kept your end of the bargain?"

"I made no bargain."

"No, Papa and your mother made the bargain in your name."

"If you think to shame me with that useless piece of information, you can’t."

"I wasn’t trying to, Conar." He cleared his throat. "Is this woman special to you, little brother?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know precisely what I mean, Coni."

"I care for her, aye."

"Have you slept with her?"

"That’s none of your business!"

"You told me and Papa that you were worried about this woman who just disappeared from the inn. You gave us the impression she was an indentured servant, that you were bringing her here to Boreas along with Gezelle. But she isn’t just a bondservant, is she?"

"I never told you she was a servant."

"You implied it." Legion let out a frustrated breath. "Who is this woman? And what is she to you?"

"A friend."

"A friend? Who do you think you’re talking to? You have let this woman become an obsession and that’s not like you, Conar. Any woman can—"

"I need her," Conar interrupted.

"You need a woman," Legion corrected.

"Damn it! I need this woman, Legion!" Conar shouted, turning his fierce gaze to his brother. His mouth was set in a hard line that brooked no argument.

"Why?"

"I just do."

"Why do you need this particular woman? What is she to you?"

"I told you. She’s a…"

"A friend," Legion finished for him. "A man doesn’t behave toward a mere friend like you’re behaving over this woman. You eat and drink and breathe her. Don’t you see that you have let her become all there is for you? No one else seems to matter." Legion touched his brother’s shoulder. "I’ll ask you again…have you slept with her?"

"What if I have?"

"Damn it!" Legion spat with annoyance. "Have you slept with this woman?"

"Yes!" Conar shouted and looked out over the pond.

Legion shook his head and let a long, weary sigh. "That wasn’t very smart, now, was it?"

"When is falling in love ever smart?"

Legion stared at Conar. "The gods help you. How could you have let that happen?"

Conar shrugged. "I didn’t intend for it to." He turned his troubled gaze to his brother. "She was easy to love. For the first time in my life, the very first time, I met someone who loved me, a woman who loved me, not who I am or what I can give her. She asked for only a moment of my time, a few days of travel to the capitol. She made a promise that when that journey was done, she’d leave and never ask anything of me again." He looked away. "She kept her bargain. She left." His last two words were soft whispers of misery.

"And you can’t accept that?"

"I can not."

Legion draped a protective arm around Conar. "And it hurts."

"Worse than you can imagine."

Legion squeezed his brother to him. "Like you, I’ve never known what it feels like to love, really love a woman, but I’ve always known one day I’d meet that special woman who turned my world upside down. With all the women you’ve been with, you should have realized it could happen. But you didn’t, did you?"

Conar shook his head. "No woman has ever touched me like this woman, Legion. I don’t mean just physically, although in that regard she was different from all the others, too. Making love to her was like riding on the wind. She touched me here, Legion," he said, placing his hand over his heart.

"You do know that if we ever find this woman, you won’t be allowed to keep her with you. You would only have to give her up eventually. Best that it be now before it has gone too far and there is still time to turn back."

"If I ever find her again, Legion, I will not let her leave ever again. I can’t and I won’t."

"You won’t be given the choice, Conar. They will take her from you in the end."

The messenger came around noon on the eighth day after the incident at the pond.

Conar still stalked about the keep in a near-insane rage, but he kept mostly to himself. He ignored Legion, being civil to his brother only when in the presence of their father, for King Gerren detested turmoil of any nature within his keep.

Confining himself to the lower portions of the keep, daring anyone to either speak or look at him, Conar did not create the havoc of days before. He sulked, sitting by himself, glaring out the windows, turning a hostile eye to those incautious enough to venture too near; but he didn’t start arguments, didn’t voice opinions concerning the way he was being provided for. His frown and his narrowed eyes usually let those who encountered him know he was not in the mood for company.

Now a messenger waited in the kitchens with a note for the Prince Regent and no one wanted to carry it to him.

"Unh, unh! Not me!" vowed Rayle Loure as he sat eating his lunch. "I like my head right where it is." He glanced at his twin, Thom, who shook his head, as well.

"It may not be the prettiest head in the realm," Thom added, "but I like mine well enough." He ran his hand over a huge head devoid of hair. "Give it to Lord Legion. He’s not afraid to take it to the Prince."

Making an ugly snort, the old cook swatted the tallest of the Elite Guard with her dishrag. "You call yourself a warrior? Some brave man you are, Rayle Loure." She turned her small black eyes to Rayle’s twin. "And you," she snorted again, "you are a mealy-mouthed pussy cat, you are, Thom Loure!" She turned her angry gaze to the two men who also sat at the table with the Loure twins. "And just what are your excuses?"

Marsh Edan, second in command of the Elite Guard, filled his mouth with a biscuit and grinned. He had no intention of defending himself to the old hag. He turned to look at the man beside him and raised his brows in challenge.

"Give it to Lord Teal." Storm Jale, another Elite, ducked his head. "He hasn’t got his ass in trouble with Coni lately. It’ll do him good." He shoveled peas into his mouth and talked around the green gob. "It’ll help keep the bugger humble."

"Lord Teal took the Prince’s son, Wyn, hunting with him this morn," the cook snarled. "I don’t see why you are so scared of the little brat. He’s just a man!"

Storm coughed, glancing at the old woman with a look of disbelief on his handsome face. "He’s the Prince Regent, Sadie. You tread easy around him these days or you’re likely wind up doing duty in some godforsaken outpost on the Diabolusian frontier."

"That, I might add," Sadie scoffed, "would do you good, Storm Jale!" Her beady eyes assessed him. "You could stand to lose a few pounds."

"It’s your cooking," Marsh said, defending his friend and cousin.

"It’s him shoveling food into that pretty little mouth of his!" Sadie shot back. "Did it not occur to you men this message might be important?"

"And it might be the worst kind of news, too," Thom told her. "Why don’t you take it to him, Sadie, if you aren’t afraid?"

Sadie MacCorkingdale drew up her five feet tall, nearly as wide, frame and glared at him. "I would, but there ain’t a soul in this damned keep that can do my work while I hunt down the little bugger!"

"But you aren’t afraid of him, huh?" Rayle asked, winking at his brother.

"Not me, you overgrown oaf!" Sadie wiped her hands on her apron and folded her arms over her more-than-ample bosom. "You don’t see me cowering behind this old cook’s skirts so I don’t get snapped at by the snotty young Prince!" She sniffed and swung her eyes to Marsh once more. "You’re getting crumbs all over my table, Edan!"

Gezelle, who had been sitting quietly in the corner near the crackling fireplace, laid aside her sewing. She had been mending a shirt the Prince had ripped off; the third one that week. "I’ll take it up to him," she said, reaching for the note. "Mayhaps he won’t bite off my head."

Handing the note to Gezelle, Sadie eyed the girl up and down. "He wouldn’t dare, ’Zelle," she murmured, smiling a toothless grin at the former servant. "Who’d hurt a wee thing like you?"

"He would." Rayle grimaced. "You better not get too close to him, ’Zelle. Just hand it over and run like the devil was after your pretty little rump."

"Don’t you be paying him no never mind!" Sadie ordered. She patted Gezelle’s arm. "His Lordship wouldn’t do you harm no matter what his mood!" Her beady black eyes squinted. "Least ways, he better not!"

Gezelle smiled. She liked the old lady. From the very first hour she was at Boreas Keep, Sadie MacCorkingdale had befriended her, taking her under a massive wing to show her about the keep and make her feel at home. It had been Sadie who let the other servants know Gezelle was no servant, but a trusted, valued friend of the Prince Regent. It had been Sadie who had held the young girl as she wept for the Prince’s pain at losing the Lady Liza. And it was always Sadie who ran interference for Gezelle with those servants who would have caused the young girl a problem.

"You remind me of my darling Joannie, you do," Sadie had told her one day as she sat helping the old cook pare apples for a pie. "My girl what died."

The hard black eyes had softened and the pursed and wrinkled mouth had relaxed into what passed as a smile for Sadie MacCorkingdale. She had sighed and a tear slid down her weathered cheek. Putting up a rough, red and cracked hand, the old cook had angrily brushed away the offending sign of humanity.

"If things had been different," she had said in her rough, North Virago brogue, "my Joannie would have been a grand lady." Her cryptic remark was all Gezelle could get out of her.

"You better get that missive to His Grace," Marsh told Gezelle. "It might well be important."

Gazing at the rolled parchment, ’Zelle wished she could read. If it was bad news, she knew he’d more than likely snap at her for bringing it. Not that it mattered whether he did or not; the young Prince always apologized to her, if no one else, for his constant outbursts of bad temper. Nevertheless, her footsteps were slow as she started up the stairs to the sleeping chambers where she knew His Grace would be.

"How are you this lovely morn, ’Zelle?" King Gerren called to her from the library door.

Gezelle looked over the curving balustrade and curtsied to her sovereign. "I am well, Highness. How are you?"

King Gerren smiled warmly. "My days are always brighter when I chance upon your face." He laughed at the immediate blush that spread over the girl’s delicate oval face. "What have you, pretty lady?"

"A note for His Grace," she said and a beam of sunlight lit her face as she smiled. "Would you like to take it up to him?"

"No!" Gerren said with mock horror, putting a hand over his heart. "Not I, Mam’selle! I prefer nothing, including that ill-tempered son of mine, to spoil my day!" He patted her hand on the balustrade, then continued on his way.

"It’s going to ruin mine," Gezelle mumbled as she started her climb.

As had become her routine when ascending these stairs, ’Zelle gazed at the gallery of family portraits hanging on the walls. All the McGregor line from King Theils, the Elder, first Monarch of Serenia, to Prince Dyllon, King Gerren’s youngest legal son and his lovely auburn-haired wife, were represented in portraits framed in rich, warm. ebony wood gilded with pure gold.

Conar’s portrait, with the crystal circlet of Prince Regent shining atop his golden hair, was attached to Prince Galen’s portrait by a thin golden chain, signifying the dual birth. Several such chains linked other portraits along the wall, for twins tended to run in the McGregor line.

Above the last four men of the Prince Regent’s family—himself, Prince Galen, Princes Coron, and Dyllon—hung the portrait of their mother, Queen Moira of Virago. Her golden beauty with its sparkling hazel eyes always kindled sadness in Gezelle. The beautiful face that beamed down upon the viewer was gentle and warm. It never failed to make those viewing it smile. The lady had had that effect on most of those who knew her.

As she approached Conar’s door, Gezelle heard a loud crash followed by a louder vulgarity that brought a blush of shame to the young girl’s face. Pursing her lips, she timidly raised her hand and knocked lightly at the oak portal.

There was no answer, only a muffled, equally vitriolic curse from behind the door.

Taking a deep breath, she was about to knock again when the door was jerked open. Conar stood in the doorway, his shirt unbuttoned and hanging free of his breeches, his hair tousled, his eyes glaring.

Seeing the girl standing at his door, Conar bit off the crude remark he had been about to make. Instead, he turned his back and stomped away, crossing to his armoire, the contents of which lay scattered about his floor. He kicked a large vase of flowers out of his way as he strode to the dark mahogany chest and rumbled inside. Knowing the girl wouldn’t dare speak unless he did, he craned his neck and peered at her over his shoulder.

"Did you want something, ’Zelle?"

Tearing her gaze from the lovely vase that had been shattered with his vicious kick, Gezelle extended the parchment to him. "This came for you awhile ago, Milord."

Conar frowned. "Put it on the desk, then."

Gezelle bit her lip. The messenger had indicated that the message was important. "Begging your pardon, Milord, but I believe ’tis most urgent."

"It can wait," he snapped and resumed his ransack of the armoire with the total abandon of someone who does not have to straighten, iron or clean such things. Some clothes already lay in a tangled heap in the unlit hearth. Some lay discarded in a heap at the foot of his bed.

Gezelle sighed. Why did the man insist on ruining his clothing in such a manner? "Your Grace?" she said in exasperation as he ripped a shirt and threw it behind him, "the man said he needed an answer right away."