WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (17 page)

Raine glanced up. "She and the man called Yuri rode into town." His little mouth twisted with humor. "I believe the lady said something about visiting a church."

"A what?" Sajin asked.

"Synagogue," Raphaella clarified, using a word she knew the Kensetti would understand.

She uncorked the purple flask and added a drop of thick yellow fluid to the potion.

"Did she say when she'd be back?"

Raphaella mumbled something to her son, then took up a towel to wipe her hands. "When her praying is done, I would think," she answered. She laid the towel on the table. "Will you walk with me outside to the garden, Sajin? There are herbs I need to harvest."

The nomad smiled. "It would be a pleasure, lady. These walls have a tendency to close in on you."

Raphaella took up a wicker basket. "Are you claustrophobic, too, milord?" She put a pair of scissors in the basket. "Conar is, you know." She nodded toward the kitchen door and waited for Sajin to open it for her. Bright, refreshing sunlight shafted into the dark room.

"He told me," Sajin answered as he shut the door behind them. "I don't like closed in places, but I'm not afraid of them."

"The two of you have so much in common," she said. "It would have been unfortunate had you never met." She looked up at him. "You have become very dear to him in a short length of time and given his tendency to keep to himself, that is a most remarkable accomplishment on your part. He has needed a friend such as you."

"I understand him," Sajin said, somewhat embarrassed by the compliment. "And I think he trusts me. At least I hope he does."

"Enough to give his woman into your keeping," Raphaella commented.

Sajin's brows shot up. "He told you?"

She shook her head. "No one had to tell me, nomad. I know Conar McGregor and how the silly man thinks." She stopped by a gray-green lacy shrub and cut several long stalks. "He thought to protect Liza in much the same way as he is trying to protect Catherine." She laid the stalks in her basket. "To his way of thinking he failed and that is why he is so determined not to do so this time."

"At the expense of his and her happiness," Sajin snorted.

"I don't believe my son-in-law always thinks before he acts," she replied. "But this time, he's had a long while to mull over what he's doing. He knows this will hurt him and Catherine, but stubborn man that he is, he's going to go through with it."

"There's a woman in Rysalia," Sajin admitted.

"Rachel Stone." The sorceress plucked several buds from a leafy green plant and added them to her basket. "Conar has slept with her."

He wasn't surprised she knew that. "If he's so afraid of something happening to Catherine, how can he think to take a mistress and risk something happening to her?"

"Because Rachel and Catherine are two entirely different women, Sajin." She lifted a delicate spray of yellow flowers to her nose. "He knows Rachel can take care of herself whereas he fears Catherine can not."

"By why take a mistress at all?" Sajin questioned. "There are always plenty of camp followers to ease his physical needs."

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"Conar hasn't always been all that discriminating when it came to his bed partners, but age has tempered that recklessness. He knows there are diseases just waiting to happen. One woman is safer than a score of eager bedmates. Besides, your friend is not the kind of man to do without a steady woman. He likes the familiarity. I don't believe chastity has really ever crossed his mind except in passing. Even when he was married to my daughter, he had an affair with a woman there in the keep. He will need Rachel in his bed to calm him and keep him on an even keel, to smooth the edges of his temper. Sexual abstinence has often made him mean and he knows that."

"I see what you're saying," the nomad Prince agreed. "I wish it wasn't so, but I can understand why he feels he has to have a woman to replace Catherine."

"He'll regret it bitterly, my love," she said as she pinched off a dill leaf and inhaled its aroma.

Sajin looked sharply at her. "You think Rachel will betray him?"

"No," the sorceress answered. "As a matter of fact, she will serve him well." She looked up at him. "The woman adores him."

"Then why do you say he will regret taking her as his mistress?" Sajin asked, worry crinkling his brow.

"Because his guilt will get the better of him," Raphaella answered. "And because it will, he will find himself mired in misery without the rope necessary to drag himself out."

"Catherine," Sajin stated.

"Aye," Raphaella agreed. "Catherine."

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The old priest patted Catherine's clenched hands as she cried against his stooped and bony shoulder. He mumbled soothing words to her in an attempt to hush her hopeless crying. His thin right arm was wrapped around her waist as he held her and her wracking sobs sounded as though her heart was breaking.

"There now, Your Grace," he whispered, leaning his head against hers. "You'll make yourself sick."

"I don't care," the woman cried.

"Well, I do," the priest assured her. He withdrew his left hand from hers and fished in his cassock for a handkerchief. Finding one and shaking it out, he extended it to her. "Here, now. Dry your eyes."

"How can he do this, Father Nicolai?" Catherine sobbed, taking the proffered cloth and dabbing at her red and swollen eyes. "How can he hurt me like this?"

The priest shook his head. "Men do incomprehensible things at times, Your Grace. I truly believe the devil has his hand in most of those stupidities."

"But I love him!" Catherine wailed, turning to look at the wrinkled face of the clergyman.

"With all my heart. Can't he see that?"

"I am sure he does," Father Nicki, as his parishioners called him, answered. "And I am sure he loves you in return."

"Then why is he throwing me away?" she pleaded.

Father Nicki winced. "You make it sound as though he considers you a worn out boot, Your Grace."

"I might as well be!" Catherine whined. She buried her nose in the handkerchief and blew.

"Would you like me to speak with him?" the priest inquired. "Sometimes those who are not close to a marital problem can bring fresh insight to the situation."

"He won't listen," Catherine complained.

"Perhaps not, but with what you have told me about the terrible things which happened to him in Rysalia, he might need a man of God with whom to talk."

"He's not a Christian," she told the priest. "He is a pagan." She shrugged. "Or was. I think he's lost faith in his god."

"All the more reason I believe I should speak to him, Your Grace. If I can bring comfort to him even in the smallest of ways, he might find his way to the true God." Father Nicki smiled gently. "I can but try, milady. The rest of what happens is up to Him."

"It may be awhile before Raphaella allows him visitors from outside," she complained. She looked at the kindly man. "I'd rather bring him here, anyway. That keep is ...." She couldn't find the words to describe it.

"Of the netherworld," Father Nicki finished for her, perfectly capable of naming the keep for what it was. But he didn't seem too concerned with the matter.

"If I can get him to come here," Catherine said, drying her eyes, "what will you say to him?"

"What would you like me to say?" Father Nicki countered.

"Can you make him see that we belong together?" she asked. "We are married." She touched her swollen stomach. "I am carrying his child. We should be with one another."

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"I agree," the priest said, nodding emphatically, "and I will certainly do all I can to convince him of that."

Catherine bit down on her lower lip. "What if he won't listen, Father?"

The old priest patted her hand. "We'll have to leave it up to a higher authority, then, won't we?"

"Oh, it's you," she groused.

The smile slid off Sajin's mobile mouth. "I always feel so welcome whenever you greet me, Catherine," he said in a hurt tone.

Catherine sighed, closing her eyes in exasperation. "What do you want, Sajin?"

The nomad prodded a weed with the toe of his boot. "Are you feeling better?"

Conar's wife put her hand up to shield her eyes and stared at the Kensetti. "Did he send you out here?"

Sajin nodded, looking just like a little boy caught doing something he knew his mother wouldn't like. "He was worried about you."

Catherine snorted and resumed her watch of the meadow leading to a higher foothill. She felt, rather than saw, Sajin sit down beside her, but from the corner of her eye, she saw him reach out and pull a red weed from the grass and knew he had jammed it between his teeth.

"Wanna talk?" he asked.

She sighed again. "I don't understand you men, Ben-Alkazar," she admitted. "You are such strange creatures."

"We're strange?" Sajin gasped in a disbelieving tone. When she turned and gave him an irritated stare, the right side of his face jerked in apology. "Sorry."

Catherine looked away from him. "Sometimes I think it's the mother's fault," she commented. "Something we, as mothers, either fail to do or overdo." She turned her head and inspected him. "Maybe we pamper our little boys too much or maybe not enough. Maybe we deal too harshly with them or overlook what should be corrected immediately." She scowled. "Maybe we keep them at the breast too long."

"Or not long enough," Sajin chuckled. He wagged his eyebrows at her when she gave him one of her 'Cat' looks.

"You need us," she said, deciding to ignore his sexual innuendo. "But you don't want to admit you do." She uncrossed her legs and stuck them out in front of her, leaned back on her elbows. "Is that because of your fear of commitment, Sajin?"

The nomad shook his head. "It's mostly pride."

Catherine frowned. "Pride?"

Sajin took the stalk of red weed from between his teeth. "Men don't like to admit they need things, Cat. To admit you need something is to admit weakness. Men don't like to be made to feel weak so they compensate by trying to convince themselves they really don't need what they actually do."

"Like a wife," Catherine mumbled.

"Like a wife, a home, children. All things that some men see as weaknesses, chinks in their armor." Sajin laid down on the grass, crossing his arms beneath his head. "We tell ourselves we don't need any of that, but deep down we know better. Deep down inside us we recognize that need, but we try to tamp it down, hide it."

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"Why?" she asked, genuinely perplexed. "It's the natural order of things to pair off and breed, to make a nest. All of nature does it. Are men so different?"

"Some men are," Sajin said. "Some men, like holy men for instance, seem to have found a way to deny that natural order, as you call it. Personally, I don't think that's good, but you have to admit it works for some of us."

Catherine thought of Father Nicolai Beshanko and nodded. "And men like my husband?"

Sajin shrugged. "Men like your husband are a breed unto themselves, Catherine." He turned over on his side and propped his head on his fist. "Men like Conar have been trained since childhood to carry the mantle of leadership on their shoulders. They feel responsible for everything that goes on about them. They aren't truly happy unless they have something to worry about."

"And those needs? Wife, home, child?" she asked.

The nomad shook his head. "He wants all that. He really does." He looked down at the grass. "And he had all that, Catherine, but he lost it once. I don't think he's ever really gotten over it."

"He could have it again," Catherine reminded him.

"Yes," Sajin agreed, then he looked up at her. "And he could lose it all again, as well. It's what frightens him, sweetness. Such a loss could finally tear him apart and he isn't about to let that happen."

"And that woman?" Catherine spat. "What about her, Ben-Alkazar? Do you have such a neat, tidy explanation for her?"

"She's a substitute for the woman Conar wants and is afraid to keep with him, Catherine,"

he answered. "You know that as well as I do."

"Hell!" Catherine sat up and glared across the distance. "If he really loved me, he'd find a way to keep me as goddamned safe as he seems to think I need to be!" She swung her furious gaze down to the nomad. "I don't buy your reasoning any more than I buy his!"

"Suit yourself," Sajin quipped, also sitting up. He tossed the stalk of red weed away. "But you aren't going to change his mind, Cat. When we leave for Rysalia, he's going to leave you here.

Marriage or no marriage …."

"You haven't told him I have no intention of divorcing him, have you?" she interrupted.

"I told you I wouldn't and I haven't," Sajin snapped.

"You'd better not, either," she snapped back at him.

"I won't!" Catherine watched her companion get to his feet and stand with his hands on hips, glaring down at her. "You're making this harder on him, you know that, don't you?" he asked.

"No harder than he's making it on me," Catherine replied.

"He's not well, Catherine," Sajin said and wished he hadn't. He hadn't intended to voice his worry about Conar.

"Well, maybe if he's not healthy enough to lead his little forays against Rysalia's slave trade, he'll come home to St. Steffensburg and let me care for him," Catherine answered, trying to hide her fear for her husband's wellbeing just as Sajin was trying to hide his.

"Maybe so," Sajin had to admit although he had his doubts. If any one was going to care for Conar, it would more than likely be Rachel.