The stairs in the keep of Lioncross were wide, at a rather low angle, so it seemed to take some time to make it from floor to floor. She wasn’t paying much attention to her trip up the stairs, still thinking about Roi, still daydreaming over him. She eventually reached the second floor, knowing Lady Hereford’s chambers to be on the top floor where there was the best view, but as she headed up the next flight of stairs, she could hear voices in the stairwell below her. She wasn’t entirely sure, but she thought it might have been Tiberius again. She was coming to recognize his voice.
“…and I am telling you that she has bewitched Uncle Roi,” he was saying. “You saw how he scolded me. You saw the look in hiseye. That Cheltenham chit has done something to the man. He was prepared to kill me.”
“It is quite possible that he is simply happy,” another voice said. “You cannot blame the man. He’s been alone for so long, and now he has a pretty young lass to warm his bed? Of course he’s happy. You should be happy for him.”
“Uncle Roi loved Aunt Odette deeply,” Tiberius said, sounding snappish. “She is the only woman for him. The only wife he ever needed, a fine and gentle creature. And now that le Bec bitch has schemed her way into his bed. Uncle West told me that she has a loose reputation, if you know what I mean. Apparently she is not a stranger to spreading her legs.”
“Is that what you think she did to Uncle Roi?”
“It has to be,” Tiberius said. “Why else would he want her so badly? She ensnared Beckett somehow, and when he died, she went after his father. Let us face the facts, lads—Uncle Roi is marrying a whore.”
The voices faded away after that. Diara was frozen on the stairwell above them, her eyes filling with tears. Ashamed and horrified, she went back down the stairs and down another corridor, running blindly in a castle she wasn’t familiar with. All she knew was that she had to get out of there.
She found a stairwell and rushed down the stone steps, too fast, and ended up slipping at the bottom and scraping her hand. Those stairs led to the kitchens, and she rushed through the steamy room, past people she wouldn’t look at, and out into the kitchen yard beyond.
But she kept going.
The stables were attached to the kitchen yard, and she entered the stables from a small door at the end of the block. Immediately, she was hit with the smell of horses and hay and urine. But she kept moving, weeping, wiping at her face, until she came to the other end of the stable block and could go nomore. There was a ladder here that led up to the loft, and she climbed up into it, shielded from the world around her.
Plopping down into the hay, she sobbed.
It wasn’t enough that Roi’s nephews were opposed to her marrying their uncle, but it was like a stab to the gut to hear that Roi’s own brother had been speaking on the rumors that had followed her ever since her days at Carisbrooke. How were she and Roi supposed to start a life together if his family thought she was a whore who had ensnared him? Surely Lady Hereford and her daughters had heard the rumors, too, and although they were friendly to her, what on earth were they saying behind her back?
It was just so incredibly hurtful to hear such things. Diara was beginning to wonder if she simply shouldn’t leave for home and stop dreaming that a marriage to Roi was even possible, because no matter where she went, the rumors would follow. No matter whom she married, surely, they would hear such things.
It simply wasn’t fair.
As she sat in the hayloft and sniffled, a head suddenly popped up at the top of the ladder. Startled, Diara found herself looking at a young girl.
“Are you well?” the girl asked timidly. “I saw you run through. Are you hurt?”
Diara knew Roi’s youngest daughter, Dorian, on sight. She had been introduced to both Adalia and Dorian when she arrived at Lioncross, but the girls had made themselves scarce and she hadn’t seen them since. Adalia evidently liked to spend all of her time tending to the youngest de Lohr grand- and great-grandchildren, and Dorian had spent all of her time in the stable. Roi had mentioned that the lass was mad for horses and the stable was her favorite place in the world, so rather than force the girls to get to know their future stepmother, he’d simply left them where they were the happiest. They’d just losta brother, and he wanted them to remain where they were most comfortable for now. Time with Diara would come later, when they were ready.
Diara understood that, and she agreed with him, but the result was that she didn’t know her future stepdaughters at all. She didn’t even know how much she should say to them, or not say to them, so she quickly wiped at her face and tried to force a smile.
“I am well, thank you for asking,” she said. “You are Lady Dorian, are you not?”
Dorian nodded. She was a tall girl for her age, with dark hair and her father’s blue eyes. “Aye,” she said. “Are…are you hiding up here?”
Diara sighed faintly. “Mayhap a little,” she said. “Do you ever feel like that? Like hiding?”
Dorian shrugged, sort of, as if unsure how to answer. “I will leave you if you want to hide.”
“Nay,” Diara said quickly. “Please do not go. Will… will you come up here and sit with me? We’ve not had a chance to talk since I arrived.”
Dorian debated on that request for a couple of moments before finally climbing to the top of the ladder and into the loft. She sat down near the ladder well, crossing her legs and looking at Diara with some uncertainty.
“Your father told me that you like horses a great deal,” Diara said, trying to make conversation. “Do you have a favorite horse?”
Dorian nodded. “Her name is Hildr.”
Diara cocked her head curiously. “That is an interesting name,” she said. “Is she named for someone?”
“A Valkyrie.”
“You know about Valkyries?”
Dorian nodded. “I learned about them,” she said. “When I lived at Pelinom Castle, they had many books, and I was taught to read. I read about the old gods and the Valkyries.”
