“Oft times you have been lost. You have not made good choices over the years. But this manner you have is different. You do not look driven by fire and vengeance.”
Magnus and his brutal honesty. Lyall gave him a square look.
“I, too, have lived with the fires of youth. Vengeance and greed have ruled my life. I do not condemn you, lad. You have followed what you wanted unflinchingly. And that is not a weaktrait, Lyall Robertson.” He paused meaningfully. “Now you need to decide what you truly want--make certain it is what you want--and chose your path without regrets. If your path is truly your own heart’s desire, you will have little to regret when you are my age. The trick is to find the truth in your desire. To not chase after something for the wrong reasons.” He stood and stretched, wincing with his joints snapped aloud.
Lyall stood out of respect for him.
“I told you years ago, when you first came to Rossi, that a man must choose his battles. Do you remember?”
“Aye, but in truth I have not thought of it,” Lyall admitted with a wry laugh. “Or I would not be in this fix.”
“I somehow doubt that, lad.” He clapped Lyall on the shoulder. “You must learn which battles are worth fighting. Now I am off to bed and you should do the same.”
Lyall watched him leave, then took a candle from a stanchion to light his way through the halls and arches, and went up to the next floor, Magnus’s words alive in his head as he passed by Glenna’s chamber. He stopped and walked back to the door.
Inside, the room was still dimly lit from too many candles that been forgotten and the glow of the banked fire in the hearth. At first glance, the room appeared ransacked, but with a closer look, he realized that was not the case. The clothing rod was empty and the drape that covered it wide open. The chairs, stools, benches and tables were strewn with gowns of every color. Shoes were lined up by each gown, some with long toes, some square-toed with no backs and small heels that might bring her closer to his chin, shoes made in leathers and fabrics of every color with silver buckles and ribbands. Shifts and chemises, other underwear and thin, delicate sleep gowns ladies favored, some in a bleached stark-white spilled from a large open clothes chest lined with hand stitched sachets of flower petals Mairi always used and that made her smell like a spring garden.
He looked at the number of the thin sleep gowns. Ironic, since Glenna lay asleep on the bed wearing a thick, finely-wovenwool robe and hugging a red velvet gown with fur trim to her chest like a coverlet, and on one foot was a green slipper with gold ribbands and a purple kid ankle shoe with red laces on the other.
Watching her, a smile curved his mouth and felt sweet, and something like happiness swelled within him, the first he’d felt since he’d been home. His heart was in his smile, but it was safe now, to reveal his deepest and secret feelings inside this room, because no one could see.
There was the chance he could spend every night of his lifetime watching her sleep, seeing her at peace, and by doing so, feel at peace himself—a miracle of sorts? In her he felt the wonder of miracles, the truth of life and God and man, the reason to be alive and to walk the earth. There was no other woman he had ever looked at and imagined fat with his child, imagined faces and bright eyes and small hands, with no other woman had he seen his sons and daughters until now.
What had Magnus said? Reasons…reason.
There was no wrong reason for Lyall to go after Glenna. He had never set out to make her his and prove or avenge something. But what would their being together do to her? There was the true issue. Who would be most hurt? Ramsey was certain something dire would happen. Would she look at him someday with regret?
As he left her chamber and moved down the hall toward his, he knew one certain thing: with her, he would never have a single regret.
The next morningwas filled with busyness that started barely after the cock crowed. Prayers in the chapel, where Glenna knelt quietly between Lyall’s mother and sister until her knees were sore and her quiet words ran together in her head, then off to break fast with the women in the solar over bowls ofstone fruit, a platter of crispy fried trout and hot pepper bread with warm honey and crunchy, oat cakes fried and dusted with cinnamon. Mairi’s boys joined them, romping like spring colts, while they asked Glenna enough questions to fill a coffer, and eventually their nurse took them off to run wild outside rather than in. The room felt the sudden quiet.
“They are a handful,” Lady Beitris said as she rose from her tapestry stand and placed a hand on her low back. “Enough stitchery.”
“Not for me,” Mairi said looking up. She bit off a thread and rummaged through a basket of spools. “I want to finish this today.”
Lady Beitris took Glenna’s arm and slid it through her own, patting her hand. “Come along with me, Lady Glenna. ‘Tis a lovely day. I will show you about Rossi.”
And that was when the day took a different turn. As the women walked the castle gardens, moving from the rows of roses and bellflowers, past the great cabbages and root vegetables, to a large, flat herb patch with clumps of marjoram, thyme, thick, sharp rosemary tuffets, and the wide frosted colored leaves of the sage plants, chatting, a wide brown leather ball flew behind Glenna and crushed a corner of the herb garden.
Lyall came running around a wall, laughing and teasing, with one of his nephews in his wake, until they came face to face with the women. He stopped, his eyes on Glenna.
“Ladies,” he bowed and said, “Make your bow to the ladies, Duncan. That’s a good lad.”
“Look at my herbs!” Lady Beitris scolded, but there was no anger in her tone.
Lyall picked up the ball and tucked it under his arm. “Fluff your grandmother’s prized weeds, Duncan.”
“Weeds!” Lyall’s mother gasped. “You are incorrigible, Lyall. These weeds are what make your winter mutton palatable.
But Lyall was still staring at Glenna, until she finally looked away from all the feeling she saw in his eyes, and she flushedwhen she realized Lyall’s mother caught their exchange. The pensive expression on the face of Lady Beitris was telling.
“Come along, lad. Your brothers are waiting.” Lyall nudged his nephew into a race and they disappeared behind the wall.
By afternoon Glenna had a few moments to herself, and for the first time since morn she was alone. She went down to the stables to see Skye.
“Hallo, you worthless nag,” she said, stroking Skye’s muzzle as she fed her a summer apple. When Skye was done nibbling, Glenna started to wipe her hand on her clothing by rote, but stopped. She was in a gown, the plainest of the lot and made of finely-woven, thin violet wool, with simple sleeves and shoes of calf that fit her feet like gloves. She squatted down and wiped her hand on the clean straw then straightened, looking around her, liking the familiar scents of the stables. She had missed this.
Leaning her head against Skye’s neck, she thought back to days on the island, when her life was simpler and all about horses and feed and manure. She closed her eyes as her mind drifted back over time.
