Now his dark emotions wracked him like a nightmare from which he could not wake, the heated exchange with his brothers not anything he would have done six months ago. Everything had changed with Sylvia gone from him forever.Hehad changed!
Gritting his teeth, Roger lunged up the tower steps two at a time and forced his thoughts to the dangerous journey that lay ahead.
He and three other lairds and their men would ride under a royal banner—along with a white flag of truce—deep into England where a meeting had been arranged with representatives of King Edward to discuss the release of Elizabeth, King Robert’s wife. Roger doubted they would be allowed to see her, the only knowledge of her whereabouts that she was imprisoned in a convent outside of York.
Her treatment thus far not as brutal as iron cages lowered over castle walls where several of her female companions, also taken captive, had been confined for several years, exposed to wind and weather and the derision of anyone passing by. King Robert had made it plain in his letter to Roger that he feared the same fate for his wife the longer she remained a prisoner, which might render her a madwoman as had become of the other women made to suffer so cruelly.
“Och, God, if seven years hasna done so tae her already,” Roger muttered to himself as he turned down the hallway leading to his bedchamber—and those of his children.
Two little daughters, Elspeth, who was four, and Breda, just turned two, and his infant son, Aran, named after Roger’s grandfather on his late mother’s side. A fearsome Highland warrior from Clan Mackay who had made James Douglas wrestle with him in a stinking mire of mud and horse manure to win the hand of his beautiful daughter, Olivia. She was ten years gone now, Roger’s dark-haired giant of a father gone after a brief illness four months ago, Sylvia gone only two months before that loss…
“Forgive me, my love,” Roger murmured as he strode past the cracked door of his daughters’ room, his heartache so intense not to look in on them though he couldn’t bear to do so.
Elspeth was the spitting image of her mother and Breda bore glossy auburn hair, too, while their son—och, their son. If not for his birth, Sylvia would still be alive, God forgive him for laying any blame at all upon an innocent child.
What manner of man had he become? So weak of spirit when he had once been strong? So devastated still by the death of the only woman he had ever loved that it was all he could do to rise to his feet in the morning?
Roger thrust open the door to his room and averted his eyes from the canopied four-poster bed he had once shared with Sylvia—and made his way instead to the wooden cot against the wall where he had slept for the past six months.
Heavily he sat down and lowered his head into his hands, his eyes burning with moisture that made him feel weaker still.
Alone in this bedchamber at night was the only time he allowed himself such an outlet for his sorrow, and he wept silently for his wife and his neglected children.
A broken man. King Robert’s request for him to join the delegation to York the only thing that had saved him from turning his grief upon himself and ending his torment.
Thank God the time to set out upon the journey had come.
Doubting he would sleep at all, Roger forced himself to lie down upon the cot to stare through blurred eyes at the ceiling…just as he had done so many nights before.
Rest coming only when exhaustion overwhelmed him and he could no longer hear the echo of Sylvia’s sweet laughter ringing in his ears.
No longer feel the trembling touch of her hand upon his chest or the gentle fanning of her breath as she bent her head to kiss him.
His wife.
His love.
His life.
DE VESCY MANOR,CUMBERLAND, ENGLAND
“Ah, no, are you feeling ill?” Her face flushed with alarm, Julianna de Vescy rushed across the bedchamber to her grandfather’s side and pressed her hand to his forehead.
Thankfully, his skin was cool and it appeared to her now that he had simply fallen asleep in his chair before the fire.
Hubert de Vescy’s wispy hair and long beard as white as snow. His breathing slow and steady and smelling of grapes and nutmeg…
“Oh, Grandfather,” Julianna murmured, glancing at the uncorked bottle on the side table and knowing at once that he had been imbibing, again, in spiced wine.
Where were the servants who were to take turns watching over him? She noticed, too, that the fire was freshly banked, so he couldn’t have been alone for long, which gave her some comfort. She had tarried past dusk out in the woods, but there had been an injured fox to attend to, and she had to see to the other animals as well—
“There you are, Juli,” came her grandfather’s low voice as he fluttered open his watery blue eyes to smile at her. “I was beginning to worry about you, child…but then I must have fallen asleep.”
“Or mayhap it was one sip too many of wine?” she gently teased him, his chuckle warming her until he began to cough and sputter, Julianna helping him to sit up straighter in his chair. “Ah, no, the congestion in your chest is growing worse,” she began, but he reached up to press a trembling finger to her lips.
“I’m an old man, Juli…and not much longer for the world. I have news…good, I hope. Sit down next to me, will you?”
Julianna obliged him at once and settled upon the wooden stool he used for his feet, her green silk gown fanning around her, and grasped his weathered hands in hers. He stared at her so intently, searching her face, she began to feel a bit nervous and leaned toward him.
