A future beyond her control.
At the moment, she couldn’t push the reminder aside and she allowed herself to feel the familiar angst of an unwelcome destiny. It was fear and disappointment all rolled into one. God, she didn’t want to go. Castle Rising was her life and the secretive role of Lady Dark had finally taken flight. She’d worked for it, all of it, and now it was to be taken away from her because of some foolish betrothal dictated to her by men she didn’t evenknow. Men who were using her for a political marriage to seal an alliance between the country of her birth and an English earl.
Country of her birth…
A country she didn’t even know.
A country she didn’twantto know.
“Not another word, Susanna,” she said firmly. “Let my last days here not be marred by something I cannot prevent. It only makes the pain of my lost future worse.”
“Ignoring it will not change things,” Susanna said with surprisingly gentleness. “And what of your business partner, Yerik? Does he know that soon you shall be gone forever?”
Cadelyn’s jaw was ticking as she glanced at her friend. “He knows,” she said. “He knows and he has agreed to come with me so that Lady Dark can continue, even if it cannot continue here in Lynn. Itwillcontinue in Chester.”
Susanna’s eyebrows lifted. “You intend to take the cleric with you?” she said, shock in her tone. “And just how do you plan to explain his presence to your new husband?”
“I am allowed my own private priest, aren’t I?”
“The man isnota priest.”
Cadelyn had enough. “No one need know that if you do not tell them, Susanna. Just keep your lips still about things that do not concern you.”
Susanna kept calm. It was one of her greatest traits, this innate coolness she displayed in any given situation, even in the face of her lady’s frustration. “I do not intend to say a word,” she said. “But when Lady Dark’s poetry shows up in Chester, coincidentally at a time when you arrive, it is possible people will notice, even your husband.”
Cadelyn had no real answer for that. Susanna made sense, but she wouldn’t admit it. She was determined to remain confident in a situation where she was trying to maintain some control.
“With any luck, he’ll not notice me at all,” she said, the pain of the unwanted betrothal suddenly reflecting in her eyes. “Say no more, Susanna. I do not wish to hear it.”
With that, she abruptly turned down an alleyway that led to the street of the merchants, winding her way through dirty little alleys and across an old yard used by the bakers before emerging into the fairly busy district of High Street. Susanna and Lily-Elsie were right behind her, rushing to keep up.
Unfortunately, in her haste to escape the conversation, she wasn’t watching where she was going and immediately moved into the path of several large war horses. Had it not been for Susanna pulling her out of the way, a knight on a muscular gray stallion would have pounded her right into the ground. But in that life-saving grab, it disturbed the purse at her waist and all of Cadelyn’s illicit coinage went scattering all over the avenue.
After that, it was chaos.
CHAPTER THREE
“Why are allof these women running around with prayer cards?” Achilles wanted to know. “See them? They’re flooding away from St. Margaret’s clutching those prayer cards. It must be quite a prayer to have them so excited.”
Kress saw what had Achilles’ attention; fine carriages painted with colors from local noble families, or even women simply walking under a canopy surrounded by servants. The midday prayers had recently ended and the pious were coming through the street of the merchants on their way back home, but most of them were carrying wooden prayer cards with them. Some were reading as they walked while still others were holding them against their breasts. And it was all women; no men that he could see.
It was most curious.
“Is it a saint’s day that I have missed?” he asked, looking to Achilles, who was the most religious of the group. “Is it a feast day that only subscribes to women?”
Achilles shook his head, noting a carriage passing him with a woman in a faint, holding a prayer card against her chest as her ladies furiously fanned her.
“Not that I am aware of,” he said. “Unless it is a local saint I have no knowledge of, but whatever it is, there is quite a flurry around it.”
Kress nodded, watching as two women fought over one of the prayer cards like an odd tug-of-war. When the card disintegrated, one woman stood there and sobbed while the other dropped to her knees in the dirt and tried to piece it together again. Kress eyed the pair most strangely.
“It is some kind of madness,” he said. “It must be. I have never seen anything like this.”
Behind him, Alexander snorted softly. “The wilds of Norfolk breed some very strange people,” he said. “Remember that this is a land of witches and demons and killer dogs.”
Kress didn’t believe in any of that. He was a man of reason. Passing by a merchant stall, he watched a man dressed in fine robes yank a prayer card out of a woman’s hand, a woman who was more than likely his wife, and the woman hit him squarely in the face in response. Kress’ eyebrows lifted as they rode past the brawling pair.
“It is a land of lunatics,” he said, his attention diverted as the steeple of St. Margaret’s came into view. “Thank God we shall not be spending any time here. Once we are through the town, we take the road to the northeast and that will take us straight to Castle Rising.”
