The Knight's Redemption

Worse yet, how could she enter a consecrated holy church knowing in her heart that she misrepresented herself to Roarke?

And yet…

How else was she to restore her family honor and fulfill her mother’s dying wish? The Glamorgan legend had plagued her family for a century, affecting generations of women who did nothing to deserve such a cruel and lonely existence. Although many of them took solace in the convent, the greater number did not have such a calling and remained a burden to their families, growing more unhappy with each passing year.

One aunt, two generations back, was rumored to have killed herself because of the misfortune of her birth, though the family asserted she fell from a slick window ledge while gazing out over a cloudy moor. Ariana’s mother had struggled her whole life to bring joy to this sorrow-filled household, to coax her husband from the dark depression of the curse that cloaked his keep more thoroughly than any Welsh mist.

Now, it was Ariana’s turn to heal that darkness.

The bell tolled for prime, reminding her she had two hours until her wedding. Three hours until she rode off with a man she’d known for less than a day. The man who was to be her destiny.

If he did not discover her secret before then.

“Ariana!” Ceara snatched a length of linen from Ariana’s hand and stuffed it into a traveling bag. “You must finish packing so you can get dressed! We will never finish if you keep brooding. Are you having second thoughts about this wedding?”

Ariana laughed, feeling nervous and edgy. “Second thoughts? I have not had time to have first thoughts about it yet.” She laid a few other personal items into her bag, wondering if she had packed everything she needed.

“Is it so wrong to fight this fate, Ceara?” Fear constricted her throat. Had she been so wrong to deceive last night? “Is it too much to want a family, a home with a husband and children?”

“Nay.” Ceara neatly arranged the garments in the bag before packing any more. “I do not think you will be forsaken for trying to rectify a grave injustice that has gone on for too many years.”

Emotion knotted Ariana’s belly. “You are so good to me, Ceara.”

Her cousin smiled as she went about her work, single-handedly packing everything Ariana needed on her journey. “You must remember your aim is worthy.” Ceara put down the shifts she was holding and went to her cousin. “But as much as I want you to succeed in this, if you do not wish to go through with it, there is still time to admit our deception.”

Tears burned Ariana’s eyes. “Nay! That is not what I want! But he is bound to find out sooner or later and when he does, what will happen?”

“He is full of pride and has fought for what is his. Just look at how coldly he goes about the business of choosing a bride. He doesn’t even know your father, yet he is perfectly willing to accept whomever Uncle Thomas puts in front of him. He will be equally cold about dispensing with a wife who does not serve him well.”

“Perhaps he seems aloof because he is in a hurry,” Ariana remarked, trying to reign in her scattered emotions.

Ceara shook her head sadly. “This is a far cry from the ‘grand adventure’ you spoke of last night.” Amber eyes that mirrored her own fixed Ariana in their unblinking gaze. Ceara looked older and wiser than her sixteen years, and Ariana was tempted to heed her advice. “You can end this before it is too late.”

There was still time to call it off. She would be safe from Roarke here, and protected.

And alone for the rest of her life.

“I cannot. I must go through with it now, and we both know it.” She would simply look at this as another way to use her healing skills. Only now she’d be healing her family. Her heritage. “Eleanor said if it is right, all obstacles will fall away.”

“Obstacles have surrounded you at every turn already, cousin! And doesn’t the curse stipulate that the man must love you?”

“Not exactly.” Ariana pulled the woolen shawl more tightly about her shoulders as she paced the cold stone floor. “There are no real instructions for how to break the curse, only speculation by Glamorgan women. But gaining the genuine love of a man might not be necessary. It might be broken merely if he—that is, if we—” She made a helpless gesture with her hands.

“Are intimate?”

“Yes.” Ariana tossed a last handful of things into her bag. “I am going through with it. If anything, our conversation has only made me sure that I am doing the right thing. Would you ask the maid to bring in the bath now? I want to start getting ready.”

Ceara stepped into the hall to do her cousin’s bidding and soon ushered two servants into the room with a tub. When they were gone, she helped Ariana settle into the warm water.

“So is this charm of Eleanor’s still affecting you now?” she asked, throwing rose petals into the water before she took up the soap.

“No. Indeed, I don’t know that there is any real power to Eleanor’s herbal potion.”

Ceara frowned. “I thought this was something very powerful, something Eleanor had been working on for years?”

“Aye. So she told me.” Ariana splashed water over her face and shoulders. “But she would also do anything to help me marry. Including trick me into thinking I could face the English knight even when I stood trembling in slippers.”

“By the rood, Ariana. You think she merely pretended to have concocted some powerful potion?” Ceara scrubbed more forcefully.

“Ow!” Ariana finished her hair herself. “I don’t know, but I cannot fathom how she would have come by the recipe for something so fanciful as a brew to make a woman more appealing. She is a healer, not a sorceress, after all.”

“Praise God.”

“Aye. Except that now I will have nothing to inspire false confidence. I think I will attend the wedding heavily veiled. Which is just as well because my hair will still be wet at this rate.” She rinsed the thick black mass quickly and stepped from the tub, drying the tresses vigorously with several linens until it was just damp.

They worked in silence, nervous and tense about the day ahead of them. Ariana combed her waist-length hair, plaiting the strands to be pinned atop her head.

Ceara handed her a newly worked hairpiece over her shoulder. “I sewed my old hair to a strip of cloth this morn, so you will have an easier time fixing it in its place each day.”

The hair was tightly bound together in small sections, then sewn to a strip of cinnamon-colored linen, not much darker than the hair itself. The cloth would allow Ariana to secure the hair easily to her head without all of the elaborate pinning and tying they did last night before dinner.

“Thank you, cousin,” Ariana whispered, tears springing quickly to her eyes. “I feel so awful about taking your hair.”

Ceara ran her fingers through the short strands that fell between her chin and shoulders. “Think no more of it. It is not as if I were bald as Uncle Thomas. I think when I join the convent I will keep it this length. It would be much cooler under a habit. And if I change my mind, it will grow back.”

While Ariana fretted, Ceara smothered a giggle. “Besides, if I decide I really would rather wed, I shall wait ’til I am an old maid like you before I choose a husband, and by then it will be long again.”

Ariana laughed, too, though her heart felt heavy with guilt and worry. Her scheme had the power to hurt Ceara and Roarke….

But it would save her brother’s little girls. If she were successful, they would benefit, which made her guilt a little easier to bear.

Distracted with such concerns, the morning raced by until she was dressed and ready to go below stairs. Then she recalled Eleanor’s charm. Quite probably a bogus brew designed to help Ariana feel more brave. Should she bother mixing the herbs today?

It certainly couldn’t hurt. Especially when the thought of facing Roarke Barret while memories of his kiss teased her senses. She needed all the courage she could muster. Slowly and purposefully, Ariana added all the right ingredients. She whispered a healer’s chant, mixed the herbs and then threw the mixture into the flames.

Nothing.

No shimmery sensation.

No blaze of fire.

Her father called to her, though of course it was Ceara’s name he called, not her own. They were waiting for her so they could begin the procession to the chapel.

But she tried one more time. Using all of her concentration to block out the various knocks that came to Ceara’s door, and the shouts for Ariana to please talk to Ceara so she will come down, Ariana went through the ritual one more time, focusing on her goal the way Eleanor taught her to. She put all of her strength and all of her hopes into the herbal concoction as she crushed the herbs beneath her pestle and once again threw the mixture into the flames.

For nothing.

The charm would not work today. Had probably never worked outside of Ariana’s wishful imagination. She had no choice now but to face Roarke Barret with only the help of a few false freckles and a cinnamon-colored hairpiece on her own wedding day.