A Passionate Magic (38 page)

“Oh, Dain!” she exclaimed, as if the awful
meaning of his accusation had just struck her. “Are you saying that
Brice and my mother were lovers?”

“I have heard your parentage confirmed from
Brice’s own lips,” Dain said. “He was talking with Gavin and
Mirielle and I overheard them.”

“Dear heaven.” Emma’s hands covered her face,
hiding her expression. “How could they lie to me about something so
important?”

“I gather it was to protect you from
knowledge of your mother’s adultery,” Dain explained in a gentler
voice, his fury abating slightly when he realized the depth of
Emma’s shock and pain. She had not known; he was suddenly certain
she was not part of the conspiracy to deceive him. The relief that
flooded through him left him as weak and stunned as Emma appeared
to be. Dain could not, at that moment, afford to examine why he was
so relieved.

Emma took her hands away from her face so she
could look directly at Dain. She stood with fists clenched at her
sides and her chin lifted in a gesture of courage that tore at
Dain’s angry heart and made him ache to embrace her. But he
couldn’t, not until he had learned everything she knew, or could
guess out of her knowledge of Gavin and Mirielle, about the
deception practiced on him. No, he corrected himself, the deception
practiced on both of them.

“The man I knew as Hermit was old and
scarred, with a beard and a withered arm,” Emma said, as if trying
to organize her fragmented thoughts. “I can barely recall the Sir
Brice who was once seneschal of Wroxley Castle, except for a vague
impression that he was handsome. Until this hour I never connected
Hermit and Sir Brice. Why should I? I hadn’t thought of Brice for
years before Mirielle called Hermit by that name. I always took
Hermit to be who he said he was.

“I do comprehend your problem, though,” Emma
went on. “I am not the wife you were promised. After what you have
learned, you have every right to reject me. But my father – I mean,
Gavin – never meant to defraud you. He fully intended to send Alys,
his oldest daughter with Mirielle, to marry you. It was I who
insisted Alys was too fragile to make the long journey and that I
should come in her place. If there is fault in our marriage, it’s
entirely mine, not Gavin’s. Let the blame rest with me and do not,
I implore you, reopen that idiotic feud now that it’s settled. Be
content with punishing me.”

“I never took you for a martyr,” Dain
said.

“An illegitimate martyr, my lord,” she
responded with a wry laugh, while tears ran down her cheeks. “The
responsibility for this debacle is mine.”

“No, it is not.” Unable to watch her misery
any longer, Dain grabbed her shoulders so tightly that she winced.
“The responsibility rightly lies with the adults who never told a
little girl the truth.”

“I’m sure they did it to protect me, just as
you assumed. My mother was even more dreadful than yours. All the
same, I had a right to know my real father.”

“And a right to be angry after learning of
their deception,” Dain said, wishing she would display some temper,
instead of meekly accepting a truth he found unacceptable.

“I’m not angry,” she said. “Just stunned. I
do admit to feeling betrayed, as much for your sake as for my own.”
She paused, swallowed hard, and then asked, “What shall we do
now?”

“There is only one thing to do,” said a soft
voice from the doorway. Vivienne moved into the room, her white
robes flowing and drifting about her slim figure, her eyes filled
with pity and understanding. “Dain, you must forgive the lie. Emma,
you must accept the truth.”

“Impossible!” Dain uttered the single word
through gritted teeth.

“Will you permit a well-meant fabrication to
tear your marriage apart?” Vivienne asked.

”Well meant?” Dain repeated with a sneer. “Am
I wrong to think you knew about this
fabrication
? Did Hermit
tell you?”

“He didn’t need to tell me,” Vivienne
answered with perfect calm. “I guessed by observation and confirmed
the guess by magic. Brice loves his daughter. That’s why he gave
her to Mirielle to raise. He would sacrifice anything for
Emma.”

“Including you?” Dain asked.

“Brice long ago repented of his sins, and
expiated them by going on Crusade, as many other men do. He is
trying to live a better life now.”

“How touching.”

“Will you hold a grudge for decades, the way
your mother used to do?” Vivienne asked. ”What of your life, Dain?
Suppose Gavin had refused Emma’s plea to send her to Penruan and
had kept strictly to King Henry’s commands. Suppose little Alys had
been sent to you, instead. If Alys had survived the journey, which
from all I’ve heard of her would be a doubtful proposition at best,
what would have happened? I can tell you without resorting to
magic. Dear brother, you’d have found yourself burdened with a sick
child for a bride. Lady Richenda would still rule Penruan with an
iron hand and a cold heart, and you would still be ignorant of my
very existence and lacking years of your memory. Would you prefer
that life, or the life you now enjoy with Emma?” When Dain did not
respond at once Vivienne said, “If you would rather answer that
question in the silence of your own heart, then do so. Just be
certain you answer honestly. Don t let injured pride
interfere.”

Dain looked from his sister’s imploring face
to his wife. Emma’s shoulders were rigid, her hands tightly clasped
at her bosom. Her marvelous purple-flecked eyes were wide, her gaze
fixed on his face. He wondered what she read there.

Did Emma love him as much as he loved
her?

Dain nearly choked on the unexpected thought.
Uncomfortably aware of the presence in his room of two women who
were capable of working magic, he tried to close the unwelcome
thought of love out of his mind, attempting to convince himself
that the idea was in some way their doing. He did not want, or
need, any further complications in his life.

Then Emma dredged up out of her undoubtedly
roiling emotions a small, tremulous smile, and Dain knew with
complete and blinding certainty that he did love her, with all his
heart and all his being, and the emotion was not conjured by magic.
He loved Emma because of who, and what, she was, and it mattered
not one whit who had fathered her. Emma was honest to her core, and
the magic she practiced was as good and pure as her heart. He
longed to tell her so and grieved to realize that he must postpone
his declaration. For Emma’s sake, he had to confront Gavin and
Brice and settle their differences before he could be free to
reveal his unexpected discovery of love.

“Both of you,” he said to his wife and his
sister, “come with me.”

Not allowing them a chance to argue, he
caught each woman by an elbow and swept them together out of the
lord’s chamber and down the stairs to the next level of the tower
keep.

Dain led Emma and Vivienne to the chamber
occupied by Gavin and Mirielle. There he pounded on the latched
door so hard that several curious faces appeared from other
doorways and from around corners, and Blake hastened from the
stairs to Dain’s side to see what was wrong.

“Has Sir Brice left this room?” Dain demanded
of the boy.

“Aye, my lord. I saw him going to his own
chamber a short time ago,” Blake answered.

“Bring him here,” Dain commanded. “At
once!”

Blake scurried off to do his bidding, just as
the door opened. Dain pushed his way inside, with the two women
following at his imperious nod.

It was apparent they had interrupted a
romantic moment. Gavin was naked to the waist and Mirielle was
hastily pulling on a robe. Neither of them objected to the
intrusion. Perhaps, Dain thought, Emma’s accusing gaze and
Vivienne’s solemn expression warned his guests that the three of
them were there for a serious purpose.

Dain stalked across the chamber to confront
Gavin face-to-face and speak before Gavin could demand to know what
was happening.

“You have broken the terms of the agreement
King Henry imposed upon us, to which we both agreed and set our
seals,” Dain said, daring to poke a finger at the broad, bare chest
of the baron of Wroxley. “I have every right to challenge you to
mortal combat.”

A slight stir at the door told Dain that
Brice had arrived.

“Blake,” Dain ordered, momentarily taking his
gaze from Gavin’s astonished face, “close the door and guard it
from the outside. On peril of your life, allow no one else to enter
here, and never repeat a word of anything you may overhear.”

“You have my word of honor on it.” Blake
closed the door, and Vivienne, who was avoiding Brice’s questioning
glance, moved to latch it securely.

“Now let us be blunt,” Dain said, returning
his full attention to Gavin. “I have by chance learned who Emma’s
real father is. Emma claims that her coming to Penruan was at her
own insistence and is, therefore, no fault of yours. I would hear
your side of it, Gavin, and then yours, my lady Mirielle. If you
tell me the entire truth, it’s just possible that we can prevent
bloodshed.”

Dain did not look at Brice as he made this
speech, but kept his shoulder resolutely turned toward the
miscreant knight. He would deal with Brice later, depending on what
Gavin and Mirielle had to say. However, Dain was acutely aware of
Emma stepping forward to stand beside him. Emma did not touch him;
she did not need to. Her close presence was support enough.

“Since the first day I met Emma, when she was
barely ten years old,” Gavin said, “I have thought of her as my
true daughter. I love her as a daughter.”

“I had the raising of her,” Mirielle said. “I
taught Emma to use her inborn magic for the benefit of others, so
she could avoid the untutored excesses of her mother, and would
never fall prey to evil, as Alda did. As for Brice, I believe Alda
seduced him for her own wicked purpose, and used magic to do it.
Brice was not entirely to blame for what happened. He has paid
dearly for his mistakes.”

“Mirielle, I will not allow you to make
excuses for behavior that was beyond excuse,” Brice said. “I should
have resisted Alda and did not. I nearly died for my weakness of
character. The only good result of my adulterous affair was Emma,
whom I believed to be Gavin’s daughter until Gavin and Mirielle
told me the truth of Emma’s birth. I regret everything about that
dreadful time, except for Emma’s existence.”

“And so, having learned she was your
daughter, you then consigned her to Gavin’s care and left Wroxley?”
Dain asked in a voice filled with scorn at the very idea of a
father abandoning his child.

“It was the best thing I could do for her,”
Brice said. “I bore terrible sins on my conscience, sins that
required a long penance before I could be absolved of them. I was
not fit to raise an innocent girl.”

“You should have told me,” Emma said to the
pair who faced her and Dain. “If not before, then when I begged to
come to Penruan in Alys’s place. Mirielle, you should have told
me!”

”We wanted to protect you,” Gavin said.

”When you have children of your own,”
Mirielle told her gently, “you will understand how far parents will
go to ensure their child’s safety and happiness. And you are the
child of our hearts, Emma.” She reached for Emma, who sidestepped
her embrace to move behind Dain, as if seeking shelter behind a
dependable rock.

”You cheated Dain!” Emma cried. “You betrayed
both of us! You owed us the truth!”

“I cannot deny it,” Gavin said. “Dain, you
have the right to demand satisfaction for the lie that permitted
Emma to wed you as my daughter.”

”Yes,” Dain said, regarding him coldly. “Be
certain of it. I intend to have full satisfaction.”

”If you want to have your marriage annulled
and to reopen the feud and contest that piece of land again,” Gavin
began.

“I am sick of that cursed feud!” Dain shouted
at him. “Nor do I intend to give up my wife.” His arm was around
Emma, drawing her closer, holding her where she belonged.

”Then what do you want?” Gavin asked, voicing
the question Vivienne had asked earlier, in a different way.

“As for the feud,” Dain said in a quieter
tone, “if my mother could lie to me for years, as I know she did
about Vivienne’s existence, then it is possible she also lied to me
about the origins of the feud. For all I know, my father on his
deathbed swore her
not
to bind me to that old conflict. We
have only my mother’s version of Lord Halard’s final hours, and her
word cannot be trusted. Perhaps we will never know the full
truth.”

“Does it matter now, after so many years?”
Brice asked.

When Dain turned a fierce glare on him, Brice
continued, “You are a reasonable man. So is Gavin. I can prove that
claim with one simple statement: Neither of you has killed me for
what I’ve done. Why don’t you forge a new agreement, making the
infamous piece of land that caused the feud the inheritance of the
first child born to Dain and Emma, whether the child be a boy or a
girl? I cannot imagine King Henry will object, not when his primary
interest is peace among his nobles.”

There followed a few moments of surprised
silence at so sensible and reasonable a suggestion, until Gavin
spoke.

“I can accept that,” Gavin said to Dain.
“I’ll gladly bestow the land on your firstborn, if only you and
Emma will allow Mirielle and me to act as grandparents toward your
children. Whatever the two of you may think of Mirielle and me at
this moment, we love Emma as our own, and we will love any child
she bears.”

Dain looked at Emma, seeing her tear-filled
eyes and quivering lips, and he knew he could not allow her heart
to be broken by a dispute that no longer meant anything at all.
Whatever the right or wrong of the old feud, or of Gavin’s decision
to send Emma to Penruan, Dain wasn’t going to quarrel any
longer.