By Winter's Light: A Cynster Novel (Cynster Special Book 2) (17 page)

Ruthlessly suppressing her awareness of Thomas Carrick, holding it to one side in her mind, she scanned the shelves and saw a rough wooden tray. She lifted it down. Next, she found three well-worn trenchers. She set two on the tray and one at that end of the table, then piled each with slices of pie, ham, cheese, and bread. She placed a chicken leg on Prudence’s trencher.

Satisfied she’d provided well enough for Lottie, Prudence, and herself, Lucilla was about to heft the tray, leaving Prudence’s trencher on the table, when Carrick, who was sitting alongside Marcus at the nearer end of the table opposite the fire and whose amber eyes had watched her throughout, said, “I brought mead, too, if you and your cousin, or Lottie, might prefer it.”

With one large palm, he pushed a bottle and several small beakers toward the tray.

Lucilla paused. She and Prudence needed to keep warm, and the mead would certainly help. Releasing her grip on the tray, without meeting Carrick’s gaze, she inclined her head. “Thank you.”

Before she could reach for the bottle of mead, Carrick picked it up. Unstoppering it, he poured golden liquid into first one beaker, then a second, then he paused. “Two or three?”

“Just two.” Lucilla took the first beaker and reached for the second; her fingers brushed Carrick’s as he released it. Resisting the urge to suck in a breath—to bite her lip, to react in any way—she calmly set the beakers on the tray. For some unfathomable reason, she felt forced to add, “I doubt Lottie will be able to handle it at the moment, but later the mead will be an excellent tonic, especially in this season.”

He’d put thought into what he’d brought; on top of the fact he’d brought anything at all—that he’d battled the storm to reach them—her understanding of the care he’d taken demanded at least that much acknowledgment, however oblique.

“In that case,” he murmured, his voice low and deep, deeper than even Sebastian’s, “I’m glad I brought it.” He caught her gaze. “How is Lottie faring?”

Lucilla looked into his amber eyes. No, he wasn’t asking to keep her there, nor was he merely passing the time. He truly wanted to know—and he was the only one of the males to have asked. The stiffness she’d been trying to maintain between them wilted. “She’s managing.”

She, too, had kept her voice low, their exchange submerged beneath the discussion about local hunting raging between Michael and Marcus further up the table.

Carrick didn’t release her gaze; she felt strangely trapped as he looked into her eyes…then he said, his voice even quieter, “There’s some problem, isn’t there?” One dark brow arched.

In his eyes, his expression, Lucilla read his certainty—he knew. Alerted somehow, as she had been, he, too, had known and had come.

She had been summoned, and so had he.

Slowly, she nodded. “It’s a breech birth, but Lottie’s strong and, with luck, all will be well.”

“How much longer?”

She raised a shoulder. “An hour. Perhaps more.”

Carrick inclined his head and lowered his gaze, releasing her. “Thank you.”

Lucilla looked down at his dark head for an instant, then she picked up the tray and went to help Lottie deliver her baby.

Seated beside Carrick, Marcus glanced his way—and watched Carrick watch Lucilla retreat behind the blanket again.

This close to the man, Marcus could sense…something similar to the aura he sensed around Lucilla, around his mother and Algaria, and even, at a lower level, around his father, Richard. Marcus had always assumed it was a feature of being, as the locals described it, Lady-touched. As Thomas Carrick was a local, born and bred in these lands, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that he might rank among the chosen, too, yet overall there were not that many who were Lady-touched… Marcus wondered if his twin had picked up Carrick’s standing; she hadn’t as yet been that close to him. At least the width of the table had been between them thus far.

Turning back to the conversation, which Sebastian had not-so-artfully swung from hunting in general to hunting dogs, Marcus hid a grin as Sebastian—who loved dogs, especially big ones—leaned forward to look down the table at Carrick.

“I take it your Hesta is a deerhound?”

Carrick nodded. “We—the family—breed them.”

For the next hour, they filled their ears with talk of hounds and deer, and anything else they could think of to keep their minds away from the sounds emanating from the other side of the blanket and, even more, from what those sounds implied.

Apparently deciding that the only thing he could presently do to help Jeb and Lottie was to keep Jeb sufficiently distracted from all that was going on, Carrick focused his attention on the crofter.

Sebastian had left the table to crouch by the huge hound, stroking her head; he cocked a brow at Marcus as he, together with Michael—also drawn by the big dog—joined him. Voice low, Sebastian asked, “Who, exactly, is Thomas Carrick, and the Carricks?”

Marcus had expected the question. He whispered back, “The Carricks are the lairds of the lands on this side of the manor’s northern boundary. Their holdings are roughly the same size as the manor’s, but the land’s rougher and rockier. The family isn’t wealthy, but they hang on. They run mostly sheep and so have a lot of scattered crofters and small outlying cottages, but otherwise, although they don’t have a Lady of the Vale as we do, the community works similarly to that in the Vale.”

“Lots of connections, all answerable ultimately to the principal family?” Sebastian asked.

Marcus nodded. “Exactly.” He glanced over his shoulder, but Carrick was still deep in conversation with Jeb. Turning back to Sebastian and Michael—and the dog, who was watching him with an interested expression—Marcus continued, “Thomas Carrick is the nephew of Mad Manachan Carrick, the head of the family. The Carricks as a whole are widely regarded as… Well, to call them eccentric would be kind.”

“Mad as insane,” Michael murmured.

Marcus nodded. “He’s not insane, of course, but Manachan is an unpredictable old despot who actively likes to shock the county. Thomas”—Marcus tipped his head toward the other man—“is widely regarded as the only sane Carrick around. Sadly, he’s not Manachan’s heir—his cousin Nigel is—and Nigel is truly mad as a hatter, albeit in a distinctly calculated way.”

Sebastian was silent for a moment, steadily stroking the hound’s head, then he murmured, “So the Carricks are intelligent, but don’t play by anyone else’s rules.”

Marcus blinked but then nodded. “An excellent summation.”

He rose, returning to the table just as a horrendous, ill-suppressed scream rent the air.

Jeb jerked, half rose, then fell back on his stool.

Across the table, Marcus met Carrick’s gaze, then Marcus slipped onto the stool beside Jeb and tugged the man’s sleeve. “I noticed the ewes you have in your stable-barn. Their fleece looks nice and thick—have you been grazing them on the higher pastures?”

Jeb blinked, slowly processed the question, then he answered haltingly.

Between them, Marcus and Thomas Carrick settled to the task of assisting Jeb through his last hour into fatherhood.

* * *

High in one of the manor’s towers, on a truckle bed in Melinda Spotwood’s small room, Claire lay on her back beneath the covers and stared, unseeing, into the darkness.

In the narrow bed on the opposite side of the room, Melinda lay on her side, facing the wall.

Claire had been staring upward since she’d slid between the sheets more than an hour ago.

Suddenly, Melinda sighed. Without turning, she asked, “Why aren’t you sleeping? I can almost hear you thinking.”

Claire glanced across through the gloom. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” After a moment, Melinda said, “Is there anything I can do to help—even if all I can do is listen?”

Claire hesitated. There was one thing. “Did you ever think of marrying—of having a family of your own rather than spending your life helping other families?”

“Oh, yes.” Unexpectedly, Melinda’s tone held the warmth of remembered pleasures. “I was engaged once to my own young man. All I thought about was marrying him and raising a family of our own.” Melinda’s voice softened. “We had a lovely two years of courting, and were all set to name the date when Napoleon escaped Elba and he—my love—marched off to war…” Melinda paused, then said, “Sadly, he didn’t come back. After that…I had other offers, but my love lived on in my heart.”

Melinda glanced over her shoulder at Claire. “But you must know how that goes.”

Claire was grateful for the darkness.

Resettling, Melinda went on, “The important thing was that, despite mourning what I didn’t get to have—a life with my love—I did have that love. I knew what it was like to love and be loved, and to have that hope that somehow shines from within and lifts you up, and to experience the delight of looking forward to a much-desired shared future. I had all that, and not even his death could strip that experience away. So the one thing I learned from that time—and that I teach my girls, every last one—is that when happiness offers, take it. Don’t just accept it. Seize it with both hands, because you never know what the future might hold, but you can decide to fill your present—your here and now—with happiness and, if the offer includes it, with love. If you do that and accept what fate sends you, then no matter what happens, you will at least have memories to warm you into your old age, as I do. But if you refuse, and fate later passes you by and you don’t get another chance at happiness and love, what will you have to cling to through the lonely days and nights?”

Claire let the words sink in. After a moment, she murmured, “Thank you.”

Melinda chuckled softly; the covers rustled as she settled deeper in her bed.

Claire continued to stare upward as—inevitably—she replayed her discussion with Daniel in her head. She’d managed to convey to him the gist of her problem—that she didn’t believe enough, didn’t trust enough to marry again. She hoped he’d understood that it wasn’t him she distrusted but herself. After her first marriage, she didn’t trust herself to love—not properly—ever again.

He’d then thrown all her careful certainty into chaos.

Would your late husband have wanted that? Would he have wanted his memory to hold you back for the rest of your life? To prevent you from having any happiness, regardless of what life sends your way?

It had never occurred to her to see her reaction in that light, but Daniel putting the matter like that—casting her position in those terms—had turned her perceived foundation of both her life and her future on its head.

Only a fool made the same mistake twice. She’d fallen in love and married, and that path had led to disaster. She’d been very certain that she did not need to go that way again.

Yet what she had felt for Randall had been…a girl’s dreams, something light and airy—ultimately insubstantial. She hadn’t known that at the time, but she could own to it now. In contrast, what she felt for Daniel—the instant focusing of her senses, of her awareness whenever he was near, the intensity and depth of sheer feeling he evoked, the connection between them—that was something she’d never before known.

Only a fool didn’t learn from hard experience, but had she learned the right lesson? Had she misconstrued the message, making it into a justification to mask her cowardice—her refusal to risk ever being hurt like that, damaged like that, again?

She would be damned if she allowed Randall, that dissolute deceiver—he who had single-handedly wrecked her life—to reach out from the grave and keep her from…what? Happiness and love with Daniel? Was that what he was offering? If so, was Melinda’s sage advice the path Claire should follow?

She’d told Daniel the truth; she felt as if his words had ripped apart the fabric of her understanding of herself and left her adrift.

As if she had to find her compass, her true north, her lodestone again.

As if she hadn’t actually been able to sense it and follow it, not over the years since Randall’s death.

If Melinda was correct—and the sensible, rational part of Claire’s no-nonsense psyche recognized wisdom when she heard it—then if what Daniel was offering was love, it behooved Claire to set aside what she now saw was simple fear—fear of being hurt, nay, devastated again—and chance her hand by taking Daniel’s.

By accepting his suit, his proposal, if and when he made it.

But all that hinged on the question of whether he truly loved her. She’d thought a gentleman had loved her once, but that had turned out to be a foolish fiction.

Regardless of Melinda’s advice, Claire would be foolish indeed to make
that
mistake twice.

So…did Daniel love her?

How could she tell?

Perhaps if she asked him why he wanted to marry her? Perhaps he could convince her that his regard was love, well enough at least to allow her to believe enough to take the chance and accept him.

But did he love her? How could she truly tell?

She fell asleep with that question revolving, unanswered, in her head.

CHAPTER 7

The sounds emanating from behind the blanket-screen were enough to make the bravest man blanch.

Thomas, at least, had to be there and, regardless, could not have escaped the ordeal, but the three male Cynsters had ended up being trapped in a small space with a woman giving birth and a storm blocking all routes to relief through no fault of their own.

He had to give Sebastian, Michael, and Marcus Cynster credit for not retreating to the stable-barn. Earlier, Marcus had done his best to distract Jeb by getting him to show off his long-haired ewes, but now Jeb sat across the table from Thomas, his hands clasped tight about a beaker of whisky—the better to stop them from shaking. Jeb’s face was as pale as a winter’s moon as he stared in mounting horror at the blanket that screened his wife.

Who had progressed from incoherent screams to partially discernible curses—several of which were directed at Jeb. Others were directed at men in general. Several were highly inventive.

Thomas had heard that such things happened in even the most content of marriages. Menfolk were not intended to hear—because they were not intended to be within hearing.