PRINCE OF THE WIND (7 page)

"Cut it out!" Riain grumbled, knocking away his brother’s hand. The eighteen-year-old raked his fingers through his hair, shook a recalcitrant lock from his eyes, and bestowed upon Tiernan a look meant to quell the mischief lurking behind the Prince Regent’s innocent eyes.

"Think you our brother has grown altogether too fussy about his appearance, Innis?" Tiernan quipped as he pretended to rearrange Riain’s hair once more.

"Don’t do it!" Again Riain batted away Tiernan’s hand, then moved down the bench, out of range of his brother’s questing fingers.

"Altogether too fussy," Innis agreed as he ladled more soup into his bowl from a large tureen. He glanced at his newest sister-in-law and nodded his appreciation of her cooking.

Ancelin Montyne Cree smiled and nudged her husband, Riordan. "Why don’t
you
enjoy my soup as well as your brothers?"

"They like broccoli," Riordan defended. "I don’t."

"Do you think Riain’s betrothed likes broccoli?" Tiernan questioned.

Riain’s face grew hot at the mention of his impending nuptials.

"I would imagine she’d not complain about any food set before her," Innis’ wife, Flanna, spoke up. The red-haired beauty sent a coy, green-eyed look toward Riain. "I hear Chrystallusian woman are very submissive and do as they are told."

"Is that so?" Riordan joined in. "Why couldn’t I have been so lucky in my choice of mate?"

Ancelin leaned toward him and smiled sweetly, batting her long golden eyelashes. "I hope celibacy is to your liking, Milord, since you will soon be experiencing it."

"A gauntlet thrown! How do you respond, Rory?" Tiernan chuckled. Everyone knew he liked nothing better than to have his sisters-in-law baiting his brothers and was looking forward to another pretty face to join in on the fun at Riain’s expense.

Riordan grinned. "I can take matters in hand, if needs be."

"True," Ancelin responded, "but will you know what to do with it once you have it in hand?"

Riain laughed softly to himself. He enjoyed the off-color banter as much as Tiernan, and although he’d yet to meet his intended, he had heard only good things about Miyoshi Shimota of the Imperial House of Chrystallus. He knew, from what the Emperor’s emissary had said regarding the third daughter, she would be an ideal mate for him. And a perfect foil for his sisters-in-law. Since it was time for him to marry and he had no qualms about doing so, he was content with the arrangement that would see him wed in another three months.

"Wipe that idiotic look off your face, Riain," Rebecca Wynth Cree cautioned her husband’s youngest brother. She was Tiernan’s mother’s fourth cousin and quite heavy with her second child.

"What look, Milady?" Riain asked innocently.

Riordan snickered. "The look that says it won’t be long before you
don’t
have to take matters into your own hands."

Riain blushed and ducked his head. He wished his parents weren’t visiting in Ionary this month; his siblings’ unmerciful badgering was starting to annoy him.

"Stop aggravating the man," Flanna ordered. "Can you not see he is afflicted?"

Riain peered at his titian-tressed sister-in-law. "How am I afflicted, Madame?"

"Other than being mentally-challenged?" Innis snorted, spooning soup into his grinning mouth.

"How is he afflicted, Sweeting?" Tiernan asked. There was a sparkle in his eye, for when Flanna decided to join in on the fun, it was usually with a well-aimed broadside that sent everyone into fits of laughter.

"You should not tease him about what he does of a late night, Milords. Can you not see his palms are all scraped and nicked from having to shave so often."

Innis spit his soup clear across the table, barely missing Riordan, and nearly choked when he drew in a gasp of laughter. He sputtered and coughed as Rebecca pounded him on the back.

"Very funny," Riain snapped, throwing down his napkin and getting up. Everyone was convulsed with laughter at his expense, and he stomped off, casting a nasty glance as he went.

* * *

Ancelin tittered, watching her little brother-in-law take the stairs two at a time. "Oh, my, I believe we’ve chased the brat from the table."

"He probably needed to do something about that five o’clock shadow in his palm." Tiernan guffawed and the table erupted once more into a gale of laughter.

"You are cruel people." Duncan Brell sopped up the last of his beef gravy with a large chunk of black bread. He popped the morsel in his mouth, then ran his greasy hands down his breeches. "I am ashamed to sit at the same table with the likes of you."

Tiernan winked. "Couldn’t think of anything nasty to say to him, Dunc?"

"Not a damned thing." Duncan looked at Flanna. "But I didn’t need to, I guess. Well done, Milady."

Flanna inclined her head in acceptance of the compliment.

"He’s a tad nervous about the Joining," Ancelin remarked. "Perhaps we shouldn’t tease him so."

"We were all nervous," Riordan told his wife.

"True," Tiernan agreed, "but I think Riain’s worry goes a tad deeper."

Innis pushed away his soup bowl. He stretched his long legs and braced his hands on his belly. "You are speaking of the madwoman."

"She’s locked away, isn’t she?" Flanna asked. "What worry could he have about her?"

"That she’ll escape," Duncan reminded her. His gaze darkened. "That and the hellish curse she flung at his head when we were leaving."

"Just the ravings of a lunatic," Innis scoffed.

"You forget—rather conveniently at times, I must say—that our little brother was granted Mama’s gift," Tiernan admonished the second eldest Cree son.

"And what exactly does that mean?" Innis shot back. "If he’s got this ‘gift,’ he’s never used it." He disdainfully shrugged one shoulder. "I doubt he even knows how to use it."

"Sometimes the gift comes in the form of just knowing when something is going to happen," Flanna said. She looked to her sisters-in-law. "Each of us is the daughter of a Daughter, so therefore we should have special abilities other women do not. But have we discovered these abilities?"

"No," Rebecca said quietly. "At least I haven’t."

"Nor have I," Ancelin put in.

"Yet each of us have had hunches that were proven correct," Rebecca commented. "That’s something."

"Aye, it is," Ancelin agreed.

"If Riain does, indeed, possess any degree of special ability, it could well come in the form of warnings to which others are not privy," Flanna declared.

"And his unease might well be that warning?" Duncan queried.

"It could be," Flanna replied.

"A warning we’d best heed, then," Duncan said sourly, and all those gathered at the trestle table nodded.

* * *

In his room, Riain lay on the bed, staring at the intricately carved ceiling. He traced the carving from one wall to the next, counting the tiny leaves and vines entwined around one another. He didn’t know what had made him so edgy of late, but he suspected it was his coming journey to Chrystallus. Long sea journeys were not to his liking and brought back savage memories of his stay aboard Olan Hesar’s ship, the
Storm Maiden
, and the terrible things he’d had to endure on his way to and from the Labyrinth.

Not to mention the Labyrinth penal colony and the brutality of its Commandant.

Riain shuddered and flung an arm over his eyes to block out the sight of the miles of red bluffs ringing the compound and the heat rising up from the baked sand. He could almost feel that heat searing the soles of his feet and smell the stench of hot, unwashed bodies toiling in the fierce sun. His stomach growled as he remembered the pitiful amounts of food he was allowed and the brackish water that had made him so ill the first week he was there. The Labyrinth was the closest thing to hell man could create and the island that housed it had to have been fashioned by the denizens of the Abyss.

Was the memory of that fiendish place what was causing the nervousness? he wondered. Chrystallus wasn’t that far away from the sea lanes leading to the mysterious island prison hidden deep inside the six-hundred-mile radius of Tyber’s Isle. Was there any chance the
Banshee
and her escort of nine fighting ships could be blown off course and shipwrecked on that savage shore?

"Stop it, Cree!" he snapped. Whatever was bothering him wasn’t going to be eased with thoughts of that nightmarish year’s incarceration.

Drawing in a long, calming breath, he forced himself to think of Miyoshi and the painting of her. It had been unveiled a few days before his parents had left for Corbin Montyne’s keep of Ravenswood at Derbenille in Ionary.

If the Emperor’s daughter was as beautiful as her portrait, Riain could only hope she was not vainglorious with that beauty and as arrogant with it as some of the Ladies-in-Waiting at his mother’s court. Usually devastating good looks signaled both an empty head and an inflated ego, and women so blessed with great beauty were not loathe to use that precious commodity to get exactly what they wanted from their mates. They could make life miserable for a man enthralled with that beauty and jealous of any other who might covet it. He’d known men to fight duels to the death over a woman who had pitted one against the other in her bid to advance her position within the keep. He seriously doubted he could live with a woman like that.

But, as Flanna had reminded him, Chrystallusian women were brought up to believe the word of their men was law.

No matter how bad the marriage might be, a woman of the Lotus Lands endured it with as much grace as was humanly possible. As a general rule, they were submissive, never talked back to their mates, and were loyal to a fault, even if their husband did not deserve such loyalty.

He hoped Miyoshi was no different. The Emperor’s man had said the third daughter was "highly intelligent, well-read, calm of temper, and merry of spirit."

The little Chrystallusian man had smiled. "She is the joy of her father. She is the one who makes all laugh. She, who can sing like the birds in the trees and play haunting music upon the harp."

"Is she shy?" Riain’s mother had demanded and cast her son a protective look.

"No, Your Majesty," the man said, shaking his head somewhat sadly. "Shy, the little one is not." His grin was infectious as he looked at Riain. "She and your son will make a glorious match, for she has the same fire in her eyes as does he!"

"Does she argue with her parents?" Christina Cree asked.

The man’s smile faltered only a little. He spread his hands. "She
debates
with them."

"Does that mean she is argumentative?" Aidan inquired.

"Not at all, Majesty," the man quickly assured them.

"Let it drop, Aidan," the queen had advised. "They’ll get along fine."

Now, pushing himself up from the bed, Riain stared out the window and wondered if his mother was right. Would they get along as well as Tiernan and Rebecca? Innis and Flanna? Riordan and Ancelin? His own parents? Duncan and his Glenna?

Since old enough to notice and understand such things, he had seen the wonder of what a good married life could be. He had witnessed the devotion and the fierce loyalty, the fleeting looks and casual touches that conveyed more than words ever could, the accidental brushing of one body against another, which usually signaled the impending disappearance of both parties. He had listened to the way his brothers spoke to their women and the way his sisters-in-law responded. He had watched love grow and lives settle into a comfortable, safe pattern. All these things made him want his own marriage to be like that—content and happy.

He had been brought up to lend his protection and support to the weaker sex, his sword arm to the glory and preservation of his way of life. He had been taught to be fair by his father, gentle by his mother. Never to lie, never to cheat, never to covet what was not by rights his.

He was a Chalean first and a warrior second.

"But you must always put your family first, unless by doing so you neglect your duty to Chale," his father had once said.

"Neglect your family," his mother had amended, "and you destroy the very fabric of Chale."

His wife would have to come first in his life, Riain thought as he padded barefoot to the window. He gripped the heavy velveteen curtain and gazed over the rich emerald green hills of his homeland.

Would she like living here? he wondered as he swept his gaze from the lush hills misted with rain to the crashing waves of the Chalean Sound, then to the high gray cliffs far to the north. Or would she miss her fairy-tale land of perfect gardens and opulent palaces?

Riain knew he would do everything he could to make his wife happy. That, too, was his duty as he saw it. Even if he were to never fall in love with her, he would attempt to make the most of the marriage his parents had so lovingly and thoughtfully arranged.

But deep in his heart, he felt a siren call that had plagued him since his stay at Vent du Nord, a mysterious, seductive song that had wakened him from that long bout of red-hot fever. He had sensed a presence somewhere in that great pile of stone, a comforting presence that had called to him, had brought him back from the brink of death. He thought he had once known her name, but it was long gone. He had once called her name.

Or had he?

He mentally shook himself and threw open the window. Leaning into the fresh mist, he breathed in the scent of heather from the moors beyond Briarcliffe and the tang of saltwater. It helped to clear his head of the memory of a tantalizing liaison that would never be.

"I wonder what she looked like," he said to a cormorant gliding by overhead.

Somehow he knew the mysterious woman who had saved him from succumbing to the darkness was as beautiful as the voice that had sang to him.

As beautiful as Suzanna had been ugly.

The sudden intrusive thought of Gunter de Viennes’ psychotic daughter sent a shiver down Riain’s spine. He stepped back from the window and closed it, then jerked the drapes across the glass, for it was almost as though he could feel her glaring at him from out of the now-heavy rain pelting the keep’s stone walls.