The Prisoner Bride. Susan Spencer Paul

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СКАЧАТЬ it back ever since. The key box was opened and closed dozens of times during a single day, offering up small, strange objects for observation, but it hadn’t yet yielded the key. Glenys didn’t even know what the key was for or what it was meant to unlock, and she wasn’t entirely certain that her aunts and uncles knew, either, but the quest was a pleasurable way for them to spend their afternoons, and the anticipation of one day finding the key never seemed to wane.

      “Mim,” Uncle Aonghus said gently as his sister began to open the box once more. “Glenys is about to leave us.”

      Aunt Mim, Aunt Wynne and Uncle Culain all stopped what they were doing and stood.

      “Oh, Glenys, dearest,” Aunt Mim said with distress, moving toward Glenys with one of her long, elegant hands stretched out. “Must you go now? It will be so long a time before you come back to us.”

      Glenys took her aunt’s hand with care, feeling, as she ever did, the great difference between her own sturdiness and the delicate loveliness of her relatives. “There’s no need to be overset, Aunt Mim,” she reassured her. “I’m only going to the bank, and Dina with me.”

      Aunt Wynne joined them, tears filling her bright blue eyes. In her hands she held Glenys’s warmest cloak. “But we shall miss you so greatly,” she said, setting the heavy woolen garment about Glenys’s shoulders. “You must take care in all things, dearest, and never forget that you’re a Seymour. A true Seymour, even though your mother was of the northern people and, like them, so very practical. But that couldn’t be helped, and a dear, good wife she was to our brother Arian.” She nodded, and Aunt Mim and Uncle Aonghus and Uncle Culain, who had left his chess game to join them, all nodded, too.

      “But—” Glenys began, only to be interrupted by Aunt Mim, who’d begun to lace up the collar of Glenys’s cloak.

      “Your aunt Wynne is quite right,” she said, sniffling and clearly striving not to weep. “You and Daman are Seymours in every way that matters, though you can be so stubborn about accepting that certainty,” she said chidingly, reaching up to adjust the plain silver circlet that sat atop Glenys’s braided auburn hair. “But you can’t run away from the truth forever. Oh, Wynne, where is the stone? She cannot go without it.”

      “Here, in my pocket.” Aunt Wynne fished about in the apron that hung from her girdle, at last producing a small, white stone that Glenys recognized at once.

      “Oh, no,” she murmured, “I can’t take it with me. Please, don’t ask me to do so.” She looked pleadingly at her aunts. “I’m only going to the bank, and once I’ve spoken with Master Fairchild I’ll return home—long before the evening meal, I vow. And you know how greatly it worries me to take anything…special…out of Metolius.” Merciful God, the very last thing she needed was to have one of Aunt Mim’s and Aunt Wynne’s stones glowing on her person. Despite their small size, the white rocks could put out an astonishing measure of light. Glenys had even taken to searching her aunts before each outing just to make certain they didn’t have one absentmindedly hidden somewhere. She could only envision the trouble that would ensue if one of her aunts’ pockets should start glowing in the midst of St. Paul’s during Mass. “I’d not be able to forgive myself should I lose it.”

      “Oh, we won’t mind,” Aunt Wynne said cheerfully, bending to slide the stone into a small pocket within Glenys’s cloak. “We have so many of them, and you’ll need this while you’re gone.” She leaned forward to kiss Glenys on the cheek. “Oh, it’s such an exciting time, dearest, but we will worry for you so. Come home to us soon.”

      “Yes,” Aunt Mim agreed, kissing Glenys’s other cheek and hugging her. “Just as soon as you possibly can.”

      “I’ll be home in two hours,” Glenys murmured helplessly as she was enfolded in the embrace. “Less than two hours, I vow.”

      “Leave her be a moment, Mim,” Uncle Culain chided, moving forward. “Glenys can’t leave without my gift.”

      Another offering? Glenys’s heart sank, especially when she saw what Uncle Culain held in his hand. It was his most prized possession, the lone remaining piece of an ancient chess set—the queen. It had been a very odd set, if the intricately carved lady was anything to go by. She was fashioned out of dark red wood, and looked much more like a pagan goddess than a proper queen, with her hair unbound and flowing down to mingle with her long, druidic robes. Her feet were bare, her crown was a wreath of twined flowers and leaves, and her eyes, made of amber, glowed as if a candle burned behind them. Uncle Culain carried the piece with him everywhere, speaking to her as if she could hear him, and even kept her beneath his pillow when he slept. It was impossible that he would part with the chess piece, even for the short while that Glenys would be gone.

      “No, Uncle Culain,” she said desperately, pushing his hand back. “I could never take your good lady, not for any reason.”

      “But you must,” he insisted. “You must, for she is the only treasure Caswallan will bargain for. He would not part with the Greth Stone for any measure of wealth or fear, but for her,” he said, gently placing the small wooden figure in Glenys’s palm, “he will gladly give it to you.”

      “Caswallan?” she said with confusion. “Uncle Culain, I’m only going to the bank. I’ll not be journeying to Wales for another month at the very least. I’ve already arranged to wait for Daman and his men. You know that.” She looked about her at each delicate, lovely face, aunts and uncles alike. “You all know that.”

      They nodded and smiled, and began to walk her toward the great room’s entryway, where Dina stood waiting for her. After hugs and kisses from all four of her elderly relatives, she was bustled out of doors, with Dina right behind, and was soon stepping into the waiting carriage with the help of one of the house servants. She looked back, out the open window, as it pulled away, to find her aunts weeping and waving and her uncles nodding sagely and waving.

      After so many years, Glenys would have thought that she would be well used to her relatives’ unusual ways, but, presently, she was thoroughly bewildered and amazed. The items they’d given her felt far more like terrible burdens than loving gifts, though she knew in her heart that they’d been given as the latter. The chess piece felt as warm as life in her hand, and Glenys pulled her gaze from the sight of her waving aunts and uncles to look down at it, slowly uncurling her fingers to reveal the little treasure. The beautiful lady was face-up in her grasp, and her amber eyes glowed with that odd, peculiar light that had always unnerved Glenys.

      “God’s mercy,” she murmured, quickly pushing the piece into the same pocket as the white stone, praying that neither would cause any trouble at the bank. She looked across to the seat where Dina sat. “Perhaps we should wait until the morrow to visit with Master Fairchild. I vow I am full discomfited.”

      Dina’s gaze was sympathetic. “’Twill be well, mistress. The white stones never glow when ’tis so light as today, and the others…you must simply keep them hidden. All will be well,” she promised once more, so convincingly that Glenys believed her. Almost.

      They passed the courtyard gates and were soon on the main street heading toward the center of London.

      “Pray God you are right, Dina,” she said fervently, sitting back. “I have a most unsettled feeling that we would do very well to finish our business and return home as quickly as may be.”

      Chapter Two

      “I thought you said that Glenys means ‘fair one,”’ Kieran said, folding his arms across his СКАЧАТЬ