The Falconer's Daughter - Liz Lyles Page 0,3

Jugs of wine and soft linens for the newborn. He knew how Lady Anne’s face would light, her lovely eyes filling with quick tears, and her mouth, so expressive! To shower her with everything she loved best.

“My lord?”

Macleod’s eyes closed, scarred hands gripping the arms of the chair. The muscles in his throat worked, one after the other, finding his voice small. “No. Nothing.” Macleod seemed to die then, slowly, a man bleeding himself to death.

“No words of congratulation? Or of sympathy? The babe might not survive—”

“No!” The Duke cut him short. “Nothing. No words at all.”

Bile rose in the page’s throat, filling his mouth, staining his tongue. As bitter as it was, the acid was easier than the violence inside his chest. He didn’t understand the Duke, didn’t see how he could turn from his daughter, from the lovely Lady Anne.

It was then that the Duke gasped, doubling over as he clutched his chest. Geoffrey leaped from the embroidered footstool, grabbed at him as Macleod collapsed.

“Guards!” Geoffrey shouted frantically, bracing his lord against his own thin heaving chest, “My God! Guards!”

*

GEOFFREY SHUDDERED, REMEMBERING. He would always regret that he was the one bearing the news. He would relive that moment, and it took all he had to keep the staff from losing their minds. It was as if he, instead of the falconer, had stolen Anne. Of course, no one knew what to do when word came, three weeks later that Lady Anne was dead.

“He wants her back, Kirk. He needs her.”

“Cordaella and Anne are not interchangeable. One was his daughter. The other is mine.”

“You owe it to him—”

“Owe?”

“For taking Anne from him.”

“You’re mad, you know. You talk as if you never knew her, as if you didn’t know that no one ever made Anne do anything against her will. God help her, but she chose her own lot.” Kirk hated this talk, hated this miserable emotion that wound from his belly into his heart, a bitter brutal helplessness and loathing.

Desperate for distraction, he picked up his whittling. Ever since he was just a boy, he worked hard, leather and leads in his hands, a saddle over one shoulder, feed over the other. He had never been good idle, never been happy without trade. From stable hand to apprentice in the mews, he had learned his craft well. Eventually he knew birds and dogs better than any other in Highland or Grampian.

“She always had a mind of her own.” Kirk weighed the carving in one hand, considering the size and shape of it. “Although it was the trait I first loved, it was also what I first came to hate. I could not make her listen to me. I couldn’t make her understand.”

“Understand?” Geoffrey echoed.

“Understand that there are circumstances that are fixed. Circumstances which ought not—cannot-be changed—”

“But at least she chose you.”

“For what? This?” Kirk laughed disbelievingly. “Come on, Geoffrey, you can’t think she wanted this once she was here. She hated it. Soon she hated me for it.”

“Don’t tell me that”

“She cried herself to sleep nearly every night. She wouldn’t take any comfort from me. Like you, like the Duke, she blamed me. S said I should have known what it would be like.”

“She had a point”

“She had no right,” he answered, his voice tight. “I lost everything, too. I knew my dogs. I knew my birds. I can never trap or train them again. I can never seek work. I can never live among others. His lordship did more than banish us—he cursed me.”

“But she was a lady. She was a Macleod!”

“She came to me, crept into my bed at the mews. What was I to do?”

“You make her sound cheap. But Anne wasn’t cheap. She was just a child, a pretty thing, sweeter than the others. You know she was different. She was her father’s favorite.” Geoffrey colored, his chin tensing, his mouth tight. “She ought to have been protected from all of this. She deserved better.”

The falconer gripped the stick and carefully sliced off one layer and then another, the wood shavings curling as they fell to the floor. His thick black hair lay matted against his head, his dark eyes set deeply in his face. He was as thin as he was tall, his collar bones jutting through the wool jupon as he whittled away.

“Remember when we returned that September, when she was in her fifth month? And the Duke wouldn’t have anything to do with her? That was when she gave up.” He