Priscilla scolded bluntly. "You must understand the responsibility that will accompany your ascent into the family."
"Yes, Lady Priscilla," Meralda replied, dipping a polite curtsey, head bowed.
"If you wish to walk at night, do so in the garden," Priscilla added, her tone a bit less harsh.
Meralda, head still bowed so that Priscilla could not see her face, smiled knowingly. She was beginning to figure out how to get to the woman. Priscilla liked a feisty target, not an agreeable, humble one.
Priscilla turned to leave with a frustrated huff.
"We have news," Lord Feringal said suddenly, stopping the woman short. Meralda's head shot up, her face flush with surprise and more than a little anger. She wanted to choke her intended's words back at that moment; this wasn't the time for the announcement.
"We have decided that we cannot wait until the spring to marry," the oblivious Feringal went on. "The wedding shall be on the day of the autumn equinox."
As expected, Priscilla's face turned bright red. It was obviously taking all of the woman's willpower to keep her from shaking. "Indeed," she said through clenched teeth. "And have you shared your news with Steward Temigast?"
"You're the first," Lord Feringal replied. "Out of courtesy, and since you are the one making the wedding preparations."
"Indeed," Priscilla said again with ice in her voice. "Do go tell him, Feri," she bade. "He is in the library. I will see that Meralda is escorted home."
That brought Lord Feringal rushing back to Meralda. "Not so long now, my love," he said. Gently kissing her knuckles, he strode away eagerly to find the steward.
"What did you do to him out there?" Priscilla snapped at Meralda as soon as her brother was gone.
Meralda pursed her lips. "Do?"
"You, uh, worked your charms upon him, didn't you?"
Meralda laughed out loud at Priscilla's efforts to avoid coarse language, a response the imposing Priscilla certainly did not expect. "Perhaps I should have," she replied. "Put a calming on the beast, we call it, but no, I didn't. I love him, you know, but my ma didn't raise a slut. Your brother's to marry me, and so we'll wait. Until the autumn equinox, by his own words."
Priscilla narrowed her eyes threateningly.
"You hate me for it," Meralda accused her bluntly. Priscilla was not prepared for that. Her eyes widened, and she fell back a step. "You hate me for taking your brother and disrupting the life you had set out for yourself, but I'm finding that to be a bit selfish, if I might be saying so. Your brother loves me and I him, and so we're to marry, with or without your blessings."
"How dare you-"
"I dare tell the truth," cut in Meralda, surprised at her own forwardness but knowing she could not back down. "My ma won't live the winter in our freezing house, and I'll not let her die. Not for the sake of what's proper, and not for your own troubles. I know you're doing the planning, and so I'm grateful to you, but do it faster."
"That is what this is all about, then?" Priscilla asked, thinking she had found a weakness here. "Your mother?"
" 'Tis about your brother," Meralda replied, standing straight, shoulders squared. "About Feringal and not about Priscilla, and that's what's got you so bound up."
Priscilla was so overwrought and surprised that she couldn't even force an argument out of her mouth. Flustered, she turned and fled, leaving Meralda alone in the foyer.
The young woman spent a long moment considering her own words, hardly able to believe that she had stood her ground with Priscilla. She considered her next move and thought it prudent to be leaving. She'd spotted Liam with the coach out front when she and Feringal had returned, so she went to him and bade him to take her home.
*****
He watched the coach travel down the road from the castle, as he did every time Meralda returned from another of her meetings with the lord of Auckney.
Jaka Sculi didn't know what to make of his own feelings. He kept thinking back to the moment when Meralda had told him about the child, about his child. He had rebuffed her, allowing his guard to slip so that his honest feelings showed clearly on his face. Now this was his punishment, watching her come back down the road from Castle Auck, from him.
What might Jaka have done differently? He surely didn't want the life Meralda had offered. Never that! The thought of marrying the woman, of her growing fat