Page 94 of Bride of Fire
Jenefer lifted her arm. “Maybe. But she’d been living in the Highlands long enough to wed and birth a child.”
“Probably a year.”
“At least a year. So an English lord is so infatuated with a maid he met in Catalonia that he waits for her while she marries another man and delivers that man’s child. And then he kidnaps her on the very day she gives birth. ’Tis hard to believe.”
“Nay, bendbothknees.Veryhard to believe.”
Jenefer bent both knees. “Right?”
“Unless… Maybe he’s been stalking her for years. Maybe she’s so breathtakingly beautiful that no man can resist her.”
ThatJenefer didn’t need to hear. She stiffened, losing her balance and stumbling sideways.
“Concentrate,” Feiyan said.
Jenefer bit back a retort. She didn’t want to think about how beautiful Morgan’s wife might be.
“That English lord couldn’t care for her all that much,” she reasoned, “forcing her to travel so soon after childbirth.”
“True.”
Feiyan swept her right arm before her in a graceful arc. Jenefer mimicked her.
“And why would he not take the babe as well? ’Twould have made her much easier to manage.”
“What’s curious to me,” Feiyan said, slowly lifting her knee, “is how she knew where to come.”
Jenefer copied the movement. “What do you mean?”
“She claims to have escaped her captor, aye?”
“Aye.”
Feiyan brought her left elbow in against her side, making a fist. So did Jenefer.
“How did she know to come to Creagor?”
Feiyan lunged forward on her right leg.
Jenefer froze.
“Howdidshe know to come here?” she wondered. “Morgan only arrived a few days ago.”
“Exactly.” Feiyan turned with a smug smile that vanished when she saw Jenefer had stopped doing the exercises. “If she was abducted and hidden away from the outside world, as she claims, with no way to get messages in or out, how did she learn that Morgan had come to the Lowlands?”
“Right.” Jenefer looked at her cousin with new respect. “But she knew. She knew he was here.”
Feiyan nodded and swept her right arm up while drawing back her left. Jenefer sat on the edge of the bed to think.
“’Tis highly suspect,” Feiyan agreed, making a half-turn and a lunge. “And yet, there’s no disputing the fact the woman is Morgan’s wife and Miles’ mother.” She drew back, pressing her hands together, palm to palm. “Which means your latest plan will have to be abandoned.”
Feiyan had been mercifully vague about Jenefer’s plan to beguile the Highlander. But she was right.
In the end, it didn’t really matter how improbable Lady Alicia’s story seemed. Morgan’s wife was alive. And well. And here.
Jenefer’s heart might be fractured. But she had to look after her own best interests. If she couldn’t win Creagor by marrying the Highlander, she’d just have to go back to her plans of taking it by force.
If Rivenloch ever arrived to lend aid.
