Curse of the Celts by Clara O'Connor (most romantic novels .TXT) 📕

attention to Gideon’s tall frame as he leaned casually against the eaves of the window, looking out onto the road leading up to the keep.

I turned back to the bearded man glowering at us.

“You’re a healer?” Relief sprang inside me. Devyn might not be here yet, but at least help would be at hand when he got here.

“Yes. Now what do you need, and I’ll be on my way,” he said impatiently.

“It’s not us. It’s our friend and he’s on the way,” I explained.

The healer looked exasperatedly at his lord. “You called me back for a patient who isn’t even here. Are you losing what little is left of your mind, my lord? We should have made the journey to Conwy weeks ago. There is nothing in the store and you will be dead before I can make it back. Though maybe that’s what you want,” he finished with a scowl.

And was met with an answering one.

“Madoc,” he said, in a quelling tone.

“You think I care what these strangers think? I care not. I have spent too long keeping you alive despite yourself, and I’m not waiting here for some traveller who may or not make it, who I may or may not be able to help. What I know is that if you will not go to Conwy, I will go alone and be back before the last of the supplies runs out,” he spat. “I hope.”

“Madoc.”

Lord Rhodri’s tone brooked no further complaint. His healer merely stared back at him in disgust, sending us a similarly dismissive glare before he turned and began to stride out of the hall.

“Madoc!” Lord Rhodri’s bellow brought the man’s exit to a sharp halt, and he turned, surprise at the force of his lord’s command clear on his bristled face.

Lord Rhodri stared down the hall before explaining softly.

“It’s Devyn. Devyn is coming.”

The man’s face fell in shock and he took a quick step forward.

“What? He has the Mallacht? Not the boy.” He looked fiercely towards us as if commanding our denial at his conjecture. “But we haven’t enough for you to last the week. How can I help him? If I go now, I can be back in a few days, less if your brother gives me fresh horses.”

“It’s not the Mallacht,” I interjected, recognising the Briton term for the illness. Whatever medication it was that was running low was clearly intended to treat what ailed the father and not the son. “It’s some kind of poison or infection. We think. At least, he was….”

“I threw a knife at him. I hit him. There was probably something on the blade,” came a flat voice from the window.

I glared at Gideon and got an uncaring shrug in response.

“What was on the knife?” Two hard voices spoke in unison as the older men turned towards the laconic dark-haired warrior.

“I don’t know,” he frowned slightly. “People knew that we were going in search of them. The chances that the pointed end of my knife might scratch the Oathbreaker were probably even enough that someone took the time to apply a little something to the blade. Whether it’s a poison or curse… I have no way of knowing.”

Or caring, his tone communicated quite clearly.

“The scar…” Lord Rhodri’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the York pup the Mercians took in. You expect me to believe you don’t know what was on the blade that you stuck in my son?”

The man could still move quickly when he wanted to and shoved Gideon against the wall, his elbow in the taller man’s neck.

Gideon smiled darkly and pushed away from the wall against the hard bone digging into his exposed throat.

“If I had wanted your son dead then he would be dead.”

Lord Rhodri sagged. “They wouldn’t even let him come home. It was not his sin.”

“He ate your sin, old man,” Gideon said into the silence in a hard voice.

Lord Rhodri stepped back, his body seeming to diminish as he made his way back over to the chair by the fire, his alertness fading.

“He was just a boy. Just a child.”

He spoke into the fire, no longer really present in the room.

I wondered if he had travelled back in time, to the frozen riverside where he had chosen to save his own life and that of his son, leaving my mother and me to our fates. I felt no hate towards the broken man by the fire. He had failed my mother and me on that day, and he and his son had been paying for it ever since. This once proud warrior sat in his empty shell of a keep, praying to whatever gods they believed in out here, to see his son one last time before he died – the son he must have thought dead this last decade, the son who had paid the more substantial price for his father’s sin. A boy who could barely remember a time when his own people didn’t hate him. A people who hated him for my sake. And he had come for me anyway.

I crossed over to Lord Rhodri. I didn’t know him, but his pain was a palpable thing as I laid my hand on his arm.

“He’s going to be okay. We will make sure that he recovers.” I couldn’t promise any more and I wasn’t even sure I could guarantee that much. I met Gideon’s dark gaze. He seemed to resolve something and pushed himself off the wall.

“Which way did you send your men?” he asked gruffly.

“What?” Lord Rhodri struggled to gather himself back. His face was pale and I noticed a flush had appeared on his high cheekbones, which were so like his son’s.

“You sent men out last night, didn’t you? There’s no point me going in the same direction.”

Gideon was going out to search for them. I don’t know why the thought of him seeking Devyn comforted me, but it did.

Lord Rhodri lifted a hand and pointed south. “You said you were just outside Worcester when you parted and