Free Temptress by Lisa Jackson Page B

sake of her love . . .
    “Stop it!” Her voice hissed and bounced off the thick walls. What had gotten into her? Was she finally believing Isa’s dire warnings, the old lady’s ever-constant muttering of death and doom?
    The wounded man is not Carrick! Get that through your thick skull!
     
    The moon was a dull orb shrouded by an ever-thickening fog. Weak light filtered through the bare trees as Isa knelt on the muddy banks of a swift creek and the barest of breezes snatched at her cloak. “Great Mother be with us,” she whispered, her heart heavy. Using a stick to draw her rune, a symbol that looked much like a rooster’s claw, in the damp earth, she prayed for safety. The wind kicked up a bit, bringing with it a chill of something she couldn’t see but something she felt, the very soul of evil.
    “Stay back!” she cried as if whatever was out there would heed her. A shiver of pure fear slid down her spine. Reaching into her pouch, she tossed a combination of mistletoe, rosemary, and ash slivers into the air, hoping the particles would catch in the wind and provide protection for Lady Morwenna and all who resided in the keep.
    What the devil had her brother the baron Kelan been thinking when he’d given in to his sister’s determination and allowed Morwenna, alone, to become Lady of Calon? ’Twas not a job for a woman. Though Morwenna was smart as any man, she was still a female. Many a woman had run a keep, to be sure, but usually their will was imposed through a man, a baron who knew not that his wife was maneuvering him. But this, to allow a woman alone to oversee so large a barony, was unnatural.
    True, Morwenna had promised to marry within the year. Though the wedding banns had not yet been posted, Lord Ryden of Heath Castle had asked for her hand and Kelan had agreed.
    Isa frowned and a cold worry settled in her heart. This coming marriage was not a good match.
    The baron was good-looking, aye, and athletic, despite his years. The man was nearly Isa’s age, for the love of the Mother Goddess, too old, though he appeared a decade younger. Lord Ryden was used to doing things his way, which did not bode well.
    Morwenna was headstrong and opinionated, willing to speak her mind. As had been his other, now-dead wives.
    But Morwenna had agreed to the union , an inner voice reminded her. Despite your advice, admonitions, and premonitions .
    “Bah.” Isa tossed down her stick and dusted her hands on her old tunic. Morwenna had agreed to marry Ryden only as it was expected that she take a husband. After her disastrous love affair with Carrick of Wybren, she’d turned to an older, steady man, one who had courted her with the intent of a wolf upon prey.
    Nay, ’twas not good. And it would not have happened if Morwenna had not given her heart to the rogue of Wybren.
    Carrick .
    It all came down to that cowardly beast.
    Isa hated the man. It wouldn’t surprise her if he was behind the murderous fire at Wybren. Carrick had no loyalty, no integrity. A bad seed, he was, a rogue who took after his father, Baron Dafydd, who, despite the love of a fine, beautiful woman, had been known to lift the skirts of servant girls, widows, and even the wives of his friends. Dafydd had been a ruler without conscience when it came to women, and all the while his wife, Lady Myrnna, had suffered in pinch-lipped silence and ignored the rumors of infidelity and bastards being born as she had tended to her own brood of five children. Rumor had it that Dafydd, outside the bounds of his marriage bed, had fathered daughters, sons, even a set of twins. . . . Isa wanted to dismiss the stories, or at the very least accept them as exaggerations borne on idle, bored tongues. But the rumors of Dafydd of Wybren’s excursions into the beds other than his own were legendary and, no doubt, had some nugget of truth within them.
    The wind slithered through the bare trees, tugging at Isa’s cowl and the hem of her tunic. She felt the cold of winter