Page 127 of Bride of Fire
“You know I don’t mean us,” she continued. “I mean that vile, wicked, scheming maidservant.”
“The one who thinks she can steal me by killin’ my son?”
She looked rattled, but only for a moment. She turned toward the window. “It seems mad, I know. But who knows how her depraved mind works?”
He’d been asking himself that very question about Alicia. Now that he had his son safely in his arms, he could press her for answers.
“What happened that day, Alicia?” he asked. “The day ye disappeared?”
Her voice was brittle. “Areyoudoubting me now?”
“Tell me the truth.”
Even now, he wanted to believe the best of her. He could even find it in his heart to forgive her if she’d be honest with him. Perhaps the responsibility of a child had frightened her. Perhaps she’d run away out of fear. Perhaps she’d invented this abductor, “Lionel,” because she was ashamed of the truth.
“I’ve told you the truth,” she insisted. “I was taken by an English lord and held prisoner at his keep.”
“Lionel?”
“Aye.”
“And if I send someone to seek out this Lord Lionel?”
She shrugged. “You can do as you please.”
“He’s not real, is he?”
“Of course he’s real!” Her expression dissolved into tears of anguish. “You don’t believe me. How can you not believe me? I was abducted. I was held at an English keep. I escaped and came here. And that witch—the one who’s put all these ideas into your head—was trying to kill our son!”
That last part he didn’t believe for an instant. And if Alicia had lied about that, she’d probably lied about everything else.
“She’d never do that,” he said.
There was an edge to her voice as she said, “I know what I saw, Morgan.”
“What youthinkyou saw. But what about the things onedoesn’tsee? The things we onlyassumeto be true?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He gazed down at his weary son, who was drifting off to sleep. He didn’t think he’d ever loved anything as much as he loved this wee bairn. To think the lad’s own mother might have abandoned him…
“I’ve been thinkin’ lately about how easy ’tis to make a man believe a thing when his heart is vulnerable.”
Misunderstanding him, she whipped around. There was a satisfied glimmer in her eyes. “Exactly! Which is what that wench has been doing. She’s been poisoning your mind.”
The blood curdled in his veins. He couldn’t bear to listen to more lies falling from Alicia’s lips. He couldn’t believe he’d ever been fooled by her wide-eyed, scheming ways.
“That day ye disappeared,” he mused, “I believed ye were dead. But I ne’er saw your body. And I believed ye were in that wooden box lowered into the grave, though I ne’er saw the proof.”
“Godit was clever. She—”
“But what I keep askin’ myself is how this Lionel managed to steal ye away while Godit was swaddlin’ my bairn and deliverin’ the bad news to me. He couldn’t have managed it alone—infiltratin’ the castle defenses, stealin’ ye from the childbed, carryin’ ye off while ye were carryin’ on and fightin’ for your life.”
He saw her visibly gulp.
Chapter 56
Alicia seldom panicked. She had a quick answer for everything. And she could switch from innocent angel to avenging devil and back in the blink of an eye.
