Page 62 of A Celtic Vow
“I hope not,” she prayed, only for the memory to swirl away and be replaced with another.
One that offered hope.
Or so they thought.
Chapter Twenty
THERE COULD BE no doubtAodh loathed Constance’s father every bit as much as he did his own in their last life, yet he’d never been so thankful to anyone. How could he not be when he’d brought her into his life? When he had allowed him the pleasure of spending time with not just a beautiful lassie but the kindest soul he had ever met.
“I thought the same of you,” she said softly, slipping her hand into his when the cave spun away, and they were left by the pond King’s Fall would someday pour into.
A pond completely encompassed by a castle with little to no community.
“Where is everyone?” he wondered, taken by how different everything looked. The castle and curtain walls had been built strategically around and within the rock. While open-air above the pond, there was so much stone between here and the outside it was impregnable. Not even arrows could make it over. “It seems as though there should be far more people enjoying all this.”
“Enjoying my father’s sacred space?” Constance frowned, clearly remembering before it came back to him as well. “Except for his servants and closest advisors, the few vile men he trusted, everyone else was forced to live outside the castle walls in ill-kept villages. Struggled to get by because of his exorbitant taxes.” Her brows furrowed as she took in the luxury around them. The musician playing delicate harp music. The fruit trees and padded lounging areas. “Taxes he didn’t need because money always found a way into his coffers.”
“Because of you,” he murmured. “Because you trulyweregood luck. Not just in the common sense, either, but because those around you healed.” He shook his head. “So he charged them everything they had to be around you. To simply bask in your presence. Because you not only brought luck and healed but could bring life,ta?”
“So it seemed.” She eyed her younger self strolling with young Aodh on the shore of the pond with a chaperone in tow. “A few women who couldn’t get pregnant did so after visiting me, but was that lucky, considering my father demanded so much in return?” Her brows pinched. “Left them with no means to care for those children?”
“Yet my guess is they found a way because those wee ones were good luck, too?” He squeezed her hand, recalling how enchanted he had been by her. “That they found a way to survive with a gift more precious to them than anything.”
“I hope so.” She issued a small, wobbly smile and blinked back tears when their younger selves sat together on the very rock they had sat on the day before to talk religion. “I loved chatting with you. Getting to know you.”
“And I, you.” The longer they were here, the more he recalled their endless conversations. “You cared nothing for my scars. Didn’t even seem to see them.” He bit back emotion. “You became the best friend I ever had. Every moment around you was precious.”
“I felt the same.” She worried at her lower lip as more memories unfolded. The two of them swimming and laughing. Eating. Sometimes just lying in the grass stargazing. All the while, as the days passed, there was change to be seen outside how close they were growing.
His scars did, in fact, appear to be healing.
“Yet I wondered how genuine your feelings for me really were,” she said. “Were they real or not? Or were you only drawn to me because of what was happening to you?”
He understood what she meant when his scarring continued to lessen as the summer wore on. As his hair filled in where it should never have grown again.
“I never even noticed it.” Constance narrowed her eyes at one memory in particular that swirled by in the darkness. He appeared to be sneaking out of the castle with a satchel full of something. Perhaps sneaking off to rendezvous with another girl? “Yet maybe somebody else did. Maybe you were sneaking off to—”
