Page 98 of The Unwilling Bride
Merrick stood as still as a statue, his face like a stone effigy’s. Then he slowly turned on his heel and went to the door. He put his hand on the latch.
Constance wouldn’t run after him and beg for an answer. “I can’t live with uncertainty and dread, as I did when your father was alive,” she said, her heart a dull, cold ache of disillusion. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll imagine the worst and seek to have our marriage annulled.”
Merrick bowed his head. His shoulders slumped. For a long, long moment she watched and waited, not daring to breathe as he stood motionless, the very image of forlorn misery.
Then he shuddered, as if he was shaking off some great weight. After the spasm passed, he turned back, his eyes full of such anguish and remorse, they were almost unrecognizable. But the tight resolve of his jaw—that bespoke her husband, as did the deep furrows of concern upon his brow.
When he finally spoke, his voice was almost unrecognizable, too, full of raw emotion and ragged sorrow. “I have lied to you, Constance. I’ve lied to everyone.”
He spread his hands in a gesture of submission and his expression settled into hopeless despair. “I’m not Merrick.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I’M BREDON, THE SON OF TAMSYN. Peder’s grandson.”
Impossible! He couldn’t be. Bredon was dead. He’d drowned. He was dead. Drowned.
As her mind struggled to understand not just what Merrick had said, but his remorseful attitude, Constance felt for the end of the bed and sat heavily. “But he…he died! Everyone knows he drowned in the river.”
Merrick shook his head. “No, I did not.”
“But…if he didn’t die—”
“I didn’t.”
“Then what happened? You…you’re…how did you come to be Merrick?” She gasped and covered her mouth. “What happened to him?”
“He died. In the ambush on the way to Sir Leonard’s.” He took a deep breath, then the words seemed to fairly pour out of him, like a stream in flood in the spring. “I went fishing at the river, and a man came to me there—a nobleman, dressed in such finery as I had never seen. He asked me if I wanted to meet my father, and like the curious child I was, I said yes. That man was Sir Egbert.
“But he didn’t take me to my father. We rode a long way, to join a cortege. There was another boy there—Merrick. My height, my coloring. They put me in his clothes, and he wasn’t pleased about being dressed in mine.
“Sir Egbert told me I was going to get to ride a pony—and whatever happened, I was not to say a word.”
Merrick looked without seeing at a tapestry on the wall of a group of ladies seated in a garden. “After the attack, I fled until I could run no more, and the next day a patrol from Sir Leonard’s castle found me.
“I was too exhausted and terrified to explain what had happened. Since I was dressed like Merrick, and there was no one to say otherwise, they assumed I was the heir of Tregellas. Yet…” His words trailed off as she stared at him, still too shocked and dumbfounded to speak.
Merrick finally fixed his steadfast gaze on her. “Bredon’s body was never found, was it? And he disappeared just after Lord William’s son was sent north to be fostered.”
“Yes—but…but you knew the castle the day you arrived. You never asked where the solar was.”
“An educated guess. Norman castles are much alike.”
“You recognized Sir Jowan.”
“A lie.”
“And Talek?”
“Him I did know, from when he’d come to the village with Lord William’s noble son. My mother warned me to stay far away from them both, and I did.”
She studied his face, his hands. “You look like Lord William.”
“I may not be Merrick, but I am Wicked William’s son. Although my mother wouldn’t admit to anyone else whose get I was, she told me, swearing me to secrecy. She wanted me to know I had the blood of nobles.”
“So you switched places with Merrick?”
Merrick grimly nodded. “Although I didn’t know it then, I later realized that if we were attacked, I was to be a decoy. The real Merrick was dressed in my clothes and put among the servants with the baggage carts, presumably for his safety.”
