Rowan's Lady Read Free Page A

bairns to count. Concluding that such dreams led to
nothing but heartache, she decided that once her marriage to Blackthorn was
annulled, she would be in charge of her own destiny. No longer would she
be subjected to her father’s consistently bad matchmaking choices. World travel
seemed to be the smartest way to keep her heart safe.
    Once she was away from Blackthorn, she would
demand that her father hand over her funds -- money that was rightfully hers,
left to her by her first husband -- money her father had been waiting to
get his fat greedy fingers on for years. With it, she would take her sisters,
Morralyn and Geraldine away. They would book safe passage and travel the world.
They would meet all sorts of new and interesting people and live out the rest
of their days in blissful solitude. Most importantly, she would live it without
the aid of a husband. She would protect her heart from any further
disappointment. She would do her best to keep her sisters from the miserable
existence that came with ill-suited husbands.
    Arline had constructed an invisible shield around
her heart with a promise that soon she would be in charge of her own life and
future. She would allow no one access to it. Hopes, dreams, those things led to
nothing but heartache and regret. She would live the rest of her life without
any expectations. She would simply live.
    This night, as she dreamt again of the faceless
hero, somewhere in the recesses of the dream, was the sound of a child crying.
As the crying grew louder the foggy image of her faceless hero faded.
    Half asleep, her thoughts muddled, lingering
somewhere between a sweet dream and reality, she pulled her blanket more
tightly around her chin and tried to fall back to sleep. In the daylight hours,
she would never admit to anyone, not even herself, that she did have a
strong desire for a tall, handsome husband who would woo her with a bright
smile and tender kisses. She fought to pull the image of the man back into the
forefront of her mind and to shoo the crying child away. But the stubborn child
continued to cry, the sound of it growing louder and sounding quite close.
    The plaintive wail floated into her room again.
Shaking away the fog, she sat up in her bed and rubbed away the sleep with her
fingertips. She sat still and strained her ears to listen. Mayhap it was the
wind she heard and not a child’s cry.
    An ominous sensation prickled across her skin as
the sound again floated in on the dark night air. The cries grew louder and
sounded as though they were coming from the fireplace.
    Flinging her legs over the edge of her bed, she
tucked her bare feet into her slippers as she pulled her robe from the end of
her bed. Slipping her arms into the sleeves, she tip-toed across the floor to
stand beside the fireplace.
    As the low embers burned and crackled, the sound
floated in once again.
    She had not been dreaming. It was a child’s
cry that she heard. But whose? There were no children living inside the walls
of the keep. Anyone with children lived in little cottages scattered here and
there.
    Whoever this child was or belonged to, he or she
was not at all happy. The wailing continued to float into her room,
along with the low grumbling of male voices.
    Arline had lived in the keep for a little over a
year. She knew the sounds were coming from the grand gathering room just one
floor below her bedchamber. Night after night she had lain awake listening to
the raucous, drunken revelry that took place in that room. A room she was no
longer allowed to enter due to her husband’s severe dislike of her.
    Instinct told her the child was terrified.
Curiosity grew and swelled along with the child’s cries. The men’s grumbling
grew worse, angrier.
    Good sense dictated she should stay put, stay out
of her husband’s line of vision as well as his wrath. It cautioned her that
whatever was going on below stairs was none of her business. She had but two
weeks left to survive the farce called her