Untamed by Elizabeth Lowell Page B

pots, bowls, mortars and pestles, knives and spoons were arrayed neatly at the back of the tables.
    Twelve paces into the hillside, supported by stone rather than wood, there was rack after rack of things drying or stored beyond the reach of light. Basins waited to be filled with the fresh springwater that welled to the surface in the center of the keep, for water was at the heart of many Glendruid rituals.
    Meg breathed deeply, letting the familiar mixture of scents fill her, driving out the malodorous air of the sickroom. After a few more breaths her hands stopped trembling and the ice in her stomach began to melt. Meg loved the serenity and generosity of the herbal, with its silent promise of aches eased and ills healed.
    But nothing in this room will cure war or the famine and bloodshed that attends it .
    The unhappy thought made ice condense once more in Meg’s stomach.
    â€œI can’t send my people into that bloody maw,” she whispered, looking around the herbal with eyes that saw only catastrophe. “And for what? For nothing! Duncan can’t win. Dearest God, make him see that!”
    But even as the prayer left her lips, Meg knew it wouldn’t change what was planned. Duncan would have Blackthorne Keep or he would have an early grave.
    â€œOh, Duncan,” she whispered, putting her face in her hands. “I would not see you dead. Of all the people of my childhood, only you, Mother, and Old Gwyn ever truly cared for me.
    â€œWhat will I do?”
    As though Anna were still alive, words came to Meg. Do that which you can, daughter. Leave the rest to God .
    After a moment Meg straightened, wiped away her tears, and tried to concentrate on the tasks that had always soothed her in the past. One of her favorite jobs was to create the fragrant bouquets of herbs that both pleased the senses and kept vermin from hiding within mattresses and sleeping pallets. Harry’s wife was bedridden with a difficult pregnancy, and in special need of anything to ease her days.
    Everything Meg needed was in front of her, for she had been preparing sachets for the wedding mattress that was even now being made up from fresh straw; the mattress upon which she would have lain down a virgin and arisen the next morning a maid no longer.
    Unbidden came the image of Dominic’s fingertips soothing the falcon so sweetly that the fierce bird calmed. Meg had wondered then what it would feel like to be so carefully touched. There had been little of gentleness in her life from the man who was her father in name only.
    And, even though she sensed that Dominic’s restraint had been a tactician’s cool calculation of the quickest way to victory, his caress had raised a hunger within Meg to be gentled like that again.
    If we had married, would Dominic have treated me like a falcon or like an opponent to be vanquished?
    Meg remembered the tip of Dominic’s tongue gliding warmly over her lower lip, a tasting as light as a breath, a caress so sweet and unexpected that remembering it made her shiver. The tactile memory sent odd frissons shimmering through her. She had felt nothing like Dominic’s caress in her life. She had imagined nothing like it in her dreams.
    If that is what marriage offers, ’tis no surprise that women settle to it after a time .
    Then came the memory of Dominic’s words to the young mews girl he so casually had offered to buy.
    Small falcon, marriage has nothing to do with this .
    For Dominic, marriage was a matter of cold calculation. It had nothing to do with Glendruid hope, much less affection between a man and a woman.
    A pot tilted and dried leaves leaped from Meg’s suddenly uncertain hands. The herbal bouquet cameapart like a flock of ducks at the shadow of a peregrine flying overhead.
    â€œKeep that up, girl, and I’ll have you out weeding the garden as though you were six once more.”
    Gwyn’s familiar voice made Meg jump. More herbs