Coulter, Catherine. Rosehaven / Catherine Coulter.

“I’m Hastings, Father, not Janet. I’m not my mother. I’m her daughter. Your daughter.”

He was sweating, his gray flesh greasy and slick. He was breathing hard now, still not believing, for she knew he couldn’t really see her with the white film over his eyes. She’d ground up cornflower blossoms, called

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hurt sickle by the Healer, boiled them in water, and used it as an eyewash. It gave temporary relief, but it hadn’t improved his vision. His sight remained blocked by a slick veil of milky white and it worsened by the day.

He turned away from her, saying not another word. She stared down at him. Graelam de Moreton said at her elbow, “Father Carreg is here.”

“Did my groom come as well?”

“Aye, I am here if you would but turn to see me.”

She turned to see that he was garbed exactly as he had been earlier in the great hall, all in gray. But he’d removed his sword and the whip. The marten was wrapped around his neck like a thick, soft collar.

“You look better,” he said, his eyes on her face, then moving down to her breasts and lower to her belly.

“I do not want this,” she said to Graelam, her fingers clutching at the rich velvet of his sleeve. “Truly, I don’t want this. I don’t know him. What is he? Who is he? Is there not another way?”

“You will speak to me, madam, since in a very few minutes I will own you as I will own everything, even to the gown on your back and the slippers on your feet.”

“Very well, I do not know you. I would prefer to wait.”

“You know that isn’t possible.” He paused, then shrugged. “We must be wed before your father dies. There are greedy men who would do anything to capture you and force you to wed with them. Your only protection is to be my wife.”

She’d heard this argument spewed several times from other mouths. Her father had spat out the name of Richard de Luci, a man she truly feared when she had met him accidentally at a tourney two years before.

She said, “But Richard de Luci is married. He is no threat to me.”

“A wife would not slow him,” Severin said, his voice uncaring, curt. “I imagine that his wife is now dead.”

“I’ll whip you as I whipped your mother if you do not do as you’re bid. Do it. Now.”

They all stared at Fawke of Trent. He had managed to pull himself up on his elbows. He was looking from his daughter to Severin of Lang-

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thorne. “Do it now. My end is near. You must wed each other to save my lands and to give my name permanence.”

And I am little of nothing, Hastings thought. Her father had ignored her since he’d had her mother whipped to death, a deed that her nurse had prevented her from witnessing. But she’d heard her mother’s screams. Her mouth felt dry. She licked her tongue over her lips. “I am ready,” she said. She thrust out her hand and Severin took it.

Father Carreg was quick. As he spoke the words from the Latin parchment that he himself had penned, his eyes darted from Severin back to Fawke of Trent. He quickened and Hastings knew that he had skipped parts of the ceremony. Her father breathed his last just as Father Carreg gave them his blessing. Father Carreg gave a sigh of relief and mopped the sweat from his forehead. “I have given him last rites,” he said to Hastings. “I will pray over him now. Make your good-byes.”

“It is done,” Severin said. He leaned over and gently closed Fawke’s staring eyes that hadn’t seen much of anything in weeks. She watched him, feeling numb. Her father lay dead and she was married. What good-byes should she say? Thank you, Father, for wedding me to a man who could be as violent as you were? She lightly touched her fingertips to his cheek,

then drew back.

The marten stirred for the first time, stretching, his thick tail brushing Severin’s face. Then the marten froze, making soft mewling sounds deep in his throat.

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