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“Very well.” The knight’s jaw clenched in obvious affront. “My one concern is to return to France and complete a mission for my king. Garner any women you think might be remotely pleasing and I will view them this eve.”
Ariana felt as shocked as her father sounded.
“You cannot mean that,” the Lord of Glamorgan returned. “A man of your stature and prestige could command a wealthy heiress. You can surely wait a few days if it means a hefty gold dowry?”
“No.” The knight raised his hand to forestall further discussion. “I have my reasons.”
Wishing the man would have related those reasons, Ariana wondered what could make him so careless about choosing his spouse. Did she truly want to wed a man who seemed so unfeeling?
Then again, suitors were not exactly lining up at Glamorgan’s gates. She could scarcely afford to be choosy about her husband.
Suddenly aware the stranger would see her on his way out if she did not escape the corridor, she attempted to pass the hall and gain the privacy of her rooms when her father’s voice halted her.
“Ariana! Come in, my dear, and greet our guest.”
Her heart hammered in her chest, as much from being caught skulking about the door as from nervousness at meeting the knight. Flustered hands straightened her surcoat as she cleared her throat and strode forward. Heat rose in her cheeks.
Hope sparkled through her when the stranger turned green eyes upon her. For one shining moment, it seemed as if the veil of the curse had lifted. His gaze penetrated her with the intense scrutiny of a man seeking a mate, and in that moment, she connected with him on some unspoken, fundamental level.
And then it vanished.
His brow furrowed, and she knew he felt the bond fade, too. He looked at her then as all men looked at her, with vague, unseeing eyes.
The curse still loomed, but by God, this man had seen through it for one incredible instant.
Thomas Glamorgan scarcely bothered to look at her, however. “Roarke Barret, this is my only daughter, Ariana. You’d be most welcome to take her for your bride if she weren’t—”
“No.” The knight interrupted him just in time to prevent her father from revealing her affliction. He peered at her for a long moment before shaking his head. “You have made it clear you do not want to give up your daughter. I will see the other women tonight.”
With those words, the English knight brushed past her with such abrupt quickness she barely noted anything else about him besides a vague impression of heavy brows and a stony set to his jaw. Mostly, she recalled fascinating emerald eyes.
The stab of disappointment caught her off guard. Except for her father’s perpetual misery and bitter resentment toward her, the curse had never bothered her before this year. She never envied her friends the lustful looks men bestowed upon them. But as her twentieth summer loomed, her deathbed promise to her mother began to prey upon her mind. And in truth, her feelings began to change on the matter, too. She did not want to die a spinster like all of her aunts had for the last hundred years. She wanted a family of her own, with children and the freedom to pursue her music whenever she wished.
And a handsome man to notice her.
It was a strange and new feeling, this disappointment. And it suddenly hurt very much to be passed over as if she were worth less notice than the keep’s hounds.
“He did not see you, of course.” Her father’s voice interrupted her thoughts as he stared at her through the cloudy white film encroaching over his failing eyes. He looked down his hooked nose at her, a difficult feat considering his shorter stature and stooped shoulders. Yet Thomas Glamorgan could lift his chin just enough to glare at his daughter in such a way that made her well aware of her unworthiness. “The curse prevents any man but me from seeing you as you really are.”
Determined not to raise his suspicions by allowing him to know how much the knight’s rebuff stung, Ariana straightened. She wasn’t cursed, by God. The Glamorgan legend was a myth perpetuated by rumor and gossip.
She hadn’t just dreamed that moment of elemental connection with Roarke Barret. The knight had admired her for a moment. Perhaps it had been a sign that he was the man destined to dispel the long-standing fable surrounding the women of her line.
She mustered a smile for her father, unwilling to anger him and risk not being allowed to participate in the evening meal. She had plans to cross paths with Roarke Barret again. “I am hardly invisible.”
Although she often wondered why she never warranted a second glance from any man. She had often seen the most humble village women chased with lustful enthusiasm by suitors. Yet, despite what she considered a mildly attractive exterior, no man ever looked at her with anything more than a fleeting glance. Before her mother died, Lady Glamorgan declared the curse utter nonsense, insisting men would travel far and wide to beg for the hand of her beautiful daughter.
But her mother’s prediction had yet to come true. Indeed, men were more apt to look right through her.
She awaited her father’s answer while he called for messengers to be dispatched to every nearby nobleman regarding the English knight’s visit. Preparations would be made to find the man a bride, and from her father’s expression, Ariana had no doubt that he would not allow that woman to be her.
His mouth hardened into the thin line that constituted his version of a smile. “My sister once compared it to being as attractive as a lovely tapestry upon the castle wall. A man might observe beauty in her, but not the kind that was in any way tempting.”
Did her father take malicious glee in hurting her? Sometimes it seemed that way, but Ariana maintained a smooth mask of indifference, assuring herself that Welsh men were merely too superstitious about Glamorgan women to look her way. Curses were not taken lightly in a country shrouded in mists and legends.
“Fortunately she found fulfillment in the convent.” Her father began a familiar diatribe. “’Tis a shame you have not yet joined her.”
After dutifully listening to his lecture on her shortcomings and an adamant declaration that he would not suffer her under his roof much longer, Ariana departed the hall.
For once, she hoped her father was correct. She did not want to abide in the dark gloom of Glamorgan Keep any more. If only the stranger could be persuaded to take her to be his wife, she could leave her wretched household forever.
Surely once one Glamorgan woman married, all talk of a curse hanging over the females of their line would quickly fade. Her nieces would one day wed and have babes of their own.
Ariana prayed this stranger was The One. The man who would be her destiny.
The knight of her dreams.
Roarke Barret stomped along yet another darkened interior corridor of Glamorgan Keep in search of the kitchens, wondering if the miserly lord had deliberately misled him about the whereabouts of the food rations. The stoop-shouldered Welshman and his gloomy household had cast a pall over a previously fruitful day. In the ten years since Roarke had left his birthplace on the Barret lands in England, he’d met men more cruel and wicked, but none more wretched.
The fact that he had entrusted the sour-faced knave to find him a bride didn’t exactly fill him with confidence, but he was running out of time to accomplish the matter and Glamorgan’s keep had been the last substantial holding on his way to the coast. Roarke had foolishly delayed his nuptials so long that he had little choice now but to rely on Thomas Glamorgan. Still, heaven only knew what manner of women would be paraded before him this night.
Not that he expected to discover wedded bliss with his new wife. Far from it. He had