Sebille did not keep them guessing long.

Between the meals of dinner and supper, she sent word by way of Father Atticus that she wished to speak with her brother and his wife.

Accompanied by the priest, she came to the solar with the rest of a tale she knew had too many holes to be believable. Thus, she would fill those which Lady Laura and her daughter had surely been unable to do in relating what was revealed to them, knowing even then it might be inconceivable. Perhaps that was because the tale was heartbreaking…hopeless…cruel. But it would soon be done and no further chapter or word added once she departed High Castle.

Lothaire placed a chair in front of the one into which Father Atticus had handed her, glanced at the priest who went to stand behind his sister, then his wife who had taken the chair alongside Sebille.

Praying Lothaire and Lady Laura would be as understanding and forgiving as Father Atticus who had received her confession of all she had done in Lady Raisa’s name, Sebille curled fingers around her prayer beads.

When her brother lowered to the chair and caught up her hand, she nearly fell to weeping again for fear he might soon toss it aside.

Not Lothaire, she told herself. Not he who loves me nearly as well as I love him.

“I am here.” He smiled. “We are here. Speak when you are ready—or not at all if you are not.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the priest who responded by settling a hand on her shoulder.

“For years Father Atticus has kept the secret a nine-year-old girl entrusted to him after returning to High Castle from which she thought herself banished,” she began.

As expected, Lothaire’s face mapped confusion. He had been too young to comprehend a connection between his missing father and his sister’s absence—perhaps did not even remember she had been gone a fortnight.

“Do you recall how much once I was loved and favored for being a miracle, Lothaire?”

“You were our parents’ joy, far more than this boy who did not behave as he should have.”

She had to smile, for that was the boy she had adored, perhaps as much as she had been adored by Ricard and Raisa Soames. “What you do not know was that our father’s feelings for me had naught to do with a miracle. As he knew well and his wife would not for years, there was naught miraculous about me. And when I was nine, his secret that would become mine was discovered. Now I shall tell it to you.”

* * *

“Ricard of my heart, my soul, and my ache, it is done,” Sebille’s mother heralded, turning the heads of those in the hall to where she stepped off the stairs. Continuing forward, she looked up from the parchment she carried, but not at her husband who had paused in breaking his fast—at Sebille, who had been slicing an apple to share with her little brother.

Never had the Lady of Lexeter looked at her daughter that way, the same as she regarded the dog who had messed in front of her a week past and for it received a kick to its soft place.

“Mother?” Sebille spoke into a silence that felt as if all held their breath.

Lady Raisa’s upper lip curled, and the knife Sebille held slipped and sliced the tip of a finger with which she gripped the apple. But she was so shaken she felt only a sting and the warmth of blood running down the other fingers.

Returning her regard to the parchment, her mother continued, “The child is born.”

Ricard Soames thrust upright, causing his chair to screech backward and nearly upend. “Clear the hall! Now!”

As knights, men-at-arms, and servants abandoned their places at table and around the great room, Lady Raisa halted before the dais. “But such enlightening reading I have happened upon, Husband. Surely all ought to know the Lord is not as merciful as we were made to believe.” Once more her gaze fell on Sebille who, along with her brother, could only stare.

Of a sudden, their father was behind them, snatching his children off the bench and, with one beneath each arm, descending the dais.

“Aye,” Sebille’s mother called, “see our miracle safely away lest the deceived harm her. Quite wise, Ricard.”

Harm? Sebille wondered, heart beating so hard she whimpered as her father’s long strides carried Lothaire and her across the hall. Who is the deceived? Why would he wish me harm? And what has so angered Mother she looks at me like that?

Her father lowered her and his son to their feet. “Sebille, take Lothaire—”

“Our daughter is beautiful,” his wife said. “Her hair golden red.”

Thinking whatever had turned her mother’s mood dark was past, Sebille touched her golden-red braid falling over her shoulder, then peered around her father. But it seemed those words were not directed at Sebille. They were read like those others.

“And just as it is the same as her mother’s,” Lady Raisa read on, “so is her pretty round face.”

“Close your beak!” Ricard Soames thundered, causing sister and brother to startle and their mother to laugh. But that which sounded from Lady Raisa was not joyous. It was as cruel as the kick to the dog, making Sebille pull Lothaire against her side. Though her bloodied finger stained his tunic, it was where he needed to be. No tears fell or cries parted his lips, but he was so tense she knew his emotions were trying to get out.

Sebille’s father bent near. “My dear girl, take your brother abovestairs and see him into bed, then you as well.”

Though it was morn, she did not ask after so peculiar a command. “What is wrong with Mother?” she whispered as her own emotions caused her father’s handsome face to appear distorted.

“Worry not, Sebille. I will fix this. I promise.” He turned them toward the stairs. “Make haste.”

It was strange, but Sebille was almost afraid to leave him alone with his wife. Perhaps because she sensed fear about her tall, handsome father who was never fearful. However, his gentle push made her take her brother’s hand and lead him up the stairs.

As they neared the landing, she heard her mother scream something—a word that sounded foul though it was not one Sebille knew.

Then her father bellowed, “Give it to me, Raisa!”

More laughter, though in the midst of that was what sounded like a sob. “Too late!” the Lady of Lexeter cried. “I know its every word. I know what you did.”

“Sebille?” Lothaire said, and she realized they had halted on the landing, and she was ashamed she was not protecting him as entrusted to her.

“Worry not,” she said, “Father will fix it. He promised.” As she urged him forward, a thought struck and she glanced at the solar’s door. It was a bad thought, and her father would be disappointed if he caught her, but it might be the only way to learn why her mother had looked at her as if…

As if she hates me, she thought and drew Lothaire into his chamber. “Quick to bed, and I shall be quick to mine.”

Her brother looked around, and amid the worry on his face was confusion. She no longer aided with clothing and unclothing him—at six he was far from a baby—but on the increasingly rare occasion she escorted him to his chamber, she often lingered to read or sing to him or simply talk.

“We must do as father bid,” she said and stepped into the corridor, closed his door, and did not do as told. She entered her parents’ solar and crossed to the wall recess with its little peek door hidden behind a fat candle.

She removed the candle and carefully opened the door. It was silent in the hall below, her mother unmoving on the dais behind the high table, her father on the opposite side. It appeared as if the two were engaged in a game of chase and had paused to catch their breath.

Still her mother held the parchment. A moment later, she raised it triumphantly.

“Raisa!” Ricard Soames barked.

“I have not finished reading it to you, my lord husband.” She set it low before her eyes to keep him in sight.

“Curse you!” he spat.

“Cursed I am, Ricard. Now where were we? Ah!” She cleared her throat. “She was born at the convent of Bairnwood Abbey on the third day of May.” Raisa looked up. “Remarkable, is it not? The same year and month I birthed our daughter, though this whore’s child arrived three weeks earlier.”

Ricard Soames lowered his head, gripped the back of his neck, his figure so defeated and diminished Sebille pressed a hand to her mouth lest she call out to him.

Raisa continued reading. “I have left her there to be raised by the good sisters and am now returned home with none but my mother aware of the true reason for my absence these three months. In a fortnight I shall wed my betrothed and, henceforth, be faithful. I did love you, Ricard, and I believe you loved me, but we were never possible.”

That line sank into Sebille, and she disliked herself for how slow of wit she was, only then realizing the one who wrote to her father was a mistress. That he had one was not surprising since his wife sometimes railed against his infidelities. What surprised was that he had made a child who, it seemed, was nearly Sebille’s age and had golden-red hair the same as the daughter of the lord and lady of Lexeter.

As Sebille’s mind fumbled over the curiosity that she and her father’s illegitimate daughter had hair the same unusual color, she fingered her chain girdle and winced over the sliced tip of her finger and the slick left upon the links.

“I shall think of you as little as I am able that you may sooner fade from memory,” Lady Raisa continued to taunt her husband with another woman’s words. “Oh, Ricard, the whore was so very brave.”

Sebille saw her father raise his head, but he did not move. “Do not stop now, Raisa. Be done with it.”

She shrugged. “She wished you a good, long life with your wife,” she said, then gasped. “That would be me, at that time wed to you for…near on nine months, I believe.”

“The babe was conceived weeks ere you and I wed, and I was faithful to you thereafter.”

She snorted. “For a time.”

“Two years!”

“Why, that is something of which to be proud. Two years, and now we have been husband and wife for ten. And how many mistresses have you had these eight years?”

Her father’s shoulders broadened with breath, then he thrust a hand across the table. “You have entertained your sorry self, now give it to me.”

Taking a step back, she pressed the parchment to her chest. “So you may destroy it as you should have done years past?” She made a sound of disgust. “Fool. A bit of flame and never would I have known you exchanged that whore’s daughter for ours.”

Sebille was glad her hand was over her mouth to capture her cry. Her mind had been moving in this direction but refused to arrive. As she began to shake, she prayed this was only a terrible dream, that her mother was her mother in truth.

“Dear Ricard, until your dying day you shall regret not allowing me to go to the grave all the more certain of heaven believing God healed our babe—made a miracle of her.”

“It seemed the thing to do,” he said with pleading Sebille had never heard from him. The hand gripping her mouth so hard it might bruise, she began to rock her body.

“How could it be the thing to do?” Lady Raisa said so calmly it was more frightening.

“I did it for you—”

“Me?”

“The girl child you birthed was deformed, Raisa—a hole in her lip nearly up to her nose. Do you not recall how you screamed when you saw her? You demanded she be taken from your sight, and when the midwife told the babe could not suckle and was not likely to survive beyond two days, do you not recall what you said? I do—If God will not work a miracle, put the babe out. And I said unlike many a man who would set their deformed child out in the night to feed the beasts of the dark, I could not. With your face turned from our babe, you said, Then pray for a miracle so the child’s suffering will not be long. And that is what I did.”

Raisa thrust a hand across the table, shook the parchment. “Nay, whilst I recovered from a birthing that nearly killed me and the shock over what came from my body, you exchanged our daughter for your wrong-born child and came home from that convent spilling lies of the days you spent on your face praying for our child’s healing. Ah, the miracle the Lord worked, rewarding his faithful servant for a belief so holy that flesh was perfectly healed! How you must have laughed at how eagerly I accepted our hideous-turned-beautiful daughter that I did not question why she was so much larger, narrow face round, hair where there had been none of a color neither of us possess.”

“I did not laugh, Raisa. I made something good out of bad, and you were happy as never have I seen you.”

“Because I thought her special—touched by God, not the devil—”

“Enough!”

It was the same Sebille was screaming inside, but no matter that she told herself to retreat to her chamber, she had to know all.

“Nay, not enough,” said the woman who was not truly her mother, whose adoration had turned to loathing. “You fooled me into raising your mistress’s child.” She slapped the parchment to her chest. “From my own breasts I fed her. No wet nurse for her—not for our miracle of a daughter.”

Her husband stepped nearer the table. “I know this is a blow, and I am sorry to have hurt you, but Sebille is a good daughter, and she loves you as you love her. That need not change.”

“Of course it must change. I cannot love her now. Will not! It makes me sick to think of all I wasted on her that should have been Lothaire’s. Instead, I loved her better, just as you have, though for you it is because she is of your mistress.” Raisa thrust the parchment forward. “Lady Honore!”

He did not respond, and she said, “I know only one of that name, she of the family Nevarre. She who is wed to Baron Graville.”

Again, he did not respond.

“He will be distressed to read this, especially were he made to believe his wife came to him untouched.”

Sebille’s father moved so quickly she did not see what he did until he swung away and bounded off the dais.

“Give it to me!” Raisa cried as he strode to the hearth with the parchment in hand.

His wife ran around the table and across the hall, but all evidence of the truth of Sebille was upon the flames and beginning to blacken when Lady Raisa reached to retrieve it. Empty-handed, she jumped back and turned to her husband.

“Still I will tell him and ruin Lady Honore’s life as she has ruined mine!”

Sebille’s father grabbed her and shook her. “You will not. You will keep that sharp beak of yours closed. You will accept the blessing of a beautiful, healthy, loving daughter and—”

His wife whipped her head down, and a moment later Ricard Soames thrust her away and gripped his arm.

Crying softly into her hand, tears running over it, Sebille guessed her mother—nay, not her mother!—had bitten her father.

“I will not!” Lady Raisa cried. “She is as dead to me as…” She took a step toward her husband. “Our cursed child is dead, is she not?”

Sebille’s father’s chest was heaving, face florid, eyes like flames.

“Tell me!”

Was he purposely refusing to answer, or did he not trust himself to speak?

“I would know, Ricard!”

“Why? So you may reject her again? Have her set out in the wood to suffer teeth and claw?”

“Does our daughter live?”

A smile turned his mouth. “She does, is this moment abovestairs in her bed.”

Lady Raisa screamed, her rage and frustration paining Sebille’s ears, though it seemed not to move her father. When she quieted, bending forward as if to recover her breath, her husband leaned near. Only by holding her own breath was Sebille able to hear what he spoke.

“I did not set out the babe whose face was as desolate as your heart. I held her close as I rode night into day, and when I reached the abbey I gave her into the care of the good sisters. Gently, quietly, in the arms of the old abbess, Sebille whom you could not bear to look upon died the following morn. And I returned to you with the miraculously beautiful Sebille who sooner healed you and loves you as never have you been loved. And never again will you be loved if you do not set your mind to forgetting what was written on that parchment.”

Forget, Sebille silently entreated. Pray, Mother, forget and I shall ever love you—ever make you proud, ever be your beautiful Sebille.

Lady Raisa remained bent over, each minute that passed giving Sebille more hope her angry, hurt heart would heal as she remembered all the embraces, kisses, smiles, and words of love spoken between them.

Finally, the Lady of Lexeter straightened, and Sebille could see the shine on her face that evidenced she had been crying.

All will be well, Sebille assured herself and slowly lowered her hand from her mouth and clasped it with the other over her heart.

“I cannot forget,” Lady Raisa said. “Every time I look at her I shall see the woman who lay with my husband, and you who made a fool of me. And one day…” She shrugged. “You will not always be here to protect her, Ricard.”

“Raisa!” His shout covered his daughter’s pained gasp before she could get a hand over her mouth.

The Lady of Lexeter laughed again, and her husband shoved past and strode toward the stairs.

Guessing the solar his destination, Sebille pulled back, but not before her father’s chin came up and she saw the determination on his face turn to alarm. Had he seen her in the opening? Or merely noted the little door was ajar?

She longed to run to her chamber but hesitated over whether to close the little door and return the candle to its place. If he had seen her, it would be of no benefit. If he had not and were it left open, he—or Lady Raisa—would know they had been observed.

Sebille closed the peek door, set the candle in the recess, and ran across the solar. She made it halfway down the corridor before her father’s boots on the landing announced she was seen.

She whimpered, turned.

“Ah, Sebille,” he said as he closed the distance between them. Then she was in his arms, her face pressed to his shoulder. “Why did you do it?”

“Sh-she looked at me as if…” A sob escaped. “…she hated me. And she does.” Then came wracking sobs she did not realize resounded around her own chamber until her father lowered her to her bed.

“Cry into the pillow,” he said softly and turned her face into it. “We do not wish to disturb your brother.”

Pressing her mouth into the sack of feathers, she looked up.

“I must gather your things, Sebille. I am taking you from here.”

She wanted to ask where they would go, but all her breath was spent on sobs.

When finally she went silent, head aching too much to cry further, her father enfolded her in a blanket and carried her out into a day that seemed like night with her head covered. Then she was atop his horse and cradled against his chest as they rode into the night.

* * *

Bairnwood Abbey, where her real mother had birthed her in secret nine years past.

She did not need to be told that was where she awakened. Even had she not heard the bells calling the sisters to prayer she would have known. Where else would her father have brought her? Where else would she be safe from Raisa Soames?

“Drink,” he said.

She looked into the cup he had handed her after propping her on pillows.

“Warm honey milk. Your favorite, Seb.”

She sipped, wished she could feel its warmth and taste its sweetness. But at least it wet her mouth.

He did not speak again until the cup was drained, then he set it on the stool alongside the narrow bed and scooted his chair nearer. “Did you hear it all, beloved?”

She jerked her chin.

“I did love your mother—your real one. But she was to wed another as was I. Our families needed alliances. And so we sinned.”

As still he sinned, Sebille thought and, despite Lady Raisa’s hatred of her, felt that pain of betrayal as ever she had since first becoming aware of her sire’s infidelities.

“Unless your mother…” He momentarily closed his eyes. “Unless Lady Raisa reconciles her mind and heart to the truth—and she may the longer she is parted from you—you shall remain at Bairnwood Abbey, and I will visit as often as I can. When you are a woman, I shall see you properly wed as befitting the legitimate daughter of a noble, which none can dispute now the parchment is destroyed.”

“I am frightened, Father.”

He took her hands in his. “Providing you never reveal the truth—what you saw and heard in the hall—you need not be frightened. Here you will be safe and well cared for.”

“I am frightened,” she repeated.

His smile was sorrowful. “Then I shall sit with you until you sleep again.”

She gasped. “And then?”

“I shall leave.”

“Why?”

“To alert your real mother that our beautiful secret has been discovered so she may be prepared should I fail in keeping Lady Raisa from revealing your existence to her husband. Then I must return to High Castle—to our people and your brother who shall need me more now his beloved sister is gone.”

“Lothaire,” she whispered. “I shall miss him nearly as much as you.”

“When ’tis safe, you will see him again.” He kissed her cheek, eased her down the lumpy mattress, and drew the blanket up to her chin. “Now sleep.”

She did not, knowing once she drifted away he would be gone and she might not see him for weeks…mayhap months. But he stayed as promised and, hours later, without realizing she had closed her eyes, sleep stole her father from her. Forever.