“You would find two trustworthy couriers and pay them to take my letters to Mallin and to Thornbeck?”
“I cannot make any promises. A courier with a dependable horse who is available for hire is not that easy to find.”
“But you will try to find two, one for each letter? I would be so grateful, and I would pay you back whatever money you give them, once I—once my letters find their way to their destinations and I receive . . . what I’m expecting.”
He could not look her in the eye as he grunted, then nodded.
He spent most of the rest of the day finishing his drawing of her face. Later, when he showed it to her, she gasped.
“You are very talented at drawing.”
“Thank you.”
She was still studying the drawing, but he took it away from her and tucked it into his bag, afraid she might ask to keep it.
As he had been sketching her, his mind was busy planning how to get back into the castle and find his portrait. He prayed it had not been destroyed. Fury rose inside him for the thousandth time at what his uncle had done to him. Steffan had been forced to kill two men because of his uncle. Locked out of his own home, he felt helpless, but when he finally captured his uncle, then he would know what helplessness felt like.
When his grandmother had come to live at Wolfberg Castle, Steffan was a fatherless, motherless heir. If his grandmother had not had some powerful friends, his uncle would have forced her from Wolfberg and become Steffan’s guardian himself. So when Oma died, Hazen wasted no time moving in and trying to influence Steffan.
Steffan had been grieving his grandmother—and his parents’ deaths had come back to haunt him—and he had not been thinking prudently. If he had been, he might have been able to discern his uncle’s evil intentions.
Magdalen spent most of the rest of the day writing her letters. She must feel as angry and helpless as he did, but she still managed to smile and speak with kindness. He couldn’t help but admire her. He also felt guilty for not admitting his own identity—and the fact that he knew hers.
“I finished my letters,” Lady Magdalen said. “I have no way to seal them, so folding them is the best I can do.”
He took the letters from her, his fingers accidentally brushing hers. She had written Baroness Helena of Mallin, Mallin Park House on the outside of one letter and Lady Thornbeck, Thornbeck Castle on the other.
Lady Magdalen and the woman who ended up marrying the Margrave of Thornbeck had been inseparable at the ball and party at Thornbeck Castle. Of course Lady Magdalen would ask them for help. But Steffan needed to find that portrait. If his uncle were to destroy all proof of Steffan’s identity, then, rather than ensuring his salvation, the margrave could side with his uncle and cousin, which would bring about Steffan’s ruin.
Chapter Eleven
The day of the big wedding had finally come. Magdalen’s heart felt heavy even as energy flowed through her to do something.
She led her geese toward the little spring pool in the trees. She wanted to get them watered and then take them to the largest pasture where they could graze while she sneaked off to the wedding.
She simply had to see who Agnes was marrying today. If the wedding was like most, she’d be able to watch them walk from the castle to the cathedral in town. Hopefully she’d be able to get a look at the “duke” and see once and for all if he was the man she had met two years ago.
But truly, did it matter if he was the man she met? She hardly knew that man, and she had come to Wolfberg to marry a duke. Her mother expected her to marry a duke. The people of Mallin expected her to marry a duke to provide some kind of work for them. Her sisters expected her to marry a duke so they would be able to make better matches. But now someone else was marrying her duke.
She couldn’t stop the wedding. If she so much as showed her face there, Agnes’s father would kill her.
She could not let her mind go to hopeless places. She had to think wisely, and she couldn’t do that if her mind was full of gloom.
Would the geese be all right if she left them here? Surely no wild animals hunted geese on the castle mount. Hungry animals or not, she had to go and at least try to find out who was wedding Agnes.
She threw her long herding stick on the ground and dashed up the hill.
She ran all the way to the front of the castle. Her breath was coming in great gulps and gasps, but no one was there. Had they not left the castle yet? Or had they already made their way down the castle mount to the town below? Since no one was around, she guessed they had already gone.
She rushed through the front gate and started down the hill. She was less than halfway down when she saw a great crowd of people just as they reached the bottom and started along the main street toward the cathedral. Several young women and children were skipping and dancing and waving brightly colored scarves and ribbons on sticks. It was a typical wedding-day procession to the church.
Her heart in her throat, Magdalen ran down the hill. Would she reach them before the vows were spoken?
She hurried along the street to join the rest of the town as they gathered in front of the church steps, where the priest would lead them in their wedding vows.
Magdalen caught a side view of Agnes’s face. She was grinning, her usual smirk. Magdalen maneuvered her way to the other side of the crowd. But even before she saw the groom’s face, she knew he was the man she had seen in the Great Hall with Agnes.
When she got far enough to see him from the side, his face shining in the bright, late-morning sunlight, she noted his countenance. The Duke of Wolfberg would never have such a lax, timid look on his face. This man might have similar features to the man she danced with at Thornbeck, but he did not have the same expressions. He almost looked afraid.
“As well he should, since he’s marrying Agnes,” she muttered under her breath. But was this man the duke?
The priest asked if anyone knew a reason why these two should not be wed. Magdalen could speak up. She could shout that these two people were not who they said they were. She could accuse Agnes of taking her place as Lady Magdalen of Mallin. But who would believe her?
Just then Erlich turned in her direction as he stood near the front of the crowd. If Agnes’s father were to see her . . .
She backed away, keeping her head down, slipping through the crowd again and heading back toward the castle mount.
She trudged up the hill. Climbing up was much harder than going down. By the time she made it to the little trail where she and the geese walked every morning and every evening to and from their little shed, her legs were burning. Her knees were weak, and her hands were shaking.
She had written a letter to Avelina at Thornbeck Castle. Steffan had promised to find couriers to take her letters to Mallin and Thornbeck, but he had admitted the day before that he had not yet found any couriers.
What hope did she possibly have unless this shepherd was able to hire those couriers?
She had been summoned here expecting to marry a duke, a duke with kind eyes and a friendly smile, and she had been stripped of her belongings and her identity and forced to tend to a gaggle of geese in exchange for bad food and a tiny bed in the servants’ barracks. No one knew who she was, and no one who cared about her had any idea that she had been forced to change places with a vindictive maidservant.
She walked down the little trail and finally came to the large meadow where she had left the geese. But . . . they were nowhere to be seen.
Magdalen found her stick where she had thrown it. Where had the geese gone? Had a bear or a pack of wolves killed them all and dragged them away? What would Frau Clara do to her for losing all the geese?
She should go look for them, but which way should she go? Her legs were shaking so much, the thought of running all over the side of this giant hill, seeing Agnes looking so smug, marrying the man who might very well be her intended husband . . .
Tears welled up and she sat in the grass. She dropped her stick, then she put her fac
e in her hands and sobbed.
Crying was a foolish thing to do. It would only make her feel more tired. She wiped her eyes, but the tears just kept coming. She dabbed at her face and nose with the cloth she now carried everywhere with her in the small bag that hung at her belt.
“God, why?” she whispered into her cloth. “Why did You send me here only to snatch away everything I’ve ever known? Everything I’ve ever counted on is gone.” She let out another sob and pressed the cloth to her eyes.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to go back home. What will Mother say? She always criticizes me and speaks to me as if I’m nobody, then lectures me on demanding respect. I told Avelina she should demand respect, but I have always been too afraid of my mother’s cruel tongue to stand up to her. I thought I could get married and I wouldn’t feel crushed, the way I do when Mother says her cruel things to me. And now . . . my chance for marriage to someone I could care for is gone. I’ll have to go back to my mother.” Another sob shook her body, and she bent forward and gave in to it.
A sound of sheep bleating made her lift her head. Steffan was hurrying toward her.
Her sobs shuddered to a halt. She wiped her eyes and nose with the cloth, keeping her face averted from Steffan. She was too embarrassed to blow her nose, so she just kept wiping.
“Magdalen.” Steffan knelt beside her, leaning toward her. “Are you well?”
How humiliating to have this shepherd see her tears! She could almost hear her mother say, “For shame! Behaving the same as a common peasant.”
She jumped to her feet, trying to hide the cloth in the folds of her skirt. She lifted her head and shoulders to regain her dignity. “I am very well, but I’d rather you did not say my name where anyone might hear. You may call me Maggie as everyone else does.” She sniffed before she could stop herself. “My name is something I only tell people to whom . . .” She gazed up into his eyes for the first time. A look of concern shone in his brown eyes.
“Why were you crying?”
“It is not important.” She broke her gaze away from his intense brown eyes and stared down at the cloth still clutched in her hand.
“If it made you cry, it must be important.”
Her heart fluttered strangely. Even though she had been rather rude to him, he still spoke with kindness to her.
“I didn’t know what had happened to you,” he said. “I took the geese with me when I didn’t see you. Believe me, I did not want to.” He raised his brows. “But I hope you were not crying because you thought you lost the geese.” He stepped aside, revealing the entire gaggle of geese waddling behind him in the middle of the flock of sheep.
“Oh, thank you.” Magdalen covered her heart with her hand at seeing the big gray birds. “I cannot believe you took care of the geese. I know how much you hate them.” Her bottom lip trembled, and she bit it to keep it still.
“Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to cause you so much distress.”
“Oh, I wasn’t . . . wasn’t crying about the geese.” He had such beautiful eyes.
“Why were you crying, then?”
He seemed pleased as he leaned down from his great height.
“I was crying because I . . . I wished to marry someone, and he . . . I think he married someone else.”
“Did this man know you wanted to marry him?”
“Why, yes. He asked for my hand, and my mother granted him permission to marry me.”
“You were in love with this man, then?”
“Oh . . . I don’t think I knew him well enough to be in love with him.”
“Then why did you want to marry him?” He seemed to be searching her face.
“I enjoyed talking to him. He seemed very kind and friendly. Except that . . . I’m not even sure if I ever met him.” She waved her hand and shook her head. “I know that makes no sense.”
Steffan let loose a heavy sigh. “Won’t you please come and sit down? I have something to tell you.”
“Let me go round up these geese that are wandering off.”
They both herded their respective animals in closer, then sat on a felled tree at the edge of the meadow.
Magdalen waited for Steffan to speak. His face was a bit crestfallen as he seemed to be staring at the half ring of mushrooms on the ground in front of them. He sighed again.
“What is it?” An uneasy feeling crept through her limbs.
“I have a confession to make. I know who you are. And”—he suddenly sat up straighter and looked her in the eye—“I am a little insulted that you don’t know who I am.”
“What?” Her breath hitched. “Do you mean . . . ?”
“You are Lady Magdalen, daughter of the Baroness of Mallin, and I am the Duke of Wolfberg—Steffan is my given name. I met you in Thornbeck almost two years ago. How do you not remember me?”
“Oh, I am so glad!” She laughed and nearly threw her arms around him but controlled herself. “I am so glad it is you, so glad to finally find someone who knows who I am. But why are you a shepherd? Please explain to me what is happening here.”
Was this the man she would marry? Her stomach fluttered again. He was handsome, and he possessed an appealingly confident way of walking and talking.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said. “Why is a baron’s daughter herding geese?”
“No, I asked you first. Please.”
“I suppose you saw who was getting married at the cathedral, and it was not you and me. I can only tell you who the groom was, because I do not know the bride. The groom is none other than my cousin Alexander van Verden.”
“But how can anyone think he is you? He looks somewhat similar, but it is still easy to tell the difference.”
“I thank you for those words, my lady.” He gave her a slight bow. “It seems while I was away at the university in Prague trying to learn things that might help my people to prosper, my uncle, Lord Hazen, got rid of the house servants who would be most likely to recognize me and replaced them with people from Arnsbaden who either didn’t know Alexander or were loyal to them. Then he brought his son in and began saying he was the Duke of Wolfberg.”
“Oh my.” Magdalen shook her head.
“He sent some men to kill me on the way home.”
“Oh!” She covered her mouth. Poor Steffan! To be so betrayed by his own family!
“But with God’s help, I managed to defeat them. I grew a beard to disguise myself and got hired as a shepherd. I plan to sneak into the castle and find proof that I am the Duke of Wolfberg.”
“That’s even worse than what happened to me.” But at least the real duke didn’t marry Agnes!
“And what did happen to you?”
She felt herself start to blush as she said, “I was on my way here to Wolfberg to marry you.” She paused a moment, but he said nothing, and her face burned. “On the last day of our journey, my maidservant and her father, who had accompanied us, forced me to change places with her. They took my clothes and all my things and gave me hers, and when we arrived in Wolfberg, everyone at the castle simply believed she was Lady Magdalen. I could not have fought back, even if I had a weapon, because they threatened to kill poor Lenhart if I told anyone who I was. And now he and I are here, working as servants.”
He did still plan to marry her, didn’t he? Perhaps he was feeling as shy as she was, thinking that they would be married soon, as soon as they were able to get their places back from their usurpers.
“I’m sorry I did not recognize you,” she said. “The first time I saw you, and many times after that, I thought you looked like the Duke of Wolfberg, but I wasn’t sure. After all, you were a servant.”
“I do not blame you.” But he kept his head down, as if staring down at his clenched fists.
A coldness settled in her middle at his awkward silence. Then a thought struck her. “You did not send me the letter asking me to marry you, did you?” She suddenly went numb all over.
“No,” he said quietly.
??
?Then who sent it?”
“My uncle. And I don’t know why.”
Magdalen’s cheeks burned even hotter, and she felt as if he had punched her with one of his clenched fists.
Chapter Twelve
Magdalen had imagined that Steffan often thought about her after the dance at Thornbeck. She had thought the duke had fallen at least a little in love with her, that he wanted her. She had been pleased to marry him, to leave her home for his.
She felt sick, her stomach rising into her throat. He must think her a lack-wit.
Meanwhile, he said nothing. What could he say? He did not want to marry her, had never intended to marry her. Truly, she should not feel angry at him. It was all his uncle’s fault and he had nothing to do with it, but in spite of this, she suddenly hated his calm demeanor and silence.
“How daft you must think me.” The words slipped out before she could halt them. She turned away as her lips trembled with impending tears. Stop! How she hated herself for those tears, for trembling lips!
“I don’t think you’re daft,” he said, a groan in his voice.
And she hated his groan! He did think she was daft. And pitiable. If only she could disappear. But she couldn’t run away. She had to stay with the geese.
“I’m so sorry, Lady Magdalen.” A hand touched her shoulder.
“Don’t.” She should pull away from him, refuse his pity. But his hand was warm and, unfortunately, she wanted his comfort. “It isn’t your fault anyway. I suppose your uncle meant for me to marry his son.”
Her words were steady, thankfully, but they made the tears spill from her eyes down her cheeks. At least he couldn’t see them. She had her back to him.
“And now he’s gone and married your treacherous maidservant. Serves him right.”
Bitterness permeated his voice. He’d already forgotten about her. Good. Magdalen hoped she could get these tears under control before he realized she was crying.