*****
Meralda couldn't deny the beautiful aromas and sights of the small garden on the southern side of Castle Auck. Tall roses, white and pink, mingled with lady's mantle and lavender to form the main garden, creating a myriad of shapes and colors that drew Meralda's eye upward and back down again. Pansies filled in the lower level, and bachelor's buttons peeked out from hiding among the taller plants like secret prizes for the cunning examiner. Even in the perpetually dismal fog of Auckney, and perhaps in some large part because of it, the garden shone brightly, speaking of birth and renewal, of springtime and life itself.
Enchanted as she was, Meralda couldn't help but wish that her escort this waning afternoon was not Lord Feringal, but her Jaka. Wouldn't she love to lake him and kiss him here amidst the flowery scents and sights, amidst the hum of happy bees?
"Priscilla tends the place, mostly," Lord Feringal remarked, walking politely a step behind Meralda as she made her way along the garden wall.
The news caught Meralda somewhat by surprise and made her rethink her first impression of the lady of Castle Auck. Anyone who could so carefully and lovingly tend a garden to this level of beauty must have some redeeming qualities. "And do you not come out here at all?" the woman asked, turning back to regard the young lord.
Feringal shrugged and smiled sheepishly, as if embarrassed to admit that he rarely ventured into the place.
"Do you not think it beautiful, then?" Meralda asked.
Lord Feringal rushed up to the woman and took her hand in his. "Surely it is not more beautiful than you," he blurted.
Bolder by far than she had been on their first meeting, Meralda pulled her hand away. "The garden," she insisted. "The flowers-all their shapes and smells. Don't you find it beautiful?"
"Of course," Lord Feringal answered immediately, obediently, Meralda realized.
"Well, look at it!" Meralda cried at him. "Don't just be staring at me. Look at the flowers, at the bounty of your sister's fine work. See how they live together? How one flower makes room for another, all bunching, but not blocking the sun?"
Lord Feringal did turn his gaze from Meralda to regard the myriad flowers, and a strange expression of revelation came over his face.
"You do see," Meralda remarked after a long, long silence. Lord Feringal continued to study the color surrounding them.
He turned back to Meralda, a look of wonder in his eyes. "I have lived here all my life," he said. "And in those years-no, decades-this garden has been here, yet never before have I seen it. It took you to show me the beauty." He came nearer to Meralda and took her hand in his, then leaned in gently and kissed her, though not urgently and demandingly as he had done their previous meeting. He was gentle and appreciative. "Thank you," he said as he pulled back from her.
Meralda managed a weak smile in reply. "Well, you should be thanking your sister," she said. "A load of work to get it this way."
"I shall," Lord Feringal replied unconvincingly.
Meralda smiled knowingly and turned her attention back to the garden, thinking again how grand it would be to walk through the place with Jaka at her side. The amorous young lord was beside her again, so close, his hands upon her, and she could not maintain the fantasy. Instead, she focused on the flowers, thinking that if she could just lose herself in their beauty, just stare at them until the sun went down, and even after, in the soft glow of the moon, she might survive this night.
To his credit, Lord Feringal allowed her a long, long while to simply stand quietly and stare. The sun disappeared and the moon came up, and though it was full in the sky, the garden lost some of its luster and enchantment except for the continuing aroma, mixing sweetly with the salty air.
"Won't you look at me all the night?" Feringal asked, gently turning her about.
"I was just thinking," Meralda replied.
"Tell me your thoughts," he eagerly prompted.
The woman shrugged. "Silly ones, only," she replied.
Lord Feringal's face brightened with a wide smile. "I'll wager you were thinking it would be grand to walk among these flowers every day," he ventured. "To come to this place whenever you desired, by sun or by moon, in winter even, to stare at the cold waters and the bergs as they build in the north?"
Meralda was wiser than to openly deny the guess or to add to it that she would only think of such things if another man, her Jaka, was beside her instead of Lord Feringal.
"Because you can have all of that," Feringal said excitedly. "You can, you know. All of it and more."
"You hardly know me," the girl exclaimed, near to panic and hardly believing what she was hearing.
"Oh, but I do, my Meralda," Feringal declared, and he fell to one knee, holding her hand in one of his and stroking it gently with the other. "I do know you, for I have looked for you all my life."
"You're speaking foolishness," Meralda muttered, but Feringal pressed on.
"I wondered if ever I would find the woman who could so steal my heart," he said, and he seemed to Meralda to be talking as much to himself as to her. "Others have been paraded before me, of course. Many merchants would desire to create a safe haven in Auckney by bartering their daughters as my wife, but none gave me pause." He rose dramatically, moving to the sea wall.
"None," he repeated. Feringal turned back, his eyes boring into hers. "Until I saw the vision of Meralda. With my heart, I know that there is no other woman in all the world I would have as a wife."
Meralda stammered over that one, stunned by the man's forwardness, by the sheer speed at which he was trying to move this courtship. Even as she stood trying to think of something to reply, he enveloped her, kissing her again and again, not gently, pressing his lips hard against hers, his hands running over her back.
"I must have you," he said, nearly pulling her off-balance.
Meralda brought her arm up between them, slamming her palm hard into Lord Feringal's face and driving him back a step. She pulled away, but he pressed in again.
"Please, Meralda!" he cried. "My blood boils within me!"
"You're saying you want me for a wife, but you're treating me like a harlot!" she cried. "No man takes a wife he's already bedded," Meralda pleaded.
Lord Feringal skidded to a stop. "But why?" asked the naive young man. "It is love, after all, and so it is right, I say. My blood boils, and my heart pounds in my chest for want of you."
Meralda looked about desperately for escape and found one from an unexpected source.
"Your pardon, my lord," came a voice from the door, and the pair turned to see Steward Temigast stepping from the castle, "I heard the cry and feared that one of you might have slipped over the rail."
"Well, you see that is not the case, so be gone with you," an exasperated Feringal replied, waving his hand dismissively, and turning back to Meralda.
Steward Temigast stared at her frightened, white face for a long while, a look of sympathy upon his own. "My lord," he ventured calmly. "If you are, indeed, serious about marrying this woman, then you must treat her like a lady. The hour grows long," he announced. "The Ganderlay family will be expecting the return of their child. I will summon the carriage."