The Penwyth Curse by Catherine Coulter Read Free Book Online

representative from our king.”
    From behind the old man came a girl’s voice, not high and fluttery but sharp, filled with suspicion. “A bishop, Grandfather? He expects us to believe that the king sent us a churchman?”
    Was this the girl who possibly had no bosom and no rabbit’s teeth and a nice chin? And beautiful red hair?
    â€œYou have misreckoned my name,” he said mildly.
    She stepped from behind her grandfather, this girl he was to wed, this girl who would be his damned wife until he shucked off his mortal coil. She wasn’t smiling, so he couldn’t tell about her teeth. It was a good chin, raised too high at the moment, and stubborn. There was distrust seamed into what was possibly a nice mouth, but distrust,in this case doubtless laden with fear, hid all sorts of things.
    â€œYou say your name is the Bishop of Lythe. You are obviously a churchman. Why has the king sent us a churchman? Does the king wish you to exhort Grandfather, to tell him he will go to hell if he continues to insist that I, his granddaughter, a female, and thus of no value at all in the Church’s eyes, not be made his heir?”
    â€œIf your reasoning is as tortuous as those words you just spoke to me, then mayhap I should despair at your lack of wits,” Bishop said, knowing he’d insulted her just to see what she would say.
    Actually, she looked eager to shove her grandfather aside and leap on him.
    After a moment of dead silence, he said, seeing her fists clench, “No. That isn’t why I’m here at all.”
    Lord Vellan said, even as he took his granddaughter’s hand and lightly squeezed it, keeping her in place, “This is my granddaughter, and heir, Lady Merryn de Gay. If you are not a churchman here to inform me as my granddaughter just said, then why do you come to Land’s End in the midst of a drought when everything is slowly dying around me?”
    â€œThe king sent me to expunge the Penwyth curse, my lord. I am not a man of the Church. I am a man of profound knowledge, a man of science. I am considered by many to be a wizard, gifted in the understanding of otherworldly phenomena.
    â€œI have heard that this curse has smitten four men to their death. It is doubtless a powerful curse, but I will get rid of it.” Bishop smiled; he’d made all his claims without hesitation, looking Lord Vellan straight in the eye.
    Lord Vellan blinked, and Bishop thought that was probably good. The old man then pushed his heavy silver hair back from his face and said hardly above a whisper, “A wizard, you say?”
    â€œAye, I say that.”
    â€œI have never before met a man who is said to be awizard. Well, then, about the curse. It has been good to us, that curse, for the four men who forced my granddaughter to wed them—all were villains, every single one of them. And now you’re telling me that the king wants you to rid Penwyth of its curse?”
    â€œAye, that’s it.”
    â€œBut don’t you understand? We want the curse,” Merryn said, stepping forward again, chin up, shoulders back, ready to slit his throat if given the opportunity, his men’s as well. “The curse has saved us four times.” She waved four fingers in his face. “The curse has saved me.”
    â€œMadam,” Bishop said in a voice as stern as his father’s, “you have buried four husbands. You will bury no more. The king forbids it.”
    â€œIf it is the king’s wish, then so be it. We will not bury another one. Aye, we’ll let their miserable bodies rot in the fields. As for my four husbands, one of them was so repellent he didn’t have a single tooth in his mouth and I doubt he was much older than my father, who had all his teeth when he died, at least all of the important ones. Listen to me, sir. They were bad, all of them. I am very glad they are dead.”
    â€œWhich one didn’t have a single tooth in his