Chapter 4

Johanna walked around the ruins of the castle, feeling his energy all around her. Yet when she looked all around her, she couldn't see him anywhere. After a long and tedious search, she realized that he was no longer on the site of the ruins. But he'd left his blanket at the base of her statue, so he must have been planning on coming back. She sighed and sat down upon the blanket and waited for him to return.

*
Nick walked back towards the ruins in a daze. He had gone to the little public library that the village ran and had looked up everything he could about Johanna de Galtres and Ariella MacKendrick and her two relatives. Apparently, Geoffrey de Galtres had not been Johanna's real father, but a man named Daniel de Galienne.

He had died after giving his wife Gwennelyn a son and two daughters, Roland, Julianna and Johanna. Johanna had never been inclined to marry, and Geoffrey had been bitter from the start when Gwennelyn had entered the marriage with already three children born to her. Two were teenagers and beyond his control. But the youngest who had been only five years old and had been brought to his castle with her mother.

Richard had been born a year later, followed by Hugh and Warren. It had been written that although Gwennelyn had done her duty and given Geoffrey three sons, she had constantly pined for her first husband and Roland and Julianna. She had been horrified when Geoffrey had started inflicting harm upon her youngest daughter and had voiced her opinion to her husband. He'd flown into a rage and broken her neck. Johanna had apparently witnessed the brutal act but had said nothing. She'd only told her aunt Abigail and her cousin Claire, who had also been known as Flora when they had come to Scotland.Then Geoffrey had started inflicting cruelty upon little Richard. Johanna's sense of fear had gone into overload and that night she took her cousin and brother away from England to Scotland, where they had taken refuge at the castle of the half brother of Scotland's King. But Geoffrey had hunted them down like a wolf and had killed them all, one by one.

Nick had then made the connection between the wolf changing into a man and the way that Geoffrey had used to hunt his relatives down from his dream. and what had been written in the book. As he reached the spot by the statue where he'd slept, he saw a girl sitting on his blanket with her head laying on her crossed arms as she slept. She loked like she was waiting for someone. For him? That could be the case.

As he neared her, he noticed that she was dressed like a girl from the middle ages and her hair was long, wavy and a flaming red-gold in color. He was immediately curious about her. Maybe the ruins were a tourist attraction and she was one of the staff members. At any rate, he wanted to lay down before he did anything else. What had the girl meant when she pleaded him to free her?



Home?