Cursed by Fire by Jacquelyn Frank

afraid of your upcoming nuptials and are beginning to make things up in your mind. Grannish is as polite and even tempered a man as I know.”
    “Father, please! I am not mistaking anything! Look … look at my hands where they were scraped upon the floor from when he pushed me down!”
    Her father barely glanced at her hands, but he frowned and she took it as encouragement. “In a few hours’ time the bruises on my arms will also be visible. Please, Father, do not make me marry him!”
    “Daughter,” he said grimly, looking her in the eye, “I trust Grannish with my life and yours. With the lives of all in this kingdom. He has served us very well and deserves to be grand. And you should know … there have been no other suitors, nor are there likely to be any. I love you and therefore find you beautiful, but this”—he reached up and stroked a thumb over the ridged scar on her face—“has kept any other decent man away. I’m sorry to have to be truthful to you. No one else has asked for you.”
    “I don’t care,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I will serve as granda alone, and when I die Drakin will become grand and his children his heirs.”
    “Your youngest brother is sickly and will not live beyond his maturing years,” her father said grimly. “I have come to face that. If I want my dynasty to continue, I need you to bear children. And before you say it, you know that any child born outside the marriage bed would be constantly called into question.”
    “Why?” she demanded to know. “It is my body that has our bloodline within it and a child will be born of that body, married or not! In fact, it is more possible to assure a bloodline from a woman than it is from a man! A woman grows the baby of her blood, expels it from her womb, but no one can ever know who the father truly is, marriage or no! Why, it is said that Lord Harkness has fathered none of his children, that all were gotten by the affairs of his wife! And yet they will inherit his titles and his lands.” She scoffed. “It’s foolish and ridiculous.”
    “Be that as it may, if you want a respectful life, you will marry and bear your children legitimately. If you do not like Grannish … well, you must find a way to like him. He does you a great honor by taking you into his arms and his house. Try to remember that.”
    “More like it is I who do him the honor,” she said acidly. “He wants nothing more than to be grand.”
    “Well, who wouldn’t?” her father asked with a low chuckle. “Everyone wishes to be grand. You cannot hold that against him. Now, give me a hug and a smile. I will talk with Grannish and we will clear the matter up between us.”
    “No!” she cried, in a sudden panic.
    “Well, then what do you want me to do?” he asked, clearly exasperated.
    “I … I just don’t want to marry him,” she said quietly. Dejectedly.
    “I’ll speak with Grannish and have him come to you in my presence and reassure you. Now off with you. Go and do those things you women always do to pass the time. I’ll hear no more about this.”
    And he had sent her away.
    He had been true to his word, calling her into the room with himself and Grannish, and Grannish had smiled and simpered, had said all the right reassuring things, but all the while she had looked in his eyes and she had seen the rage boiling just beneath the surface. So she had meekly accepted his words in front of her father.
    And she had feared.
    Within hours she had been stricken with sickness, her stomach in flux, with painful cramps, nausea, and vomiting. She had been thoroughly sick, sweating violently one moment, then chilled the next. Was it a coincidence, or was it Grannish’s retribution? She was convinced it was the latter. She had been sick for three days and it had taken seven more before she had been up to her usual health. She had been poisoned. She was sure of it. And suddenly she saw her brother’s illnesses in a whole new light. What if