скачать книгу бесплатно
“Indeed, it is. If you are prepared for such sacrifice.”
“I am. Maybe. Hell…” He sighed, riffled his fingers through his this-way-and-that hair. “I’m working on it.” He gave his purse another squeeze. “I’m not yet ready to give up the bones.”
“Bones?”
Baldwin shrugged. “I bartered in bones as well. No longer. But I do have some excellent treasures.” He dug in the leather purse at his hip. “See here, St. Miranda’s finger bone. ’Tis an excellent charm against mud slides and natural disasters. And here!” He displayed a thin white bone before his glittering eyes. “The finger bone of St. Jude the Obscure, patron saint of Hopeless Causes—” he cast a glance Sera’s way “—which could certainly be put to use in our endeavors.”
Sera shook her head.
“Well, St. Eustache’s toe bone really does work!” Baldwin insisted. “I rubbed it both nights you rode into battle.”
“I see,” she said. “And so I suppose they do work, for I am yet all of one piece.”
Baldwin gave an exacting nod.
Sera reneged her challenge with a deftly concealed smirk behind her hand. The man needed some faith to cling to. And until he was ready to accept his own courage—for he did possess courage—he would need the false reassurance the bones offered him.
“And what of you?”
Sera lifted her chin at Dominique’s query. No mistaking he had addressed her.
“You lost your family. A tragedy. Was there also…a husband?”
The smirk grew wider, and Sera had to dip her head to keep San Juste from seeing the mirth she knew glittered in her eyes. The mercenary’s question came across as more personal than the man might like it to sound. Did he have an interest in her beyond his mission? She who slaughtered men, and stomped about in armor, and was more in resemblance to a man than a woman with long beautiful hair and a delicate step beneath flowing skirts?
Her heart warmed to think such. She could not fight the damsel’s desire for love. Much as she had chosen to deny her tattered heart that emotion, she knew it was needed.
But it was not required for healing. Only avenging her family could provide that.
“I was to be married on the first day of the New Year.” She regarded Dominique for his reaction. A raised brow. The warmth in his eyes contrasted acutely with his sharp features; she wasn’t sure whether to trust this man or slit his throat.
She raked her fingers through her spiked coif and scratched. With a splay of her hand she said, “Despite outer appearances, I am marriageable. My father had land on the coast he wished me to have, so he found a husband. Someone who would not interfere with my desire to control the holdings.”
“In other words,” Dominique figured, “a man malleable to your desires?”
“In a sense. I am not a cruel person, San Juste. Nor was my father. It was simply the only way I could own land. Henri agreed.”
“Your husband?”
“Henri of Lisieux. He hadn’t any land to inherit after a brush fire, courtesy of Mastema de Morte, razed his father’s holdings. Lisieux was an interesting man…”
“Sera! You’d best run a comb through your hair and tidy up. Father has already declared the festivities begin.”
Sera stood up from brushing under Gryphon’s belly and pushed a long strand of hair from her eyelashes. Antoine slapped Gryphon’s flank, then chucked his sister under the chin, pointing out the smudge of dirt there.
Since when had he been overconcerned with her appearance?
Ah. She found the answer in her brother’s bright-eyed smirk. “He is here?”
“Father outdid himself with this one. Truly, you must see the man to believe it.”
“That hideous to look upon?” Sera handed Antoine the brush and jerked her rucked-up sleeves to her wrists. The red damask kirtle was clean, though hay clung to the hem, and certainly the odor of stable would cling for the day.
“No, no, Father would not be so cruel to his only daughter.” He slid an arm around her shoulder. “I still find it troubling that you allowed Father to choose your husband for you.”
“Fathers choose their daughters’ husbands every day, Antoine. Why should that disturb you so?”
“You are not like most women, Seraphim. Do you not desire…well, love?”
She shrugged, shooed away a metallic green hover fly from near her brother’s face. “What woman does not?”
“There is still time to make your own choice. Do you not care for any of Father’s knights?”
“Ha! They are adept idiots, the lot of them.”
“I will remind you that I am a knight, dear sister.”
“You are not stupid, Antoine. The knights that practice in the lists are adept at but one thing, and that is being men. Boisterous, unclean, single-minded, sword-swinging, idiot men. They reign on the battlefield, and I know they choose to reign in the bed chamber, as well. I cannot live with a man who will seek to reign over me, Antoine, you know that.”
“Indeed, I do understand. So you must go then, look upon the man Father has chosen. But be cautious you don’t frighten the mouse away with your overwhelming Amazon presence.”
Sera left Gryphon to Antoine’s care and strode out into the courtyard, destined for the great hall, where she felt sure to find amidst revelry and celebration her future husband.
So Father had done as she had requested. Just a proxy for her holdings; she and Father had agreed. Not a man who had designs on her future, let alone his own future. Someone compliant, simple, and agreeable. Though not meek. She did not wish a milksop to have to protect should her holdings ever be challenged. He must command a sword as well as a gentle tongue.
She would be no man’s chattel.
Offering a good day to the laundress who hung wet sheets to dry on the line, Sera marched inside the castle and followed the gay melody of lutes and harp-strings to the rush-strewn keep. Baldwin Ortolano, the abbe’s newest postulant, bowed and offered a “Good day, my lady.”
A gray-bellied dove swooped down from the rafters, flittering a breeze across Sera’s face. At the far end of the great hall Father and Mother were seated upon the dais. ’Twas a rare occasion that saw Mother out of her solar. She held her simply coiffed head regally, though her curled fingers were clutched tight to her stomach.
Mother’s lady-in-waiting stood with a hand cupped over her mouth. The object of her stifled glee stood on the floor before the dais, a maroon velvet liricap spilling from his head onto narrow shoulders. His doublet, belted in gold about his waist, did not so much hang from his shoulders, as drip. Two long sticks for legs were capped off by long pointed leather shoes. Not so much comical, as pitiful.
Had this man ever touched sharpened steel in defense?
Sera halted but three strides before the man. Behind her, surprising winter sun beamed through the windows set high upon the wall, lighting her figure in worship. She had planned her position thusly.
Placing arms akimbo, and raising her chin assertively, Sera spoke with a certain discernment, “My lord Henri, I presume?”
The man’s jaw dropped. He pointed a long finger then, thinking better, dropped the hand to his side. He stuttered on the first syllable, then finally spat out, “My—my lady Seraphim?”
“I told you she was a fine piece of woman,” Marcil d’Ange bellowed from his throne. “Wine! We celebrate from this moment until the stroke of midnight, when the New Year comes marching in. Let the First Foot bring blessings for us all!”
A lute player plucked an arpeggio of notes and the flute joined in. Serving maids rushed in with pitchers of wine and silver goblets, and the merriment of the hall resumed. But Sera remained, hands on hips, a smile curving her lips, as she studied Henri’s nervous gaze. Gold eyes rimmed with thick blond lashes dodged here and there. He dared not look upon any one part of her for too long, yet his gaze could not help but stride over her face, shoulders, and body.
He surely thought, What the hell have I gotten myself into?
“I do not bite,” Sera said, and offered her hand.
Henri stepped forward, bowed to one bony knee, and kissed the back of her hand. A sweet gesture. One that startled Sera. Amidst the stir of music and dance and drink, this man had just promised something to her. His faith, his trust, his acceptance. Such a simple victory. But hardly a triumph over one so…malleable.
“Forgive me if I stare, my lady.” Henri’s voice no longer stuttered, but he had to shout to be heard above the din of revelry. “You are quite remarkable.”
“My father claims the d’Anges come from hearty Amazonian stock.”
“No doubt. Er, but it is your beauty I remark upon.” He hastily removed his cap, exposing stick-straight blond hair cut in a fashionable circle that rimmed just above each ear. “I feel quite a shrew next to your bright shining star. I hope I can be everything you expect in a husband.”
She smiled at his humble confession. “You already are, Henri.”
Her father had chosen well.
Sera, deciding to walk alongside Henri, allowed him to take the first step up to the dais and lead her to the seat next to her father. For the evening she allowed the romance of marriage and gaining a man to claim her land to overtake reality. When it neared the midnight hour she was drunk, tired, and quite pleased with the circumstances of her life.
“If you’ll excuse me, my lord Henri,” she whispered in his ear. “I must retire.”
“You’ll not stay and ring in the New Year?”
“I was up before dawn, and have been busy in the stables and the garden and the larder all the day. The festivities have brought me to the peak of exhaustion. I wish to sleep, repair for the new day, which will find me a blushing bride at your side.”
Henri afforded an embarrassed smile. Sera couldn’t be sure if it was that, or perhaps excessive drink that colored his cheeks. Sweet man. He would be easy enough to ignore. Or perhaps, grow to love.
She pressed a palm to his cheek. “Good eve, Henri. May the First Foot bring happiness to our lives.”
“The First Foot?” Dominique asked. A blaze of sparks burst skyward at the poke of his stick. Somewhere above the encampment an owl hooted.
“The first man who crosses the threshold after the midnight hour,” Baldwin explained, his gaze fixed to the flickering flames, “holds the futures of all the family members within.”
“It is said a man with dark hair and a dark complexion is most favorable,” Sera offered, as blandly as the squire had. “He did have dark hair.”
Dominique looked to Baldwin for explanation. The squire muttered the name, “De Morte.”
“Did not the wardcorne announce his arrival from the battlements?” Dominique wondered.
“I found him with an arrow to the brain,” Baldwin said. “Lucifer’s entire army appeared as if bats rising up from hell. There were so many of them…”
A chill silence held the threesome. Had the flames voice they would have cackled wicked taunts at Sera’s tale.
Had her family been punished for the sanguine choosing of Henri de Lisieux as her proxy? No. Maybe? No. Father had been to arms against Lucifer de Morte for weeks. Lucifer demanded payment for the surplus wheat d’Ange lands had produced over the past three years. The new methods of agriculture her father had been testing had proven fruitful beyond imagination. Father had given the surplus to the needy villagers.
She could still hear the deafening roar of her father’s voice as he’d set Lucifer’s messenger to right. “You tell de Morte I’ll see him in hell before I bow to an English king. And the surplus has been given away!”
“Ah! But what of you, San Juste?” Sera chased away the haunting echoes by averting attention from herself. “Have you family? Tell us about them and lift this sudden darkness that has fallen over our heads.”
“My family.” Dominique stirred a branch in the snow at his feet, designing a circle. “My parents are both dead. ’Twas the plague brought over by the English a few years back.”
“I’m sorry.” She remembered that horrible summer. The plague had reduced the numbers in France by a quarter. Elizabeth, the young girl who had tended the d’Ange sheep, had been stricken. She had suffered two weeks of agony before finally surrendering to death. “Have you a wife? Children?”
“Neither a wife nor child.”
“That you know of,” Sera said with a hint of mirth. Anything to lift the spirits of this dismal trio.
Dominique rose. His expression showed no clue that he’d caught the mirthful mood. “I have no children, my lady. And believe me, I would have a care to know if I did.”
“Honorable words, uttered by many a man,” she said lightly.
“I know women believe men lust after any wench who should cross their paths, but that is not the case with me. My lady—” he gazed down upon her with fire-glinting eyes “—when I love, I love deeply. And I do not take the act of carnal relations lightly. Yes, there may be occasion when a wench will serve, but she will be treated with respect and dignity, as one should only expect. Unlike some people I have come to know, who bully others about with commands and choose the most amiable of matches to lord over in their marital bliss.”
He then turned and marched off into the forest, destination unknown. His exit left the encampment a cold hollow shivering amongst the cage of winter-raped trees.
Snapping out of the icy hold of Dominique’s words, Sera looked to Baldwin, who nodded effusively in response to her unspoken question. “He was speaking directly to you.”
“Hmph. I had no intention of lording over Lisieux.” She toed a stray piece of bark into the fire. “Why do you always side with San Juste?”
He shrugged. “He is different from most. Not your normal boisterous, demanding male.”
She lifted a brow at Baldwin’s stunning insight.
“And he has an eye for you.”
“Ridiculous.”
“As you wish,” came Baldwin’s reply, smothered by the wrap of his cape as he settled himself back into a cocoon. “He is good for the both of us, Sera. I pray you grant him the chance to prove it.”
“I have denied him nothing,” she said, and allowed her body to fall back against the elm trunk. A heavy sigh spumed a thick puff of frost before her face.
When I love, I love deeply. I do not take the act of carnal relations lightly.
“Indeed,” Sera whispered. “What fortune a woman should reap, to be loved by Dominique San Juste.”
SIX
So it had arrived. Dawn.
Dominique stood alone at the edge of the forest, his face turned to absorb the amber rays of sun as they widened and stretched the horizon in a dance of majesty. An incredible sight to behold. One he’d not missed for as long as he could recall.
Always the rising sun called to him. Much the way the moon beckoned he worship her luminescent glow.
But the sun’s lure was not a favorable calling. For with the dawn came the darkness. At this time of day the evil thoughts, that dark roil of something else, burned deep within Dominique’s being.
They did not want you. You are evil, not right!
Seraphim’s voice wavered in the depths of his mind, blending with the other dark whispers. Faeries are evil, malicious creatures…
Curse them all!
He clenched his fists as tight as his jaw, then stretched out his fingers in alternate moves. Like a beast preparing for the lunge, working its talons in anticipation of the kill.
“What is this?” he asked now in a low hiss. As he would always ask.
