No way out.
Except one.
Yet this time the thought of death brought no comfort to Ariane.
How can I kill Simon, whose only crime is love of his brother?
Failing that, how can I endure rape again, and then again, all the years of my life?
“My duty,” she whispered.
“Duty,” Simon repeated in a low voice. “Is that all you will be able to bring to the marriage? Is your beauty like the whore Marie’s, a lush fabric wrapped around a soul of icy calculations?”
Ariane said nothing, for she was afraid if her mouth opened, a scream of rage and betrayal would be all that came out.
“Your anticipation of our marriage overwhelms me,” Simon said sardonically. “See that I don’t have to send a man-at-arms to fetch you to the altar. For by Christ’s blue eyes, I will do just that if I must.”
Simon turned and left the room without another word.
None was needed. Ariane had no doubt that Simon would do exactly as he said. He was, in all things, a man who kept his vows.
No escape.
Save one…
Without knowing it, Ariane’s fingers closed around the harp strings. A despairing, dissonant wail was ripped from the instrument.
It was the only sound Ariane made.
The wedding would begin before the sun set and end before the moon rose. Before the moon set once more, the bride must find a way to kill.
Or die.
3
Melancholy, subtly clashing chords quivered through Ariane’s corner room. Although Stone Ring Keep seethed with hurried preparations for the coming wedding, no one disturbed Ariane until the maid Blanche belatedly arrived to see to her mistress’s needs.
A glance was all it took for Ariane to see that nothing had changed in the handmaiden’s health. The girl’s face was still too pale. Beneath a kerchief of indifferent cleanliness, Blanche’s light brown hair had no luster. Nor did her blue eyes. Obviously she felt no better today than she had since the middle of the voyage from Normandy to England.
“Good morning, Blanche. Or is it afternoon?”
There was no censure in Ariane’s voice, rather simple curiosity.
“Did you not hear the sentries crying the time?” Blanche asked.
“No.”
“Well, ’tis to be expected, what with finding yourself so soon to be married to a groom who is not the man you expected to wed,” Blanche said with a maturity far beyond her fifteen years.
Ariane shrugged. “One man is much the same as another.”
Blanche gave Ariane a startled look.
“Beg your pardon, mistress, but there is considerable difference.”
Ariane’s only answer was a series of quickly plucked notes that sounded like dissent.
“Not that I blame you for being uneasy,” Blanche said hurriedly. “There are some surpassing odd fold here. ’Tis enough to make a body start at shadows.”
“Odd?” Ariane asked absently, drawing a questioning trill from the harp strings.
“Tch, m’lady, you have been talking to your harp so long your mind has gone as numb as your fingers must be. The Learned are odd ones, don’t you think?”
Ariane blinked. Her fingers stilled for a few moments.
“I don’t think the Learned are odd,” Ariane said finally. “Lady Amber is as kind as she is lovely. Sir Erik is better educated—and more handsome—than all but a few knights I’ve known.”
“But those great hounds of his, and that devil peregrine on his arm. I say it isn’t natural.”
“’Tis as natural as breathing. All knights love hounds and hawks.”
“But—” Blanche protested, only to be cut off.
“Enough useless chatter,” Ariane said firmly. “All keeps and their folk seem strange when you haven’t lived within them very long.”
Blanche said nothing as she set about readying her mistress’s bath needs. The sight of a long ebony comb reminded Ariane of her earlier conversation with the mistress of the keep.
“Have you seen a comb set with red amber?” Ariane asked. “Lady Amber misplaced one.”
Blanche was so startled by the question that she simply stared at Ariane and gnawed on one ragged fingernail, speechless.
“Blanche? Are you going to be sick again?”
Numbly Blanche shook her head, causing a few lank tresses to escape from the kerchief that was her only headpiece.
“If you do find the comb,” Ariane said, “please tell me.”
“’Tis unlikely I will find aught before you do, lady. Sir Geoffrey said many times how like your aunt you were.”
Ariane went taut and said nothing.
“Was it true?” Blanche asked.
“What?”
“That your aunt could find a silver needle in a field of haystacks?”
“Aye.”
Blanche grinned, showing the gap where she had lost a tooth to the blacksmith’s pincers when she was twelve.
“It would be a fine gift to have, finding lost things,” Blanche said, sighing. “Lady Eleanor was always beating me for losing her silver embroidery needles.”
“I know.”
“Don’t look so sad,” Blanche said. “If Lady Amber has lost her comb, you soon will find it for her.”
“Nay.”
The flat denial made Blanche blink.
“But Geoffrey said you found a silver goblet and ewer that no one—” began the handmaiden.
“Is my bath ready?” Ariane interrupted, cutting across the girl’s words.
“Aye, lady,” Blanche said in a low voice.
The handmaiden’s unhappiness tugged at Ariane’s compassion, but Ariane had no desire to explain that she had lost her fey gift along with her maidenhead.
She also was weary of having her stomach clench every time she heard Geoffrey’s name.
“Lay out my best chemise and my scarlet dress,” Ariane said in a low voice.
Whether a wedding or a wake, the dress would do quite well.
“I dare not!” blurted the handmaiden.
“Why?” asked Ariane.
“Lady Amber instructed me that she would bring your wedding dress to you personally.”
Uneasiness rippled through Ariane.
“When did this pass?” she asked.
“Another Learned witch—er, woman—came to the keep,” Blanche said.
“When?”
“Just at dawn. Didn’t you hear the baying of those hellhounds?”
“I thought it was but a lingering of my dream.”
“Nay,” Blanche said. “’Twas a Learned woman come to the keep with a gift for you. A dress to be wed in.”
Ariane frowned and set her harp aside. “Amber said nothing to me.”
“Mayhap she couldn’t. The Learned woman was special fierce. White hair and eyes like ice.” Blanche crossed herself quickly. “It was the one they call Cassandra. ’Tis said she sees the future. There be witches here, m’lady.”
Ariane shrugged. “According to some, there were witches at my home. My aunt was one of them. So was I. Remember?”
Blanche looked confused.
“If it makes you feel better, I have met the Learned woman face-to-face,” Ariane said. “Cassandra is quite human.”
The handmaiden’s frown eased and she sighed.
“The chaplain here told me that this was a godly place no matter what the whispers,” Blanche said. “’Tis a relief to hear. I would be fearful for my ba—”
As though cut with a knife, Blanche’s words stopped.
“Do not worry, handmaid,” Ariane said calmly. “I know you are breeding. The babe will come to no harm. Simon has promised it.”
Blanche still looked alarmed.
“Would you like Simon to arrange a husband for you?” Ariane asked.
Wistfulness replaced alarm on Blanche’s face. Then she shook her head.
“No, thank you, lady.”
Black eyebrows lifted in surprise, bu
t all Ariane said was, “Do you know who the father of your baby is?”
Blanche hesitated, then nodded.
“Is he back in Normandy?”
“Nay.”
“Ah, then he must be one of my men. Is he a squire or a man-at-arms?”
Blanche shook her head.
“A knight, then,” Ariane said in a low voice. “Was he one of those who died of that savage disease?”
“It matters not,” Blanche said, clearing her throat. “No knight would marry a servant girl who has no kin, no dowry, and no particular beauty.”
Tears stood in the handmaiden’s eyes, making their light blue irises glitter with unusual clarity.
“Be at ease,” Ariane said. “At least no man pursues you because of what you can bring to him. Nor would any man take from you by strength or wile what you would keep as your own.”
Blanche looked at her mistress oddly and said nothing.
“Put away your fears,” Ariane said crisply. “You and your babe will be well cared for, and you won’t have to endure a husband in your bed if you don’t wish.”
“Oh, that.” Blanche smiled. “’Tis not such a trial. In the winter, a man is warmer than a swine and stinks not half so much. At least, most men don’t.”
Unbidden, the memory came to Ariane of Simon leaning down until his breath brushed her nape.
Shall I have Meg blend me a special soap to please your dainty nostrils?
Your scent is quite pleasant to me as it is.
An odd sensation whispered through Ariane as she realized anew just how true her words had been. Simon was as clean to her senses as the sunlight that caught and tangled in his hair, making it appear to burn.
If all I had to do as a wife was to see to Simon’s house, his accounts, and his comforts….
But that is not all a man wants from a wife. Nor is it all God requires.
“M’lady? Are you well?”
“Yes,” Ariane said faintly.
Leaning forward, Blanche peered more closely at her mistress.
“You look white as salt,” the handmaiden said. “Are you with child, too?”
Ariane made a harsh sound.
“No,” she said distinctly.
“I’m sorry, I meant no insult,” Blanche said hastily, her words stumbling. “It’s just that babes are on my mind and Sir Geoffrey said you were particularly eager to breed.”
“Sir Geoffrey was wrong.”
The lethal calm of Ariane’s voice told Blanche that she had once again stepped beyond the boundaries of her half-learned duties as a lady’s maid.
Blanche sighed and wished that all the highborn were as charming and easy of manner as Geoffrey the Fair had been. No wonder that Lady Ariane had become grim and removed after being told that she would be sent to England to wed a rude Saxon stranger, rather than remaining at home to marry Sir Geoffrey, son of a great Norman baron.
Ariane the Betrayed.
“Your things are ready, my lady,” Blanche said sympathetically. “Do you wish me to attend your bath?”
“No.”
Though the marks of Ariane’s ordeal at Geoffrey’s hands had long since faded from her body, she could not bear even the casual touch of her lady’s maid.
Particularly not when Blanche kept bringing up the name of Geoffrey the Fair.
4
A brazier sent warmth and a small bit of fragrant smoke into the third-floor room of Stone Ring Keep. The draperies around the canopied bed were drawn. A frowning Dominic le Sabre sat next to a table set with cold meat, bread, fresh fruit and ale.
His expression gave a saturnine cast to his face that made strong men uneasy. Coupled with his size, and the Glendruid ornament on his black cloak—an ancient silver pin cast in the shape of a wolf’s head with clear, uncanny crystal eyes—Dominic was a forbidding presence.
Thinking about the marriage that would take place in a few hours had done nothing to improve Dominic’s peace of mind. The bonds of love between the two brothers were far deeper than blood or custom required.
“You sent for me?” Simon said.
Dominic’s frown vanished as he looked up at the tall, lithe warrior who stood before him. Simon’s fair hair was windswept and his indigo mantle was thrown back to reveal the scarlet tunic with purple and silver embroidery that had been a gift from Erik. Beneath the elegant clothing was a body honed to battle readiness. Despite being Dominic’s right band, Simon never shirked the endless battle practice that the Glendruid Wolf decreed for his knights—and for himself.
“You are looking particularly fit,” Dominic said approvingly.
“You sent me running from the outer bailey all the way up here to determine my fitness?” retorted Simon. “Next time, run with me. It will give you a better idea of my stamina and wind.”
Dominic laughed. Too quickly, his laughter faded and his mouth once again fell into rather grim lines. He knew his brother too well to be deflected for long by Simon’s quick wit.
“What is it?” Simon asked, eyeing Dominic’s expression. “Have you news from Blackthorne? Is something amiss?”
“Blackthorne is fine. Ariane’s dowry chests still lie unopened and undisturbed in the treasure room, guarded by Thomas the Strong.”
“Then why are you so gloomy? Has Sven brought news of Norsemen or Saxon raiders nearby?”
“Nay.”
“Where is Meg? Has that handsome sorcerer Erik managed to charm her from your grasp?”
This time Dominic’s laughter was truly amused.
“Erik is as comely a knight as I’ve seen,” Dominic said, “but my wife would no more fly from me than I from her.”
Smiling, Simon conceded what he knew quite well was true. Lady Margaret’s loyalty to Dominic was as great as Simon’s.
“I am glad you found it in your heart to welcome Meg as your sister,” Dominic said. “Sit with me, brother. Eat from my plate and drink from my mug.”
Simon looked at the dainty chair opposite Dominic and grabbed a bench from along the wall instead. As he sat, he resettled his broadsword on his left hip, hilt ready to his right hand. The unconscious grace of the gesture said much about his ease with the weapon.
“Of course I accepted Meg into my heart,” Simon said, reaching for the ale jug.
“You have no love of witches, whether they do good or evil.”
Simon poured ale into the nearly empty mug, saluted Dominic silently, and drank. After a few deep swallows, he put the mug aside and looked at his brother with eyes as clear as a spring and as black as midnight.
“Meg risked her life to save yours,” Simon said. “She could be Satan’s own sister and I would love her for saving your life.”
“Simon, called the Loyal,” Dominic said softly. “There is little you wouldn’t do for me.”
“There is nothing.”
The finality in Simon’s voice didn’t reassure Dominic. Rather, it brought back his frown. He reached for the mug, lifted it, drained it, and refilled it.
“You were loyal to me before we fought the Saracen,” Dominic said after a time, “but it was a different kind of bond.”
“We are brothers.”
“No,” Dominic said, pushing the mug of ale toward Simon. “It is more than that. And less.”
The quality of Dominic’s voice caught Simon. Mug half-raised to his lips, he looked at his brother.
And found himself pinned by a glance that was as unblinking as that of the wolf’s head pin.
“It is as though you feel responsible for my torture by the sultan,” Dominic said.
“I am,” Simon said bluntly, and drank.
“Nay!” Dominic said. “It was my error that led men into ambush.”
“It was a woman’s treachery that led us to ambush,” Simon said flatly, setting the mug down with a thump. “The whore Marie bewitched Robert, and then she cuckolded him with any man who caught her fancy.”
“She wasn’t the first wife to do so, nor the last,” Dominic said. “Bu
t I couldn’t leave a Christian woman to the mercy of the Saracens, no matter that she lived among them since she was stolen as a child.”
“Nor would your knights have allowed it,” Simon said sardonically. “They were bewitched by Marie’s harem tricks.”
Dominic smiled slightly. “Aye. She is a skilled whore, and I have need of such to keep my Norman knights from seducing Saxon daughters and causing more strife.”
Leaning back in the heavy oak chair that had been brought up from the lord’s solar for the Glendruid Wolf’s comfort, Dominic fixed Simon with shrewd, quicksilver eyes.
“Sometimes I worried that Marie had bewitched you,” Dominic said after a few moments.
“She did. For a time.”
Dominic hid his surprise. He had always wondered just how deeply Simon had succumbed to Marie’s practiced lures.
“She tried to bewitch you, too,” Simon pointed out.
Dominic nodded.
“You saw through her cold game sooner than I,” Simon said.
“I am four years older than you. Marie wasn’t my first woman.”
Simon snorted. “She wasn’t my first, either.”
“The others were girls with less experience than you. Marie was…” Dominic shrugged. “Marie was trained in a seraglio for the pleasure of a corrupt despot.”
“She could have been trained by Lilith in hell and it would all be the same. Marie cannot stir me anymore.”
“Aye,” Dominic said. “I watched her try the whole journey from Jerusalem to Blackthorne Keep. You were polite, but you would handle a snake sooner than her. Why?”
Simon’s expression changed. “Did you send for me to talk about whores, lord?”
After the space of a breath Dominic accepted that he would get no more from Simon on the subject of Marie.
“Nay,” Dominic said. “I wanted to ask in private about your coming marriage.”
“Has Ariane objected?” Simon demanded sharply.
Black eyebrows shot up, but all Dominic said was, “No.”
Simon expelled a pent breath. “Excellent.”
“Is it? Lady Ariane has little taste for marriage.”
“Blackthorne can’t survive a war over a Norman heiress who was jilted by a nameless Scots warrior,” Simon said bluntly. “Ariane will be my wife before the moon sets tonight.”