Читать книгу Seraphim - Michele Hauf - Страница 10

The moon glowed high in the sky when the traveling trio decided to stop at the edge of the thick forest that bordered the winding green waters of the Seine. Sera, who had been silent since granting San Juste his desire to protect, now settled against the rough, icy bark of an elm. She spread her wool cape out around her thighs and tucked it up over her knees to fight the chill.

They’d passed the Abbaye de Royaumont a half hour earlier. Now its single spire rose up majestically in the distance, decorating its little unpopulated spot of land with quiet grace. A sanctuary from evil, open to all who sought sanctity. Save the English.

Yes, please, Sera thought now, as scrapes of flint striking stone produced sparks at her traveling mate’s direction. Grant me sanctity. I want to be free of this quest, free of the rage and anger.

But Sera knew that such freedom must be earned. ’Twas the price she must pay for being the only survivor. Her brother and father would have done the same.

Soon a roaring blaze lighted their snug encampment. Fire sprites danced up toward the unreachable moon. Gryphon, tied close by, had settled to rest and Tor, untied, wandered the edge of the forest, seeking sustenance. The squire followed Tor’s untethered steps, then looked to Dominique—who offered but a silent shrug.

The mercenary excused himself, and took off over a hard pack of snow.

He needed a few moments away from Seraphim’s hard blue gaze to collect his thoughts. Every time she looked at him she gazed straight into his eyes. Not an evasive, coy look, as most women were wont to express. The feeling that she touched his soul with an imperceptible appendage was so strong. What did she spy in his own eyes of such interest?

He also sensed she still did not completely trust him. Wise woman.

But all for naught. He had every intention of protecting Seraphim until her mission was complete. Woman or no, he would not be granted release from the burning question of his parentage until he did such.

The chill air quickly attacked his exposed cock as Dominique drew a line in the snow with steaming urine. A man should wonder if the thing might take up the freeze and fall off for the times he must whip it out just to relieve himself. He could think of far warmer places to put it. Though present company would go unconsidered. The last woman he wanted to expose his starving lust to was a sword-wielding vixen like Seraphim d’Ange. That woman could emasculate with a mere glance. Rather, with the evil eye.

Securing the leather codpiece to his soft linen undershirt with a tug of the points, Dominique then slipped his fingers over the narrow slash in the thigh of his leather braies, courtesy of the black knight. ’Twas shallow, the cut. His flesh had taken on the chill, though the wound had already healed. There was not a drop of blood on his skin or clothing—at least not of the red variety. He smoothed away the congealed iridescent liquid, rubbing it between his fingers until it became powder and glistened into the air.

The only pain he felt was that of succumbing to his opponent’s blade. A woman’s blade, for the love of the Moon! He most certainly was not accustomed to such a bold woman. She deserved to be put in her place.

No. She deserves as much respect as you wish for yourself.

Indeed, he must set aside petty male/female comparisons. Seraphim d’Ange traveled a perilous course; she deserved nothing but his support. As their path drew closer to Creil, that course would only become more dangerous.

Tugging down his jerkin and drawing his gauntlet back on his hand, Dominique then punched a fist inside his other palm to stir his blood to a faster pace. He hated the chill and was most susceptible to drafts. Especially right between the shoulder blades. Once he exposed a bit of flesh the cold crept under his skin and remained until spring. He much preferred to grow a thick bushy beard to keep in the warmth, but the damned thing would do no more than sprout a thin shadow over his chin and upper lip.

Sorry man he’d turned out to be.

“Damned faery blood,” he muttered, as he cupped his palms before his mouth and blew. His warm breath briefly touched his nose and cheeks, but disappeared all too quickly.

“Your mission is progressing nicely.”

Dominique spun around, a stealthy movement bending him at the waist and crouching him into fight position, his dagger unsheathed and flashing before his face.

“You?” He relaxed his fight stance and jabbed the dagger-tip into the snow. “Morgana’s spine, but you follow me even when I am taking a piss!”

The Oracle remained serene, an odd expression on the figure that appeared to Dominique to be a boy of perhaps nine or ten. Short spikes of palest brown hair spurted here and there, as if bed-tousled. A flat nose only made his eyes appear all the more generous. A sweet fragrance, like a fresh spring meadow, overwhelmed him always.

The wide brown gaze of innocence teased Dominique to question his beliefs every time the Oracle glimmered into form—for that is the only term Dominique could summon for the sudden appearance of the apparition—swept in on a glimmer.

But for as young as he appeared, Dominique suspected the Oracle was decades older in wisdom. And if he were really a ghost of some sort, he could have been dead for ages.

“Do you realize the black knight is a woman?” Dominique asked.

“I…did not know that until now.”

Difficult to believe, knowing what Dominique did of the Oracle.

He regarded the vision with a careful summation of his visage. Not a flinch to his smooth features, the brown eyes held a frustrating clutch on naiveté. The Oracle knew everything. He’d given Dominique the layout of Abaddon’s castle, provided him with the information that he would meet the black knight en route to Creil, had even relayed details from both battles that saw the first two de Mortes fall. Why hadn’t he informed him of this important fact?

“A woman!” Dominique jabbed the trunk of a twisted elm with his boot, not hesitant at letting the Oracle see his disappointment.

“Can you keep her safe?”

“Against Abaddon, Sammael, and Lucifer?” Dominique shrugged a fall of snow from his shoulders then lifted his chin in challenge. “Sounds like a battle already won. And not by the black knight.”

“You must believe in yourself, Dominique San Juste,” the Oracle said in his whispery adolescent timbre. “You are of the earth; Seraphim is of fire. I chose you, knowing you would be a formidable match—as well a complement—to the d’Ange woman’s fire.”

“D’Ange,” Dominique muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. “An angel riding a quest against the darkest demons in France—wait! You said you did not know she was a woman. And yet—you just said you chose me to match her fire.” He raised an accusing finger on the glimmering figment. “You lie to me to serve your own selfish needs? What is the truth of my mission? Who are you, and why did you come to me?”

“You ask far too many questions, and already know the answers.”

“And you are a double-talking nuisance.”

“Have I yet steered you wrongly?”

The Oracle had first appeared to him three years ago. Dominique had been contemplating joining the English on the raid against Rouen, where Jeanne d’Arc would finally fall. No—contemplation had been all of a moment at sight of a purse gleaming with coin. He’d avoided siding with the English for years. But the coin…oh, that bright and sparkling coin.

The Oracle had appeared, insisting he go home. His mother needed him. Dominique had arrived only to hear his father’s dying words. “I have loved you so, son.”

Son. A word wrought of pure, priceless gold to Dominique’s troubled soul. Far more valuable than any English coin could offer. Yet beneath the gild lay a bronze core.

“Tell me, do you know why she quests so?”

The Oracle shrugged. Actually shrugged, which seemed to Dominique a very odd movement from one so otherworldly. “You have not asked her?”

“The woman is not one for conversation.”

“She fears adversity.”

“I am not the enemy.”

“Make her believe it and together the two of you shall triumph. She fears the same thing you fear, releasing the anger and following her heart.”

“I have no anger,” Dominique said, his jaw tightening.

“Really? Why then this mission? Perhaps it is not necessary to provide the answer you seek?”

“I am not angry about my past—only—all right! So I am angry.” He kicked at the snow, his frustration erupting in a powder of cold crystals. “It was not fair to be abandoned. To be left to my own devices in a world so unaccepting and…. and wrong.”

“You made it your own world, did you not?”

Dominique huffed. Another kick buried the toe of his boot.

“Come, Dominique, you tread too deeply in anger over such an insignificant portion of your life.”

His parentage insignificant?

Before Dominique could protest the Oracle’s suggestion, the waif of flowing robes and wide brown eyes was gone. Gone in a glimmer, a fizzle of twinkling lights and sweet scent.

“I hate it when he does that. Why can’t I do that?”

But the Oracle’s words lingered in his mind like heavy flakes of falling snow. Falling, but never landing on the ground…such an insignificant portion of your life.

No, ’twas not insignificant to his heart. To finally put to rest the decades-old question of who his real mother and father were was no little thing. He would have the answer, one way or another.

Pounding his boot heel against the elm trunk behind him, Dominique noticed the iridescent dust still coruscated from his person. He had to cast a glamour soon or risk exposing himself to Sera and Baldwin. A secret unnecessary to reveal; his mission did not rely on either of them knowing his truth.

Of course, he did not know their truths either. So many secrets. The squire—or was he a monk? And Seraphim d’Ange, the women who hid beneath a mask of male dress and bravery.

Well…he understood the need to hide. And for that reason he would not question.

Dominique pulled his cloak snug around his shoulders and flexed the muscles in his back. He’d hidden his true identity for so long he’d become accustomed to the aching need for release that always tingled between his shoulder blades. But not on this quest. He wanted the woman and her squire to accept him as an equal, not an anomaly.

Sera heard Dominique’s footsteps crunch over the hard snow behind her. Settled in for the night, she shrugged her hood down to her shoulders, allowing the heat of the blazing fire to simmer over her face and neck.

“We thought you’d been stolen away by the fair folk,” Baldwin offered from his tight little cocoon of wool cape as the mercenary landed camp.

“He thought as much,” Sera corrected. “I do not speak of such nonsense.”

“The nonsense that a man of my skill should allow himself to be stolen away?” Dominique moved close to the fire to draw heat into his chilled bones. “Or the fair folk?”

“The damn faeries,” she muttered.

“You—” Sera marveled at the muscle that tensed in Dominique’s jaw “—consider them nonsense?”

“You know naught of what you question, San Juste.”

“Ah, I see. A nonbeliever. So you believe only in what you can see?”

“Aye, but—”

“You cannot see the wind, yet it is so powerful as to fell trees.”

She regarded him with a wry smirk. No need to explain that she did believe, or to reveal her hatred for the hideous creatures. He was most likely a believer in the whimsical and magical ways of the fair folk, could have no idea of the true evil they wrought.

Dominique nodded, the movement of his hood clacking the hematite stones against one another in a canorous ring. “I shall grant you that, for the sake of peace.”

“I shall take it without your leave. Did you scan the perimeter?”

“We will be safe here in the forest for the night.”

“Your horse wanders freely,” Baldwin commented.

“He does.” Having no intention of elaborating, Dominique moved between Sera and the squire and picked up a leafless elm branch to poke at the fire. A few jabs raised a flurry of red fire sprites over the blaze in a spiral of escape. “Have you ale or wine?”

“No supplies,” Baldwin said with a shudder.

“You should have filled your belly in Pontoise,” Sera commented. If the man craved drink he could melt down snow for all she cared. “We travel light, nothing to burden our journey.”

“Just wondering,” he said, a dismissive tone to his voice. Sera gauged that he was not a man to anger easily. Unless one tried to lie to him about their identity.

She leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, and unfocused her eyes upon the brilliant orange flames. In her peripheral view, the mercenary’s stallion did indeed roam freely. Curious. But she didn’t trouble over the reason. Instead she released a sigh and allowed her shoulders to sag. It felt good not to think. To relax before the blaze. The warmth brought a numbness that spread to her skull. This night she would not worry of what the morrow may bring.

But close, sat San Juste. Too close for the damsel to disregard.

Just one moment for my pleasure?

Very well, Sera thought, being much too tired to conjure an excuse.

From the corner of her eye, she studied the side of the mercenary’s face, as he, too, voided out on the flames. His jaw was so sharp as to be deadly. Not a single line of age creased the unnaturally smooth flesh. Though black stubble lended masculine roughness to an otherwise tender visage. Indeed, a handsome man. But she was not taken to swooning, as Baldwin liked to tease. Had Sera ever before favored a man, she had required but a look and a bend of her forefinger to bring him to her side.

That was me, the damsel cooed.

Enough then. Sera lowered her head onto her knees and closed her eyes, forcing the damsel back into the darkness. ’Twas risky to allow such thoughts.

“From where do you hail, San Juste?” Baldwin asked.

“East of Creil, but five hours on a slow horse. Deep in the Valois Wood where my father built a cottage for my mother, far away from any village.”

“Your parents await their son’s return from a successful mission?” Baldwin wondered.

“I have not been to the wood for over a year. What of you, squire? How long have you been at the d’Ange castle?”

“Let’s see…since the May Day festival, I believe. Aye, I remember sweet Margot and her plump—”

“Benwick.”

Baldwin quieted at Sera’s terse reprimand. He offered a shrug and slumped into his nest of cape and supplies.

“Did you lose parents,” Dominique wondered, “loved ones in the New Year’s ordeal?”

“I am an orphan since six. Spent all of my life living upon the discards of others, the swiftness of my fingers, and the finely tuned wit of my brain.”

At Baldwin’s boastful declaration Sera cast him the mongoose eye. And he saw.

With a resolute sigh, the squire said, “Very well, if you must know, before I became a squire, well, er…a postulant, I was…a toad-eater. Though you mustn’t hold it against me,” he rushed in. “I atone for my crimes every day. I was seeking orders, for heaven’s sake!”

“Toad-eater?” Dominique wondered. The flames danced in his dark eyes. Sera could not look away from the beguiling sight. No red demons there, only violet allure. “Are not toads poisonous?”

“Oh, aye,” Baldwin offered. Then with a wriggle of his thick brows, he added, “If you really eat them.”

“I don’t understand. You say you ate them, and then you say you did not.”

“Exactly.” Baldwin sat up a little straighter. A proud smile beamed beneath his wearied brown eyes.

Sera would allow him such pride, for she was the first to admit the man was not the sort of hardened criminal that belonged swinging at the end of a noose. He was the closest thing to family she had left. She needed family. A place to belong. A place to be loved.

The squire spread his hand open, the long fingers splaying to catch the heat. “You see, I used to work for a magician, Melmoth the Marvelous. You’ve heard of him? Known through all parts of France and England, also a small portion of the Irish Isle. Anyway, I helped him sell his elixirs at market every summer to unsuspecting dupes—er, patrons.”

“I think I begin to understand,” Dominique said. “The patrons would witness you eating a poisonous toad. You would go into convulsions or some form of grand death charade. The magician would rush an amazing cure-all elixir down your throat, therefore drawing the poison from your body and curing you before all eyes.”

“And only three sous per six drachms!” Baldwin declared in his best hawker’s voice. “I never did eat the toad. Well, there were occasions—hell, a man tends to build an immunity by slowly exposing himself to poison. I can munch a whole toad now without worry of dropping dead. Rather tasty roasted.”

Dominique leaned across the distance between he and the squire. “And just how were you such a success when I myself have witnessed your remarkable inability to cover a lie?”

Baldwin drew his hand over his eyes to simulate laying a blindfold over them. With a laugh, he announced, “I was blind!”

“That’s quite a skill, the fool that fools while acting the fool himself.”

“A skill.” The squire clutched his leather purse and squeezed the contents. A reassuring gesture. “But no more.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“For as much as I relied on the scarf to blind the fools to my dupe, it did not serve to blind me. I began to notice the lost hope, the tragedy in the eyes circling Melmoth’s stage. Their eyes were wide with the hopes of a magical cure to end all their woes, their pains. They were so much like the orphan boy that stood before them on the stage. And I was selling them snake oil. Abbe Belloc reassured me that dedicating my life to God was a noble effort.”

“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.”