Chapter Four #2
“Come on, then.” He held
the door wide. “All you had to do was ask, you know.”
“I didn’t want to be any
trouble.” She strode out the door, and Talon swallowed his
grin.
He led her and Wolf out the hall of
watching servants and into the courtyard, where even more curious
eyes followed them as they crossed the courtyard and passed through
the guarded back gate and out onto the open field. When they
reached the river, Talon sat down on the grassy bank, and Wolf lay
down beside him, offering his belly for a rub.
Talon chuckled at the surprised look
on Lara’s face. “We’ve become friends,” he told her. He’d been
taking Wolf out each morning and evening to relieve himself, and
though he’d asked the dog a hundred questions about his mistress
over the past days, Wolf had only ever told him where he liked to
be scratched or where he liked to sniff.
Lara gave the dog an accusing glare,
then lifted her skirts and waded into the river, grinning as Talon
sat up straighter, ready to jump up and chase her if she bolted.
Still grinning, she tucked her skirt hems into her waist belt and
dipped her hands into the water, splashing handfuls onto her face
and the back of her neck, sighing as rivulets ran down her arms and
chest and looking much as she had the first time he’d come across
her and Wolf. She wandered around in the water, her face to the
sun, and Talon relaxed, enjoying the sight of her. After a while,
she sat down on the riverbank and leaned back on her arms, letting
her head hang back, her loose hair falling to the ground in a pool
of silken, auburn curls.
Talon watched the play of sunlight on
her creamy skin, the rhythmic rise and fall of her full breasts
beneath her damp tunic. He breathed in the heady, spicy sweet scent
of her, and let himself imagine what it would feel like to run his
hands up and down her sun-warmed skin, to bury his nose into her
fiery mane, his cock stones deep into her womanly flesh. He started
to reach for her and jerked his hand back, having no wish to bleed
today. Standing abruptly, he offered her his hand. “Let’s walk some
more. Then perhaps we can both get some sleep tonight.”
They followed the river’s course in
companionable silence, unlike the cold silence of their shared
chamber. Yet as much as Talon was enjoying the brief respite, there
were questions he wanted to ask her. He’d ridden out with Phillipe
into the valley of toths and villages several times over the last
few days, to survey the land and meet the people, to ask them about
Sophie and Lara and Count Nithard and his son, Ranulf, whom the two
women had mentioned the first morning of Lara’s confinement in
Talon’s chamber, thinking him ignorant of Latin. The people had
offered little about the count and his son, other than the fact
that Nithard had ruled the province for over twenty years, that
they figured he was no better or worse than most counts, and that
he had a daughter named Ravenna.
When it came to Sophie and Lara, the
people told him they were the valley’s healers, that Sophie had
raised Lara since she was a babe and taught her the healing arts,
as well as the arts of prophecy, which they spoke of without fear
or rancor. They told him if Sophie the Sixth made a prediction, it
always came to pass one way or another, that it was best to stay on
her good side, and that Lara, while good-hearted, had a temper to
match her fiery red hair. They also told him of the many times the
two healers had saved them or a family member from sickness or
death, and that most babes born in the province with their help had
lived, along with the mothers. A claim that brought up old memories
for Talon. Memories that he’d kept buried deep and had only ever
told Phillipe about when deep in his cups.
He glanced up at the afternoon sun,
loathe to disturb the fragile peace between himself and Lara, but
it was time. “What form of Latin were you and Sophie speaking to
each other the other morning?”
“The cleric’s Latin.
Sophie taught me it, as the nuns taught her.”
“Sophie was at a
nunnery?”
Lara nodded. “Until she ran away to
elope with her first husband, Leopold.”
“Go on.”
Lara measured him with her gaze,
obviously deciding exactly how much, or little, she was willing to
tell him. “They’d been childhood sweethearts, whom she’d cried over
when her father sent her away.”
“The nunnery wasn’t her
choice, then?”
“No. Leopold was. He went
after her two years later, when he’d saved enough coin to strike
out on their own together. They journeyed as far west as they could
and still remain in Gaul, which is how they came to settle in
Oloron.”
“I see.” Like Talon,
Sophie had left a life in the church chosen for her by others. He
felt a thread of kinship with the old healer, and admiration. “You
said this Leopold was her first husband,” he said. “What happened
to him?”
“He only lived to plow the
land they bought here for two springs before he died of the pox. It
was after his death that Sophie took up the study of medicines and
healing.”
“Who was her second
husband?”
Again, she eyed him for a long moment
before answering. “He was Orlando, captain of the count’s
guard.”
“Count
Nithard?”
Lara shook her head. “Count Reginald,
Nithard’s brother.”
“Nithard inherited from
his brother, then?”
“In a manner of
speaking.”
“What do you
mean?”
“Count Reginald and his
wife both died of a violent sickness within a day of each other.
Their only child, a daughter named Isabeau, disappeared soon
after.”
“Disappeared?”
“They say she walked up
into the mountains one day never to be seen again, that she had
gone mad after losing her parents.” Lara lowered her voice, though
there were none to hear her except him. “They say Nithard was madly
in love with Isabeau, his own niece, but she would have none of him
because he was not only her uncle and married, but she was secretly
in love with another. After Isabeau disappeared, Nithard claimed
his brother’s lands and title and has ruled as count
since.”
“What of Nithard’s wife?”
None of the villagers had mentioned a countess to Talon.
“She died giving birth to
Ravenna.”
The sound of his mother’s screams, the
dark red of her unstaunched blood, all rose from the depths of
Talon’s exhumed memories. “Sophie couldn’t save her?”
Lara’s keen gaze held Talon’s as if
she could see the turmoil his old memories had dug up. “Nithard
would never deign ask help from Sophie the Sixth.”
“Even for his dying
wife?”
“Especially for his dying
wife.” Lara gave a soft snort of disgust. “She’d already given him
a male heir and a daughter to marry off. She’d served her
purpose.”
Talon had seen enough of arranged
marriages among the titled to know how most of them worked, but the
cold, calculating cruelty Lara’s tale told of Nithard was a thing
he couldn’t fathom. His father had at least loved his mother and
had grieved her death for years. He shook his head. “To be raised
by such a father.”
“To be judged by such a
man.” Lara’s pointed gaze held Talon’s before she turned and headed
back toward the keep.