Chapter Fifteen #2
And Sophie had lost him to war. As
Lara would Talon.
“Oh Tante.” She started
shaking as if she’d woken from one of her dreams. “I see him fall.
In my dreams, I see Talon pierced through with an arrow and fall
off the Black into a pool of his own blood. And his eyes…” She
shuddered and her teeth chattered. “Oh God. His eyes are as dulled
and unseeing as Plutarch’s were.”
Sophie laid a gnarled hand over Lara’s
icy fingers. “So, you do love him?”
Lara shook her head as hot tears slid
from her cheeks. “I can’t.”
“Yet you do.”
“I did,” Lara admitted.
“Once. After the massacre at Roncesvalles.”
Sophie gave Lara’s hand a gentle
squeeze. “It was inevitable. Everyone could see it but you two.
Every person in the valley’s been stepping around the chain pulling
you two together since the day you met, getting tighter and tighter
the more you both fought it.” She eyed Lara, her expression
serious. “Some people are meant to come together, whether for a
moment, a day, a year, a lifetime. In the end, we can only love who
and when we can.”
Lara burst into sobs
“It’s not that bad, is
it?” Sophie asked. “Captain Guiscard is a good man, and a good
lover, I’m guessing.”
Lara nodded, then laughed and snorted
through her tears. Not that she had anyone to compare his
lovemaking with, but good didn’t even begin to describe what she’d
felt with him.
Sophie cackled. “That’s what I
thought.”
“But, Tante, it was you
who warned me to stay out of his bed. Who told me not to get my
belly fat with his bastard.”
“He would marry
you.”
“You’ve heard him.” Lara
sniffed. “He has no intention of marrying me or anyone. No
intention of siring any brats. Besides, a man can’t marry when he’s
dead.”
Sophie said nothing. What was there to
say?
“Tante?” Lara asked, her
voice just above a whisper. “Was it worth it? Loving a man, only to
lose him?”
Sophie gave a sad smile. “My husband
and I were still getting to know each other as man and wife when he
was taken from me. But Orlando I loved as fully as any woman ever
loved a man, and he loved me. Though we only had five years
together, I don’t regret a single moment of them.”
“Yet you grieve for him
still, over twenty years later.”
“I do. Though I thought I
did a better job at hiding it.”
“Would you do it again?
Would you let yourself love Orlando knowing you’d be grieving him
longer than you loved him?”
“I would,” Sophie answered
without hesitation. “I did. I knew he was a soldier, that soldiers
die in battle in numbers that devastate entire provinces.” She
patted Lara’s hand. “You’re wrong about one very important thing
though.” She smiled and her lips trembled. “I haven’t been grieving
either of them longer than I loved them, for I love them still and
will until my dying day.”
***
Talon
Talon drank enough wine to keep his
backside down on his seat in the common room after supper but not
so much that his wits were dulled. He was spared having to interact
with Nithard at least, who kept Charles in near constant
conversation. Ravenna sat surprisingly quiet beside her father,
listening to the king with the reverence of a nun in church. Her
brother sat off in a corner, whispering back and forth with Fulrad,
whose cousin, the king, had discharged him from the army and
Talon’s care.
“I go to my wife on the
southern shore of the Garonne where she and our twin sons await
me,” Charles told the company. “The main army will winter in
Auxerre, and since you’re so comfortably garrisoned here at
Crossroads Keep, Captain, you will stay and keep these borders
secure until I muster the army, when you will help me secure the
Saxon borders.”
Not sure if he’d been given a reprieve
or a lengthening of his sentence, Talon held his cup up. “I accept,
my liege.”
By the studied mask of indifference
plastered on Nithard’s face and the sneer on Ranulf’s, it was easy
to see they were less than pleased by the company’s continued
posting in the province. After lifting his cup to Nithard and then
Ranulf, Talon drank deeply, then grinned and wiped his mouth with
his sleeve before slamming his empty cup down.
Ranulf lifted his cup to Talon and
didn’t drink a drop: an insult not missed by many seated around the
hearth fire, certainly not by Talon, who let the insult go, for
now.
“See,” he said to Charles,
who had watched it all. “See how politic I can be when
needed?”
“I do see, Captain.”
Charles steepled his fingers. “Very politic indeed.”
“And now, my liege.” Talon
eased to his feet on unsteady legs. “I need to seek my bed, for my
brain is fogged from too much drink and too little
sleep.”
“Go, find your bed, my
friend.” Charles waved him off. “Go dream of long-legged wildcats
with pelts of fire and eyes of green and gold. Perhaps tonight’s
decisions will help bring her closer to you.”
Talon was sure Charles meant well,
giving him more time here, and he wanted that time. He wanted to
make love to Lara again, to make her his. But would she let him?
And if she did, what would become of her after he left? He stood at
his full height and sucked in a deep breath to clear some of the
drink from his mind. Once he was gone from here, there wouldn’t be
much he could do for Lara, but he could do something for her
now.
“Before I retire for the
night,” he announced in a voice that commanded everyone’s
attention, “I have determined the lidi, Lara, has fulfilled her full
wergeld. As of tomorrow, she will be a freewoman, beholden to
none.” The last he spoke directly to Nithard, then he turned to
Charles. “As you have released your cousin from his military duty,
I assume you will agree to this.”
Charles didn’t bat an eyelash. “The
king declares it to be so.”
Talon took the stairs to his chamber,
all too aware that Lara wouldn’t be there pretending to sleep, that
if she didn’t return sometime tonight, she’d likely never be in
there again. He was losing her already, yet his loss was tempered
by knowing he’d done what was right.
In his chamber, Talon stripped down to
his breechcloth and plopped down on the bed. He closed his eyes
with a bone-weary groan, expecting the sweet oblivion of sleep to
overtake him, but a host of sights and sounds haunted him: his
mother, her cheeks tear-streaked, her face ashen as she bade him
good-bye; the copper scent of the blood that couldn’t be staunched;
his father’s wracking sobs, his brothers’, his own; the wails of
the newborn babe whose birth had killed his mother. He lay in his
bed praying never to hear Willem or Wyatt cry like that, that both
Patience and her babe survived the grueling process of birth, that
Lara wouldn’t have to say good-bye to her friend so soon after
Plutarch. He lay there in a half-drunken, half-dreaming stupor when
he realized someone was knocking at his chamber’s door. Once he’d
rolled off the bed and found his feet, he opened the door, and a
small, dark-headed woman darted beneath his arm into the
room.
“Ravenna?”
“May I come
in?”
Talon waved an arm toward where she
already stood inside his bedchamber. “What do you want?”
She untied the sash to her
robe and pushed it off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor.
Clad in the same sheer, one-shouldered sleeping gown she’d worn her
last unannounced visit to his chamber, she sauntered over to the
table and poured herself a cup of wine, smiling seductively as she
ran a fingertip along the rim. “Your lidi is not here, nor will she be
after tomorrow.”
“What the king and I
decided about Lara has nothing to do with you.”
She dipped her finger in the wine and
licked it off her fingertip. “What I meant is, you are not playing
your game tonight. I thought you might like to play
another?”
“With you?”
She offered a pretty pout and sidled
up to him. More curious than aroused, Talon let her take him by the
hand and lead him toward the bed. Wrapping her hands around his
neck, she stood on her tiptoes and stretched up, her rouged lips
puckered. Talon gripped her forearms to remove her hold from his
neck.
“Ravenna,
stop.”
“But Talon…” She leaned
into him, and he stepped back, taking her weight with him before
bumping the back of his legs up against the bed.
The door burst open, and Lara blew in
with Wolf. “Good news, Talon,” she said. “Patience had a
b—”
“A boy?” Ravenna still
held tight to Talon’s neck as Lara stilled. “How perfectly
common.”
Lara whirled around and ran out the
door, Wolf on her heels.