Entreat Me (24 page)

At the ritual’s completion, Magda tossed the blood-slick log onto the fire.  The group bowed to the sparking, crackling conflagration and turned to the business of tending their self-inflicted wounds.  Ambrose pulled Ballard to the side as the others waited their turns for Magda to clean and bandage their cuts.  “Did you hear what Louvaen said?”

Ballard shrugged.  “Aye.  What part put you in such a dodder?”

Ambrose wrung his hands and started to pace.  “She’s nonborn, Ballard.  Cut from her mother’s womb instead of pushed.”

“What of it?”  Nonborns were uncommon enough to cause talk but not so strange as to be miraculous.  He was even less surprised that Louvaen had survived.  So fierce a woman would have fought death from the moment she took her first breath.  An admonishment about Ambrose wasting his time hovered on his lips and faded at a sudden recollection of Isabeau’s last venomous words.

“To him I bequeath my bitterness, my rage, my hatred.  When he puts childhood behind him, they will manifest.  The savage you are shall raise up the savage he’ll become.  No woman will love him.  All your machinations—your deceit—have brought us to this.  No woman born will ever love you.  And the son will destroy the father.”

“No woman born will ever love me,” he said softly.

“Yes!”  Ambrose glanced furtively over his shoulder to see if anyone else noticed his agitation.  “Louvaen Duenda is as much a key to breaking this curse as her sister.”

The burgeoning hope welling up in Ballard’s chest flattened just as suddenly and left a crushing despair in its space.  His face must have revealed some emotion because Ambrose’s triumphant grin faded.  “What’s wrong?”

“How is this good news?  We thought Cinnia’s love for Gavin would break it.  Now we need both sisters loving both beasts to accomplish the same thing?”  His gaze flitted to Louvaen, elegant in her crimson gown.

“You’re swiving her, Ballard, and she’s enjoying it, “ Ambrose countered.  “Surely, she has some affection for you.”

She did: of that he had no doubt.  She respected him as well, and admired him.  But love him?  That was altogether different, something deeper which went beyond mere desire and affection.  He knew that when spring came, she’d return home to her father.  Nothing she’d said or done since then indicated she’d change her mind.  If she loved him, wouldn’t she ask to stay?

He shook his head.  “You hold false hope, my friend.”

Ambrose’s eyes flashed annoyance.  “It’s still hope,
dominus
.  You owe it to yourself to hold onto hope.  You owe it to your son.” He gave Ballard an abrupt, annoyed bow before making his way to Magda for a bandage.

Louvaen and Ballard waited their turns for bandages.  When Magda finished and left them alone, Ballard turned to Louvaen and examined her bandaged hand.  “Thanks to you, I’ve won a bet with Ambrose.”

“Oh?”

“Aye.  He was certain that if cut, you’d bleed green.  I disagreed.”

She tried, and failed, to stifle a laugh.  “Mouthy, bastard wizard.  I don’t know how Magda tolerates him.”  Her eyes searched his face, and her levity disappeared.  “What troubles you?”

Either he was losing the talent for hiding his emotions or she had grown more skilled at reading them in his expressions.  He bowed over her hand.  “Nothing that can’t be soothed by a night in your arms,” he said.  “Your bed or mine?”  He thought he’d offer her the choice after her strident complaints about his cold bed.

“Mine’s too narrow for the both of us.  Promise me a nice hot brick or a warming pan, and you’ll get no more complaints from me.”  She paused.  “About that at least.”

Ballard smiled, the melancholy of Ambrose’s interpretation of how to break the curse lessening before Louvaen’s teasing.  “Done.”  Were they alone in the hall, he’d kiss her to seal their bargain.  Instead, he raised her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to her knuckles.  “Until tonight, mistress.”

They rejoined the others at the table, where Cinnia practically danced out of her shoes from the excitement of giving Modrnicht gifts.  Ballard resumed his seat in the dantesca and drank his sixth—maybe seventh—goblet of wine.  Louvaen and Cinnia gave Magda and the girls each a pair of fur lined gloves made of supple leather.

Magda ran a thumb over the fur cuff.  “These are too fine to wear every day.”

Cinnia protested.  “No!  You should wear them any time you want.  They’ll keep your hands warm on days like these.”

Clarimond presented the gifts she, Joan and Magda made for them.  “To keep you busy at the wheel,” she said and handed Louvaen a basket full of Joan’s finest combed flax.  “And you with your books.”  She passed a small packet to Cinnia who opened it to display a pair of bone needles, whittled, smoothed and sharpened to punch through signature pages for her book binding.  The women exchanged hugs, and Ballard wondered if he’d be treated to watching Louvaen’s nimble fingers transform the strick into golden thread.

Ambrose lifted one cloth wrapped package and passed it to Louvaen.  “For a woman with the wild magic in her and no use for it,” he said, light winking off his spectacles and hiding the expression in his eyes.  Louvaen held the gift gingerly, her eyes wide with surprise and no small amount of suspicion.

“Don’t trifle with her, Ambrose.”  Ballard gestured to Louvaen and Cinnia.  “A gift to be shared between you.  My idea but impossible without Ambrose’s magic, so it’s from both of us.”

Louvaen slowly untied the twine holding the cloth closed while Cinnia watched.  Both women gasped at the exquisitely carved hand mirror revealed.  Ballard caught the spark of confusion in Louvaen’s gaze.  The mirror was far more costly and finer than the ones they currently possessed, and how would they share?

“You’ve been apart from your father,” he said.  “That mirror will reveal him to you.  Just give the command ‘Show me,’ and say the name of the person you want to see.  The glass will cast back to you a reflection of that person in that moment.  When you’re done, just tell it to sleep.”

Louvaen caressed him with her gaze.  “This is a thoughtful gift.  Thank you both.”

In her more exuberant fashion, Cinnia raced to his chair, knelt before it and clasped his hand.  “Thank you, Lord de Sauveterre,” she cried.  “Thank you so much!”  Before Ballard could tell her to get up, she raced back to her sister who handed her the mirror.

“Go ahead, my love.  You do the summoning.”

Cinnia gripped the mirror by its ornate handle and stared into its reflective surface.  “Show me Mercer Hallis,” she commanded.

For a moment, the mirror shimmered with an azure radiance in her hands before fading.  Cinnia’s excited smile transformed to a shocked “O”, and her eyes grew round as dinner plates.  “Papa?  Dame Niamh?”

Ballard leaned forward in his chair as Louvaen’s eyebrows shot high, and her face flamed.  She snatched the mirror out of Cinnia’s hand.  “Sleep,” she snapped, and the mirror glowed blue a second time.

Ballard had a good idea what the mirror had revealed to the two women.  He braced an elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand.  “How’s your father?”

Louvaen handed Cinnia a goblet of wine which the girl took and drained in two gulps.  “Doing quite well obviously.”  Louvaen downed a glass of her own before answering.  “I’ll never be able to scrub that from my mind.”  She patted Cinnia on the shoulder.  “I think it best if I keep the mirror for now and summon the next time.  What do you think?”  Cinnia nodded so hard, one of the braids in her intricate hairstyle came loose.

Despite the mirror’s unexpected surprise, they all declared the evening a success.  Ballard held Louvaen back when Magda drafted the others to help clear the table.  He retrieved the dagger from a small chest near the hearth and handed it to her.

“You already gave us the mirror.”

“This is for you alone.”  He liked the way her hands caressed the bronze velvet.  “Go ahead.  Open it.  No magic mirror showing your sire swiving the neighbor.”

She groaned.  “Please don’t remind me.”  She unwrapped the velvet and inhaled at the sight of the dagger and sheath.  “My gods, Ballard, what...”

Her reaction was all he’d hoped it would be.  “Many years ago I was summoned to court to welcome a foreign queen to the kingdom.  Her name was Estatira; she was a warrior garbed in silk.  Beautiful, powerful.  She passed out gifts to the courtiers who welcomed her.  I received this dagger.  She told me it was a favorite of hers, one she wore as both protection and a talisman of good luck.  A fitting gift for a woman of great beauty and even greater strength.”

He stiffened when Louvaen shook her head and tried to give the dagger back to him.  “I can’t accept this, my lord.  It’s too fine a gift, and I am no queen.”

Ballard gently pushed it back to her.  “You are, Louvaen.  You’re simply uncrowned.”

She blinked at his compliment, rewrapped the dagger in its velvet parcel and clutched it close to her chest.  Her hand lifted and glided down his cheek.  He closed his eyes and leaned into her caress.  “It’s a gift beyond price,” she whispered, her gray gaze tender.  “I’ll treasure it always.”

He was interrupted from answering her by Gavin guiding a weaving Cinnia from the kitchen and toward the stairs.  Louvaen left him to tend her sister.  The girl yawned and offered a bleary smile.  Louvaen sighed.  “Come, my love.  It’s bed for you.”  She motioned to Gavin.  “This will be the only time I’ll ask you to carry my sister to bed, de Lovet, and I’m only doing it because with us wearing these deadly long frocks, she’ll pitch us both down the stairs.  So make the best of it.”

Ballard grinned as Gavin lifted a half slumbering Cinnia in his arms and took the stairs at a snail’s pace.  Louvaen trailed behind them, pausing once to give Ballard a look that said she knew exactly what Gavin was doing.  She winked, hugged his gift as if she were hugging him and followed his son up the stairwell.

He returned to his chamber soon after, warming pan in hand to heat the sheets.  Clarimond had offered to take on the task, but he’d refused.  He didn’t feel like company of any kind except Louvaen’s, and if he could muck out a stable, he could warm his bed for his lover.  He’d just set the pan near the hearth when a soft knock sounded from the solar.  He discovered Louvaen still in her crimson gown.  She braced her hands on her hips and frowned.

“I’m trussed up worse than a stuffed goose,” she proclaimed.  “You’ll have to help me out of this stupid dress.  And please tell me the sheets are warm.”

She laughed when he pulled her into the solar and slammed the door.  She sighed his name when he lifted her in his arms and kissed her all the way to his bed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Cinnia strode into the kitchen pointing a finger at Louvaen.  “You are a hypocrite!”

Magda, Clarimond and Joan stared first at a red-faced, furious Cinnia and then at Louvaen who continued to plunge the dasher up and down in the butter churn.

“So we begin,” she murmured before turning her gaze to Magda with a silent request.

The cook set down the boiled egg she was peeling and rose from the table.  “Come on, lasses, to the buttery.  We’ll have cyser tonight with the ale.”  The two women followed her through the door leading to the buttery, leaving the sisters alone.

Louvaen maintained her rhythm on the dasher as she met her sister’s angry stare.  “Why am I a hypocrite?”  She knew the answer.  All the sneaking about she’d been doing lately between Ballard’s chamber and hers guaranteed Cinnia would catch her at some point.  She was honestly relieved to have it in the open.

Cinnia crossed her arms.  “I saw you leaving the solar this morning.  De Sauveterre kissed you before you left.  He wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.”  Her cheeks rosied.  “You were wearing very little.”

Louvaen shrugged and continued churning the butter.  “What of it?”

Cinnia’s eyes bugged and she flung her arms wide.  “What of it?  What of it?  You’ve been ranting at me for weeks to behave!  No kissing.  No touching.  No embracing.”  She counted the restrictions off on her fingers.  “I can’t even walk with Gavin across the bailey without you tracking us like a lymer, and you’re bedding his father!”

Louvaen winced as Cinnia practically screeched in her ear.  She abandoned the churn and patted a place beside her on the bench.  “Sit down.”

Cinnia’s mouth thinned to a mutinous line.  “I don’t want to sit down.  I want to know why you think it’s just fine for you to...”

“Sit. Down.”

Moments of rebellion couldn’t conquer a lifetime of obedience.  Cinnia sat.

Louvaen reached for her hand.  The girl snatched it out of her reach.  She sighed and met Cinnia’s glare with what she hoped was a neutral expression.  “We’ve already had some of this conversation, but we’ll revisit so we both know where we stand.”  She’d known they’d deal with this, even if she’d never become Ballard’s lover.  “I can shackle you to my leg, tie you to my wrist and sew you into my shoes, but my best efforts won’t stop you from bedding Gavin if you insist.  Are you still a virgin?”

Cinnia glared.  “Yes,” she hissed.  “But this isn’t about me.”

“Oh, it’s very much about you.  I’m a widow.  Unfair I know, but my value in society isn’t based on my maidenhead.  My worth as a woman is tied to the property my husband left me and my ability to bear children.  I can bed as many men as I want as often as I want as long as I’m discreet.  You already know where your worth lies.

Cinnia raised her chin and scowled.  “Gavin doesn’t see me in that light.”

Louvaen scowled back.  “So?  He hasn’t offered for you yet, has he?  Until he does, what he sees doesn’t matter. Others will measure differently.”

The girl jerked up from the bench and began to pace.  “You’re right.  It isn’t fair.  I’ve a good mind and was raised to have good character.  I’m more than some stupid virginity.”

“We all are, my love.”  She reached for Cinnia’s hand again, and this time the girl returned the clasp.

Cinnia squeezed her fingers.  “Gavin will marry me,” she proclaimed with the unshakeable fervency of a newly indoctrinated anchorite.

Louvaen heaved a weary sigh.  “I want to believe; truly I do, but your faith in him is greater than mine.  If he doesn’t offer for you, you have to walk out of Ketach Tor intact.  Until I hear him plight you his troth, I’ll continue to act the lymer and remain the hypocrite.”

She and Cinnia stared at each other until Cinnia collapsed back on the bench with a huff, all her indignation drained away, leaving only puzzlement.  “Why de Sauveterre?”

Louvaen paused.  Her list of the obvious was a league long; the more subtle, short and hard to express.  Ballard de Sauveterre was unlike the jocular Thomas Duenda in almost every way.  Somber, weary, often taciturn, he exuded a latent power that filled whichever room he occupied.  She knew little of his history, only that he was a widower and served as a Marcher lord.  She’d not been surprised to learn he’d once ruled a kingdom within a kingdom.  Even if he hadn’t revealed the last fact to her, she would have imagined the roles of leader and warrior for him.  Louvaen respected these traits but wasn’t drawn to them.  The quiet man who saved her family from ruin, laughed at her sharp-tongued quips, loved his son and protected his household: such a man drew her like iron to a lodestone.  She told Cinnia none of this.

Why de Sauveterre?

She shrugged.  “Why not?”

Cinnia blinked, obviously startled by the question.  “Well, he’s...”

“A good man with a stalwart heart.”  Louvaen grinned as Cinnia’s blinking turned to owl-eyed fascination.

“And you think him handsome?  Even with his scars and claws?”  Cinnia’s rounded eyes and downturned mouth spoke volumes.

“I do.  Very much so.”

Louvaen continued to smile at the thought of Cinnia’s mortification if she revealed just how attracted she was to Ballard.  He’d teased her and called her lusty, and he was right.  She lusted after him with a ferocity that had her practically leaping on him the moment they were alone, hands sliding into every open space of his clothes while she plundered his mouth.  He met her enthusiasm with equal passion, and there were many times they didn’t reach his bed or even remove all their clothing before he had her up against a wall or stretched out on the rug by the fire, deep inside her as she moaned his name.

“Do you love him?”

Cinnia’s question cooled the heat of her thoughts and turned them melancholy.  She refused to ponder the possibility, though the idea had lurked in the back of her mind for several days now demanding she recognize its presence.  “Your question has no bearing.” she said.  “I can’t stay.  Papa needs me.  Leaving Ketach Tor in the spring is your question to answer.”

This interlude that had unexpectedly grown out of desperate circumstances was only temporary.  She belonged at home in Monteblanco, her father’s caretaker and mistress of his household.  She had no intention of remarrying.  That she’d ever married at all surprised everyone, including her.  She had loved Thomas, loved being his wife.  He’d taken a piece of her with him when he died, and she couldn’t imagine binding herself to any man after him.  Until now.  Recent memories teased her—sitting with Ballard in the solar during winter nights, reading to him or playing Draughts, teasing him and being teased in return, waking before dawn wrapped in his arms with his slow breaths warm on her neck, his body curled around hers.

She gave Cinnia a severe look.  “You sly minx.  You made this about me after all, didn’t you?”

Cinnia’s unrepentant smile reflected in her brown eyes.  “Only a little.”  An anxious frown replaced the smile, and she bent to kiss Louvaen’s knuckles.  “You’ll be careful, Lou?  You’re so busy watching after me, I don’t want you to forget about you.  If de Sauveterre hurts you, maybe I’ll be the one to shoot someone,” she declared with a scowl and flourish of her hand.

Louvaen hugged her and gave her a peck on her forehead.  “My love, I didn’t bring enough powder and shot to take down all three men, but there are crossbows and swords handy.  I’m sure you’d make do.”

The two parted company, Cinnia leaving Louvaen to the thoroughly detested task of churning while she helped Clarimond dip candles.

Ballard found her later in Cinnia’s bower alone, carding from a basket of raw wool.  Louvaen bade him enter at his polite knock.  He stood in the doorway and leaned indolently against the frame.  She stroked the teasel brushes against each other, drawing the wool into longer fibers.  “What brings a handsome lord to visit a lowly spinner this cold morning?” she said.

Ballard made a show of looking over his shoulder and peering down the hall before turning back to her.  “I wouldn’t know.  There are no handsome lords or lowly spinners here—just me seeking the favor of a beautiful woman who happens to spin.”

“You’ve a silver tongue, Lord de Sauveterre.”

“That isn’t how you described it last night, Mistress Duenda.”

She heel-toed the two teasels too short, matting the fibers.  “Ballard!” she admonished him.

He lifted his hands in a nonchalant gesture.  “What?  From what I hear, your virginal sister is aware you share my bed.  What secrets do you have to keep now?”

Louvaen dropped the teasels into the basket and rose to join him at the doorway.  “News travels fast.”

“We’re one castle and eight people.  News doesn’t have far to go or many ears to reach.”  He straightened from the doorframe.  “I have to ride the land boundaries.  Come with me.  The sun is out and the sky clear.”

She recalled the list of tasks she intended to do for the day and promptly tossed them aside.  Magda wouldn’t mind, and Cinnia would welcome a reprieve from her guardianship.  Best of all, she’d have Ballard to herself all day instead of a few stolen dark hours.  She stopped short of accepting his invitation, disappointment dampening her excitement.  “I can’t.  Plowfoot is frightened of you.  I’d have to fight him the entire way to keep him from galloping back to the stables.”

Except for Magnus, animals feared Ballard.  Plowfoot had almost kicked his stall door down once, trying to put distance between him and the master of Ketach Tor as Ballard and Gavin mucked out the stables.  Gavin had to trot the horse out to the bailey and tie him to a post until they’d finished cleaning.

Ballard offered an easy solution.  “You’ll ride pillion on Magnus.  He can carry us both at full gallop without breathing hard.”

She gathered her cloak and mittens and changed her shoes for heavier boots.  As he promised, the sky arced a clear, deep blue overhead.  Louvaen squinted against the sun’s glare after so many weeks spent either outdoors with gray-washed skies or indoors under candlelight.  The snow had cleared, but the air burned like cold fire in her nostrils and lungs.  The stable’s warmth practically lulled her into a torpor after the bracing temperatures outside.  Magnus nickered and blew at her skirts as she waited for Ballard to saddle him.

“He doesn’t mind a second person?” She and Cinnia often rode Plowfoot together, but their mild-mannered draught horse was nothing like this sleek, battle-ready courser.

Ballard adjusted the cinch strap and blanket beneath the saddle.  “No.  You may not recall, but he carried us both back to the castle after you fell in the pond.”  He focused on her next, pulling her hood forward to shelter her face and tightening the laces at her throat.  Unlike her, he was impervious to the chill and wore only a quilted surcoat over a heavy wool shirt and leather breeches.  “Are you ready?”  She nodded, and he sprang nimbly into the saddle without using the stirrup.  She took his offered arm and swung behind him, landing neatly on Magnus’s rump amidst a flurry of skirts.

“I told you I didn’t need a stool.”  She proceeded to squirm until she adjusted her dress to her satisfaction and Magnus snorted his disapproval.

Ballard looked over his shoulder.  “No, but a pair of breeches instead of your dress might have worked better.”

Louvaen slid her arms around his narrow waist and nestled against his back for warmth.  “Stop complaining.  This ride was your idea.”  She very much liked the way the low laugh vibrating along his spine made her cheek tingle.

They rode through the bailey, skirting the serpentine roses.  The blooms swiveled on their stems as Magnus trotted past, the crimson petals opening and closing.   They hissed their disapproval as the horse rode by, untroubled by their presence.  Louvaen pressed closer to Ballard and hissed back.

They crossed the smaller bridge notched into the back of the castle.  It stretched across the chasm at the narrowest point, putting them on the track leading to the pond.  Louvaen shuddered at the memory of falling into that black, frozen water.

Ballard must have felt her shivers.  “Too cold?” he said over his shoulder.

“Not yet.”  She was grateful when he led Magnus off the path and down another that twisted and turned through a maze of trees before descending into a shallow gulley and up again to a narrow ridge that hugged the forest edge.  They rode without speaking, serenaded by the creak of Ballard’s saddle and the muffled rhythm of the horse’s gait as he trod on a carpet of dead leaves layered with snow.  Louvaen settled in to enjoy the ride.  Her legs and back prickled from the cold, but the front of her torso stayed warm as she held Ballard close and gazed upon the bare forest locked in winter.