Fallen Angels (52 page)

The bright sun was shadowing the cleft in the mountain where the soldiers still guarded the shrine of the dead, the shrine of the last Duc d'Auxigny. Campion frowned. 'Why did he do it?'

'Mad,' Toby said.

'It was his duty,' Skavadale said.

'His duty?' she asked.

'He believed.'

'He was mad!' Toby said.

'So he was a mad believer. A fanatic'

Campion stared into the dawn. Like a glint of gold she could see the streak of the waterfall high in the mountains. 'Poor Uncle Achilles.' She looked at the tall, light-eyed man who was her lover. 'He must have been so disappointed in me.'

'Your footmen do slouch. It's quite true.'

She laughed. She would go with Christopher Skavadale to Lazen, she would marry, and they would breed a horse that was faster than the north wind. She held out her hand, Skavadale took it, and she leaned over to kiss him and to feel his arm about her.

She felt his skin on her skin. She was an aristocrat with the blood of kings, and he was a man. He loved her, and she knew it, and she remembered how she had felt when the Fallen Ones came forward in the shrine, and she knew that her life's dreams were safe in this man's hands as his were in hers. 'I love you.'

He laughed softly. 'You see? It does exist, it really does.'

The Earl of Lazen coughed. 'Are you two finished?'

She made a face at her brother, then turned her horse. She went to that place where all the roads begin. She rode, hand in her lover's hand, for love.

Bernard Cornwell was born in London, raised in Essex and now mostly lives in the USA. He is the author of the Sharpe series; the Arthurian series, the Warlord Chronicles; the Starbuck Chronicles, on the American Civil War; Stonehenge; Gallows Thief; and the Grail Quest series. Susannah Kells is a pseudonym, now revealed to be Judy Cornwell.