Roses & Thorns (9 page)

Drew
did not answer, but continued as if Angelique were not even in the room.
"I committed the crime of loving my stepsister. Two years younger, radiant
with the joy of life. Just beginning to know what it is to be a woman. Just
beginning to learn what love is about."

Drew
paused and the broad shoulders straightened. "I had no right to pursue the
trusting attachments of any young woman, Angelique. And yet I did pursue her.
For a time, I even thought she returned my affections. Until the night we were
discovered in the midst of our —
my
lusts. What I had thought to be her
desire was fear... of me. What I had mistaken for love was merely —"

Drew's
gloved hands gripped the back of a chair. The merciless rasp of self-hatred
etched each phrase. "To see her terror! Her shivering in fear! Clutching
at her dress as she begged her mother for protection! From me! My father's
face, his revulsion, his horror as the truth was finally forced upon him.... It
is all so clear to me still. Every image... every word said."

Angelique
trembled. Icy fingers of fear pricked the skin on the nape of her neck. She
stared at Drew with wide eyes, questions tumbling upon themselves in her head,
warring to be released, but she knew better. She remained silent.

Drew
seemed to be elsewhere, pulled back through time to that horrible night so many
years ago. It all played out, just as it had then, and Drew was powerless to
stop the rush of memories. Drew faltered. In the mind's eye, images spilled
from memory and Drew was unable to stop them.

"My
daughter!"
the witch-woman screamed,
emerald eyes burning like living fire, her black hair flying around her head
like a thousand hissing snakes. "How dare you defile my own flesh and
blood with your perverted touch?!"

Drew
cowered, jerkin and tunic clutched in awkward desperation as she tried to hide
her nakedness. Helpless and confused, she shook her head. Her disheveled tangle
of ebony hair shimmered in the lantern light. She burned with shame.

"What
have you to say for yourself?" The Count's words were flat with judgment.
How could she explain to him that he encouraged what she was? Allowed her to
think of herself as his mirror image, his son, his heir? He had never told her
that women were only for men’s beds and she had not assumed such a narrow view.
But now his voice was full of rage. Where were the tender words meant just for
her? The nicknames, the shared laughter? Where was her father? The man who
stood before her, demanding and inflexible, was not the Count she knew. This
man’s words were judgmental and harsh. As if she should have known, somehow,
all that was expected of her but never said. "Speak!" he commanded.

"I
meant no crime, Papa! I love her," she cried, the truth of her words
apparent to any who would listen. "As she loves me. I thought to marry
—"

"No!"
the shriek came as one from daughter and mother.

"I
never loved you," screamed the girl as her mother moved to shield her more
completely. "How could you imagine something so horrible? So untrue?"

"But
you said—"

"Don’t
listen to the lies—" the daughter broke in. But the mother needed no
convincing to prove the innocence of her child.

"Filth
— liar! Marry my own to one of Nature's most warped abominations?" She
spit on the ground in disgust. "If you were not my husband's child
—!"

"I
have no child but yours, wife," he said. Drew whirled on him in stunned
surprise. "Papa!" He would not hear, but instead turned away.
"Father!"

At
the doorway, he paused, but did not look back. "Father, please —" The
plea became a cry, a wail of despair that drove the girl to her knees as her
father took one step away from her, and then another.

The
witch stepped near, and from her lips fell the words of an incantation already
begun, "...my daughter to protect and for all the daughters of those you
have sworn to protect...." Words tumbled over each other like pebbles in a
rockslide, erasing all in their path. Smoke rose. The witch circled the sobbing
young woman on the floor. "...Hear me now and mark my words!"

The
wind shrieked; the witch's cry rose to guide the gale. "Then find you a
prisoner for your precious love! You shall be bound by spells and time in a
place befitting such noble dreams. You shall be, oh swine of humankind, bound
to a mockery of love which will play with you. Marry you say? Then marry you
will. Love you say, then love
she
must! A maid as plain or fair as you
choose. But
choose
she must! Freely and knowingly must she choose to
marry you and consecrate those sacred vows in your monstrous bed!"

The
gale reached its final fury, whirling around the crumpled form of the
once-cherished child. The witch's final curse screamed over the howling wind:

"Cast
thee gone! Beyond thy Death!

Cast
thee out! Doomed in Quest! Beyond mere Time!

Eternity
Now... is...
Thine!"

"My
father," Drew said at last, "roused by my stepmother's shrieks, found
me in the barn with my stepsister. I tried to explain to him — to them all —
that I loved her and she ... she denied my love. My father, saying I was no
longer his child, turned his back on me. And my stepmother... Her words were
the most devastating of all. The witch-woman cursed me." Drew looked up at
Angelique and repeated her stepmother's words, ending with the curse.

Silence
hung over the dark parlor. The fire had ebbed to mere coals. Angelique
shuddered. Her hands pressed to her chest. She felt faint. What had Drew just
told her?

"And
now, my Lady thinks there must be some error — some noble oversight. But there
was none, I assure you. I wish only that my appetites reflected gentler
passions!"

"But
each of us may be only what we are," Angelique choked out against the
strangling dryness in her throat.

"And
what am I? I hear your desire to ask even though your fears urge you to
silence!"

"Would
you not have me know the one I would marry?"

"Who?
Or
what,
my Lady?" The acid in Drew’s voice burned. "Are we
demons not all alike? Is it not enough to know we are demons?"

Angelique,
frightened by the rage that swirled in the room as powerfully as the witch’s
windstorm, fought for control. Drew seemed like a serpent ready to strike and
she a helpless creature caught in its mesmerizing stare. Words evaded her
tongue. The silence deepened. Ashamed of her inability to speak, Angelique
tried to choke out an apology, but found her throat closed by tears.

"Go
to bed, Angelique." Drew’s voice cut through the tension like a knife and fell
away. The room was suddenly ordinary again, and Drew was nothing more than the
bleak, hooded figure, half-hidden in shadows. In a flat voice, Drew said,
"Go to bed and dream of dancing and stars and happy things. There will be
no marriage between us."

She
should have stayed. She should have protested. But Angelique could only run.

The
night wind howled like a tormented animal. Angelique shivered uncontrollably in
the emptiness of her great bed. Neither the fine lace and satin sheets nor the
thickness of the eiderdown quilts did anything to ease the chill in her heart.

She
could not imagine ever doing anything so terrible as to cause her mama to
disown her. Her mama’s love transcended all transgressions, no matter how
wicked. Of that she was sure. But that was exactly what had happened to Drew.
To be banished by the only family you had known simply because she had loved?
It didn't seem right somehow. Angelique shuddered. She struggled to make sense
of all that Drew had told her, but the words only echoed within her mind.

A
crack broke through the howling winds. For an instant, complete, eerie quiet
descended. Angelique sat bolt upright, heart racing. That had been the shot of
powder and ball! Poachers!

Slashing
torrents of rain struck suddenly at the window. Lightning flashed, illuminating
the darkened night, and thunder followed close behind, crashing across the sky.
Voices boomed abruptly in the courtyard below: Drew, Culdun and others.

Angelique
snatched the red cloak from the foot of her bed and pulled open the doors to
the terrace. Drenching, icy waters pelted her, the force of the rain hard
against cloak and hair, stinging her face. The scream of Drew's white stallion
cut through the night, and she ran for the terrace's stone steps, unmindful of
her bare feet.

"Go
back!" Drew shouted at her, looking fierce and dangerous high upon the
stallion's back. Angelique's eyes strained to see through the night and the
storm. Tying down saddlebags and readying the bridle, Culdun and two other Old
Ones turned to see Angelique standing half-soaked and barefoot in the rain.

"My
Liege!" Angelique's voice lifted above the thunders shout, "you must
not go alone!"

"Inside!"
The mighty stallion lifted, his war cry shrill. "The beasts are panicked.
They will flock to the palace grounds and
I
will not have you
harmed!"

"But
Drew—"

"Inside!"
Thunder flew from Drew's hand and,
abruptly, Angelique found herself back in her room. The doors were fastened
tight, though they rattled in the wind. She tried the handles, but they remained
fast. She urgently rubbed the mist of her breath from the glass, straining to
see into the black depths. Lightning spiked down and she glimpsed horse and
rider. Then all vanished into the darkness. She waited anxiously for the next
bolt of lightning. But when it came, there was nothing left to be seen.

Culdun
came in search of Angelique later, half to assure himself of her safety, she
guessed, and half to offer reassurance. But he did not expect the near-frozen
figure he found.

Still
dressed in the wet cloak, dark hair straggly and pale skin chilled almost blue,
Angelique sat curled on the floor beside the doors. Her eyes were round,
unseeing, haunted. She made no response when he spoke to her, but merely stared
through the glass and into the storm.

"Culdun?"

"Yes,
my Lady?" The little braid flopped across his cheek as he glanced up
sideways. He was busy turning the mulch and soil beneath a rose bush. He smiled
as Angelique folded her loose skirts and knelt beside him to help, approving of
her practical way of dressing and matter-of-fact pursuit of such pleasures as
gardening.

"The
day we met, you invited me to ask questions."

"I
remember, my Lady."

"May
I ask a few more?"

Something
in her tone warned these would not be simple questions. With a stiff grunt he
got to his feet, and they moved the mulch bucket to the next bush. "Some
of your questions I may not be able to answer, my Lady. There are oaths I have
taken. But ask and we shall see."

"What
does Drew hide behind the—"

"Ah!"
Culdun sat back on his heels, shaking his head with a sad chuckle. "What
shape? What form? What monstrous abominations do cloak and glove hide?"

Quietly,
evenly, Angelique countered, "I need to know, Culdun."

"You
have heard the story. Is that not enough?" His answer was evasive and they
both knew it. She had heard but a fragment of a story, nothing more.

Angelique
looked at him steadily. "If it must be, yes." She sighed and stabbed
the trowel into the dirt. Leaning into the work, she continued, "It seems
I am a fool, Culdun. Every time my Liege presents another bitter piece of
history, I fall to pieces. When we are simply together, I am quite comfortable.
But when confronted with that rage —" Angelique broke off with a baffled
shake of her head.

"It
is often easy to deny one's fears until confronted, my Lady. Your presence here
has caused my Liege to again confront the pain of familial betrayal and the
hope that your presence has engendered. It is not surprising that you would
feel the power of that anger and that hope. And be frightened by it." His
voice was quiet.

"It
is cowardice," she retorted heatedly. "I should have been stronger.
But Drew's tale was so full of bitterness and hatred, I was overwhelmed. I
didn't realize until later just how much I'd succumbed to Drew's own horrors. I
felt as if the fearful darkness of all that hatred was rising up to swallow me
whole."

"And
now, my Lady?"

"Now?"
Her lips twisted. "Now I am angry."

Culdun's
face showed his surprise.

"Not
at Drew," she added quickly. "Never at Drew." After a moment she
continued, "How old was this stepsister, Culdun?"

"Nineteen,
my Lady."

"And
who became the Count's heir?"

"The
son born to the stepsister, my Lady."

"Tell
me," Angelique growled, "has no one ever thought nineteen is a bit
old for even unmarried girls to be quite so innocent?"

"Meaning?"

"I
question the witch-woman's ambitions. Have a spouse plant enough suspicions and
even the most loving parent can fail in the moment of crisis. I can imagine the
bespelled words of a witch might only make the situation worse."