Claudia Dain (12 page)

"Very long," Juliane said, "though that could change at any time," she said loudly.

Baldric said, "Get me to Stanora without wolf bites on my neck and you shall see me satisfied. What you do to me after that will only count as blessing, lady."

"You see what I deal with," she said, shrugging.

"I do not hear any wolves," William said, urging his horse closer to Ulrich's.

"Nor do I," Ulrich said comfortably. The track they followed was narrow, wide enough for two to ride abreast but not three. If William could have slid between the two of them, Juliane was certain he would have. "'Tis too early for wolves to hunt. They wait for full dark and moonlight."

"Oh, aye," the boy said, easing his mount back.

"You are very kind to him," Juliane said in a voice just above a whisper. "Is it not strange that your life has been surrounded by Williams? First the knight of your fostering and now your squire."

Ulrich took a deep and easy breath and said, "I found it strange at first, but no longer. Now I do not find it strange at all."

* * *

They returned without mishap and with no wolf tales. William, once they were safe inside the walls of Stanora, seemed almost disappointed. They had missed Vespers and Compline, which did not disappoint him at all. To be at his prayers was not William's most favored activity.

Morgause was set safely within the mews, her night to be constrained with enforced quiet. She hardly seemed to mind; her day had been full, even for a hawk, and her belly more full yet. What she had caught while free and on the hunt they would never know, but to judge by the angle of her close-feathered head and the glint in her eyes, she was well content.

As was Ulrich. He was content to let the night pass in quiet peace. His amorous battle with Juliane must wait until the rising of the sun to continue; she had been greeted sweetly by the women of Stanora and hurried off to her chamber, there to certainly tell the tale of her reclaiming of Morgause... and her defeat of Ulrich's art.

Let her tell her tales. He was not defeated. Nay, he had come to see some kindred heart in her, some spark of tenderness in her eyes as the sun had set and the moon had risen; in that half-light, that shadow land between the day and the night, he had seen something in her, some soft, quiet thing. A melting.

A small thing, yet... something. And in this battle with the frost, even small things were victories. He had won a victory with her, and it warmed him.

The fire in the center of the great hall danced before his eyes, the smoke lifted upward by invisible currents of heat. Invisible currents of heat, yea, it would be just so between them. Drop by drop he would melt her down, finding the woman beneath the legend of ice, finding Juliane.

She was a woman worth the finding.

"Did you kiss her again?" Roger asked, coming from behind him.

"Not all victories are measured by kisses," Ulrich said.

Roger turned and said to Edward, "He did not kiss her again."

Edward came to stand next to them, making a half-moon of the three. William had been sent up to the chamber they would all share, to see that fresh water was ready and that the fire was hot. They were almost alone in the great hall of Stanora. Only a few men-at-arms played at dice upon an upturned and polished stump in the corner beneath a torch, their wagering consuming both ears and eyes.

"I did not kiss her again," Ulrich said with a small smile, shaking his head.

Roger shook his head, too. "And why did you not? She did not take her dagger to you when you stole that first, raw kiss; it could only mean that she was open to more kisses."

"Is this my wager or yours?" Ulrich asked. "Is it my legend for wooing which is to be tested or yours for crashing?"

"I do not crash," Roger said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I am only bold. Many women prefer boldness."

"Not this one," Edward said, rolling a pebble in his hand, moving it from hand to hand.

"She took that kiss to the throat well enough," Roger said.

"She would take anything well enough. Anything that did not touch her," Ulrich said.

"She was not touched?" Edward asked.

"She looked well touched to me," Roger said, brushing his dark hair off his brow.

"Did she?" Ulrich asked.

In truth, he was not certain. He had been all heat, all white anger, all passion when he had taken her by the throat, her pulse beneath his lips. Her body soft and vulnerable under his hands. Of what she had felt, he could not know. He had been lost in his own fire and had known only the desire to touch her and to lay his mouth upon her. Never had he lost so much of himself in the net of a woman.

Never had he been so vulnerable.

He shook free of the memory and lifted his eyes from the fire. The hall of Stanora was whitewashed, the floor stoneflagged, the stones lichen gray and tawny white and set close upon each other. A clean, white hall was Stanora, with little of the dark, smoky shadows that haunted other halls in other holdings. Wooden shutters bleached pale gray by time and weather were closed against the wind holes at night, keeping out the night birds and the night air which they rode upon. A welcoming hall, a wide-open, sunlit hall, yet shuttered, walled, and stony nonetheless.

"Enough of Juliane," Ulrich said. "We are in this place for more than wagering against a most compelling legend, though she serves our cause well enough."

Roger and Edward nodded and stepped back from the fire, finding what shadows they could in Stanora's hall.

Chapter 7

"Did he kiss you again?"

They stood all round her, Christine, Lunete, Marguerite, and Avice. Her aunt Maud was to bed an hour or more past, once she had seen that Juliane was safe returned; for the hawk, she had not spared a care. Hawking was not to Maud's taste and she could not see how it could possibly be to anyone else's.

They stood in the chamber that Juliane shared with Avice. Marguerite, Lunete, and Christine slept in a smaller chamber with a yet smaller bed just to the south of her own. A great gallery, overlooking the hall below, was the passageway that bound all the chambers together. Her father slept in the lord's solar, just beyond the small chapel on the corner. Maud, her father's sister, slept in the lady's solar, which had the advantage in winter of a center fire, and the disadvantage in summer of a center fire; in either condition, there was room for only a very small bed tucked against the cold stone wall. Maud did not complain. She had little cause and little enough recourse. If not for Stanora and Stanora's lord, she would have been bundled off to an abbey long since, and abbey beds were not known for their comfort.

"Did he?" Christine asked again.

"Would he have dared?" Juliane answered, not answering.

"Then he did not?" Marguerite asked. "He is more cautious than the tales of him, then."

"Or perhaps only more patient," Avice said with a smile and a shrug. "You are not quit of him yet, Juliane, if I read men right."

"Not too difficult a task," Juliane said with a smirk, "as they trumpet every thought like the blast before the joust."

"Then what thought did you read in him while you were out hunting Morgause?" Marguerite asked, sitting herself down on the high bed in Juliane's chamber. It was a much softer mattress than her own and the linens finer.

What had she read? Too much. Far too much.

He was not dissuaded, this man from Caen, and by this point in her amorous joustings, all others had been. He was more confident, then, or simply more arrogant. But nay. He came bringing more than arrogance to this game of love. He brought laughter and lightness of heart, and that was welcome indeed. More, he seemed to be unafraid of her.

It was even possible that he liked her.

What place for friendship in the rituals of courtly love? No place at all. 'Twas a game of power, an exercise in dominance, a game she played very well, even if she played it with little true joy. But with Ulrich she had found, for a moment, a measure of joy, of joviality, of pure play, and it had tasted very sweet.

By such confections a woman could fall, she knew that very well. She would not fall to him, losing her heart, her name, her pride of place in the skies of legend. Not for him. Not for any man. Not even once.

She had not conceived this game, but, thrust within it, she would surmount it. Victory was all that mattered, and no cost was too high to own it.

"Juliane?" Lunete asked, calling her back from her thoughts.

"He may not have kissed her, but he did
something
to her," Avice said with a chuckle intended for all to share. All did share in her chuckle, but their eyes were worried. All except Avice's.

"What did I read in him?" Juliane said, shaking thoughts of Ulrich and his too blue eyes from her mind. "I read in him a man who plots to win even when the sword has pierced his heart. A man who laughs when trodden upon. A man who smiled when, by purest chance, I used his hand to wipe the mud from my boot."

"You did?" Lunete said.

"You did not!" Christine exclaimed.

"I did!" she said, laughing.

And it had felt glorious, as had his wry smile at her bold affront. Strange man to be so mild when so vilely insulted. He played with more heart than most she had encountered in her years at this game.

"Did you mind his kiss upon your throat so very much, then, that you would take such a revenge against his bold claim?" Avice asked. The brazier was behind her, her features hidden in shadow. The rest of them were on the bed. Avice stood alone, heating herself by the flames. She was ever cold and always sought the fire.

"We should not have made that wager," Marguerite said somberly. "We pushed him to it."

"You did not push him to anything, and do I look harmed to you?" Juliane said. "He lost his temper, a simple thing for a man to do, and he won his wager by force and not by skill, which tells me something of the nature of the man in this game we play. As to revenge, there was and is no need. He stirs nothing but my increased desire to win. This game will play most well."

"Are you certain you are not angry? We did not think it would go so far," Christine said. "Though it was a kiss of passion, was it not?"

"If fury is passion, then yea, it was," Juliane said.

"And you felt nothing?" Avice asked, lifting out her skirts to capture the heat. It had been warm all through the day, yet the stones held the chill of December even in July.

Had she felt nothing? Nay, she had. Something. Something dark and burning and buried. Something, some fiery pulse, some... exhilaration. He opened doors in her that must stay closed, stirring passions that ought not dwell in her, unleashing heat when all must stay cool and distant, cold and unreachable.

But there was nothing as to that. She would master herself. He would ne'er take a kiss from her again, nay, nor a touch.

"You looked... frightened," Lunete said.

"Upon all the saints, I was not frightened," Juliane answered, thankful that here was a question she could answer in all truth. She had not been frightened by that violent, stolen kiss upon her throat.

She had been aroused.

* * *

"Now, speak to me of that kiss."

Ulrich knelt before the lord of Stanora, his head bowed. They were in the quiet solitude of the lord's solar. Alone. The day was behind them and the night stretched forth, the dawn a dream of tomorrow.

"I ask your pardon and your forgiveness, lord," Ulrich said, not lifting his head. "I make no excuse. Your mercy is all I may rest upon, and I will rest easily in whatever judgment you choose to make."

Silence greeted this abject apology. Dark and heavy silence which was, in time, broken by a chuckle of laughter.

Ulrich kept his head bowed, but he felt the beginnings of a smile twitching at his lips.

"The tales of you are true, then," Philip said. "You are most fluent of speech, your manner most smooth. Tell me, and lift up your head; I shall not smite you, though I have the right. Tell me, Ulrich, what wager have you made concerning Juliane?"

Ulrich lifted his head, his smile flown. 'Twas one thing to make a wager, 'twas another to tell the lady's father of it.