Claudia Dain (18 page)

Juliane turned slowly and with confident ease. Ulrich stood battle-ready, bristling with bows and quivers packed tight with arrows, his sword hanging upon his hip, his smile ever fixed upon his face. A man for all times. A man underfoot. A man confident of himself and his power.

Why did she feel like grinning just to see him standing before her in all his man-pride? She killed her grin and brought forth bristles; bristles were needed now more than smiles. This one smiled too often. She did not need to learn bad habits from him.

"Your time is forward enough," she answered. "Did we not agree as to the hour? You are before your time, my lord."

"I came not to the stables in search of you, lady," he said. "I came merely for a horse."

"And I thank you that you can make the distinction," she said with a sharp smile.

"I ride to the hunt," he said, smiling at her jab. "And you?"

"I am also to the hunt," she said.

"We have much in common. At least in the stables."

He kept repeating that word, reminding them both of their stables wager. As if she were likely to forget. Or decry. Small chance of that; she would beg off from no wager, no matter how repellent.

"You have a far reach to make that claim of thin kinship. There are many who ride to the hunt and yet few who make the kill."

Let him hear her warning cry in that and run back to the horizon from whence he came.

Ulrich grinned and walked toward her, his sword swinging lazily at the movement of his hips, the gleam of the hilt catching her eye.

"Do you question my skill? I can hunt and I can kill. There is no joy in hunting without the stain of blood to mark it," he said softly.

And she knew he spoke of more than hunting stag or boar or wolf.

"Is it the sight of blood which calls to you, Lord Hunter, or is it the smell?" she asked, standing her ground as he advanced upon her.

Ulrich grinned and leaned close to her face to whisper, "It is the taste, lady. It is purely the taste."

"You are barbaric in your tastes and in your practices," she said, leaning away from him.

"I am," he said unrepentantly. "I hunt for blood and for the kill. To roam through wood and meadow, tilting at yarrow and daisy, is a lady's pleasure. I am a man, Juliane, my needs are more base. My tastes raw."

"With manners to match," she said, turning from him to find her mount.

The groom had led the horse ten paces off, well away from the warfare taking place in the bailey of Stanora and within the dark shadow of the stables. He was no fool.

"My manners do not suit you?" Ulrich said. "Perhaps they will improve by the hour of our wager."

"Scant time," she said.

"Or it may be," he said, with a slow and heated smile, "that I can instruct you in matching your tastes to mine. It has been done."

"A taste for blood?" she said with a smile. "If the blood is yours, then you have good hope of succeeding in that quest, my lord."

Ulrich blinked, his blue eyes wide in sudden shock, and then he laughed. "Well met, lady, and well spoke. This is a wager I would come far to see won. I am sudden glad that I came to Stanora and met Stanora's legend."

And he meant it. She could see that he meant it. Her answering smile was upon her face before she could stop it, and then she gave up all hope of trying.

"Of a sudden," she said, "so am I. At the very least, you have admitted that you have set yourself up against a legend."

"But, lady," he said, laughing, "so have you."

And with a salute to her, he whistled for his squire, mounted, and was gone across the wide bailey and out beneath the tower gate. Gone. For now. Until the hour of their wager.

It was an hour she was growing eager for, more eager by the moment.

Another kiss from Ulrich of Caen. Juliane felt the tumbling lightness in her belly and clenched herself against the rolling of anticipation.

"Looking forward to Sext?" Baldric asked, coming from the tower.

"If I am, it is only because I look forward to winning," she said, licking lips gone dry and swallowing burgeoning eagerness, banishing all thought of Ulrich to the bottom of her cold heart. "As to that, did you see Avice while you were within? I have the rewards of a wager to settle with her before the day is done. Aye, and the sooner the better."

"Awash in wagers, you are," Baldric said.

"Did you see her?" Juliane asked again, clasping the reins of Onyx as she prepared to mount.

"Aye, and still at the table she was, talking, plotting," Baldric said.

"Plotting? Plotting what?"

Baldric grinned at her and shrugged.

"You are becoming more useless by the hour, Baldric," Juliane said. "Your future is looking quite uncertain."

Baldric mounted his own horse and followed Juliane through the gates. Watching her back, he mumbled good-naturedly, "Not if I keep winning these wagers."

* * *

"That did not go well," Marguerite said, referring to the display they had all witnessed at the high table.

"Nay? I thought it went very well," Roger said, grinning. "They have made a wager between them. I know the look in Ulrich very well. I wonder what the wager is."

"Do you?" Edward asked, sipping his wine. "Knowing his look as well as you claim to, can you not guess what it is he has wagered with the lovely Juliane?"

Roger sat up and leaned his elbows on the table. "You think you know? What?"

"If he set the wager, which by Juliane's face he did, then it was for something he wanted from her, something she would not give unless forced by the lure of winning a wager against him."

"She would not wager
that
!" Christine whispered, her brown eyes huge and horrified in her delicate face.

Edward laughed and shook his head. "And he would not take his winnings if she did. Nay, this is not so great a wager and harms no one. Look, even her father, who must have heard all, has let it fly, watching to see where it will land."

"A kiss," Lunete said softly. "He has wagered for a kiss."

"Aye," Edward nodded. "But whether he has wagered to get one or give one, that is what I am unsure of."

"At least you have the humility to be unsure of
something
," Roger said.

"Making another wager?" Avice asked as she came up behind Edward.

Edward stiffened and said, "Wagering seems to be
your
game. I have other ways of marking time."

"You mean besides being discourteous and arrogant?" Avice said with a sweet and deadly smile.

Edward gritted his teeth and said nothing. He did leave the table. He did not look back as he walked across the hall and down the wide steps that led to fresh air and, temporarily, freedom from the female sex.

"Pushing him at your sister?" Roger asked softly. "Or just pushing him away?"

"I would shove him down a well if I could," Avice said, taking Edward's seat.

"If I were going to shove someone into something," Lunete said, "it would be into the garderobe."

"A lady should not shove anyone," Marguerite said loftily, then added, "but if I were going to shove someone, it would be into the moat at Portesdone. It has not been drained for twenty years."

"What of the wager?" Roger said, bewildered by this abrupt shift in conversation. He was mistaken; there had been no shift.

"We are speaking of the wager," Christine said. "Do you think Juliane will just stand there while Ulrich kisses her again? She may well shove him into the ditch that runs the length of Stanora's village. It is running high and wide and stinks of... well, you know what it stinks of."

"And do you think that Ulrich will allow himself to be cast into a ditch by a woman?" Roger asked, thinking it was all a jest.

Silence met his words—bored and knowing silence.

It seemed by their look that Juliane le Gel was well adept at shoving.

Chapter 10

She never had asked what it was he was hunting. No matter. She took the trail that pointed north toward the crags that abutted the marsh and woodland. Boars loved that sparse woodland. Onyx did as well. It was good ground, solid and firm, the rocks clear and easy to avoid. The sun was a distant warmth that flirted with the clouds draping the blue of a summer sky. A good day for a hunt.

A good day for a wager.

But it was always a good day for a wager, especially as she was so skilled at winning.

Theobald, armed and ready to defend her, rode at her side. Baldric walked ahead with the dogs on the leash, searching for tracks in the grass. He had his task before him, and she could let her mind play with the possibilities of the day. She had two wagers before her, Edward and Ulrich. Edward was the easier. She would lure him, laugh with him, and win him. But what was to be her winning? It was just like Avice to avoid the setting of terms.

Had she not done the same with the knight from York, a man of ruddy complexion and riding a gray steed? Aye, Juliane remembered well his horse, a fine animal. Of the man she remembered naught but the wager. And the winning. Of the terms, Avice had been negligent, and since that time, Juliane had been diligent in the setting of them. Except for now. Ulrich had distracted her.

He was a very distracting man.

She did not like what he called forth from her, this treacherous softness, this uneasy joy, this gentle falling into laughter and gaiety and fun. A woman was soon lost if she fell into fun with a man. There was only one sort of fun a man wanted with a woman, and it was not to the woman's advantage.

Even knowing that, she liked him. Liked his company, his look, his laugh.

A most, most dangerous quarry, to seduce the hunter into unwilling admiration and affectionate regard. She would hardly have the will to toss him from her life if he proceeded apace. Yet he would not. Did he not need a wager to worm his way into her presence? She must not fall to that lure again. 'Twas too much to his advantage.

He was very fond of wagering. She liked that about him, understood it. She even understood his confidence that he would win, because she had exactly the same confidence in herself.
A
fine pair they made in that, though only one of them would win, and it would he she. She would make certain of it.

She always did.

"The dogs have caught a scent," Baldric said, turning to her.

Juliane left her thoughts of Ulrich and their battle in the dust at her feet and looked instead at the pack of dogs clustered around Baldric, their tails high and quivering, their noses to the ground.

"Set them to it," she said, adjusting herself upon her saddle, preparing to set Onyx to a run.

With a baying like a thousand trumpets, the dogs were off, chasing through the wood, their paws setting the leaves of last autumn into the air behind them, turning them to dust. And into that swirling dust rode Juliane and Baldric and Theobald, her favorite man-of-arms, who carried the lance. Theobald was quite good with the lance. They would all enjoy the scent and sight of blood this day, if Theobald held true to his skill.

Through the high shade they ran, the dogs before them running as heralds of the hunt, in their throats the prophecy of blood crying forth to any who stood before their charge. Through the hot air of high summer the horses ran, their withers bunching beneath the gleam of sweat, their breath coming in hard snorts, their hoofs pounding soft upon the damp earth beneath the trees, pressing the leaves of seasons past into dusky mold. Through the mottled light Juliane ran to the blood of a kill, certain that a boar awaited her, certain of victory. Ever and always certain of victory.

It was no boar that awaited her.

Ulrich stood in the deep shadow of a darkened wood, a rough crag of silvered rock rising at his back. Before him was a pack of wolves, snarling, two of their number dead or dying upon the dirt, their coats marled with blood and tissue. Five wolves remained, two at a distance, seeming to want to run into deeper darkness, to flee the dogs rushing toward them. To be outnumbered was not a wolf's desire; a weaker foe was more easily won, and they hunted for food, not sport.