Claudia Dain (22 page)

"Yet I must have a care for all within my sphere, child; this you have known, as I have known you, from a child."

"Pray for me, then, Father, and you will do me good service. But of care have none, as I have none."

"We should all have a care, Juliane. The world is harsh, and life can be long and difficult.

"Yet I am safe within God's embrace, Father Matthew, my future assured," she said with a smile. "With your prayers to clothe me, what shall I fear?" she asked, blinking brightly her shining approval of him.

Of these conversations, this was not the first. He wanted her to enter the convent. She would not. Why he wanted it, she did not know. But she would not. To live within the cloister, bound and blinded, obedient to every voice and to the inflexibility of every rule? Nay, 'twas not a life she sought; she would not be pushed to it. Nay, nor lured either. But of lures, what could a priest hold out to her?

"Fear nothing," he said a bit stiffly. "Fear only the condition of your soul and your place in eternity."

"I do. As do all men. We are a fallen race, Father. I know my place in the ordering of the world, taught most well by you," Juliane said evenly.

"Then you know that you must marry, either man or God. A woman's place is as a wife."

"I will not marry."

"Then you fall out of the natural order of the world, child," he said. "What place for you then?"

"Maud did not marry," she said. Juliane had based much upon that truth. If Maud could carve herself a life without a husband to constrain her, then so could she. And with Maud's wise counsel, it would be done.

"She may still," Father Matthew said. "Her tale is not told complete, not as long as she lives upon this earth. A husband may come forth for her."

"At this hour?" Juliane said with a snort of disbelief. "She is too old to make a child. What purpose, then, to marry?"

"She is young enough still. I know of many women who bear the fruit of marriage when their hair is stone white."

"Then perhaps it is that I will marry when my hair is white, for surely, Father, I will not marry now," she said, her careful understanding of the world tilted by his declaration that Maud might yet marry.

"You are decided? You will not seek the abbey life?" he asked once more.

"Nay, Father, I will not," she said, making a statement of intent which he could not mistake.

"Then I will speak no more of it," he said, his smile fading.

"Yet let us speak of many other things, Father. I value your thoughts in all things, as is right," she said courteously.

"Would you know my thoughts regarding Ulrich of Caen?" he asked.

Juliane gave a delicate snort and shook her head. "There is no need for either of us to cast our thoughts in that direction. He is a man, like all the others before him and all others to come."

Father Matthew raised his brows. "So? Like all other men, is he? My eyes have deceived me, it seems, for I thought in him I saw something I had not yet seen. At least in men who come to test themselves against Juliane le Gel."

"What?" she asked, turning to search his familiar face. She had known this priest all her life and thought of him not unlike a cherished uncle. In fact, she preferred Father Matthew's gentle humor to her uncle Conor's brash ways. "What do you see in him?"

Father Matthew shook his head, the light from the distant wind hole turning his grayed hairs to beaten silver. "Can you not see it?"

"I see only his need to win and his arrogance that he will achieve a victory."

"And a fierceness of heart that springs from fierce love."

Juliane laughed and turned to walk out of the chapel. It was almost Sext. She would not be found here within when all came to make their prayers; she would not be named eager in Ulrich's eyes. She would meet the wager, but she would do so on slow feet.

"Aye, self-love. All men love themselves most well. It is their besetting sin," she said.

"Nay, Juliane, the sin that hounds a man through all his life as not the sin of love, but the sin of thinking himself equal to God, the sin of pride. This sin sprang forth in the Garden and lives on today, flourishing, flowering in the heart of man," he said. "This is the sin which must be rooted out and burned, before it destroys the very world."

"Do you yet speak of Ulrich?" she asked. Father Matthew had a most strange look about him, his face frozen into grim foreboding and determination. All this for an errant knight? Ulrich did not warrant such depth of consideration.

Father Matthew jerked his gaze back to hers, pulled from his spiritual discourse.

"Perhaps in part," he said, pulling forth a gentle smile, "yet what I see in him is that he brings to you what no other man has brought."

"He brings no land, that is certain," she said with a wry shrug.

"Nay, Juliane, look beyond what the world lays value upon. A man is more than the measure of his worth in land or name. Ulrich brings a heart that can love. 'Tis no small thing."

"Small enough," she said. "Marriages are made between equal partners. Ulrich has nothing."

"Then you would prefer Nicholas of Nottingham? 'Tis your uncle's choice for you, and he presses most hard against your father to see it done."

"Prefer one man to another?" she said. "And one of Conor's choosing? I would make no such choice."

"Yet a choice must be made and soon, Juliane. Your father slows in his walk through life," Father Matthew said. "He must see you set upon your path before he passes out of earthly cares, his duty to you done."

"He has done well by me," she said. "I need no betrothal to confirm it."

"What of Conor? Will he say the same?"

"Conor has no charge over me. That care falls to my father, and my brother after him," she said, turning from him and from the dark foreboding of this conversation. "I must away for now. I have a wager soon to fulfill. With your blessing, Father," she said, dropping into a curtsey of submission, but walking away from him without his blessing or his leave.

"With my blessing, Juliane," he said to her back, watching as she moved through the cool dimness of the chapel, her will unchanged, as was her heart.

* * *

The chapel filled slowly with those souls who sought to pray away the hour of Sext. Juliane was of their number, of their rearward number, waiting in the shadows of the porch for Ulrich to pass within. She waited long. He did not come. The chapel filled, the noon hour song of prayer began, and he did not come.

Concerned she was not.

Curious, nay, not at all.

Let him be where he was, wheree'er that was, out of her sight, out of her thoughts, gone from all that touched her. He could touch her not.

It did not matter where he was during the prayer of Sext; let him only be in the stables for the meeting of their wager and he would be well met in that hour. In an instant, 'twould be over. He would speak softly, his eyes would shine, his mouth would turn up in a smile, and he would, for an instant, lay his lips upon her. Somewhere upon her.

It mattered not where upon her, and it mattered not how long he laid his moist mouth against her heated skin.

Nothing mattered but the winning of this wager, and the defeating of Ulrich, and the departing of Ulrich from Stanora. He would win nothing in Stanora.

Such were her thoughts as the congregation prayed around her. Their prayers, upon soft lips and from urgent hearts, flew upward into heaven. Her thoughts were anchored firmly on the earth, chained by will and passion to Ulrich.

If there was a winning in that for Ulrich, she closed her eyes to it, closed her eyes and pretended to pray.

* * *

She came to the stables with some slowness to her steps, dragging her toes over the dirt, surrounded by smells of straw and sunlight and horse. Good smells. Warm smells. The light was hot and direct, heating her head and shoulders like a brand; she hesitated upon reaching the dark, cool portal of the stables. Between hot light and shadow, she would choose light, if she could choose. Which she could not. The wager was for the stables, cool and dark, and so into the shadow she went.

He was waiting for her.

Tall amid the shadows, leaning against the worn wooden western wall, wreathed in darkness, he stood. The air was alive with sound: the stomp of hoof, the jingle of harness, the beating of her heart. Or so it seemed to her.

He stood so very still, so very shadowed. So very predatory. Like a wolf. And like a wolf, he watched her.

"You came," he said, not moving from his place at the wall.

"Did you doubt I would?" she said, clinging to the scrap of sunlight that skirted the doorway.

He shook his head slowly. "Nay, I did not doubt the word of Juliane le Gel in the matter of a wager."

The stalls were not full. There were perhaps three horses in the stalls, dozing, lazily munching straw, watching. She moved into the shadows and stood with Onyx at her side. Onyx's ears twitched in her direction, and Juliane smiled.

"Shall we, then, begin it?" she said.

"So that we may be the sooner done with it?" he asked, still unmoving from his post at the wall. His very stillness made her nerves jump like locusts in the grass. "Nay, I have waited too long for this to hurry through it."

"Too long? A few hours at most."

"Too long," he said, his words a growl of longing.

Nay, nay, not a growl, not a man who watched her with all the feral hunger of a wolf; only a man in need of winning a wager. That was all he was. That was all it ever was.

"You are impatient," she said with soft mockery, scolding him.

"Only for you," he answered, unabashed by her scolding, untouched by it.

"Pretty words," she said with a chill smile. "Yet are we not here for a kiss? A single kiss without the threat of blood to chill your ardor? Come, then, my lord, lay your mouth upon me. I will stand and take whatever is in you to deliver."

"So, you will stand while I come to you, a penitent seeking grace from a woman with a marble heart? Nay," he said softly, "I will not come. You shall come to me, Juliane. Come to me now," he quietly commanded."

"Is this part of our bargaining?"

"Must it be? Will you not come to me unless a wager is attached to the act? Must all be wagers and winning between us, Juliane? Can there be nothing of warmth and generosity?"

"In the winning of a wager?" she said stiffly. "Are you generous with your brother knights in the playing out of a wager, or is that only to be my gift to you, to ease your way to winning what I have determined you shall not win?"

"When I am certain of winning, then, yea, I am generous," he said. "Is it that you are uncertain of your victory in this, Juliane? Is it that you fear to draw close to me of your own will? Is there a falling in that, Lady Frost? Are you so easily tumbled that mere steps will see it done?"

He gloated. He prodded. He manipulated. All the things a man did to achieve his will by soft steps when blows and bluster would not serve. She knew all this. She knew the ways of a man. And still, he pricked her pride with his taunts. She felt her blood race at his dare, knowing that it was foolish to give him a single step of ground he had not fought for, yet knowing that she would meet his dare and walk to him, walk to him like a woman in love, running to the arms of her lover.

Yet mayhap she could turn even that to her advantage.

In every move of every game, there was always an advantage to be found and used, and no one was better at games than she.

"Watch and see," she said, her eyes smoldering with promise and with threat. Let him read that in her face and wonder. There was no fear in her. This wager had been won time and time and time upon time.

She stroked the black face of Onyx, making him wait for what she had promised. Waiting never suited a man; they were all quick hurry and blind need. She fondled Onyx's ear, running a hand down her sturdy neck, cooing meaningless words, ignoring Ulrich, feeding his impatience. Releasing the rope that bound Onyx into her stall, she patted, stroked, and caressed the beast until Onyx pushed her face into Juliane's chest, demanding more. With a final pat, she left her then, turning back to face Ulrich.

Who smiled, watching her. Who leaned with all the careless ease of a man with nothing to do but stand and watch a woman fondle a horse. Who waited softly, his temper unprovoked and untouched.

"I watch," he said. "What is it I will see? Will Juliane come to me of her own power? Will she lay herself under my touch? Will she submit her body to my will?" he breathed, the summer light golden at his feet, his blue eyes shining within the shadow.

"Your mouth upon me, that is all of touching you shall have," she reminded him, ignoring the bubbling race of her blood as she said it. "One kiss only shall you have of me."

"That is all I shall require," he replied.

If there was ominous promise in his voice, she pushed the threat from her.

And so she went to him, one step upon another. The distance was not so very great. Step after step she went to him while he waited, his arms crossed, his shoulders leaning back against the wood, his hips thrust forward, his eyes locked on to hers.