Alexander-Fyn-Sanguinarian

late to find someone of the blood and let this girl go?”
    Munk asked. “There is still more than a week, my lord.”
    “No!” Raven said sharply. “She has defied me and provoked me. I refuse to let her go now, on principle. She will marry me and accept her fate, or she will be sorry. I’ll make her sorry.”
    Munk’s mouth twisted in anger. “She should be grateful to marry a lord. She comes from nothing. You have given her an opportunity that would not present itself to her under ordinary circumstances.”
    Raven sighed, placated somewhat by Munk’s words. “She is a pretty child, though, don’t you think?”
    Munk nodded very reluctantly. “I compare all beauty to Lady Dominica’s great beauty. No one matches her ladyship.”
    “But Evangeline’s beauty is different. She is small and fair. So different from our kind.”
    “She is attractively pale of skin, my lord, but that blonde hair.”
    She frowned. “And her taste in clothes does her no justice. She is too drawn to the sunlight. Before she ran away she asked me what the gardens are like in the summer. It’s incomprehensible.” Munk frowned.
    “Strange,” Raven agreed. He began to eat his meat quickly and efficiently. “More suitable clothes we can provide, but I’m afraid that after the wedding we must indulge her desires to go outside and look Sanguinarian 105
    at flowers and such nonsense.”
    “She may still try to run off after you are married, my lord. I think we should get her a companion to keep watch on her.”
    “Yes, I have not yet told her the full details of the will.”
    Munk leaned forward and Raven remembered that he had never told her either. If anyone should know such details about the family then it was Munk. “Half the estate, which is a considerable sum in itself, will come to me on the wedding day. After that my bride and I must reside together for a full year and she must provide me with at least one child for me to inherit the rest of the estate. So you see Munk, she must not get away even after the wedding, though I have not yet told her this. If I have to keep her locked in the tower for a full year then that is what I will do.”
    “And if you don’t marry, my lord?”
    “I keep the castle to live in until my death, but nothing else, not the lands nor the farms. I would have no income except what the government pays me for the work I do for them.”
    Raven took several pieces of fruit from the silver bowl before him—apples from their own orchard and oranges from the orangery of a cousin in the south. He ate them quickly with great bites, and then stood up. “I should be home in the early hours of the morning, Munk. Keep Miss Rutledge under lock and key.”
    “Yes, my lord.”
    She followed him as he strode out of the dining hall, across the Great Hall, and up the wide steps toward his chamber. “Ensure that her fire is kept blazing. She likes to be warm at all times. The cold seems to bother her terribly. Give her the foods she likes and make certain Dominica suspects nothing. I don’t want her upset.”
    “You need not worry, my lord. I will take care of them both until you return.”
    At the door of his chamber Raven spoke to his manservant who was carefully preparing a small bag for his journey. “I need very little.
    I am traveling on horseback. I will stay at an inn only if the weather is 106
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    too bad to travel overnight. Make sure that my hip flask is filled with absinthe.”
    “It is, my lord,” the servant assured him.
    Raven began to walk in the direction of the west tower. “I will visit Dominica before I leave.”
    “Shall I come, my lord?” Munk inquired.
    “No, I will see her alone.” He stopped to look at Munk. “Visit Miss Rutledge often to ensure that she is safe and not trying to climb out of the tower windows or scale the sides of the castle to escape.
    But do not keep her company or allow anyone else to. She is being punished.”
    “Yes, my lord. I can’t imagine Miss Rutledge would appreciate my company anyway.”
    “No, probably not, Munk. Good day.”

    * * * *

    Her black velvet cloak flying about her, Lady Dominica walked the walled garden of the tower where she had lived for most of the last fifteen years. She was free to walk about her garden and the rooms of her tower, but never beyond, except on the four major festivals of the year when Court was held at the castle. She had no idea why she was locked in and had never thought it just. Sometimes