Dream of Me/Believe in Me

the hunt was fading, returning him to the workaday world of decisions, judgments, compromises, and wise leadership he was expected to provide by the several thousand people who clustered in and around the fortress of Hawkforte and the thousands more spread out over his lands. He never questioned his duty, in fact he embraced it, but there were times when it weighed heavy all the same. Such a mellow day might have been spent in more amiable pursuits, perhaps dangling a line beside a brook in the hopethat no fish would come along to require attention. He thought, too, that it would be pleasant to share such an interlude with someone who would ask nothing of him save his company. But that notion had scarcely stirred before the realities of his duty, which was to say his life, overrode it.
    The steward, reassured that his lord was more approachable than of late, relaxed as much as his meticulous nature ever permitted. He was young for his position, which he had on merit rather than rank, and he meant to hold on to it. “Three servants of the Lady Krysta have arrived, my lord.” He gestured toward a trio standing some little distance away near the smithy's shed, one of many such small buildings that framed the inner walls of the fortress. The slight motion of his hand, the faint pinching of his nostrils, and the shadowed look in his eyes expressed a range of emotion scarcely seen in the redoubtable Edvard. Surprise, concern, puzzlement, a veritable cacophony of feeling flowed from one who was normally the most imperturbable of men.
    Hawk surveyed the little group for himself. There was a man—short and stocky, bent shouldered, with long black hair and beard, and coal-bright eyes. Beside him stood an aged woman dressed all in black, hair like a raven's wing, sharp nosed. Partly concealed by them both but still visible was a much younger woman, also black-haired, delicately made with pixyish features and eyes …
    Dancing, anticipation-filled eyes that even from a distance appeared to him to be the selfsame shade as a forest glen in high summer. He could almost feel the cool moss, hear the crystalline patter of water on stone, smell the fragrance of shy wood violets twined in the hair of a woman with skin like cream and …
    Hawk returned to himself with a start. He was too far from the girl to see such detail yet had been so absorbed in his imaginings that he had forgotten all else.
    That was absurd. She was only a servant, a rather small and disheveled one at that. There was no conceivable reason why she should be of any particular interest to him. Yet there he was again falling into those eyes and that sweetly entrancing smile that managed to remind him somehow of … of what, exactly? He'd seen it there in his mind for just an instant but it was gone too swiftly, leaving only a fleeting impression of sun-dappled water and the sleek, gleaming forms that leaped between air and sea in the wake of his fast-skimming boat.
    Ridiculous. He looked away, looked back, caught himself doing so, and scowled. She saw his confusion and seemed to fold herself up, all but vanishing behind her two companions.
    He was tired, that was it. He'd been at court until a fortnight ago and that was always wearying. Since returning home, the business of Hawkforte had occupied him without surcease. And then there was the matter of his damnable marriage hanging over him like the proverbial sword.
    One no less sharp than the tongue of his half-sister who he saw too late was bearing down on him with all the grace and subtlety of an ill-tempered she goat. Hawk spared a thought for the rapacious Danes, whom he would have greatly preferred to face, and steeled himself for her usual tirade.
    “This is beyond all bounds!” Daria proclaimed. “It is not enough that we are left to wonder when the Lady Krysta may find it convenient to appear, now we are expected to welcome her servants in her stead.” She cast a dire look over her shoulder before returning her attention full force to her brother, who closed his eyes for a moment, summoning that most elusive of all virtues—patience.
    Daria was his elder by a decade. By all rights, she should have been in her own manor and so she would havebeen had not her husband had the poor judgment to go against Alfred of Wessex just as the scholar-warrior was setting out to unite Britons against the Danes. Promptly widowed, Daria made no secret of her resentment against all those who had denied her what she