Medieval 03 - Enchanted

been gentle enough with me.”
    Much gentler than he will be
when he discovers that his wife is no maiden .
    Wars have begun over lesser
insults. Men have killed. Women have died .
    The last thought held a dark allure for Ariane. It
whispered of an escape from the brutal trap of pain and betrayal
that life had become.
    “Simon is strong of body and fair of
face,” Amber added, “with a quickness to put the
keep’s cats to shame.”
    Ariane’s fingers hesitated. After a moment
she murmured, “His eyes are very…dark.”
    “’Tis only that sun-colored hair of his
that makes his eyes seem so black,” Amber said instantly.
    Ariane shook her head. “It is more than
that.”
    Hesitating, sighing, Amber agreed.
    “’Tis the same with many of the men who
came back from the Saracen battles,” she admitted.

“They returned less light of heart.”
    A minor chord quivered in the silence.
    “Simon mistrusts me,” Ariane said.
    “You?” Amber laughed without humor.
“He trusts you enough to show you his back. I am the one he
mistrusts. In the silence of his heart, Simon calls me
hell-witch.”
    Surprise lightened the bleak violet of
Ariane’s eyes for a moment.
    “If it helps,” Amber said dryly,

“your own eyes, for all their fey beauty, are as remote as a
Druid moon.”
    “Should that comfort me?”
    “Can anything comfort you?”
    Ariane’s fingers paused in their delicate
stroking of the harp as she considered the question. Then her
fingers struck like snow falcons, ripping a harsh sound from the
strings.
    “Why does he call you hell-witch?”
Ariane asked after a moment.
    Before Amber could answer, a deep male voice spoke
behind her, answering Ariane’s question.
    “Because,” Simon said, “I thought
she had stolen Duncan’s mind.”
    Both women turned and saw Simon standing at the
entrance to the small corner chamber that had been turned over to
Ariane for the length of her stay at Stone Ring Keep. Ariane
didn’t expect the visit to be long; all that held Lord
Dominic of Blackthorne Keep here was his determination to see
Ariane wed to one of his loyal men before anything else could go
awry.
    Simon was the second groom chosen for the Baron
Deguerre’s daughter. Though Ariane had never been drawn to
her first fiancé—Duncan—in any way at all, just
seeing Simon sent odd currents through Ariane. He filled the
doorway with little left over. Because most people first saw him
standing next to his brother Dominic, or to Amber’s even
larger husband Duncan, Simon’s size often passed without
particular comment, as did the width of his shoulders.
    Yet Ariane noticed everything about Simon, and had
from the first instant he had strode up to her at Blackthorne Keep
and told her to prepare for a hard ride to Stone Ring Keep. She had
been vividly aware of Simon’s quickness and grace, and of his
supple, powerful body. His eyes had burned like black fire with the
force of his intelligence and will.
    And sometimes, if Ariane turned to him
unexpectedly, she had seen Simon’s eyes burning with an
intense sensual heat. He desired her.
    She had waited in dread for him to force that
desire upon her. Yet he had not. He had been unfailingly civil,
treating her with a courtesy and disciplined restraint that she
found as reassuring as it was…alluring.
    Simon could have been standing in a forest of
giants and he would have towered over them in Ariane’s sight.
There was something about the feline quickness and male elegance of
Simon’s body that in her eyes overshadowed men more
brawny.
    Or perhaps it was simply that he had been kind to
her in his own sardonic way. The ride from Blackthorne Keep, where
she had just arrived from Normandy, toStone Ring
Keep had been hard indeed. Blackthorne Keep was in the far north of
England, on the edge of the Disputed Lands where Norman and Saxon
still fought over estates.
    Stone Ring Keep was still farther north, in the
very heart of the lands where Normans claimed estates and Saxons
held those same estates by force of arms. The Battle of Hastings
had been won more than a generation ago by the Normans, yet the
Saxons were far from subdued.
    “It seems,” Simon said as he walked
into the room, “I was wrong about Amber. It was only
Duncan’s heart that she had stolen. A far more trifling
matter than a mind, surely.”
    The Learned girl refused to rise to the deftly
presented bait, though the amber pendant she wore between her
breasts shimmered with secret