Medieval 03 - Enchanted

Simon had been given a
room close to the bathing room. The room had been Meg’s
before her marriage to Dominic le Sabre. The other rooms on that
floor of the keep were unavailable, for they were being renovated
with an eye toward children.
    Simon could have slept in the barracks with the
rest of the keep’s fighting men, but that area was filled to
overflowing. Dominic had been recruiting knights returning from the
Holy War, as well as men-at-arms, squires, grooms, and the servants
necessary to support the growing number of people living at the
keep.
    Though Ariane understood the necessity of combined
quarters, she found it difficult to sleep next to a man whose very
breath made curious threads of heat gather throughout her body. A
man whose shimmering sensuality came to her in dreams, setting her
afire. A man whose restraint she trusted. A man much beloved bythe keep’s cats. A man whose own feline
grace made her heartbeat speed.
    But not with fear.
    How can I fear a man whose
chain mail hauberk serves as a ladder for kittens ?
    The answer was as swift as it was unavoidable.
    I fear what will happen when
Simon discovers that I am no maiden, but a girl hard-used by a
dishonorable knight .
    Will I finally find the death
I once sought ?
    Once, but no more. Now the rainbow possibilities of
life called to Ariane.
    Somehow, while she had lain in thrall to Learned
medicine and fragrant balm, much of the poison of her past rape had
drained away, allowing another kind of healing to begin. Nightmare
rarely came to Ariane now unless she was in some way
restrained.
    As she had been by Simon when she sat astride his
lap and discovered that some things burn far more deeply than
fire.
    The downward curve of Ariane’s mouth became
deeper as she remembered how she had cried out and clawed at Simon
hands. The pride and anger in him at her rejection—and the
hurt—had been almost tangible.
    He had no way of knowing it had been past nightmare
that she rejected, not Simon himself.
    I must tell him .
    Soon .
    Tonight ?
    A shudder coursed through Ariane at the thought of
how Simon would react. He deserved better than a bride whose
emotions and body had been savaged by a cruel knight.
    Just as Ariane herself had deserved better than
rape and betrayal by the very men who should have honored and
protected her.
    I can’t tell him. Not
yet .
    Not tonight .
    If Simon has a chance to know
me better, perhaps he will believe that it was rape rather than
seduction that forced my maidenhead .
    But my own father did not
believe .
    “Lady Ariane?” Meg said gently.
“Do sit down. You look quite pale.”
    Ariane straightened her shoulders and released a
breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. Her fingers moved
restlessly on the strings of her harp.
    It was jagged sorrow rather than completion that
she drew from the instrument.
    “I am well,” Ariane said neutrally.
“The medicines you and Cassandra used healed me.”
    “Not quite.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Listen to your own music,” Meg said.
“It is darker than even Simon’s eyes.”
    “Betrayed by my own harp.”
    Ariane had meant the words lightly, but they came
out as a bleak statement of fact.
    “Are the men still out hawking?” Ariane
asked quickly.
    “No. We just came back.”
    Slowly Ariane absorbed the fact that she
hadn’t been awakened to go hawking in the glorious dawn, but
Meg had.
    It shouldn’t have hurt Ariane, but it
did.
    “Simon said you had slept badly and
shouldn’t be disturbed,” Meg said.
    A ripple of discordant notes was Ariane’s
only response.
    “Was the hawking successful?” Ariane
asked politely while the strings were still quivering.
    “Aye. Dominic’s peregrine brought down
enough fat waterfowl to assure a feast. Simon’s gyrfalcon did
just as well. They earned so many morsels of freshly killed fowl
that the falcons could barely fly toward the end of the
morning.”
    Ariane forced a smile. “Skylance is a fine
falcon, worthy of Simon in every way.”
    The tone of Ariane’s voice said much more,
implying that other things—such as his wife—were not
quite so worthy of Simon.
    Meg’s green eyes widened. She saw Ariane with Glendruid eyes, and what Meg saw
was unsettling: Ariane did indeed feel that Simon had been cheated
in the marriage bargain.
    As for Simon…Meg didn’t need Glendruid
eyes to know that Simon was like a wildcat that had been caged and
tormented until it savaged everything within reach.
    “Lady Ariane,”