“Indeed, it is. If you are prepared for such sacrifice.”
“I am. Maybe. Hell…” He sighed, riffled his fingers through his this-way-and-that hair. “I’m working on it.” He gave his purse another squeeze. “I’m not yet ready to give up the bones.”
“Bones?”
Baldwin shrugged. “I bartered in bones as well. No longer. But I do have some excellent treasures.” He dug in the leather purse at his hip. “See here, St. Miranda’s finger bone. ’Tis an excellent charm against mud slides and natural disasters. And here!” He displayed a thin white bone before his glittering eyes. “The finger bone of St. Jude the Obscure, patron saint of Hopeless Causes—” he cast a glance Sera’s way “—which could certainly be put to use in our endeavors.”
Sera shook her head.
“Well, St. Eustache’s toe bone really does work!” Baldwin insisted. “I rubbed it both nights you rode into battle.”
“I see,” she said. “And so I suppose they do work, for I am yet all of one piece.”
Baldwin gave an exacting nod.
Sera reneged her challenge with a deftly concealed smirk behind her hand. The man needed some faith to cling to. And until he was ready to accept his own courage—for he did possess courage—he would need the false reassurance the bones offered him.
“And what of you?”
Sera lifted her chin at Dominique’s query. No mistaking he had addressed her.
“You lost your family. A tragedy. Was there also…a husband?”
The smirk grew wider, and Sera had to dip her head to keep San Juste from seeing the mirth she knew glittered in her eyes. The mercenary’s question came across as more personal than the man might like it to sound. Did he have an interest in her beyond his mission? She who slaughtered men, and stomped about in armor, and was more in resemblance to a man than a woman with long beautiful hair and a delicate step beneath flowing skirts?
Her heart warmed to think such. She could not fight the damsel’s desire for love. Much as she had chosen to deny her tattered heart that emotion, she knew it was needed.
But it was not required for healing. Only avenging her family could provide that.
“I was to be married on the first day of the New Year.” She regarded Dominique for his reaction. A raised brow. The warmth in his eyes contrasted acutely with his sharp features; she wasn’t sure whether to trust this man or slit his throat.
She raked her fingers through her spiked coif and scratched. With a splay of her hand she said, “Despite outer appearances, I am marriageable. My father had land on the coast he wished me to have, so he found a husband. Someone who would not interfere with my desire to control the holdings.”
“In other words,” Dominique figured, “a man malleable to your desires?”
“In a sense. I am not a cruel person, San Juste. Nor was my father. It was simply the only way I could own land. Henri agreed.”
“Your husband?”
“Henri of Lisieux. He hadn’t any land to inherit after a brush fire, courtesy of Mastema de Morte, razed his father’s holdings. Lisieux was an interesting man…”
“Sera! You’d best run a comb through your hair and tidy up. Father has already declared the festivities begin.”
Sera stood up from brushing under Gryphon’s belly and pushed a long strand of hair from her eyelashes. Antoine slapped Gryphon’s flank, then chucked his sister under the chin, pointing out the smudge of dirt there.
Since when had he been overconcerned with her appearance?
Ah. She found the answer in her brother’s bright-eyed smirk. “He is here?”
“Father outdid himself with this one. Truly, you must see the man to believe it.”
“That hideous to look upon?” Sera handed Antoine the brush and jerked her rucked-up sleeves to her wrists. The red damask kirtle was clean, though hay clung to the hem, and certainly the odor of stable would cling for the day.
“No, no, Father would not be so cruel to his only daughter.” He slid an arm around her shoulder. “I still find it troubling that you allowed Father to choose your husband for you.”
“Fathers choose their daughters’ husbands every day, Antoine. Why should that disturb you so?”
“You are not like most women, Seraphim. Do you not desire…well, love?”
She shrugged, shooed away a metallic green hover fly from near her brother’s face. “What woman does not?”
“There is still time to make your own choice. Do you not care for any of Father’s knights?”
“Ha! They are adept idiots, the lot of them.”
“I will remind you that I am a knight, dear sister.”
“You are not stupid, Antoine. The knights that practice in the lists are adept at but one thing, and that is being men. Boisterous, unclean, single-minded, sword-swinging, idiot men. They reign on the battlefield, and I know they choose to reign in the bed chamber, as well. I cannot live with a man who will seek to reign over me, Antoine, you know that.”
“Indeed, I do understand. So you must go then, look upon the man Father has chosen. But be cautious you don’t frighten the mouse away with your overwhelming Amazon presence.”
Sera left Gryphon to Antoine’s care and strode out into the courtyard, destined for the great hall, where she felt sure to find amidst revelry and celebration her future husband.
So Father had done as she had requested. Just a proxy for her holdings; she and Father had agreed. Not a man who had designs on her future, let alone his own future. Someone compliant, simple, and agreeable. Though not meek. She did not wish a milksop to have to protect should her holdings ever be challenged. He must command a sword as well as a gentle tongue.
She would be no man’s chattel.
Offering a good day to the laundress who hung wet sheets to dry on the line, Sera marched inside the castle and followed the gay melody of lutes and harp-strings to the rush-strewn keep. Baldwin Ortolano, the abbe’s newest postulant, bowed and offered a “Good day, my lady.”
A gray-bellied dove swooped down from the rafters, flittering a breeze across Sera’s face. At the far end of the great hall Father and Mother were seated upon the dais. ’Twas a rare occasion that saw Mother out of her solar. She held her simply coiffed head regally, though her curled fingers were clutched tight to her stomach.
Mother’s lady-in-waiting stood with a hand cupped over her mouth. The object of her stifled glee stood on the floor before the dais, a maroon velvet liricap spilling from his head onto narrow shoulders. His doublet, belted in gold about his waist, did not so much hang from his shoulders, as drip. Two long sticks for legs were capped off by long pointed leather shoes. Not so much comical, as pitiful.
Had this man ever touched sharpened steel in defense?
Sera halted but three strides before the man. Behind her, surprising winter sun beamed through the windows set high upon the wall, lighting her figure in worship. She had planned her position thusly.
Placing arms akimbo, and raising her chin assertively, Sera spoke with a certain discernment, “My lord Henri, I presume?”
The man’s jaw dropped. He pointed a long finger then, thinking better, dropped the hand to his side. He stuttered on the first syllable, then finally spat out, “My—my lady Seraphim?”
“I told you she was a fine piece of woman,” Marcil d’Ange bellowed from his throne. “Wine! We celebrate from this moment until the stroke of midnight, when the New Year comes marching in. Let the First Foot bring blessings for us all!”
A lute player plucked an arpeggio of notes and the flute joined in. Serving maids rushed in with pitchers of wine and silver goblets, and the merriment of the hall resumed. But Sera remained, hands on hips, a smile curving her lips, as she studied Henri’s nervous gaze. Gold eyes rimmed with thick blond lashes dodged here and there. He dared not look upon any one part of her for too long, yet his gaze could not help but stride over her face, shoulders, and body.
He surely thought, What the hell have I gotten myself into?
“I do not bite,” Sera said, and offered her hand.
