“Perhaps they have enoughsense to fear being shredded for their uninvited attempts.”Hervoice was as arched as her brows.
“Or no stones enough totry.”Talon eyed his bandaged hand.His prize for thinking with hisstones instead of his brain.
“I never said none hadever tried.”Her voice dripped honey, as it had at the river rightbefore she’d called him an arrogant ass.“Nor that none had everclaimed the prize.”
Talon sat back, her words stinging assmartly as the slice across his palm had yesterday.Her smileturned smug, and it occurred to him that she’d intended to get arise out of him, and it had worked.Too well.He pushed his chairback, stood, then gave her a stiff dip of his head before he turnedand strode from the chamber, throwing the outside bolt shut.Heshould’ve stayed and pretended it didn’t matter to him that she’dbeen plucked before.Yet it did, though he couldn’t have said why.Which pretty much explained everything the red-headed, hazel-eyedwitchy wildcat made him feel.
***
The last of the candles sputtered outin the common room before Talon stepped over snoring soldiers toclimb the stairs to his chamber.Lara lay in her cot, pretending tosleep, Wolf on his pelts on the floor beside her.Talon knew shewas pretending because she’d laid her hand on Wolf’s head to quiethim when he growled at Talon entering the chamber.He stripped downto his breechcloth, washed up, and, ignoring the big, soft, emptybed, threw the pelts he’d slept on last night against the door,then settled into them for the night, grinning as he heard thesound of her fist hitting her pillow and her loud harumph as sheflopped over on the cot.
He woke up several times to her pacingback and forth across the chamber, keeping away from him and thedoor, and he was up at dawn and out of the hall by daybreak.Hestayed away from his chamber all day, though it seemed every timehe looked up at the open window while about the day’s business,which was every time he passed by it, she was either pacing backand forth across it or sitting and staring out of it.After theevening meal, he sat with his men in the common room drinking andtelling stories they’d all heard and told a hundred times before,along with a few new ones, most of which had to do with thecaptain’s current bewitchment.He let them jape away, only becauseSophie and the house servants all left for their own homes aftersupper and weren’t there to hear, and Fulrad was heavily sedatedand floating in and out of awareness.
Talon only drank one cup of alehimself.He didn’t dare guard the door to his chamber drunk, surethe caged wildcat would run right over him, claws out and at theready if he was impaired in any way.When he entered his bedchambera little before midnight, Lara was in her cot, pretending to beasleep again, but was back to pacing not long after he settled ontothe pelts.
Seven days passed this way, seven daysof watching her pace past the window all day, and seven nights ofhaving his sleep interrupted by listening to her footsteps in thedark.Seven days of not a word spoken between them, when Taloncould take it no longer.
He returned to his chamber after alight noon repast and leaned against the open door as she whirledaround midstride.“Will you give me your word that you’ll swear notto run, ride, swim, or fly away if I let you out walkoutside?”
“Yes,” she said withouthesitation.“I swear.”
“Come on, then.”He heldthe door wide.“All you had to do was ask, you know.”
“I didn’t want to be anytrouble.”She strode out the door, and Talon swallowed hisgrin.
He led her and Wolf out the hall ofwatching servants and into the courtyard, where even more curiouseyes followed them as they crossed the courtyard and passed throughthe guarded back gate and out onto the open field.When theyreached the river, Talon sat down on the grassy bank, and Wolf laydown beside him, offering his belly for a rub.
Talon chuckled at the surprised lookon Lara’s face.“We’ve become friends,” he told her.He’d beentaking Wolf out each morning and evening to relieve himself, andthough he’d asked the dog a hundred questions about his mistressover the past days, Wolf had only ever told him where he liked tobe scratched or where he liked to sniff.
Lara gave the dog an accusing glare,then lifted her skirts and waded into the river, grinning as Talonsat up straighter, ready to jump up and chase her if she bolted.Still grinning, she tucked her skirt hems into her waist belt anddipped her hands into the water, splashing handfuls onto her faceand the back of her neck, sighing as rivulets ran down her arms andchest and looking much as she had the first time he’d come acrossher and Wolf.She wandered around in the water, her face to thesun, and Talon relaxed, enjoying the sight of her.After a while,she sat down on the riverbank and leaned back on her arms, lettingher head hang back, her loose hair falling to the ground in a poolof silken, auburn curls.
Talon watched the play of sunlight onher creamy skin, the rhythmic rise and fall of her full breastsbeneath her damp tunic.He breathed in the heady, spicy sweet scentof her, and let himself imagine what it would feel like to run hishands up and down her sun-warmed skin, to bury his nose into herfiery mane, his cock stones deep into her womanly flesh.He startedto reach for her and jerked his hand back, having no wish to bleedtoday.Standing abruptly, he offered her his hand.“Let’s walk somemore.Then perhaps we can both get some sleep tonight.”
They followed the river’s course incompanionable silence, unlike the cold silence of their sharedchamber.Yet as much as Talon was enjoying the brief respite, therewere questions he wanted to ask her.He’d ridden out with Phillipeinto the valley of toths and villages several times over the lastfew days, to survey the land and meet the people, to ask them aboutSophie and Lara and Count Nithard and his son, Ranulf, whom the twowomen had mentioned the first morning of Lara’s confinement inTalon’s chamber, thinking him ignorant of Latin.The people hadoffered little about the count and his son, other than the factthat Nithard had ruled the province for over twenty years, thatthey figured he was no better or worse than most counts, and thathe had a daughter named Ravenna.
When it came to Sophie and Lara, thepeople told him they were the valley’s healers, that Sophie hadraised Lara since she was a babe and taught her the healing arts,as well as the arts of prophecy, which they spoke of without fearor rancor.They told him if Sophie the Sixth made a prediction, italways came to pass one way or another, that it was best to stay onher good side, and that Lara, while good-hearted, had a temper tomatch her fiery red hair.They also told him of the many times thetwo healers had saved them or a family member from sickness ordeath, and that most babes born in the province with their help hadlived, along with the mothers.A claim that brought up old memoriesfor Talon.Memories that he’d kept buried deep and had only evertold Phillipe about when deep in his cups.
He glanced up at the afternoon sun,loathe to disturb the fragile peace between himself and Lara, butit was time.“What form of Latin were you and Sophie speaking toeach other the other morning?”
“The cleric’s Latin.Sophie taught me it, as the nuns taught her.”
“Sophie was at anunnery?”
Lara nodded.“Until she ran away toelope with her first husband, Leopold.”
“Go on.”
Lara measured him with her gaze,obviously deciding exactly how much, or little, she was willing totell him.“They’d been childhood sweethearts, whom she’d cried overwhen her father sent her away.”
“The nunnery wasn’t herchoice, then?”
“No.Leopold was.He wentafter her two years later, when he’d saved enough coin to strikeout on their own together.They journeyed as far west as they couldand still remain in Gaul, which is how they came to settle inOloron.”
“I see.”Like Talon,Sophie had left a life in the church chosen for her by others.Hefelt a thread of kinship with the old healer, and admiration.“Yousaid this Leopold was her first husband,” he said.“What happenedto him?”
“He only lived to plow theland they bought here for two springs before he died of the pox.Itwas after his death that Sophie took up the study of medicines andhealing.”
“Who was her secondhusband?”
