For My Ladys Heart by Laura Kinsale

Author:Laura Kinsale [Kinsale, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B001ADSPTE
Publisher: BERKLEY BOOKS
Published: 1992-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

In the early morning, in a manor house empty of all but a few servants, he left her sleeping hard and deep. He bathed and shaved in the kitchen and walked outside, where a little huddle of villagers surprised him in the yard, eager hands reaching out to touch him. He was, he discovered, a miracle arisen from the dead—a notion he found repellent. He dismissed them with the trenchant suggestion to seek out his excellent doctor instead of miracles, which produced an efficient clearing of the courtyard.

Fog lay on the river surface, shading to mist and clear air. He stood looking down through it toward the shore, where trampled grass and the black clods of burned-out torches were all that remained of the departed barks.

He had not expected this morning, this moment. He had never since the day she left Wolfscar believed in his heart that he would have her to wive again. Even before, it had never seemed perfectly real, but a thing of fantasy with no tie to the earth. They had not spoken of the future, because they had both known that in truth there was to be none.

But abruptly, he was in it—future and present, anchored by his own battle to prove their vows and her public words of acceptance in the hall.

Amid birdsong and wet flowers, he walked aimlessly toward the empty stables. He heard someone behind him and turned, half expecting Melanthe, but it was not.

It was Desmond. He wore his court clothes, her fine scarlet livery, limp with the mist.

"My lord," he said, and went to his knee. "My lord!" His face crumpled into tears. "Will ye letten me go home?"

Ruck reached for him, and the boy came into his embrace, holding on as if to life.

"My lord," Desmond sobbed against his cote, "ne'er did I break my word! Ne did I say aught of Wolfscar, nor that ye kept wedlock with my lady, e'en did they rack me! But Allegreto said me nought to comen to you, that I mote nought, for my life and yours. And I saw you die, my lord—I—"

He lost his voice in weeping. Ruck crossed his arms over Desmond's neck, rocking him fiercely.

"My lord, can I go home? Oh, my lord, I made blunder and wrongs and failed you, but I beg you."

"Desmond." Ruck put his face down in the boy's shoulder. "I will taken thee home if I bear thee on my back in penance. God forgive me, that e'er I sent thee out alone."

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