Loyalty's Web by Joyce DiPastena

Author:Joyce DiPastena [DiPastena, Joyce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: medieval romance
Publisher: Indie Author Project
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Heléne. Heléne.”

Heléne did not know when the persistent hissing evolved into a voice. In the back of her disordered mind, she had thought it the rustling of the breeze in the grass. But the urgency finally penetrated her haze and she turned about to look for its direction.

“Etienne?”

He was crouched beside one of the tall, unruly rose bushes. Her joy at seeing him did not succeed in wiping away her confusion over Gunthar’s departure, but she ran to him and fell to her knees to embrace him.

“Oh Etienne, how glad I am to see you!”

He slid one arm around her waist. “Heléne, are you all right?”

“Me? Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I saw that devil taking advantage of you, knowing you would not dare to resist an officer of the king. I wanted to stop him, but this kitchen knife’s no match for that dagger he always wears, and with my injured wrist— Still, if that lackey of his hadn’t come when he did, I would have—”

She put up a hand to his mouth. This bush stood opposite the garden gate. Etienne must have been concealed behind the bush all morning and witnessed her interlude with Gunthar.

“Stop. Etienne, Gunthar was not assaulting me.”

Etienne pulled her hand away. “You can’t mean—” His eyes widened. “Heléne, have you lost your mind?”

She said nothing, for at the moment she was none too sure of the answer.

“He is going to marry Clothilde,” he reminded her. “You said so yourself. It is all over the county that that is why he has come to Pennault.”

“They are not betrothed yet,” she said.

“They will be. Father said it’s a direct order of the king, and Father’s source is never wrong. Heléne, think. It is Gunthar. You know he would never defy the king.”

Her confidence wobbled. “But he does not love Clothilde.”

“A cold fish like that would not love anyone,” Etienne scoffed. “That has nothing to do with marriage.” He paused, then added with a sudden incisiveness, “But you’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

She bit her lip. When had it happened? How could it have happened? Yet she knew with unwavering certitude that Etienne had discerned the truth she had not, until this moment, dared to admit to herself.

Etienne found her hand and squeezed it.

“I’m sorry, Heléne, but you know it’s true. He will only use you and cast you aside. He is not flesh and blood like other men, but a stonehearted monster. Look what he has done to Father, what he has done to me—” he waved his bandaged wrist “—and think what he yet will do if he catches me again.”

She did not want to believe, after the tenderness they’d shared, that Gunthar could still be a threat to anyone she loved. But Etienne was right. A few kisses, even had they been sincere, would not change the man. His implacable devotion to the crown would see Etienne imprisoned or worse, as surely as it would drive Gunthar undeterred to the altar with Clothilde.

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