Shana Abe (26 page)

Solange drew in a great whoop of air, and released it in a gale of laughter that rang to the rafters.

He stared down at her, astonished. She was laughing so hard that tears sprang to her eyes. She reached out one hand and held on to his arm, then withdrew it
quickly back to the covers, giggling still. “If you had but seen his face when he saw me,” she began.

“He saw you?”

“Aye! But only for a moment. But his face, Damon! He looked as if you had punched him full in the stomach! I’ve never seen such bulging eyes!”

Damon had to smile a little at the picture she described. “Well. You do somewhat resemble his wife, you see.”

“Really?”

“Only in the most superficial way. You are far lovelier than she could ever hope to be.”

“Poor lady, to be married to such a pompous fool. I quite feel sorry for her.”

“Don’t,” he said curtly. “She has plenty of diversions to entertain her.”

Solange tilted her head and gave him a penetrating look. “I see. Tell me, who was that man?”

“Howard Longchamp. He is emissary to Edward, here only on royal business. He will be gone soon.”

“Yes. That was abundantly clear.”

She said nothing more, only continued to examine him in that disturbing way. She was a charming witch, a cloud of tousled hair framed her face, her skin as pure as cream in the morning light. Without conscious will he found himself staring at her lips, wanting to taste them again.

“You should go,” he said slowly.

“Should I?” She raised a winged brow.

His body responded to her unspoken invitation immediately. Longchamp, he thought. “I have to get
downstairs before he comes up again. We don’t want him coming up.”

“No,” she said.

His mind was thick as soup this morning. She wasn’t behaving like she was supposed to. She wasn’t acting like a noblewoman who had just been compromised. She wasn’t shrill, or overwrought, she didn’t cry or scream in outrage; just the opposite, she seemed both relaxed and in good spirits. Amazing for a gentlewoman who had just been called a whore by a strange man when she was caught in another man’s bed.

But this was Solange, and she had always managed to surprise him. Damon shook his head to clear his thoughts. “I will send a maid to your room with something appropriate for you to wear. I’m sorry, I must get ready or risk offending Longchamp, and thus Edward, further.”

He stood, picked up her nightgown and gave it to her, then politely turned his back as she put it on, even though he felt foolish doing it. When she was done, he offered his hand and walked her to the connecting door. They reached her room. Damon simply stopped and stared down at her.

Solange was here, he thought again. His mind couldn’t break that thought. She had come back to him, shared herself with him in the most intimate way a woman could with a man, and all he could do was tell her to go back to her room and dress. He was an idiot. He should be thanking her on his knees, telling her he worshiped her, that what they had shared was beyond anything he had ever known. None of the
pretty phrases would leave his tongue; all was lost in the sheer improbability of the moment.

She watched him struggle for words, golden eyes under a dark fan of lashes. Finally, what he said was: “This was my mother’s room.”

He wanted to kick himself.
Oaf
, his mind chided,
what a stupid thing to say
.

But she nodded. “Yes. It’s perfect.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m glad you like it.”

The moment grew longer. They could both hear people out in the hallway again, greeting each other, starting the day.

“Well, good-bye,” he said, letting go of her hand.

She held on. “Damon. Thank you.”

He could feel himself blushing like a schoolboy. “Thank
you
,” he responded without meeting her eyes. He left.

H
oward Longchamp was a notoriously bad loser. Damon expected to have to pay dearly for the morning, and he was not disappointed. When he arrived in the greatroom, he found Longchamp sprawled in a chair, nursing a black eye with a piece of raw mutton. Godwin stood beside him, weaving his clever blend of fact and fiction, as usual. The rest of the hall was uneasily divided between Damon’s men and the king’s soldiers, each group clustered along either side of the main table, all of them grumbling.

Damon was not worried about his side. Though a somewhat motley team of men, each was unquestionably
loyal to him and none would act without his signal.

The king’s soldiers, however, might be a problem. Their pride had been stung with the blow to Longchamp, and men who had openly disliked the emissary before now smacked their fists into their hands and muttered that he had been done wrong. Thank God they were significantly outnumbered.

And there was also the little matter of Damon’s reputation to be considered. Although the years had significantly exaggerated his skill at battle, his talents at conquest, and his tactical prowess in general, there was a grain of truth or more in every rumor, and Damon was smart enough to make use of the legend when needed. Now looked like as good a time as any. Fortunately for him, the one part of the legend that was no exaggeration was the part about the demons inside of him. They drove him forward now, taking the stairs two at a time to reach his prey.

Careful, he thought, attempting a mastery he wasn’t feeling. He couldn’t afford to alienate Longchamp completely, not in light of the mystery of Solange’s departure from Du Clar. It was a weakness he didn’t want exposed yet, not until he found out what actually happened. Once he had the facts, he could determine a course of action. Until then, his hands were tied. There could be no doubt the story would spread sooner or later. He needed it to be later. If Longchamp met Redmond’s soldiers, there could be hell to pay. He would have to placate the man as best he could.

Damon was richly dressed in his usual black, the heraldry on his chest a silver wolf under a crescent
moon. The conversation filling the room ceased as he appeared. He towered over most of the men around him. Many of the king’s men were more than a little in awe at their first sighting of the Wolf of Lockewood, who walked as if he commanded the entire kingdom, and not just this wild, unsettled portion of it.

Longchamp saw him coming and removed the mutton from his eye. “Lockewood! Your conduct is scandalous, even for you! Edward is going to learn of this first thing! That you would attack a peer of the realm over nothing more than a common whore is insufferable!”

All thoughts of tactical caution fled. Without breaking his stride, Damon came up to the emissary and picked him up again by his tunic, a deliberate repetition of his earlier actions. The men he passed shifted forward as one, but no one made a sound.

“The lady is not a whore,” Damon said in a deadly voice as he dangled Longchamp in the air. “If you refer to her once more, in any way whatsoever, you will find yourself on the far side of hell, am I clear enough for you?”

The other man’s face was changing from bright red to purple. “Yes, yes,” he cried. “Quite clear!”

Damon dropped him back into the chair. “Excellent. Now, read me your damned parchment and then get the hell out of my demesne.” He crossed to the head chair at the main table and took his seat, where a servant immediately placed a mug of tea and plate of food before him. He ignored the crowd and began to eat.

Longchamp cast a fearful but determined glance at a
chest near his chair. “I will, of course, be taking the required payment with me to the king.”

“Of course,” interrupted Godwin with a grin. “It is all there for you, my lord, the same as when you counted it earlier.”

“Get on with it,” Damon commanded in a bored voice.

Longchamp had regained his composure enough to realize he still had the backing of Edward’s men, which brought some of the former brashness back to him. “As the king’s chosen man, it is up to me to decide the proper moment to begin.” He reached hastily into a pocket of his cape and withdrew the parchment when Damon began to stand. “And that moment is now,” he added. He broke the wax seal and unfolded the paper.

The first part had to do with Damon’s deeds on the field, a recounting of his infamous victories which Longchamp read in a suffocated voice. This was pure politics, a standard way to boost the recipient of any sort of royal gift. A vanity of Edward’s, since Ironstag would not be a gift from him at all, and another example of his humor, to have Damon’s bitter enemy recite his triumphs aloud before depleting his coffers. The scroll continued by going on to the Marquess of Ironstag, naming him a loyal and worthy servant, a good man who had requested a boon from his bountiful king. This was the part that interested Damon.

“Hear ye, hear ye,” Longchamp read loudly. “Be it known that Our faithful servant Henry of Ironstag did request to break the entailment of his estate as a great favor from Us, and We did grant it to him afore he died. Therefore let it be known that Damon Wolf,
Marquess of Lockewood, is hereby the sole heir to the grand estate of Ironstag. As penalty to this break, however, We decree that Lockewood bestow upon Us the sum of one full year’s profit from the estate of Ironstag, to be paid to Our emissary by none but the marquess himself, at the time of the reading of Our decree by Our royal emissary.”

Damon sat back and continued eating.

“Be it also known that at the behest of the late Marquess of Ironstag, the Lady Solange, Countess of Redmond and sole offspring of Henry, shall be disinherited for as long as she shall remain wed to Stephen, Earl of Redmond, with the exception of any legitimate children from that marriage, who will each receive a single payment of a sum not to exceed the annual profit of the estate of Ironstag.

“Furthermore, it is a condition of this royal decree that if she yet lives, the Lady Solange shall be wed to Damon Wolf, Marquess of Lockewood, in the unfortunate event of the earl’s death, and being that the Marquess of Lockewood has not already wed.”

Damon choked on his tea. The rest of the men in the room erupted into comment, drowning out Longchamp’s voice. Of all the faces in the room, only Godwin’s remained unchanged, his inscrutable smile firmly in place. Longchamp pounded petulantly on the arm of his chair, trying to regain control.

“Read that part again,” commanded Damon in a thundering voice, stilling the crowd.

Longchamp obeyed, barely able to conceal his glee that the Wolf of Lockewood had been trapped into wedlock with a woman he surely had not seen since
childhood. May she be fat and pockmarked, he thought vengefully as he read. May she have a brood of unpleasant children to reduce his estate to nothing! May she always remember the touch of another man, her first husband, and so will slowly kill Lockewood by breaching his damnable pride!

Damon couldn’t believe it. He searched his memory, trying to recall any hint in his last conversation with Henry that he had planned something like this. Nothing, not a single clue could have prepared him for this blow. Marry Solange! She would never stand for it. She would run away first, rather than be tied down again, he knew it.

But underneath the initial shock grew a pool of cool, collected thought. It was the Wolf in him, rescuing him once more.

Why not marry her?
asked the Wolf.
You want her, and now between them Edward and Henry have ensured that you may have her. She really has no say in the matter at all. She is only a woman, and so has no legal right to decide her future. It was in her best interest to have her father and her king look after her
.

And they had chosen him to do it.

If you have to
, continued the ruthless Wolf,
you should lock her up until she sees reason. Convince her of the soundness of the plan. Explain to her logically that she has no alternatives. Ultimately she’ll have no choice but to do it. She needs your protection now, and this is the best way to give it to her. It will be for her own good
.

Longchamp had stopped reading aloud, mouthing the last words of the document to himself in delighted disbelief. Damon was alert to this, but Godwin was on
top of it, reading over Longchamp’s shoulder the final section of the decree. His face tightened unpleasantly. He threw Damon a warning look.

“Furthermore, We take it upon Ourselves to announce,” called out Longchamp, resuming his role, “independent from the will of the late Marquess of Ironstag, that if the Lady Solange be eligible, and if the Marquess of Lockewood be eligible, that should either party refuse the lawful union of them both, one or the other or both shall be brought to the royal court to deal with Us, and shall be taken by force if need be.”

“What union?” asked a clear, resolute voice.

All heads turned. Solange stood still at the entrance to the hall, silhouetted by a patch of sunlight from the archer’s hole high above. She had been given the gown of someone’s wife, a bliaut of cranberry-colored brocade with black corded trim. The gown underneath showed a deeper red as she walked farther into the room, toward Damon.

It took him a moment to adjust to the sight of her dressed as a woman again, but the color and the flowing lines of the gown suited her immeasurably. She had left her hair to hang in one thick plait down her back, but had placed two combs of silver on either side of her temples to hold the soft strands in place. She appeared regal, dignified, and puzzled.