The High Sheriff of Huntingdon (4 page)

She
wouldn’t
know
she’d been
married
by proxy to
the
son of t
h
e
devil himself.

Alistair
Darcourt, the
high
sheriff
of
Huntingdon,
had a headache. Lord, h
e
had m
o
r
e
than
a
headache;
he had
the
vilest remains of
debauchery
known
to man.
He
lay
in the huge bed,
alone, naked, waiting
for
the pain in
his head
and in
his gut
to
subside.

The
girl
hadn’t
pleased
h
i
m
.
None of
them had for
the past
weeks,
even months.
He’d
ended
up
kicking
her
out
of
the bed, bored
by her attempts
to
arouse him. The hot
flesh
of
the
females
of
the castle
had ceased to
interest
him
any
more
than the good wine,
the dark
ale,
or
the
rich food.
He’d
lost
his taste
for things,
and
he
could
only b
l
a
m
e
his
mother.

She’d warned him
about excess,
and
he’d ignored her.
He
h
ad
little
do
u
b
t
the old witch
had
put
a
curse
on him
just
to bring the point
home.
And
since
she
was
the
only
h
u
m
a
n being
on
the
face
of
th
i
s
earth w
h
o
wasn’t justifiably
frightened
of
him, there was nothing
he
could
do
about it.

He
rolled onto h
i
s
back
with
a
loud
groan,
feeling t
h
e
p
a
i
n racket around in
h
i
s
body.
He was a fool t
o have
let
s
e
ntiment
get
in his way.
He
ought
to
have
Morgana
k
i
l
led. It
wo
ul
d
be
a
simple enough
matter, and she
was the only one
with
any
power
over him.
Once
she
was dead,
he’d
be
unstoppable.

But the idea
of
having
his
own
mother
strangled
didn’t sit well with
the faint remains of a
conscience he
still
possessed. Besides, he had a
certain
fondnes
s
for the old
woman,
despite
her less than
subservient
behavior.
At least
she out
of his way, in
t
h
e
heart
of
Dunstan
Woods.

Then again, it
might
not be
a
new curse
that
was
troubling him. There
was
that
other
one,
the
prophecy
ha
n
g
i
n
g
over
his
head
s
i
n
c
e
his boyhood,
one
his
mother
had repeated
to
him with
a singular
lack of
tact
.
She’d heard from the
voices
of
Dunstan
Woods,
the
forest she
called
her own with a
blithe disregard for
its legal ownership.
In
d
e
e
d
,
no one
was going
to
attempt
to
dislodge
a
witch.
She’d told him the
voices
of the night
had sang her
the prophecy,
and
he
rather
wished
she’d kept
the bloody thing to herself, but
the
words haunted
his
dreams,
as t
h
e
y
had
since
h
e
first heard
the
words by
the
light
of
a
w
i
t
c
h
’
s
moon.

White and black they shall
combine,

Pure as
snow,
as
blood-red wine,

Flame and
fire destroy
them both,

Death
and rebirth, blood their troth,

In
thunder, rain, brought right again,

And all shall be
as
God’s
design.

He knew those
words
weren’t
his
mother’s. She
wasn’t
very good
at
rhyming her curses. He knew
t
ho
s
e
words were his
destruction,
and while
he
wasn’t afraid of
death,
or an
o
t
h
e
r
human
be
in
g
,
he
was afraid of
this
prophecy. He had
no
interest
in
rebirth,
or
God’s design.
He
liked
things as
they were,
thank
you.
He liked things by
his own
design,
not
some
nebulous God’s
. He rendered
unto
the
hierarchy
of the
church
exactly what he had to, and
h
i
s
new
bride
was
costing him
a
pretty
penny.
He
wasn’t sure why
Gaveland didn’t
want to part with
the
younger
daughters,
but
h
e
wasn’t interested enough to
ask.
His new
bride would
provide
him with
heirs
as well as
any
woman,
and she brought him
Dunstan
Woods.
Since she’d
spent
the
l
a
s
t
few years
in
a
convent,
at
least
s
h
e
’
d learned
to
be
meek
a
n
d
silent.