Through Wolf's Eyes (33 page)

He looked older now than when they had been lovers
some seventeen years before, his skin showing the lines drawn by long
days in sun and weather on land and at sea. Princess Lovella had
thought to earn some fame as a naval commander and her husband had
voyaged with her. Now the brown hair that had often been bleached tow
by the sun was showing grey at the temples. His sideburns and beard
were almost completely white. As with some men, this made him more
attractive, not less, granting character to his lean features.

Zorana saw the changes and tingled. Here was the face
of a stranger, but the eyes that looked out of that face were the same
that had once met hers, wild with the passion that sealed their bodies
into a single sweaty whole.

"I am grateful for your company," she replied
formally, hoping her face did not give away her thoughts. "This
engagement is an . . . interesting complication. But you must be
delighted, Jet is your nephew."

Newell pursed his lips thoughtfully, as if testing his words before uttering them even in this private place.

"I have never cared for my sister's children as an
uncle should," he admitted. "They are too much her creatures, too
tightly under her control for me to feel comfortable with them."

His words were so close to Zorana's own thoughts that she did not question them.

"I see," she said softly. "Melina is a strong woman."

"A spoiled youngest," Newell said bluntly. "Always
given her way when small and now married to a man who cannot rule her.
No wonder the common folk think her a sorceress."

Zorana smiled. "She isn't?"

"No more than I," Newell laughed. "But she has the benefit of the reputation just the same. Or the deficit . . ."

He let the words trail off, but Zorana followed his thought without effort.

"Not all the common folk would be comfortable with a sorceress queen, would they?"

"Nor the noble folk," Newell added honestly. "I have
heard words among the rulers of the Great Houses. They think such would
be too much like the dark days when the Old World nations ruled their
colonies with dark arts as well as honest statecraft."

"Yet Rolfston will not divorce her?"

"For no better cause than ambition?" Newell laughed
heartily. "I doubt he could get the king to permit such a divorce.
Moreover, I believe he is devoted to Melina in his own way. Their
fortunes are hitched together."

"Far easier," Zorana said bitterly, "for them to wed a younger son to a rival and so consolidate two claims."

"To the crown?" Newell asked.

"Of course!"

"More than one family can play at that game," he said, tentatively.

She glared at him. "Impossible!"

"Perhaps I speak too quickly," he said, making as if to rise. "I just thought . . ."

She stopped him. "It is I who speak too hastily. What do you mean?"

"I . . ." Newell paused. She saw him swallow as if
the next words were stuck in his throat. "I have always been fond of
you, Zorana, in memory of those days we shared so long ago. Childless
myself, I find myself looking on others' children as if they are my
own."

Zorana felt her face growing hot, thinking how easily— had Newell been less honorable—this might have truly been the case.

"I have just returned from a voyage with our navy.
Our kingdom's fleet is small, but we were fortunate and captured a
Bright Bay vessel. The captain invited my assistance in questioning our
prisoners before they were ransomed. From these I learned how well
Allister Seagleam is thought of by his peers. What surprised me more
was learning how well he is thought of by our own people. Did you know
that he is viewed by some—especially those who have reason to journey
between our rival nations—as a pledge child, born to end the wars
between us?"

Zorana was cautious. "I have heard some such thing."

"He has children of an age with your own, dear
Zorana," Newell said caressingly. "Their grandmother was King Tedric's
own sister—they are his grandnieces and grandnephews just as your own
children are."

"Just as Elise and Jet are," Zorana said,
understanding him and feeling her heart pounding. "And if I betrothed
one of my children—Purcel, say—to one of the children of the Pledge
Child . . ."

"It might make a claim as persuasive as that offered
by the marriage of Lady Elise and young Jet. Moreover," Newell said,
rising from his chair and putting his hands on her shoulders, "you
would be the best interim ruler in those years following the king's
death, before such children could be expected to take on their
responsibilities."

"Purcel is but fifteen," Zorana agreed, her voice
hushed but the words spilling out faster than she could speak them,
"and has a warrior's nature. Even if King Tedric directly named Purcel
his heir, it is unlikely our aged monarch could live until Purcel was
old enough to take the throne."

"For all Father Tedric's unwillingness to admit it,"
Newell said sadly, "age has a firm hold on his heart. Allister
Seagleam's eldest daughter is four years younger than Purcel. She would
be even less ready to take the reins."

Zorana smiled, feeling the crown take shape upon her brow once more. The smile vanished at a sudden thought.

"Doesn't Allister have a son older than my Purcel?"

"Shad," Newell admitted, "is five years older, just
shy of his own majority. I understand, however, that he is already
betrothed to an heiress of Bright Bay."

"That engagement couldn't be broken without causing much trouble," Zorana said anxiously, "could it?"

"I think not," Newell soothed. "Duke Allister's next
son, Tavis, is a few moon-spans younger than Purcel and wholly without
Purcel's achievements in battle. I believe he paints pictures or some
such."

Relief weakened Zorana so that she sagged to a seat
on the edge of her bed. Newell poured her a glass of water from the
pitcher on the bedside table and held it to her lips. It seemed the
most natural thing in the world that he remained seated beside her when
the glass was set by.

"It will not," Zorana said cautiously, "be an easy
thing to arrange. I do not believe that I can appeal to my mother, the
Grand Duchess Rosene, for assistance."

"That would be unwise," Newell agreed. "If her heart
is now set on encouraging young Elise's advancement, she will be
hesitant to take this great gamble when she sees a sure thing."

"Yes," Zorana frowned. "Yet I will need a liaison. I cannot ride to Bright Bay myself and make this proposition."

Newell cleared his throat. "If you would permit me .
. . I am frequently called into areas where such duties would not be
impossible—nor terribly obvious. Your hand need not be shown until all
is ready."

"Would you?" Zorana turned and found herself flushing again at his closeness.

"I said before," Newell purred, "that being childless, I must think of others' children as my own."

"There will be details to work out," she said
quickly, "letters to draft, conditions to consider, some means of
stalling King Tedric's announcement of an heir until we can show him
this newest option."

Newell slid his arm about her waist. "That can all be worked out."

"Then we are in this together?"

"Most definitely."

They sealed their agreement with something far more intimate than a handshake.

I
N THE TWO
weeks
following the announcement of her engagement to Jet Shield, Elise tried
to believe that she was completely happy. Certainly both in public or
in private Jet was as attentive as she could desire. Indeed, in private
she became grateful that Ninette was always within call. Otherwise,
Jet's ardor might overcome her own good sense. She was startled to
discover what fires lurked within her and how easily he could kindle
them—sometimes with as little as the brush of his lips across her cheek
or a smoldering look that gave a heretofore unsuspected meaning to the
most innocent-seeming comment.

Her eighteenth-birthday celebration—a week after
their betrothal had been announced—had been a wonderful festivity,
marred only by her gathered relatives' sour looks when Elise warmly
welcomed Lady Blysse and Derian Carter to the group.

However, ever since the falconry party, Elise had
wandered out to the upper castle meadows most mornings, joining in the
casual gatherings, teaching the feral woman how to weave daisy crowns
and other silly things, and finding herself quite enjoying Lady
Blysse's—or rather Fire-keeper's—odd perspective on human culture.

Elise had needed a new friend. Lady Aurella's
prediction that Sapphire would be furious with her had come true—a
thing Elise had not thought would trouble her so much given how
annoying she often found her cousin. Perhaps it was not just that
Sapphire had cut out all contact with Elise; maybe it was that she
looked so sad, so hurt. Oddly, Aunt Zorana, whose wrath Elise
had
feared, was so contented-seeming that
Elise's father was moved to comment (in private) that he wondered if his sister was pregnant again.

As for Ivon Archer, he viewed his daughter with
unconcealed pride and joy. Although the necessity of training Elise to
manage the Archer estates had forced them frequently into each other's
company, they had never been close. Privately, Elise had thought she
was a disappointment to her father: too quiet, too scholarly, too
uninterested in the martial games he had enjoyed with his own father
before the elder Purcel's death in battle a few years before Elise
herself was born.

Strangely enough, the fact that Aurella Wellward
apparently shared the same weakness that had made her aunt Elexa barren
had brought Ivon closer to his wife, but had distanced him from his
daughter. Sometimes Elise thought that he privately blamed
her
in some fashion for Aurella's long illness following Elise's birth and her subsequent infertility.

Now, however, that was swept away as if it had never
been. Ivon Archer clearly viewed Elise's desire to become betrothed to
Jet as a mark of her loyalty to her father and his cause. With that one
decision, Elise had removed all the deficits of being an only child,
allied her family to their greatest potential rival for the throne, and
made her father the most likely choice for King Tedric's heir.

Anticipating with an innocent enthusiasm that
reminded Elise not a little of Jet on the day he first proposed, Ivon
took his daughter on long rides through the countryside so that they
could discuss statecraft. She had learned more about her father in
these two weeks than she ever knew before and felt—a little
uncomfortably—that he was far more human and vulnerable than she had
ever imagined.

But no matter how hugely Baron Archer dreamed, the
reality remained that King Tedric had not selected an heir from among
his nieces and nephews, nor from among their children. Nor had he sent
Lady Blysse away, keeping her thus tacitly beneath the mantle of his
favor. Duty to his own estates and family called Earl Kestrel from the
castle from time to time, but Blysse remained in residence, a lithe,
dark-haired figure, gradually becoming more sophisticated in her
manners
and seemingly unaware of the shadow she had cast on everyone else's plans.

Fumbling at her throat, Elise fingered the exquisite
jet carving of a wolf's head that Jet had given her as a betrothal
gift. She had given Jet a token of her own society patron, the Lynx,
worked in gold with tiny emerald eyes.

Exchanging society tokens was a long-standing
tradition, dating back to when the Old Country still reigned. The
exchange of tokens provided a symbolic pledge that one's own society
would now be looking out for the soon-to-be wedded partner.

Touching the token, however, did not make Elise
decide to seek out Jet. Rather she resolved to go see the real wolf in
her life—Firekeeper.

Neither Derian nor Ox answered the door to the suite.
Instead, a slightly familiar man with something Kestrel about his dark
hair and hawk nose stood in the opening. Slightly disconcerted, for she
had been lost in her own reflections, Elise fumbled for words:

"Is Fire . . . I mean Lady Blysse in?"

"Firekeeper's fine with me," the man said, opening
the door wider and giving Elise a friendly smile. "Since that's what
she insists on being called. However, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but
she's not in."

"Oh."

Stepping back, Elise started to make her apologies, but the man continued:

"I think she's in the kitchen gardens. Derian has the
day off to visit his parents and so Firekeeper went down to the gardens
soon after breakfast."

"The kitchen gardens?" Elise asked, the question coming out despite herself. "Firekeeper?"

"She discovered them sometime after that first
hawking expedition," the man replied. "She's completely fascinated by
the concept that people can grow their own food. I guess the gardens at
West Keep weren't very extensive or maybe she just had too much else to
learn then."