by Anne Stuart
The High Sheriff of Huntingdon
The Prophecy
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
1
“Where is my bride?” Alistair Darcourt, the high sheriff of Huntingdon, bellowed, his voice thundering through the great hall, all conversation stopping mid-spate.
His second in command, Gilles De Lancey, glanced up idly, his beautiful blue eyes bright with malice. “Why should you care, cousin? It’s not as if you’ve even seen the woman. Have you suddenly developed a lifelong passion for the wench?”
Alistair leaned forward and shoved the crockery from the table with a loud crash. The jug of ale upended on Gilles, who leapt to his feet with a curse.
“Don’t try my patience,” Alistair snarled. “I’m not a patient man. I’ve been a bridegroom for more than a week now, and I’ve yet to see my bride.”
“She has a ways to travel,” Gilles said, brushing at his damp clothes with maddening calm. “And you have no idea how she’s going to respond to the notion that she’s been married by proxy. After all, she’s been in the convent of the Sisters of the Everlasting Martyr since she was fourteen years old. She might prove a bit intractable. You know how women are.”
Alistair Darcourt leaned across the cleared table, fixing his cousin with his odd, golden eyes. Eyes that had been attributed to a legacy from his mother, the witch. Eyes of a madman. “She wouldn’t dare,” he said simply.
Gilles laughed. “True enough. Your reputation precedes you, cousin. No human, male or female, would dare to stand up to you. I imagine she’ll arrive at Huntingdon any day now. It’s always possible that she’ll be worth the long delay.”
Alistair flung himself away in disgust. “I’m tired of waiting. I’m celebrating my wedding night, and it’s a great deal too bad that my bride isn’t here to participate.” He gestured toward a plump young girl whose ripe breasts were spilling out of her soiled red dress. “You there,” he said, snapping his fingers.
Gilles watched them disappear, no expression on his extremely handsome face. He’d planned to take that particular girl to bed that night himself.
But his cousin was the high sheriff of Huntingdon, and his power was absolute, not merely that of a powerful magistrate. He ruled with an iron fist, and Gilles was only his lowly vassal. The woman could wait. And then he would punish her for his disappointment. That thought made the wait all the more exciting.
Alistair’s bride was going to be an interesting addition to the wild tenor of Huntingdon Keep. De Lancey seriously doubted whether a former holy sister would make much of a difference to the controlled chaos of Darcourt’ s household. Licentiousness and violence were part of their daily fare, as much as brown ale and coarse bread.
Once his impatience was satisfied, Alistair would take no notice of Lady Elspeth of Gaveland. He’d married her for a piece of land, and the none-too-pressing need for an heir. The bride would be lucky if she survived the first night of Alistair’s rapacious demands, much less the first year.
It would make life very colorful, De Lancey mused, and usefully distracting, to view the marriage of a holy sister to a man who was generally considered to be the spawn of a witch and the devil himself.
Very distracting indeed.
Lady Elspeth had spent the first three days of the journey with her wrists tied and her mouth gagged. Her esteemed father had grown tired of her shrieks of fury, her calls on God to protect her, and ordered the gag for his own comfort.
By the fourth day she was so weary of trying to breathe through a knotted piece of silk that smelled and tasted of rancid venison that she subsided into a furious silence.
Her father wasn’t lulled into thinking she’d accepted her fate. Although he’d been blessedly, peacefully free of his younger daughter’s presence in his comfortable household for the last eight years, he hadn’t forgotten the lamentably willful streak that ran through such an otherwise unremarkable girl. It was the willful streak that had decided him on the convent for her; that, and her talent for managing. She was the kind of woman who did very well with power; even at the tender age of fourteen she’d managed to run his holding and see to his comfort with extraordinary efficiency.
She’d also put a damper on some of his more warlike behavior, and he’d decided the best place for a managing little dove of peace like Elspeth was the convent. Particularly when Sir Hugh still had two other daughters to dispose of comfortably.
The church had been satisfied with a small dowry, and if Sir Hugh of Gaveland had missed the comfort Elspeth was adept at providing, his two younger daughters had made no more than financial demands on his good nature, At least they hadn’t wanted him to change his ways.
But now he was stuck with Elspeth again, at least for as long as it took to deliver her to her bridegroom. He glanced over at her pale, furious face, and wondered whether he might live to regret this piece of work.
Not that he’d had a choice. Darcourt was not a man one argued with. When Gilles De Lancey had arrived with the sheriff’s ultimatum, Sir Hugh had told himself that things could have been worse. The sheriff demanded only one of his daughters, and the fact that Elspeth was the least comely and already immured in a convent seemed to disturb her prospective bridegroom not one whit. Or so De Lancey had informed him.
Sir Hugh was a great deal more grieved to part with Dunstan Woods. It was a prime piece of forest, albeit a haunted one, and it held more venison than a household could go through in several lifetimes. Sir Hugh would have gladly married all three of his daughters to the mad sheriff of Huntingdon rather than lose the woods. But he’d had no choice in the matter, he knew that full well. He’d seen evidence of the sheriff’s temper and determination, knew about the scores of dead, had seen the burned, blackened villages that had been left in his henchmen’s wake. The sight of Gilles De Lancey riding into his stronghold had put the fear of God into him, far greater than any worry about tearing his daughter away from her vocation. Huntingdon had used anything within his reach to consolidate his wealth and power, including some of the most lawless men-at-arms ever known. Sir Hugh knew the alternatives—do what Darcourt demanded or see his own villages laid waste over some trifling excuse.
He preferred to salvage what he could in the face of the sheriff’s seemingly insatiable lust for power and possessions. And indeed, Elspeth was no sacrifice at all.
He glanced over at his daughter, who was swaying silently with the motion of the slow-moving carriage. She was a changeling, this first daughter of his, with her tall, willowy body, her straight, flaxen hair and pale face. Her eyes were very blue, like those of his dead wife, and just as reproachful. Her usually gentle mouth was set in a grim, uncompromising line, and her narrow, graceful hands were folded in her lap.
She still wore her pure white habit, though it had clearly seen better days. She was quite strong, and the women attendants he’d brought with him had been no match for her when they tried to force her to change into the beautiful golden gown he’d taken from his youngest daughter, Rowena. He hated to think of Rowena’s reaction when she got her favorite dress back, after it had been trampled in the dirt by her sister’s angry feet.
Sir Hugh couldn’t decide which was the better part of valor—to have his men strip Elspeth, or to present her to her husband dressed in holy garb. Either made him shudder, and being a man who disliked unpleasantness, he simply refused to decide. If Alistair Darcourt insisted on taking his eldest daughter to wife, then he’d have to accept
her in her present clothing.
The heavy traveling coach went over a bump, tossing Elspeth against the side, and her long pale hair drifted over her face. At least they’d managed to destroy her damned wimple during the fruitless battle for clothing. She looked like a witch herself, cool and white and angry. He wondered if Darcourt had any idea what he’d gotten himself into.
A year from now, his stubborn Elspeth would be quiet and tamed. That, or Darcourt would have killed her.
Sir Hugh viewed the possible loss of his daughter with a determined lack of emotion. After all, he’d lost three daughters in childbirth, and two sons. Nothing could grieve him after his second son had died at the age of two, taking his mother with him. He had daughters to spare.
Of course, there was always the possibility that Elspeth could succeed where no man had as yet. Perhaps she would be the death of the sheriff himself. She certainly had nearly been the death of her poor, beleaguered father.
They’d arrive at Huntingdon Castle by evening, if Elspeth didn’t play any more of her tricks. Indeed, Sir Hugh fancied the light had gone out of her, at least temporarily. She looked bone weary and accepting of her fate. It was a good thing she’d been in the convent since the sheriff’s rapid rise to power. She wouldn’t know the stories circulating about him.
She wouldn’t know she’d been married by proxy to the son of the devil himself.
Alistair Darcourt, the high sheriff of Huntingdon, had a headache. Lord, he had more 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 him. 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 blame his mother.
She’d warned him about excess, and he’d ignored her. He had little doubt the old witch had put a curse on him just to bring the point home. And since she was the only human being on the face of this earth who wasn’t justifiably frightened of him, there was nothing he could do about it.
He rolled onto his back with a loud groan, feeling the pain racket around in his body. He was a fool to have let sentiment get in his way. He ought to have Morgana killed. It would 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 fondness for the old woman, despite her less than subservient behavior. At least she out of his way, in the heart of Dunstan Woods.
Then again, it might not be a new curse that was troubling him. There was that other one, the prophecy hanging over his head since 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. Indeed, 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 they had since he first heard the words by the light of a witch’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 those words were his destruction, and while he wasn’t afraid of death, or another human being, 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 his new bride was costing him a pretty penny. He wasn’t sure why Gaveland didn’t want to part with the younger daughters, but he 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 last few years in a convent, at least she’d learned to be meek and silent.
He sat up, threading his fingers his long hair, and began to curse in a low, vile voice. He had no idea what the prophecy meant but some sixth sense inherited from his mother warned him that the time was close. The years of waiting were over. And he had no intention of surrendering to his fate without a fight.
He knew the knock on the door. It was De Lancey’s, a very clever kind of knock, but then, De Lancey was a very clever fellow. The knock suited him, strong yet subservient, ever so faintly sly. Alistair trusted De Lancey as much as he trusted anyone in this world. Which meant that he trusted him not one bit.
“Go away,” he shouted, throwing himself back down among the velvet bed-coverings.
De Lancey was a brave man, there was that to be said for him. He opened the door anyway, obviously prepared to duck if Alistair threw something at him. “I hate to interrupt you, cousin,” he began.
Alistair picked up an empty goblet and hurled it across the room. It bounced off the door, rolling along the stone floor with a clanking noise. “Get out of my sight, Gilles.”
“As you wish, sire.” De Lancey’s irony wasn’t lost on Alistair. “I just thought I might inform you that your bride is about to arrive.”
Alistair fell back among the pillows, considering the notion. Now that he’d finally gotten his way, he’d lost interest in the woman. “About time,” he muttered. “What does she look like?”
“No one has seen her yet, though it appears she’s still dressed in her habit.”
“What?” Alistair thundered, furious. He threw himself out of the bed, storming toward his discarded clothes and dressing with a rapid disdain for the frivolities of fashion. “Why the hell is she dressed like a nun?”
“Cousin, she is a nun.”
Alistair scowled at him. “Not anymore. The girl is my bride. The sooner she realizes it, the better.”
“I imagine you’re going to enlighten her. That is, if Jenna didn’t wear you out.”
“Jenna?” Alistair threw his cousin an irritated glance over his shoulder as he fastened his black hose. “Who is Jenna?”
He didn’t miss the sudden darkening of Gilles’s determinedly affable expression. But he had no interest in deciphering it.
“Jenna was the woman who shared your bed last night,” De Lancey replied in a neutral voice.
“Eminently forgettable,” Alistair muttered, running his hands through his thick hair.
“She didn’t please you?”
“If it’s any concern of yours, Gilles, she did not.”
“I’ll do something about it.”
Alistair barely heard him. “See that you do,” he said absently. “Where is my bride?”
“I imagine she’ll arrive in the front courtyard.”
“Very good. You may greet her, take her to her rooms, and get rid of her idiot father.”
He’d managed to surprise De Lancey, a feat he seldom accomplished any more. “Where will you be?”
“Looking for someone a little more talented than Jenna. My bride has made me wait for days. Now it’s time for her to wait.”
“What rooms?”
A small, cool smile played around Alistair’s mouth. “Where else? Put her in the haunted tower.”
De Lancey’s grin displayed his strong white teeth. “You never cease to impress me, cousin. Your bride will feel most welcome.”
“That, dear De Lancey, was my intention.” Alistair strode toward the door. Only for a moment did he consider that he felt far more lively than he had in months. Marriage certainly did wonders for a man.
Elspet
h stepped out of the narrow coach, disdaining her father’s supporting hand as her sandaled feet touched the ground. It was early evening, and the courtyard was filled with people. Most of them were men; all of them were evil-looking. Elspeth let her gaze drift coolly around her. The place seemed prosperous enough, but unconscionably filthy. The disarray seemed more from a lack of organization than money. Elspeth considered herself very good at organization.
It took only a moment to realize she was drawing close to accepting her fate. She glanced back at her father, but in the gathering gloom she could see only the anxiety on his bluff, hearty face.
She wasn’t certain what was behind that anxiety. Fear that his oldest daughter would somehow shame him? Or fear that some harm might come to her? She suspected it was the former—she never had any illusions about her father’s addiction to his own comfort.
“Lady Elspeth!” The voice was soft, masculine, pulling her attention from the filth of the offal heap behind what must be the kitchens. She turned, and wondered for a brief moment whether this marriage would be quite so bad after all.
The man hurrying toward her with an affable smile on his handsome face was quite the most beautiful man she’d ever seen in her life. His golden blond locks hung to his broad shoulders, his eyes were a limpid blue, his jaw firm and manly, his gaze steady. As far as husbands went, her new groom was a great deal more appealing than she’d anticipated.
He took her hand in his own surprisingly small one, and brought it to his lips. Soft lips, faintly wet. A chill ran through Elspeth, and she told herself she was being an utter fool. She wondered whether she’d be expected to kiss her husband. Doubtless she’d be expected to do a great deal more before the night was out. At least she’d be doing it with a comely man.
“Welcome to Huntingdon Keep, my lady,” the man she assumed was her husband said. “We’ve been most impatient for your arrival.”
