My True Love

by Karen Ranney

  The rising sun lit her face, as if nature itself recognized the delicacy of her profile. Her hair looked as if it had recently been brushed, tied back as it was with a scarlet ribbon. If he found one today or five years hence, he would thread it through his fingers and think of her.

  He should not have studied her so intently, but he found himself captivated. Her neck was slender, leading to a chin and jaw that were finely carved. Her lips were solemn in repose, the bottom one more full than the top. The mouth of a lover. Not a woman barely escaped from childhood, with the glow of youth still upon her. The green dress she wore hinted at a ripe figure; hips that curved and breasts that thrust against her laces promised it. Eyes as brown as the earth beneath his feet but hinting at gold in their depths surveyed him with the wise stare of an owl.

  He had been wrong to compare her to a courtesan. He could not remember ever seeing a woman at any court party who rivaled her in beauty. Not that of paint and artifice, but natural and unre strained. A piece of gilt contrasted to the beauty of the sky. Nature won each time.

  Her charm was more than her loveliness. It was the way she spoke of this place called Dunniwerth that was her home. The way she looked at Langlinais as if she felt the enchantment of it. And more. Something more that he could not explain, not even to himself.

  He did not deal in imponderables, but only those things he might touch and feel. There were things in her eyes that lured him. She was a danger and a delight. She was frightened of storms and talked of circles, spoke in a burr of soft accent and enticed him to think of things he had not thought of for years. He found himself amused by her comments and cast into thought by her questions. Her presence at Harrington Court had never been totally explained, but he cared less for the reason for it than to understand the woman herself.

  He’d known her for a week. Two, if one counted the time he was insensible. He’d talked with her on numerous occasions, been charmed by her wit, fascinated by the mystery of her, tempted by the woman.

  He was at the king’s mercy and subject to his will. As soon as her companion was ready to travel, she would be on her way, her destination and errand unknown to him. They would, in all certainty, never meet again.

  It stunned him.

  He raised his hand as if to summon her or place his palm upon the face of time itself. She glanced at him quizzically, a faint smile on her face.

  “You are abroad early,” he said, dismounting.

  “I could not sleep,” she said.

  His night had been as restless. He wondered what had kept her awake. Thoughts, dreams, or fears?

  “I did not think you could manage him one handed,” she said, nodding at Faeren.

  He smiled, genuinely amused by her comment. “In battle I rarely use the reins at all. Otherwise,” he said, “my sword would be useless.” Faeren shook his head as if he knew he was being discussed. “He’s trained to knee commands.”

  She reached out and rubbed Faeren’s nose. He should have told her that he was a temperamental stallion renowned for his endurance and heart. Not a pretty pet. But he should have known his horse would be as easily charmed as his master. Faeren nearly preened beneath her attentions.

  A wiser man would have parted from her then. Would have smiled and played the host with geniality and perhaps some fondness. He would have bowed and removed himself from her presence, attended to those myriad details that fell to him as a commander of men. Or even fled from her presence, prudence being wiser than regrets.

  But he didn’t. Perhaps he was fevered, not by a suppurating wound, but by spring. Perhaps he was lonely on this morning, and she’d stepped into the role of friend and confidante. Or perhaps he fooled himself that the mystery of Juliana’s chronicles was the only thing that bound them.

  “I’ve messages to send,” he said. Words of apology to the king. But he did not tell her that. Instead, he offered her the only thing he had that was valuable. Time. It slipped through his fingers like ground diamonds. “Will you join me for the noon meal? There, where the trees border the river. We’ll have our meal and a bit of Latin.”

  “And Juliana’s chronicles?”

  “Yes.” There was little time to complete them. But he’d not hurried himself along, had taken each passage as if it had been delicious and to be savored. Juliana’s words had served to join them together. He’d not wished the mystery too easily solved.

  She nodded. Agreement without a word spoken. Effortless conspiracy. She was as unwise as he, then. Or as daring. She looked not at him but at his horse, and Faeren snorted. An equine laugh at human hesitation.

  “What would you have done,” she asked, turning to him, “if it had been your sword arm that was injured?”

  “I would have practiced until I’d become proficient with my left,” he said. A simple truth. One that did not seem to surprise her.

  She looked as if she would have liked to say something, then had changed her mind. A small nod of either admonition to herself or warning to him not to ask.

  He had the strange feeling that a fragile fence stretched between them, comprised of good manners and civility, honor and nobility, and virtue. He’d scaled it despite the fact that she was without protector and far from home.

  She’d spoken his name and known of his childhood hiding place. But that was not the true depth of her mystery. It lay in the fact that she looked at him sometimes as if she knew his thoughts or could understand the words he did not speak. As if she was a friend who’d been away for a time and now stood waiting for him to recognize her. An odd sensation.

  Nor was that the only one. Even with his amusement, even adrift in his confusion, in his wondering, he could not forget her touch. She’d placed her hands on him. Reached up to brush a kiss upon the corner of his lips, returned his improvident kiss with an ardor that had stunned him.

  She’d asked him to name those things he feared. Afraid? Not of things he could conquer. Not of circumstances he could easily overcome. Not even of nature’s fury. But of a woman who felt known to him, who smiled at him at this moment and urged him to think of warm beds and soft murmurs? Even a fool would be cautious, and he had never been a fool.

  He stepped back, mounted Faeren again. He did not say farewell to her. It might have been good practice for the moment soon to come. Instead, he simply lifted his hand in a wave. Then left her.

  Penroth’s man walked along the cobbled streets of Lange on Terne and wondered at the neatness of the town. He was an Englishman but not a Royalist. It hardly seemed to matter in this small town. Not one person looked at his garments with anything like suspicion. Or wondered that his hair was cut shorter than most.

  They were friendly in this place, a benefit to his mission. The only drawback to it was the fact that there were too many soldiers for his liking.

  A little boy, no older than three, was being hefted on the shoulders of one of those uniformed men. He pulled on his hair and bounced on his shoulders, for all the world as if the man were a horse.

  “Your son?” he asked. A comment he’d half expected to be rebuffed, him a stranger and all. But the man stopped and smiled.

  “He is,” he said with pride.

  “A great lad.”

  “He is that.”

  More conversation divulged that he hadn’t seen the lad for two years. Duty had taken him from his home.

  The earl’s name was mentioned more than once in their talk. Again when he’d stopped for a tankard of ale.

  “Oh, aye, we’re all Langlinais men,” one man said. “All born and bred in the town. And most of our men serve with the earl.”

  When he wished a good day to an old woman, she smiled back at him. A few moments of conversation gleaned him the information about Harrington Court and the Earl of Langlinais. More knowledge than he needed but given in exchange for a few words of kindness.

  General Penroth would be pleased.

  Chapter 13

  Betty sent one of the maids to the place Stephen had selected for their m
eal with a cloth, a bottle of ale, and a bowl of fruit. She filled a platter with cheeses and crusty bread, covered it with a napkin, and would have delivered it herself if Ned had not caught her hand as she walked through the kitchen.

  “You can leave by that door when you’re finished,” he said, motioning over his shoulder to Anne. His blue eyes twinkled at her, even as he handed Anne the platter.

  The wrinkles around his eyes spoke of years of labor in the sun. The hair on his head was graying and sparse. But it was his smile that lingered with her as she crossed the room and opened the door. That and Betty’s laughter.

  It was a soft sound, one that made her smile. Even during times of war, life went on. Smiles and laughter, joy, and hope. They were never completely extinguished.

  Anne placed the platter on the cloth and looked at the scene below her. Langlinais was touched with the sun, the yellowing brick of it making it appear almost golden in the light.

  Her legs curled to the side, her drawing board beside her. She was rarely without it. Her sketches were more than a way of occupying time. In her work she put all of the emotion she could not voice, all of the confusion of her life. She’d drawn pictures of Ian when she was a child and made him a grotesque monster. Or on his knees begging her forgiveness. She’d drawn Hannah in many guises, her father going off to war. A hundred pictures that held precious moments and scenes she always wished to remember.

  Perhaps one day she would draw Harrington Court. Or Stephen mounted on Faeren. But for now, she held those sketches only in her mind.

  The day was what her mother would have called soft. A haze seemed to settle over the landscape, one of heat rather than mist. She leaned back against the trunk of a venerable oak.

  She closed her eyes, listened to the sound of the wind as it ruffled through the leaves. A bird called, and the River Terne gurgled a greeting.

  An afternoon of peace. It was almost possible to believe that there was no war.

  She was not anxiously awaiting him, nor impatient at his absence. Instead, she was asleep, an expression on her face of utter rest. Her cheek was pressed against the bark of the tree, a rough embrace he thought. He sat beside her as quietly as he could, gently pulled her toward him.

  Her cheek would bear the imprint of his shirt, instead.

  He should have awakened her, but she herself had said that she’d gotten no sleep the night before. What had kept her awake? Dreams? Wishes? He realized that he wanted very much to know.

  Her hand brushed against his chest, and he held it tenderly there.

  It was a fine hand with long fingers. No calluses marred her skin, no blisters. Yet it was not a delicate appendage. Her palm was almost square, the thumb long. It was a capable hand, one of sturdiness, of competence. One of talent. He could as easily see it controlling the reins of a horse as he could holding a piece of charcoal between thumb and forefinger.

  She smelled of roses or some other flower that bloomed in spring. An errant beam of sunlight touched her hair and revealed the colors rampant in one lock. Red and chestnut and a shade almost blond. Strange that he’d never studied hair with such intensity before.

  She was silent in sleep, her pose one of deep peace. Or like one enchanted. A small smile wreathed her lips, as if a dream gave her amusement. He wanted to touch her there with his fingertip. Measure the softness of a mouth that lured him to kiss it. Once he had done so, and she’d startled him by touching her tongue to him.

  He sat with her, silent and charmed by the moment. The breeze blew more softly, as if it feared to wake her. Even the sound of the river was muted, cautioned by the wind.

  A curious protectiveness invaded him. A feeling he’d never had for a woman. For his people and his land, yes. For a building, Langlinais. But never for one woman.

  What would it be like to share his life with a woman? To shelter her and protect her? To take delight in doing so? To know that with her he might speak of things he feared with as much ease as he did those he enjoyed? He had felt that ease with few people in his life and never with a woman. Even his friendship with Sarah had been one of polite restraint. He had never stepped beyond the boundaries with her. Never wished to. She was a sweet and well-mannered girl who sparked his humor occasionally and his kindness always.

  He had knelt with this woman in the midst of a dangerous storm and not known his peril. Instead, he’d been swept up into the passion of a kiss.

  She’d been subjected not only to his lust, but to the absurdities of his thoughts. He’d wondered about her when he should have been making arrangements for Langlinais to be protected against the possibility of early summer floods. He’d thought about her when he’d been postponing his return to Oxford and to wherever the king would send him and his troops.

  He could not stop thinking about that moment etched in elemental detail, when the bright blaze of lightning had illuminated her upturned face just at that moment he’d lowered his lips to hers.

  How many nights had he lain awake, wondering what it might feel like to have her place this hand on him? To feel the strength of her fingers and the pads of her fingertips, the gentle line of nail on his skin? Too many nights to dismiss the memory of it lightly.

  There, a confession that threatened the very essence of his honor.

  He’d dreamed of her. Not only in his fever, but in his restless sleep. He’d pored through his books in Latin for phrases that she would wish to learn. Had found himself transfixed by the idea of reading to her from Catullus. The moment tempted him.

  “‘Ille mi par esse deo videtur,

  ille, si fas est, superare divos,

  qui sedens adversus identidem te spectat et audit

  dulce ridentem, misero quod omnis

  eripit sensus mihi.’”

  Words he whispered as softly as the breeze around them.

  “What does it mean?” she asked softly.

  She sat up, pushed her hair away from her forehead. Her ribbon had become dislodged, and she looked around but could not find it. He did not offer to pull it from his pocket and give it to her.

  He should have noted that her breathing had changed. Instead, he’d been captivated by a hand, the curve of her cheek, his errant thoughts.

  Still, there was nothing to do but to tell her. “He is close to a god, he who sits and watches her. And listens to the sound of her laughter as he is seated there. A rival to a god with such delight.”

  “How beautiful.”

  “The poet was very ardent about the woman he loved.”

  He found himself oddly discomfited. Not because he’d been discovered quoting Latin. The poets at court had often waylaid a likely conquest to regale her with verses they’d toiled over. Poetry with more libidinous intent than his selection. His awkwardness came not from his words but his thoughts. For those alone he should probably have been slapped.

  “Ní hí an bhreáthacht a chuireann an crocán ag fiuchadh,” she said with a smile.

  “Gaelic again?”

  She nodded. “Beauty will not make the pot boil.”

  He began to smile, eased from the moment by her teasing look.

  “We Scots rarely talk about love,” she said. “Most of our proverbs have to do with practical matters. Fearr an mhaith atá ná an dá mhaith do bhí.”

  At his look, she smiled. “Better one good thing that is than two things that were.”

  “Latin scholars were the same. Most of them spoke of the great questions of life, mortality, and immortality. The nature of man.”

  “Are you certain?”

  She tilted her head and looked at him. There was a mark on her cheek, a tiny scratch, and he pressed his thumb upon it. A gesture he did not know he was going to make until he did so.

  He pulled his hand back, concentrated on her question, not on the fact that her cheeks now bloomed with color.

  “Do you mean have I read all there is? No.”

  “Did you never think that certain thoughts were not deemed important enough to save?”
r />   “A censor who decreed that certain words be considered sacrosanct and others discarded?”

  “Or a great many, century after century,” she said, sitting up completely. There was a peace still on her features, as if she’d not wakened fully yet. But she debated with him. Yawns and riddles and the ability to kiss him until his blood burned. A unique woman.

  She frowned at him as if she knew his thoughts had drifted. “Juliana’s work might not have survived if it had been found two hundred years ago. Perhaps one of your ancestors would have decreed it a silly thing, a woman’s thoughts unworthy to save. Or a man of the Church might have seen it as heretic and tossed it into a fire.”

  “If that were true, then Catullus and Ovid would not have survived.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. The look on her face indicated her thoughts. A wall stopped her logic. He did not help her across it.

  “You do not lose arguments easily, do you?”

  She laughed. “What you see as stubbornness was only survival at Dunniwerth.”

  He smiled at her, charmed again.

  She yawned and placed her hand over her mouth. She’d not been embarrassed to have found herself leaning against him. In fact, she’d not been shy about the fact that he’d discovered her asleep.

  A fascinating woman. Another time, perhaps, he would have celebrated the fact that fate had put her in his life. Now he could only wish that circumstances were different.

  Chapter 14

  The ale was hearty, the cheese sour but balanced by the surprisingly sweet bread. She would have eaten rocks, Anne thought, if it meant sitting beneath a tree with him and enjoying these moments.

  He opened the codex, found his place.

  “Are we nearly finished?”

  “There are about ten pages,” he said. “But the writing is cramped.”

  He sat there, lit by the sunlight that filtered through the leaves.