Nicholas felt as though everything was happening in slow
motion, but in reality, he was at Sera’s side only an instant after
the last chord faded against the vaulted ceiling. His gaze centered
on the play of emotions so clearly visible on her face. He pulled
his handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped her cheeks.
Strange, he had never seen her cry before, but now, the tears
streamed unchecked and unnoticed.
The silence of the abbey stole over them. He felt a great
satisfaction. She liked it—there was no doubt he had finally
given her something she liked. He handed her the handkerchief.
She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose, and made all sorts of
adjustments on her person, straightening her skirts, patting her
hair into place beneath the Russian fur. She looked longingly at
the chantry.
“Could we speak to them?” she asked.
“They would be delighted. Come.” He felt himself expand
like a balloon with pride. Sera’s instincts were impeccable. He
had chosen wisely, indeed.
She won over the choirmaster immediately, and the
members of the choir were grinning from ear to ear.
Sera curtsied low before them. “To create such beauty is to
achieve perfection. There is no greater goal on earth, and you
have reached it.”
“It is Mozart who created such perfection, Lady Sera,” said
the choirmaster. His eyes went very bright.
Nicholas took Sera’s hand, resting it upon his arm. He gave
his thanks to the flushed and beaming choirmaster. “It has been
a long night and day,” he told Sera. “Time for you to be home.”
She walked beside him, her head bent, down candle lit aisles,
past the statues of Saints and Madonnas, and through the high
doors into the cold, clear evening air. Stars hung in the
firmament, benevolent little lanterns in the dark dome of the
sky. Sera climbed into the carriage and sat opposite Nicholas,
her gloved hands clasping and unclasping upon her lap. Just as
she lifted her face to look at him, the carriage rolled past a street
lamp. She was incandescent as flame, her eyes the color of
midnight. She stared at him with those huge eyes, her lips
trembling on a smile, and then, abruptly, she flung herself across
the carriage.
His arms caught her and held her close. His hands clasped
the small of her back and the nape of her neck, where her hair
hung in truant curls below the Russian fur hat. She kissed him
madly, his eyes, his cheeks, the spot at the corner of his mouth
that curved upward in what he knew must be a very foolish
smile.
“Thank you, thank you. I wish I could think of a way to
thank you properly. That you would give me such a gift! I shall
never forget it, no matter where I am, or what happens.”
He pushed down the shiver of apprehension her words
engendered. “Nothing’s going to happen,” he said in a voice
that sounded rough to his own ears. “We shall be together
forever, that’s all.” He held her cradled against his shoulder and
looked into her face. The passing lantern light shot through the
window, limning her lips, the soft contours of her cheeks, but
her eyes were in shadow and unreadable. “It’s fate, Sera,” he
said more fiercely than he had intended in his sudden
apprehension. “Get used to it.”
She raised her hand and laid it along the line of his jaw, and
he tried very hard to unclench his teeth. “You are a romantic
after all, Nicholas Rostov,” she said. But her voice was sad.
He forced himself to smile, to lighten his tone. “If you wish
to thank me, ride with me tomorrow. The day promises fine,
and we shan’t have many more like it.”
“All right,” she said and laid her head on his shoulder.
Good, thought Nicholas. He’d planned to get away, to rest
and heal inside a warm, cozy place.
Like a bed, with a fine down quilt and Sera naked beside
him.
He knew just where he would take her—to his hunting box
a few hours outside Montanyard. And just how long he would
keep her there. Sera might think that she was going to leave
him, but he knew otherwise. And when she had been in his bed
for at least a week, when she was limp from his lovemaking
and completely tuned to his will, he would bring her back and
call the Bishop into the palace for a wedding ceremony. With
the world going to hell in a hand basket, he was justified in
taking what he could.
Hell, if the generals found out where they’d been before
the wedding, they’d applaud him. War was coming. The sooner
he got her with an heir, the better for Laurentia.
He would notify the servants to provision the lodge tonight.
And he would inform Andre of his plans, in case he was needed
before he wished to return. When the carriage rolled to a stop
before the palace, he sent Sera directly to her chambers where
she would, he hoped, have a nourishing dinner and fall asleep
immediately. If he had anything to do with it, she’d need every
bit of rest she could get in preparation for the days to come.
Eleven
“What a glorious day,” Sera said. She sat Wind Rider’s easy
canter alongside Nicholas’s bay as they rode northeast from
Montanyard. They had been out in the wind for two hours, but
the sun was bright and warm. Nicholas said they’d reach their
destination in another hour.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Nicholas simply gave her a mysterious smile. “Someplace
where we don’t have to deal with the court. Good enough?”
“Better than good,” she said. Only a few clouds laced the
sky. Sera felt just like Wind Rider, who every once in a while
kicked up his heels in a happy buck.
“This wind is making me hungry. Let’s stop for tea,”
Nicholas said. He pushed an unruly lock of hair back from his
forehead and glanced at her sidelong. In his warm houndstooth
jacket cut in the English style and his simple brown woolen
stock tie, he looked every inch the carefree, youthful aristocrat
out for a country hack. He had tied his cloak behind his saddle,
and he had insisted that Sera take one, as well.
Sera glanced up. Even as they spoke, more clouds had
appeared in the sky. The wind gusted, and a cloud covered the
sun. She shivered, looking forward to warming herself with food
and her cloak.
“Is there a full English tea in the mysterious package you
have in your saddlebag? How clever of you, especially when I
could roast your lovely bay right now and eat him whole.”
“A woman with an appetite—what a pleasure. And no, my
dear Sera, this is not horseflesh, but the ambrosia of the gods,”
said Nicholas.
“Madame Torvell’s wonderful tarts? Oh, bliss.” Sera
immediately squeezed Wind Rider into a halt. “This looks just
the place, do you not think?”
“Glutton! This spot is completely open to the wind. If we
stop here, any ploughboy
coming home from the fields would
see us. I could never steal a kiss from such a location.”
Sera slanted him a look from beneath her lashes.
Nicholas was looking at her with a dark intensity that made
her stomach go fluttery. He looked as though he were hungry
enough to eat her.
Playing at love was a heady thing. Those stolen kisses in
the carriage had made her feel as though she had just taken a
leap off a mountainside. She tried to remember caution, but it
was too late for that. Whenever she was near Nicholas, a thrum
of excitement vibrated through her blood. She squeezed Wind
Rider into a gallop and threw her head back, drinking in the
cold wind.
Nicholas gave chase. She could hear his deep laughter
behind her. And then a sharp crack through the air, beneath the
sound of hoof beat and wind. Another report, and then another,
and the acrid smell of gunpowder came to her from behind.
Nicholas had pulled even with her. “Run!” he shouted over the
wind.
And she did, bent over Wind Rider’s neck, his mane
whipping against her face, the wind and her own fear spurring
her on. Nicholas was beside her, pointing to the left, and Wind
Rider swerved, narrowly missing a tree as they raced up the
hillside, behind a cover of dull gray and evergreen brush.
The bitter wind buffeted her body with brutal force, and ice
stung her cheeks. She looked up past the windblown branches
at a lowering sky. Clouds coiled and roiled like sea serpents
ready to strike. The sleet began in earnest,
Sera glanced over her shoulder once. She saw the haunts of
her nightmares, black garbed from head to toe, gaining on
Nicholas and her as they climbed the hill. She could hear the
labored breath of Nicholas’s horse behind her.
“Leave me and make for the top,” shouted Nicholas.
“Beyond is a road that will take you to a hunting box. Stay
there. Somebody will come within a week.”
Sera shook her head and kept going at Nicholas’s slower
pace.
“Damn it, woman. Leave me. That horse of yours is good
for hours.”
“I’m staying with you. I like the odds better,” said Sera,
controlling the tremor that shook her inside and threatened to
spread to her lips. She gave him what she hoped was a brave
smile.
Nicholas gave a growl of frustration. “Little fool! Stop
being a damned heroine.”
“You’re stuck with me,” said Sera. “So decide how to save
us.”
“Over there.” Nicholas pointed to the left. “There’s a deer
blind behind those oaks. Hurry!”
She raced Wind Rider ahead. The blind appeared. She rode
Wind Rider past it and found a post behind some trees and brush,
but she didn’t tie him to it. Instead, she slipped the saddle and
bridle from the horse. If something happened to her, those snakes
wouldn’t be able to catch him. But they were following. They
would find them.
They would kill Nicholas. Her heart almost cracked at the
thought of all that beauty of mind and body, all that exuberant
energy, draining with the bright flow of his blood into the
ground. Her breath hitched in a sob as she realized what a
precious place this alien world was because Nicholas was a part
of it. Dear gods, she couldn’t let him die.
She had to do something. She had to hide him.
Her soul opened, with an outpouring so great, she felt she
must shout with the power of it. From deep within, from a lore
passed down through generations—a lore she hadn’t known
existed, the words welled up inside her. She raised her arms
high to the sky. In the ancient, formal language known only by
the Mages, she cried out. “Boreas of the North Wind, I charge
you, in the secret name granted you by the gods! Anaisis,
master of the storm! I charge you by the Gift surging in my
blood! Come to me. Unsheathe your power. Give all unto my
hand to work my will upon this place.”
The sleet fell harder, needles of ice that froze her cheeks.
She wished snow, a blizzard of it, and the sleet grew light and
softened into great flakes. The wind whipped them, swirling
about her in a blinding haze of white.
Then Nicholas’s strong hand was on her arm, pulling her
back into the blind. As she checked the road below them for
signs of the villains, he handed her something cold and heavy.
She smelled oil and gunpowder. She didn’t need to look down
to know what she held.
Death.
Nicholas grabbed her hand. “This is no time for debate.
And don’t even think of having a fit of vapors. You’ll shoot the
damned thing, if you must, to save your life. Do you hear me?”
She nodded once. Her stomach made a queasy turn. If the
time comes, she tried to reassure herself. Not when.
“Load this one while I shoot the other.” Nicholas arranged
the killing tools on the rock beside her. Powder, shot, rod. She
despaired that she would forget, would kill them both simply
because she was too much of a goose to remember correctly
when it counted. The vermin were climbing now, their own
horses stumbling on the uneven rock.
Nicholas grabbed her shoulder with his free hand and pulled
her to him. She stared up into his eyes, slate-dark and intense,
and he gave her a ferocious grin. Surprisingly, it gave her a
shred of hope.
“You can do it,” he whispered, and his lips covered hers in
a fierce, hot kiss.
Sera heard the Brotherhood bastards curse as they climbed
closer to the hiding place. There were too many of them.
“Hold this one until I ask for it,” said Nicholas softly.
“There’s a good girl.” He was kneeling on one knee, his pistol
propped on his free arm. Except for the grim set of his mouth,
he looked as calm as he had two nights ago in his ballroom.
The shot exploded with an ear-splitting reverberation. One
of the men below slumped and fell. A horse reared on the steep
mountain road and fell backwards, taking the rider down with
him. Sera heard the crazed fear in the man’s shout and then the
snap of bone as the horse landed. The horse’s body twitched,
and she heard a moaning from beneath it. The others dismounted
and fanned out, looking for places to hide. They skittered, black
robed vermin slipping through the swirling white.
“Now,” said Nicholas, his voice as calm as a summer sky.
He handed her the pistol, still smoking. As she worked feverishly
to load it, he aimed the other and fired again, and another man
dropped from his horse, crying out in pain.
Powder, rod, shot, rod, thought Sera, working over the
pistols as they were handed to her, handing them back again.
She could not count the dead and dying. Even with animals
like these, she couldn’t think about their deaths. But Nicholas
had fired several times, and he had given a satisfied grunt every
time but one.
She could still see blurr
ed movement through the slanting
white curtain of snow. For once, that awful, unremitting black
of the Brotherhood served to their disadvantage, for against the
snow, they made easier targets for Nicholas. But one ran up to
the blind, so close she could see the battle madness in his eyes.
He gave a victorious shout and raised his pistol. Nicholas shot
again. Sera watched in horror at the blood blossoming on the
man’s chest. With a groan, he dropped to his knees and then lay
bleeding on the snow.
She bent to her work, choking back the nausea. Load, pack,
load, pack. She could do it. Nicholas took careful aim at another
fanatic who raced for the blind, screaming imprecations.
Sera caught a furtive movement to her left. Another was
coming on Nicholas’s blind side. His eyes—oh, his eyes—
glittered with that madness that haunted her dreams.
It happened too fast for Sera to shout a warning. The terrorist
raised his arm and aimed at Nicholas’s back. Sera shoved
Nicholas aside and aimed, squeezing the trigger. The malevolent
gleam drained from the man’s eyes, replaced by a look of
surprise. He slumped and fell backwards in the snow.
“Oh, gods.” Sera dropped the pistol.
Nicholas turned. “They’re on the run.”
Sera crept on hands and knees to the still body. A red stain
spread from beneath it and tainted the snow’s purity. His eyes
were still open.
She stared, unable to turn away from his final question.
“Why did you kill me?” his eyes asked. With shaking hands,
she pulled the black mask down to his chin.
He was a boy, perhaps sixteen, with just enough blonde
down on his cheeks to make an acceptable beard. He had a
mother and a father somewhere, waiting for him to come home.
“Oh, gods, why wasn’t I strong enough to hold him back?”
She couldn’t stop shaking. “What have I done? What have I
done?”
“Sera.” Nicholas’s hands gripped her shoulders hard,
making her rise. Hastily, he re-saddled and bridled Wind Rider.
“We have to get out of here. They’ll come back any minute and
take us if we don’t. All right? That’s it, up on your horse, now.
Here. Take my cloak. Put it over your own. You’ve had quite a
shock. No, don’t give it back to me. I don’t need it.”
Lennox, Mary - Heart of Fire.txt Page 29
