The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (10 page)

His opponent, one of the estate’s men at arms, laughed. “Teach you to call Alice a whore,” he said good naturedly.

“But your sister—ah!”

“Is a virtuous woman,” the guard finished pointedly.

“Very virtuous,” Hart gasped, tears standing out at the corners of his eyes.

A pig ambled over to sniff at him, no doubt wondering what a fully grown man was doing lying on the ground. Hart tried to push the beast off, but to no avail. Pressing her wet snout into his cheek, Bessie waited to be patted. She liked having the coarse bristles under her chin scratched. She was a good pig, all eight hundred pounds of her. Pigs, unlike men, were fastidious animals; they rolled in the mud because it acted as a natural sunscreen to their sensitive skin. But, all things considered, they preferred to be clean.

Hart, meanwhile, seemed oblivious to the mixture of churned up dirt, bilge water and excrement that made his bed of the moment. The practice yard was a good deal more convenient than the river, and no one was contaminating their drinking water by tossing scraps onto the hard-packed dirt. The only other dumping ground within easy distance was the earl’s private fish pond, and half the manor drank from and bathed themselves in those waters. Not to mention, tanning chemicals might kill the fish.

Sitting up, Hart ran a dirt-grimed hand through his equally dirt-grimed hair. That he was blond like Rowena was, at this particular juncture, impossible to tell. Seeing Isla, he waved.

She came to the rail and, leaning over, favored him with her most condescending smile. “What a lovely perfume, brother. Is that pig shit?”

“Men don’t wear perfume.”

“Then perhaps you should wash.”

“I washed last week,” Hart protested, scandalized at the suggestion. “Although,” he added, with a wicked grin, “I suppose I’ll have to wash again for your wedding.”

“You’ll have to wash, if you want a wedding of your own.”

“Why? Alice….” At a look from his friend, he trailed off. “What I mean is, I’m a man of the world. I neither want nor need to get married.” He stood up and shook the worst of the mud from his sweat-slicked form. Clearly, his exertions had so far kept him from feeling the chill. “Besides,” he added good-naturedly, reaching for his shirt, “I’m a bastard. I don’t have to worry about such things as passing on the glorious family name I don’t have.”

Isla didn’t respond. She knew her brother’s situation bothered him more than he let on. Probably at least part of the reason he’d been fucking his stepmother these last six months; anger was a difficult beast to control, once awakened, and beneath Hart’s studied indifference lurked a fearsome monster indeed. Isla wondered, and not for the first time, if their father knew. Or cared. Or was capable of doing anything about it if he did care. She frowned slightly. She loved Hart, but she worried about him.

“They promote on merit in the North,” the guardsman said. Isla thought his name was Rand. She wasn’t sure. He worked as a ranger, and spent most of his time lost in the forest.

Hart ran his hand through his hair again and stared out at nothing. Around them, the manor was hard at work. The competing dins made it sound like a fairground: shouts as people called out to one another, or haggled, or bickered, the ringing out of hammers at the forge, the bleating of sheep and the lowing of calves, the snuffling of pigs as they roamed the grounds in search of food. When one owned a pig, one had no need of a maid to scrub the floors. Squealing in delight, Bessie found a mushroom that had grown up in the shadow of the fence post.

Standing here in the brilliant fall light, Isla almost felt normal. The pall hanging over them, in turn, seemed unreal. Surely nothing bad could happen, on such a gorgeous day? The world didn’t
feel
like it was ending. And Hart’s bland acceptance of her new status only added to her sense of unreality. He acted, indeed, like her marrying this man was the most normal thing in the world. “I like him,” he said, helping himself to a long drink of water from the skin he’d left sitting on the bench next to his shirt. “He knows a lot about horses.”

“I don’t care about horses.”

“That’s because you’re a girl.”

Isla swatted him. Rand laughed. Rand was right, too, about the North, or so Isla had been told. In much of Morven and, indeed, much of the known world, title counted more than brains and a fat purse counted most of all. Opportunities for a smart man were few and far between, unless he had a great deal of determination. Although with Piers on the throne, this was potentially changing—much to the chagrin of the peers who’d helped to put him there and who, jealous of their own power, bitterly resisted any attempts at modernization. They were, Isla supposed, frightened that their own deficiencies would finally be revealed.

“I envy you,” Hart said suddenly.

“Why?” Isla asked, taken aback.

“Because you’re leaving. I hate it here. I want to leave, too.”

“Talk to the duke,” Isla found herself saying. She hadn’t even known what she’d been about to suggest, before she spoke. But now that the words were leaving her mouth, she discovered that she meant them. As much as she, too, wanted to leave Enzie Moor, she wasn’t too keen on being a stranger in a strange land. In the North, for however long she lasted there, she’d know nobody. The idea of a familiar face sounded as appealing as a rope might to a drowning man. She hadn’t allowed herself to admit, until now, how truly terrified she was. Until, with the idea that Hart might come too, that terror abated a little.

She smiled weakly.

“I’m doing this for me,” he told her confidently. And disingenuously. “If I do it, I mean. Come north with you.”

Isla heard a giggle and turned to see Rose watching them. Watching Hart, rather. She had something of a crush on him, along with half the other girls at Enzie Moor. Not a serious crush—Hart and
serious
weren’t concepts that went together, at least where matters of the heart were concerned—but few women remained immune to his charms for long.

Isla was protected, in this instance, by being his sister. She’d never thought of him in that way and couldn’t if she tried, but she understood in an intellectual sense that he was handsome. And Hart certainly enjoyed their attentions, although he was conscientious enough to make sure that no one mistook his preening for interest. He might be a bit of a whore, but he had a good heart and he’d never misled a girl about his intentions in order to see her naked. Which made him all the more popular.

Seeing Rose, his smile broadened. His shirt hung open, revealing an expanse of smoothly muscled chest. That his idea of
bathing
included dunking his head into a horse trough and washing his hands before dinner seemed to bother girls not a whit. He wasn’t a modest man, and a good many of his admirers had seen him naked. He was as vain as Rowena, Isla thought fondly. Just smarter, which made him more dangerous. And Isla loved them both, even though—or perhaps because—neither of them was anything like her.

“Hello, beautiful,” Hart said. Rose blushed. “Come to offer congratulations?”

Rose turned her shy smile on Isla. “I’m pleased, mistress, but we’ll all miss you. I wish you weren’t leaving, even though”—she made a self-deprecating gesture—”I’m sure you’ll be very happy.” She giggled. Such seriousness was unnatural to her, and she was unable to maintain it for long. Joining Isla at the fence, she whispered, “he really is very good looking.”

“Who, Hart?”

“No!” Rose jabbed her with an elbow. They didn’t stand overmuch on ceremony at Enzie Moor; with little difference between ruler and ruled, there was no point in such useless affectations. “Your husband-to-be,” she clarified. “And I’ve heard he….” Rose lost her words in a fit of giggles.

“What?” Isla asked, alarmed.

“I’ve heard he….” She broke down utterly now, howling with laughter. Seeing her, Hart made an illustrative gesture and arched an eyebrow in question. Rose laughed all the harder.

“Well what are we talking about, here?” Hart broadened his hands wider. Rand, returning from the trough where he’d been sloshing water on himself along with Bessie, informed Hart that the duke was a man and not a bull.

“You’re just jealous, because you’re so small.” Hart held up his finger, letting the first joint droop. “Well at least it’s not like this.”

“Speaking from personal experience?” Rand asked.

Hart cuffed him on the side of the head, but good-naturedly. “Well at least she’ll be able to find it on her wedding night,” he informed Rose, who was still unable to form a cogent sentence for laughing. “I mean really, can you imagine?” He took another pull from the skin, and poured some on his head. “Years ago, the old sergeant at arms—you know, Rand, the one who got gored by a fire boar?—told us a story about a fellow he’d been with in the war.”

“Which war?”

“Which war do you think, you great clod? Anyway,” he continued, deigning now to lace up his shirt, “that’s not relevant. What I’m telling you is—”

“With you,” Rand cut in, “the intelligent part never is.”

Hart glared. “Do you want to hear this story, or not?” After a minute, seeing that he at least had an appreciative audience in Rose, he continued. “He’d been anxious to get with this particular girl for a long time—the friend, I mean, not the sergeant at arms—and she’d been pretty resistant I guess. He took her out, bought her dinner at a tavern, picked her some flowers, all that shit that girls like and, finally, she relented. So one night, after getting her good and liquored up, he took her back to his tent. Which he shared with a couple of guys, one being the sergeant, but they’d prudently absented themselves for the occasion and I guess were outside by the fire smoking and pretending not to see anything.

“No sooner does he get her inside and get his breeches unlaced then she takes one look at the package inside and bursts out laughing.”

“What did he do?” Rand asked interestedly. “I’d have disemboweled myself on the spot.”

“He ran out of the tent, and the next morning he got skewered by an arrow.” Hart winked, his green eyes glittering with amusement. They were as clear and guileless—or apparently so—as emeralds and Rose sighed appreciatively, no doubt imagining a night in
his
tent. Sometimes, the fact that Hart got so much female—and occasionally male—attention wherever he went could get a little tiring. For Isla, if not Hart.

“Don’t worry,” Hart told her, turning, “it’s no worse than being poked with a stick.”

“Gross!” Rose made a face.

“What’s
your
basis of knowledge for evaluating this analogy? Oh, I forgot.” Hart gestured at Rand. “How was his stick?”

“Disappointing,” Rose confirmed.

“Hey now, listen here!” Rand looked scandalized.

Isla ignored the rest of the conversation. That Rose had admirers of her own, almost as many as Hart, was of no particular significance to her. Although normally she took much more of an interest in her friends’—and she supposed that she and the maid
were
friends, for all that separated them—love lives. But with the reference to her own marriage bed, however kindly Hart’s joke had been intended, all the color went out of the afternoon. The sun had managed to warm things up considerably, but now she felt as cold as if she’d been encased in snow.

She’d been happy enough, for a few minutes; the sheer
normality
of the situation would have been enough to raise anyone’s spirits. It was hard not to feel good when Hart was laughing, and Rose was laughing, and everyone around her was acting like something good had happened. But….

She shivered. Beneath the persistent sense of unreality lurked the knowledge that life as she knew it was over. Possibly life of any kind. Whatever lay in store for her up in the snow-capped mountains of Darkling Reach didn’t include happiness, as both she and her would-be husband knew. And while she tried to steel herself to the realities of her situation, he seemed nothing but amused by the idea of this bizarre sham upon which they’d agreed.

What did that mean?

D
inner was drawing to a close when it happened.

Rowena looked radiant in flax that had been dyed a soft shade of rose. Her color was high, both from excitement and from the ground
angelica archangelica
powder that she’d smeared on her cheeks. Although the church considered the use of cosmetics sinful, Rowena had saved up for her own small kit for months and bribed Apple for her help in making up the rest of the cost. She’d offered to both clean Apple’s favorite slippers—Apple herself was hopeless when it came to such matters—and stand guard at the door of Apple’s small private study while she trysted with Hart.

One of their companions made some bland remark and Rowena’s laugh was like the high, clear tinkling of bells. She was bent, apparently, on acting like nothing unusual had happened. The duke was a houseguest, nothing more; she treated him with the same polite disinterest that she’d shown since his arrival. And he, in turn, ignored her entirely.

He ignored Isla as well, a condition that Isla found both relieving and oddly piquing. He was her betrothed, was he not? Shouldn’t he at least ask her if she enjoyed her venison?