Not knowing what to say, Dagobert watched her hurry from the room.An awkward silence settled over the three men.The candle flame sputtered in the tallow, drawing Dagobert’s gaze, and he wondered how he could in good conscience bring a bride into this battle.
Even a bride his father had sworn he would take.
“’Tis a risk we need not take,” Eustache muttered, but Dagobert was unconvinced.
He sighed, frowning in dissatisfaction at the role he had drawn in life.It was not the first time he had wished that he had been born a man devoid of responsibilities, but the die had been cast and he would not shirk what needed to be done.
Eustache always spoke of success, but Iolande was right.Should Dagobert fail, he left no heir and he had no brethren to take up the cause.He had no right to discard the future of the bloodline for the sake of his own convenience.He would keep this pledge of his father’s.The woman had been sworn to him and she, too, must follow her destiny wherever their paths might lead.
His decision made, he gave Guibert de Perpignan an encouraging smile and leaned forward to explain the situation in full to the older knight.
The bright Januarysunlight did naught to soften the foreboding facade of the fortress Montsalvat looming overhead.Alienor shivered at the sight of the stone castle crouching atop the steep mountain like some great venomous toad.
The structure was short and squat, or perhaps that was just an illusion created by the contrast of the sharp incline of the mountainside.It seemed mysterious with its brooding walls, its darkness highlighted by the light dusting of snow.As her horse climbed the steeply winding path and grew ever nearer, she refused to look up again.Her first impression of the château that would become her home had not dispelled her trepidation about her pending marriage.
“Trust me,” Guibert had insisted when she had balked at the news that she would not meet her bridegroom before the nuptials.She had done so, trusting in the man who had so often put her needs before his own.
But now, before the forbidding facade of Montsalvat, she could not help but question the haste with which her marriage had been planned, as well as the secrecy and mystery surrounding her bridegroom.There were tales in the town, tales aplenty about Montsalvat and its enigmatic lord.
Her gaze fell on her foster father’s back as he rode before her, still straight and proud despite his advancing years.How could she doubt this man who had given her so much and whose judgment was always good?She knew that Guibert had been hard-pressed to afford her tutors: indeed, she knew that on more than one occasion he had unsheathed his blade as a mercenary against his own desires to see her raised as he saw fit.She had been schooled as a southern lady, tutored and taught in music, languages and mathematics.Guibert had insisted that her mysterious origins gave her the opportunity to claim a finer destiny than his had been.
And now she was to wed the Count of Pereille himself, the most powerful man in the province, the ultimate vindication for all of Guibert’s sacrifices, and all she could think about was the fact that she was deeply afraid.She had heard too many rumors in the village, provocatively half-heard morsels of tales of magic, of legends come to life, of strange doings beneath the fullness of the moon.
Alienor glanced up at the foreboding edifice looming ever closer.Why would anyone build such a château?And why here, virtually in the middle of nowhere?Why was the stone not the pleasing dove gray from the local quarries?Why not build an elegant tower, a spire, an attractive curtain wall instead of presenting this dark menacing face to the arriving traveler?What secrets did Montsalvat so jealously guard within its walls?
Did she truly wish to know?
Hours later,Alienor toyed with the seed pearls sewn to her crimson kirtle and surveyed her reflection in the sheet of polished silver hanging opposite, unable to believe that she would be wed before the day was through, unwilling to accept that she was already ensconced in the building that would be her home.
She had already discovered one secret about the château—its crusty exterior belied the wealth and opulence of the furnishings within, though that revelation did little to ease her trepidation.This tiny antechamber near the gates had been offered for her use, as it was undoubtedly offered to countless other guests, but even its decor easily overwhelmed anything she had known before.Intricate tapestries hung on each of the four walls, a fire raged on the hearth beneath an elegantly arched and ornately carved stone fireplace.A bed draped in brocades and scattered with embroidered pillows dominated the far wall, a comfortable chair and table were placed invitingly before the hearth.
The mirror amazed Alienor in and of itself, as wide as she, it was, and nearly as tall, and shockingly expensive to acquire, without a doubt.She could not even imagine how it had been carried up that winding mountainous track and arrived intact.She had never seen a wonder like it.She touched it carefully as if her fingertip alone would shatter it, marveling at the smoothness of its surface.As she touched the glass, she marveled again thatsheshould be the one the count would take to wife.
Guibert’s ominous assurance rang again in her ears.“The count wills it”was all she had been able to coax from him and Alienor shivered anew in recollection.
The ringing of the bells in the chapel brought her head up with a snap, her heart skipped, and she summoned a smile of encouragement for the sad bride reflected in the silvery expanse.She rose to her feet to check her appearance one last time before donning her veil.
The red velvet kirtle was laced snugly to her forearms.The cuffs and high neck were trimmed with pearls carefully removed from an old garment and sewn upon this one.The fullness of the skirt cascaded over Alienor’s knees and ankles.The pearl-encrusted hem stopped just above the floor, revealing a glimpse of the gold brocade trim on her chemise, which swept the ground.
The toes of her red kid slippers were barely visible and she spun around, checking that the narrowness of the band of brocade was not visible.Her nimble fingers were clever at making less look like more: the sliver of heavily embroidered gold hinted at an entire chemise of the fine cloth, when in fact she had only had the coin to buy a narrow piece.Alienor was not ashamed of her own circumstances, but in the open opulence of this château, she was curiously reluctant to appear less affluent than her intended.
She had only met her groom’s mother so far, and that lady’s intimidating manner might have sent a more timid soul scurrying homeward through the heavy gates.Iolande de Goteberg was both beautiful and icily pale, so perfectly composed that Alienor found her presence unsettling.Her fair brows, clear blue eyes and pallid complexion were such as Alienor had never seen before in this land of dark-haired, dark-eyed people.
Both horses had paused of their own volition within the gates when Alienor and Guibert had first seen Iolande, her tall figure draped in pastel mauve velvet, the cold winter sunlight illuminating her fairness as she stood in the courtyard, one long hand trailing over the ears of a huge gray wolfhound at her side.
It was a deliberate pose, Alienor was certain, but an effective one nonetheless.After all, no one could climb that road unobserved.She turned to the mirror once again for reassurance, seeing no evidence of the regal bearing of her mother-in-law in her own posture.Though Iolande’s words had been carefully chosen, her welcome had not been warm and Alienor wondered yet again what future awaited her here.
She had plaited her dark hair earlier this morning, winding its length into an elegant arrangement of braids despite its unruly nature, more of the seed pearls gleaming from their perches within the ebony tresses.With a sigh of dissatisfaction, she carefully placed the linen circle of her fillet on her head, draping her sheer white wimple around her neck with practiced hands and tucking the ends into the fillet.A whisper of golden veiling slipped over the entirety, covering her hair and the fillet and flowing down to her shoulders in a sheer cloud, her face a lonely oval in the midst of all the concealing cloth.
Married to a man she had yet even to see.Alienor met her own gaze in the mirror, wondering what her husband looked like, panicking briefly at the thought that he might not find her pleasing.She scanned her reflection with a discriminating eye, noting the creamy skin of her face, the full rosy lips, the tawny eyes with their uncommonly thick lashes that tipped up at the outer corners, that a scandalous hint of some Eastern blood in her ancestry.That same Eastern influence seemed indicated in the honeyed hue of her complexion, the heavy thickness of her dark hair, though those tresses were defiantly wavy instead of ramrod straight.
Though slender as a reed, she was tall for a woman.Alienor hoped against hope that her husband was not a small man, then chided herself, for his height should be the least of her concerns.She also hoped that he would find her an attractive mate.She had always been a misfit in this province of people who so closely resembled one another and who had learned to regard foreigners as undesirable.Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin and compact bodies had confronted her at every turn, even her subtle physical differences drawing attention amongst such startling similarity.
Alienor clasped her hands together, recalling the taunting comments she had endured for so long, the teasing when she had been a long-legged adolescent towering over most of the other women and not a few of the men in her town.She clenched her fingers tightly and prayed to the powers that be that her husband be anything but a short man who thought her an abomination of nature.
Then she hoped he might be kind to her.
She started at the sound of a light tap on the door and turned away from the mirror, her heart leaping as she struggled to pull on her gloves despite the trembling of her hands.When she opened the door, the admiration in her foster father’s eyes coaxed her smile.
