“Is he gone?” Cinnia poked her head around the corner, gaze darting about the room.
Louvaen never took her eyes off her father. “Yes. Do you want tea? It’s only warm now.”
Mercer rose. Shoulders hunched, he shuffled out of the parlor, pausing long enough to hug Cinnia. “I’m off for a nap,” he told her. “I’ll see you at supper.” He didn’t look back at Louvaen. Both women listened as his footsteps thumped up the risers and then over their heads towards his room. At the snick of a door closing the two faced off.
Cinnia glared at Louvaen. “What did you say to him?”
Louvaen turned away to stare into the fire. “Nothing that wasn’t true.” True or not, she’d flayed her beloved father, shaming him in the harshest manner.
“Nothing that was kind either I’ll bet. You’re heartless sometimes, Lou.”
“Maybe if some of us thought more with our heads instead of our hearts around here, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” Louvaen rubbed circles at her temples with her fingertips. “Jimenin is calling in his markers. He’ll forgive the debt if Papa trades you to him in marriage, otherwise he’ll have Papa tossed into debtor’s prison.”
Cinnia gasped. “Can’t we pay him?”
“Not enough. I’ll sell the house, the land, what little furniture we have left and the rest of the livestock, but that will only cover a fraction of what’s owed. Jimenin convinced Papa to join another failed venture. We might have been able to pull him out of the pit he dug himself into before that arrangement. Not any longer.”
Cinnia rushed forward and knelt before her sister’s chair. She clutched Louvaen’s hand. “Gavin can help. His father is wealthy. We’ll borrow from him.”
Louvaen looked into the breathtaking face that often made life so difficult and squeezed Cinnia’s fingers. “Absolutely not. We trade the evil we know for the one we don’t.”
Cinnia dropped Louvaen’s hand as if scorched and jerked to her feet. “Gavin de Lovet isn’t evil!”
“Maybe not, but he might be a liar. You’ve known him what?” Louvaen snapped her fingers. “Three months? A fair face, good manners, fine clothes. Those don’t make a good man, Cinnia, or an honest one. We’ve never met his family. No one here has seen or heard of the de Sauveterres.”
Cinnia stamped her foot, quivering with indignation. “He wouldn’t lie to me! I believe him.”
Louvaen shrugged. “Good for you. I don’t. Even if he’s all the things you say, we’ve nothing left to trade. Pay off Jimenin with another man’s money, and what do we offer de Sauveterre in exchange? We’re right back where we started.” She frowned at the sly look entering her sister’s eyes.
“If I were Lady de Lovet...”
Ah, the crux of it all. It wasn’t a bad idea except for one missing key component. “Well you’re not, and he hasn’t offered for your hand.” The headache threatening to crack her skull since she first caught sight of Jimenin lurking at their threshold struck her behind her the eyes. “You’ve wasted half the day flirting and accomplishing nothing, and I need to think. Go next door. Dame Niamh promised me a basket of rovings.
Cinnia crushed her skirts with hands curled into delicate fists. Her face flushed a becoming pink. “I am not an idiot! You never listen to me!”
“I would if you offered me a workable idea. What makes you assume de Lovet is rich and will just blissfully hand over his family’s money to us if you flutter your eyelashes at him.” Louvaen groaned as Cinnia’s face went as ashen as their father’s had earlier. She’d be drowning in apologies before the evening was over. “Cinnia—”
The girl spun on her heel and fled the parlor. Louvaen winced as the back door’s slam reverberated throughout the house and through her pounding head. Well, she’d manage to cock it up but good with all the members of her small family.
Supper was a silent, brooding affair. Louvaen decided the next morning would be a better time to beg forgiveness, as neither Cinnia nor Mercer were inclined to even look at her much less speak to her. With the mostly uneaten meal put away, Cinnia offered to read from Mercer’s favorite book of poems. He kissed her hand and led her to the parlor. Cinnia shot a baleful glare at Louvaen with the message she wasn’t welcome to join them.
Louvaen blew out the kitchen candles and went upstairs to her room. She unlaced her gown and draped it across the foot of the bed. Her shift brushed her skin like cold wings, and she shivered in the dark room. The bed was equally chilly, but she’d grown used to it since Thomas’s death. Her vision blurred as she thought of her husband. Kind, stout-hearted, always knowing the right words to smooth ruffled feathers, he’d been the perfect foil to Louvaen’s sharp edges, and oh gods did she miss him. She hugged his pillow to her breasts and buried her face in its softness. His scent was long gone, but she still imagined she smelled him on the pillow and the sheets. “Thomas, my love, what am I going to do?” Only the whisper of snow against the window replied.
When she finally dropped into slumber, she slept poorly, tossing and turning until she’d cocooned herself in the blankets. She woke several times in a sweat, plagued by nightmares of Jimenin dragging a screaming Cinnia away by her hair or Mercer dying of neglect and mistreatment in a prison cell. The sun hadn’t broken the horizon when she rose from the bed, bleary-eyed and dim from lack of sleep, to wash and dress. The house was quiet as she tiptoed downstairs to light the hearth and set out the pots to make porridge and tea. At dawn she trudged back up the stairs, prayed for guidance, and knocked softly on Cinnia’s door.
It creaked open at her touch. Puzzled, Louvaen pushed it a little wider. “Cinnia? You awake?” The room was dark and freezing. Her heart lurched at the sight of the neatly made bed and open window. The curtains gusted under the draft sweeping the chamber. A snapping sound drew her to Cinnia’s writing desk where a sheet of parchment fluttered beneath the weight of a candlestick. She pulled it out, crushing the edges in her hand. Cinnia’s familiar handwriting scrawled across the paper in loops and curls of black ink.
I’ve left with Gavin for his family estate in the north. I’m not running away. I’m helping Papa. My idea is workable, and I’ll see it through with or without your blessing. If you want to help me, keep the letter with you. It’s ensorcelled and will lead you to Gavin’s home. Give Papa my love.
Louvaen swayed; terrified by Cinnia’s reckless actions, horrified at the idea she had been their catalyst. The last recriminating line of the letter had her breathing in panicked gulps of air.
You should have listened.
CHAPTER TWO
Ballard admired the fact that even with her clothing askew and straw sticking out of her mussed hair like an Unseelie crown, his betrothed was still the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. Her lover Cederic, however, couldn’t boast the same comeliness. The obvious tussle in the stable loft had left him rumpled and sneezing until his eyes ran with tears and his nose with snot. He wiped his face on his sleeve before presenting his arm to Isabeau. She hesitated, her flawless features pinched into an expression of revulsion before she finally placed one hand over his while the other plucked the last few bits of hay from her ruined coif.
Another man might be enraged by this blatant proof of his intended’s faithlessness, but Ballard had earned his reputation as a ruthless warlord lacking both heart and soul. He felt nothing for his Isabeau, or she for him. She was welcome to Cederic and any other lover who caught her fancy—as long as those lovers didn’t try to claim her lands. His parents’ union had been a cool, cordial one of mutual benefit by united lands and increased power. Both had taken lovers during their marriage, but the land had stayed firmly within his family’s control. The union between him and Isabeau would be no different—a contract signed when they were children, a betrothal made, a dowry of a fiefdom with rich farm land, water rights, toll bridges, and an heir to control it all once Ballard died.
