CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The door’s slam reverberated in the room. Louvaen chuckled and deposited their goblets on the table set between the two chairs before the fire. She took the food from his arms and put it with the goblets. “Will you lock me in now, my lord?”
He eyed her with a mock scowl. “Do I need to?”
“Hardly. There’s food here, and I’m starved enough to gnaw on this table.” She offered a suggestive smile. “I should warn you though; your virtue is now in jeopardy.”
“Is that a threat or a promise?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. Instead, he scooped her into his arms and settled into one of the chairs with her in his lap. “No matter. Either one will be pleasurable.”
Louvaen twirled a lock of his hair around her finger. “We’ll miss our supper as well if we stay in here too long. What delicacy will you nibble on then?”
Ballard buried his face in her neck, and she laughed as he snuffled, nipping at her earlobe and the skin under her jaw. “You,” he growled in her ear. “Sweeter than a damson.” He nibbled his way toward her shoulder. “Soft on the tongue like a tipsycake.” His fingers danced along her ribs. She chortled and swatted at his hands. “More delicate than a roasted haunch of venison.”
“What?” Louvaen thrust her hands into his hair, using the leverage to tug his face away from her neck. She met his grin with a scowl. “Ballard, there’s nothing delicate about a haunch of anything.”
The hand tickling her side slipped nimbly under her skirts to stroke her leg from knee to hip. One of his eyebrows winged upward. “I disagree. This one is.” He bent to nuzzle her cleavage but paused when her stomach protested with an even louder growl than before.
Louvaen shrugged. “What do you expect, talking of tipsycakes and plums and such?”
His frustrated chuff dusted her collarbones. “My horse, my cook, your belly.” He pushed her gently off his lap and toward the other chair. “I’m a vassal to you all.”
They shared the simple meal between them, teasing each other as they consumed the food. Even though she’d spend the evening with Ballard and share his bed through the night, she found herself wishing the day might never end—not because she’d discarded the day’s toil but because she’d devoted those hours to the master of the house and reveled in his companionship. That he felt a great affection for her, she had no doubt. He was reserved with her around others but generous in his passion and tenderness when they were alone. The hours spent riding along his land borders together had merely strengthened the bonds that tethered her to him.
Cinnia had asked earlier if she loved him. Now, Louvaen would say yes, unequivocally. She was deeply in love with Ballard de Sauveterre, as much if not more so than she’d been with Thomas Duenda. That epiphany—its utter futility—stunned her, and for a moment she forgot how to breathe. The apple she held fell to the floor, and she swayed in her chair.
Ballard shot from his seat, twin lines furrowed between his eyebrows in a harsh frown. He knelt in front of her and took her hand. “What’s wrong? You’ve gone pale as the dead.”
She reached for her goblet with a hand that remained blessedly steady. “Just thirsty. And full.”
He gazed at her, his frown lingering while he drew circles on her knee with his thumb. Louvaen stared into his dark eyes, wondering if he could see the emotions roiling through her, hear the declaration of devotion hovering on her tongue.
“Come to bed,” he said abruptly and rose to his feet with a hand outstretched.
Startled, she glanced at the shuttered window through which tendrils of insipid light unfurled, then back at him. “A little early for slumber, don’t you think?”
Ballard grasped her fingers, pulled her up from the chair and relieved her of her goblet. “I never said anything about sleeping.”
This time she didn’t complain about cold sheets or worry that Cinnia would come hunting for her. A growing sense of dread consumed her, along with a desperation to hoard every minute with Ballard. For some reason, the moment she’d acknowledged to herself she loved him an hourglass had turned on its end, and the sands ran fine and fast. Spring was still weeks away, yet she felt as if it hovered outside the door, a harbinger not only of rebirth but finality. She shivered in Ballard’s arms and kissed him hard enough to taste blood.
He made love to her as afternoon gave way to twilight and then to night. In the quieter moments when they rested, Louvaen entangled her legs with his and clutched him close.
“Tell me what troubles you, Louvaen,” he said, his voice easy and deep. They reclined together and he stroked her back and shoulders while she lay docile in arms.
“I’m well.” She lied. She wasn’t well. She despaired and raged at the knowledge she’d soon return home and never see him again. “What could possibly trouble me right now?” She nestled into him and contented herself with carding his hair through her fingers, hoping to distract him from more questions. He grew heavier against her, and his breathing deepened, signaling he’d fallen asleep.
Louvaen stared into the darkness. A week. She had a week, maybe a fortnight if Cinnia wanted a wedding ceremony more elaborate than Ambrose binding her hand to Gavin’s with golden cord and giving the ritual blessing of unification. After that, Louvaen had no more reason to stay. The weather would be fair enough to travel. She might even catch the first blooming daffodils as she rode Plowfoot over the drawbridge and onto the land opposite Ketach Tor.
“I wish I could stay, Ballard,” she whispered. “I do love you.”
The words had barely left her lips when the air around her compressed, and her ears popped. Beside her, Ballard jerked and muttered in his sleep. She couldn’t discern anything in the shadows swallowing the curtained bed. Dizziness overwhelmed her, as if a great hand had grabbed the bed and launched it into a spin. The sickening motion stopped almost as soon as it began, and Louvaen clutched Ballard to her, gasping. He didn’t awaken—a strange thing itself as she’d learned he was a light sleeper and sensitive to her slightest movements.
Her skin prickled, and the fine hairs on her arms rose; the air smelled of magic—sharp and cool like the first breeze before the coming of a downpour. She lay still, waiting for the dizziness to return. She half expected the tell-tale blue sparks to make an appearance. The scent of rain dissipated; the bed didn’t spin, and no fae lights appeared. Whatever sorcery had surged through the chamber was gone, leaving nothing more than a light draft on the bed curtains. Louvaen lay rigid in the bed long afterwards, only relaxing—one wary muscle at a time—as the room remained steeped in quiet. Her eyelids grew heavy. Ketach Tor convulsed within a tide—this flux Ballard and Gavin mentioned but never expanded on—and she wanted answers. Tomorrow she’d track down Ambrose and demand them. She draped an arm across her lover’s waist and fell asleep to the sound of his gentle snores.
She woke to a thing far less soothing. During the night she’d engaged in her customary act of cocooning herself in the blankets for warmth. Ballard, impervious to the chamber’s frigid temperatures, slept peacefully beside her, his back pressed against hers. Louvaen wrinkled her nose at an odor both familiar and repulsive—roses and dead bodies. In the four years she’d been married to an undertaker, she’d gotten a nose full of those two smells combined. She opened one eye to the predawn darkness and made to untangle herself from the covers. A sudden, sharp pain shot through her thigh and radiated down her leg to her knee.
“Ow!” She wrestled with the blankets, trying to reach her leg and whatever was gnawing on it.
Ballard jolted beside her. “Louvaen,” he slurred. “What...” He swore on a pained gasp, and this time his voice was clear, enraged. “Evil-minded bitch! Why can’t you just die?”
