the bed and opened the door yet another time, to admit several
serving men carrying a large copper tub and buckets of hot water.
Sera splashed and scrubbed as quickly as she could. Where
was she going, and why hadn’t anyone bothered to tell her?
The maid helped her into the day dress she’d brought—a
light blue woolen gown with a matching cloak lined in sable.
“There, my lady,” she said as she buttoned a pair of white
kidskin gloves over Sera’s wrist, “you’ll be warm enough now
to walk about.”
The maid arranged Sera’s hair in a complicated, upswept
mass of curls as she sat before a vanity mirror and stared at the
stranger she was becoming. As Annette slipped a tall sable hat
over the coiffure and handed her a muff of the same fur, Sera
felt like a goose being carefully stuffed for a gourmet’s dinner.
It was already cold enough to wear a fur hat, thought Sera.
Time was passing inexorably. Another two weeks would
bring snow to the mountains, and after that, the waterfall would
freeze. She couldn’t ask Nicholas for help. She had sworn the
same oath of secrecy that every Hillman swore, and there was
no recourse but to stay until the thief arrived. Where in heaven’s
name was he?
Her stomach knotted. If he does not come soon, she
promised herself, I shall set off at once for the Hills.
“There,” said the maid, smoothing the fur-lined cloak about
her shoulders. “You’ll not catch cold if I can help it.”
“But where am I to go?” asked Sera in confusion.
“Why, to the grand staircase. The king will meet you there.
Did he not tell you?”
“No one tells me anything, Annette.” Sera picked up her
skirts and walked down the long corridor.
Nicholas was standing at the foot of the great stairway, his
elbow braced negligently upon the newel post as he watched
her descend the stairs. He wore a brown superfine jacket that
emphasized his wide shoulders and slim waist. His cravat was
tied in a complex fashion, and the emerald in the stock pin at
his throat glittered in the light from the high dome. He looked
elegant and easy in his overwhelming palace.
“Hurry up, or we won’t have time for tea.” His deep voice
echoed all the way up the staircase. Sera kept on walking, feeling
the heat rise in her cheeks.
She forced herself to look calmly at Nicholas, daring him
to rid himself of that lazy, sensual smile.
He seemed entirely different from the unpredictable stranger
who occasionally spun her senses in five different directions.
He looked both younger and more frightening. A dark lock had
slipped from his normally neatly parted hair and hung over his
forehead. His gray eyes glittered with a restless heat beneath
the cool depths, like a fire banked beneath ashes. As he
straightened away from the newel post, he seemed suddenly
alive with a fixed purpose, an intention concentrated upward,
at her.
Even covered by the cloak, she felt exposed. He looked
at her as though he knew all of her. Just seeing him again had
her quivering in fear and confused her enough to make her
clumsy. With a sinking in her stomach, Sera pictured herself
slipping and sliding down this grand staircase, to the shock of
powdered footmen who lined it like life-sized lead soldiers in
blue and gold satin.
She was trembling when she finally reached the bottom
stair. Nicholas did a strange thing. He bent over her gloved hand,
blocking her from view of the servants. Turning her palm
upward, he placed the gentlest of kisses on the sensitive spot
just between the glove and the sleeve of her jacket.
As her pulse leaped, Sera felt his lips curve against it, and
she quailed beneath the realization that he knew just what he
was doing to her. She wondered how she would ever hide herself
successfully from him. She thought of the modiste’s and Lady
Tranevale’s original speculations and called herself a fool.
Nicholas straightened and took her hand, laying it upon his
arm. In a light voice he said, “Young ladies who get abducted
must learn to defend themselves. Come.”
To learn what? Violence? “No.” Sera shook her head
vehemently.
“Yes,” Nikki said gently and drew her inexorably to the
door.
Sera thought she might freeze on the spot. She felt the cold
hit her face as soon as she walked outside.
Behind the palace stood a target. A manservant appeared
from nowhere with a brace of pistols and offered them to the
king. Nicholas chose one and gave it to her.
“This firearm does not resemble a dead rabbit,” he said,
carefully extracting the weapon dangling awkwardly from her
fingertips and repositioning it in her hand. “That’s better. Lift
your hand and take aim. Brace your hand on your left arm.
Even in the best of circumstances, these things are known to
shoot wide of the mark, and we can’t have that, can we?”
“No.” She handed the weapon back to him, looking at it
with revulsion.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I cannot learn to kill another human being. Ever.”
“You’re not going out hunting, sweetheart,” Nicholas said
in a gentle voice. “This is for your own protection.”
She shook her head. “Not even to save my life. It goes
against everything I was taught, all I believe in. Can you not
understand?”
“I understand that I almost lost you. They could have killed
you, Sera. They would have. And then I—I…” A look of anguish
flashed across his face, hollowing out the curve beneath his
high cheekbones, and then it was gone.
“All right. We’ll call this target practice. I am only interested
in making you a wicked expert at hitting that bull’s eye in the
middle there. All the other targets will never dream of attacking
you. All right?”
“No,” she whispered, but a small smile tugged at her lips,
betraying her.
“Sera.” He lifted her chin with his forefinger and looked at
her, all serious and beautiful, and she was lost. “If Katherine
were threatened by a wolf, would you shoot to wound, not to
kill? It could happen, you know. Game has been scarce recently.
Have you heard the wolves howling near the city? You ride
with Katherine every day. Would you let her die if you could
protect her? You wouldn’t need to kill anything if you shot well
enough to only wound.”
Sera thought hard. “If I could heal the wolf afterwards, I
would do so,” she said.
His voice was soft as eiderdown. “But you would have to
be very good with a pistol to give the wolf a chance, wouldn’t
you?”
She bit her lip and nodded.
“Then I suggest you begin to practice, for Katherine’s sake
as well as the wolf’s.”
Nicholas’s eyes were so full of trust. He seemed to be giving
her everything he held dear, knowing she would protec
t it. And
she, on the other hand, plotted every day to leave as soon as the
thief came and she had the ruby.
Against her conscience and her upbringing, she took the
offensive thing in her hand.
Nicholas’s manner slowly changed. His concentration,
always overwhelming, was focused solely on her in the most
businesslike fashion. He taught her to load her own weapon,
powder, ball, and rod, again and again, so she wouldn’t forget.
It felt like she aimed a thousand times, and she found she had
an uncanny instinct for hitting the target. In another life, she
thought, she might have been a cold-blooded killer.
Finally, as her arm grew heavy and sore, Nicholas said,
“Enough. Any more and I’ll have to give you an army
commission. Come. I wish to show you the abbey.”
As she approached the courtyard, Sera caught sight of
Katherine and Andre. “Are they going with us?” she asked,
smiling and waving to them.
Nicholas leaned near. “Chaperones. Every well-bred lady
needs them.” His breath was a warm caress against her cheek.
He took her hand again and tucked it into the crook of his arm.
“I wanted your first real experience of the abbey to be with me.
Rather selfish of me, I admit, but then, I am the one with the
most to gain should you decide you like it here better than any
other place in this world.”
She hated his ease while she fought so hard against her
own conflict—the need to go, the desire to forget that he was
impossible and the worst sort of womanizer.
“I have to go home, Nicholas. Very soon.”
“No,” he said with a low growl. “I told you. Look around
you. The people love you. They need you.”
She understood quite well. He kept her for his country, not
for himself.
“Don’t you like it here at all?” he asked in a voice velvet
soft.
She wanted to say yes, she liked it when he was close, and
kind, and seemed as though he needed her and valued her
somewhere beyond the worth of an occasional mistress. “I am
certain that, if you took me back to my grandfather, he would
agree to help you with Laurentia’s problems.”
“How could he possibly help Laurentia?” She heard the
barely disguised frustration in his voice and reacted blindly.
“He knows a great deal more than you do, Outlander.” She
stopped herself, appalled that, in her lack of control, she’d
revealed more than she should.
Nicholas’s gaze sharpened. He looked at her as though she
were a butterfly of rare interest, one he would anesthetize and
stick on a pin. “What kind of knowledge, Sera? Is he the Mage,
perchance?”
“What would you know about the Mage?” she asked,
stalling.
“Yes or no, Sera? Is he the Mage?” Nicholas’s voice was
soft, but beneath that very softness lay his inexorable will, and
she shivered as she felt his hand clasp her wrist. “Don’t attempt
to misguide me. Yes or no?”
She felt sick inside. She could not lie, and she could not
give him the information he sought. “Take me back to the hills
and ask him, yourself,” she said at last, but faintly.
He sighed and let go of her wrist. She rubbed at it, and he
reddened. “Enough. I—I’m sorry. I don’t wish to hurt you. But
I have a country to protect. Whenever we’re together, I want to
probe and delve and worry you into giving up all your secrets.”
“If people wanted to share their secrets, they wouldn’t be
secrets,” she said, staring down at her toes.
“Yes. And we all have them, don’t we?”
“Especially you, Nicholas Rostov.” She thought of the sham
princess whom he would marry.
“Especially me.” He took her arm again, gave her a smile
of such unalloyed charm that she did not know quite how to
react. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
He laughed, raising his hands in surrender. “I promise, no
more questions. Or, if you prefer, later, when we’re alone, you
may ask me as many or more questions than I have asked you.
And unlike you, my dear, I shall attempt to answer them all.”
Sera nodded. Oh, she’d ask him all right. She took a deep
breath and raised her chin. If this was to be a truce of sorts, she
would walk with him into the central square to stand before the
soaring walls of Montanyard Abbey. And by her calm, dignified
behavior, he would never know that he had the least effect upon
her, at all.
Katherine and Andre, who had strolled slowly behind them,
now caught up.
“Nikki,” said Katherine, “some baron’s daughter, just come
to court, accosted me with a purse full of money and a request
that I introduce her to you. The lady certainly believes she is
pretty enough to catch your eye, Nicholas.”
“I hope you warned her that bribery is against the law,”
said Nicholas. His gray eyes turned hard as slate.
Katherine smiled at Sera. “He’s quite fierce about those
who wish to curry favor.”
“I see.”
What Sera saw was another aristocrat eager to take Nicholas
to her bed. And if Nicholas didn’t want this one, she was certain
he’d find another. Which was fine with Sera.
She hated Nicholas Rostov. No, she couldn’t afford such a
violent emotion. She just pitied him because he was Outlander
and an unenlightened womanizer.
As they neared the abbey, Sera stared at its airy arches and
flying buttresses dominating the square. Nicholas held the door
for her. She slipped inside, hoping the soaring vaulted ceiling
and hushed corridors might soothe her.
Sera took off her gloves in order to keep her hands from
wringing together as she worried. Why couldn’t she stop
thinking about this Outlander king and his sham marriage?
Why hadn’t Grandfather fetched her? Why had he left her
alone to deal with the burgeoning power of the Gift? He need
only look into the scrying glass, and he could find her and come
for her. Although he had never said one harsh word to her,
perhaps now he was very angry. A huge lump rose in her throat.
Would he allow her back into Arkadia if she returned without
the Heart of Fire?
She sank onto a bench and bowed her head, biting her lower
lip. Nicholas sat down beside her, so close to her that she could
feel the warmth and the tensile strength of his arm and shoulder.
She resisted the desire to lean into that strength. Instead, she
took a deep breath and closed her eyes, calming herself in the
cool quietude of the prayer house.
Nicholas’s solid shoulder just touched hers. She could feel
every breath he took. How did it help her that he could be there,
both accepting and ignoring her at the same time? She glanced
at him beneath her lashes. He didn’t look back. She watched
his mouth curve upward, just a little. Then he took her hand,
and his fingers laced through hers. The touch of his skin against
h
er ungloved hand was electric, warm support and wicked
enticement. She had to break the spell. Now.
She slid her hand from his grasp. He glanced at her, his
brows raised in question. She rose abruptly, and without a word,
he stood. When she moved, he walked beside her, matching his
easy strides to her own. Seemingly ignoring her rejection,
Nicholas pointed out the statues of the saints and the virgin,
and the rose window at the western end of the transept, glowing
with all the colors of the rainbow, until they reached the tall
doors of the prayer house.
Once out on the street, he continued in the role of amiable
host and tour guide. “The abbey has the finest acoustics in
Europe and Russia.”
“Perhaps Notre Dame has better, Nikki,” volunteered
Katherine, walking behind them with Andre.
“Never.”
“Acoustics for what?” Sera asked him.
“Concerts, of course. Masses. Music.” Nicholas looked at
her closely. “Have you never heard a concert?”
Sera shook her head. “We do not have this music. It
releases—dangerous emotion.”
Nicholas looked at her sharply. “What sorts of dangerous
emotions?”
“Those that confuse the soul and keep it from right reason,”
she said in a tone that implied that every school child ought to
know this.
Nicholas felt the slight chill at the back of his neck, and the
fine hairs rose there. His senses sang faintly, like strings of a
harp when a wind passed through them. He vaguely recalled
reading something to the effect when he was a schoolboy. What
was it? Oh, he wanted to know everything about her. A lifetime
would never be enough.
“Your majesty! Lady Sera!” Mrs. Torville called from the
door of her teashop. “How good of you to come.” She ushered
them in, past the usual number of intellectuals, aristocrats, and
gluttons who filled the little shop to capacity. They made their
way to a rather private alcove where Mrs. Torville had laid a
table for them.
The woman was a plump and beaming testament to her own
delicious pastries. “I am glad to see you better, Lady Sera,” she
said. Sera gave her a startled look. “All of us know of your
latest mishap, my lady, and of His Majesty’s gallant rescue.
I’ve got some blueberry tarts made special, to help you put the
Lennox, Mary - Heart of Fire.txt Page 24