Secret Heart

by Speer, Flora

  “You are mine,” he said. “Now and always.”

  “Yes.” It was a surrender, yet not a defeat, not in any way. “And you are mine, Roarke.”

  “Always.” His mouth on hers sealed what Jenia knew was a solemn oath more binding than many a marriage contract witnessed by king and mages and nobles.

  “Only you,” Roarke whispered. “No one else for me. Never.”

  “Roarke.” She wanted to make her own promise, to tell him she’d never accept anyone else, either, but she discovered she couldn’t speak. Suddenly her heart caught fire. The cleansing heat of Roarke’s honest passion seared away the last bitterness of unjust imprisonment and cruel death that had festered in her soul, until in his embrace she knew every rule binding mortals was unnecessary, except for the rule of love.

  Treasuring that sublime knowledge, Jenia burned along with Roarke, hotter and ever hotter as the flames of their mutual desire leapt higher until, uttering a great cry, Roarke shuddered against her. An instant later Jenia burst and scattered into burning, aching pieces, each delicate cinder glowing red enough to brand her heart and soul with love.

  Only very slowly did the heat cool. When she came to herself again she found that Roarke was still deeply embedded in her, still holding her close, cherishing and protecting her. They held each other for a long, long time before he gently separated himself from her.

  “I meant it,” he whispered, his cheek against hers. “I meant every word. Never doubt me, Jenia.”

  Chapter 19

  “Good day to you, Uncle Walderon.” Jenia stood on the battlements near the main gate, from where she could look directly down at the troop of horsemen on the other side of the moat. An errant breeze sent her sheer silk veil wafting about her face. She put up one hand to secure the golden circlet that was meant to keep both the veil and her hair controlled.

  Her feelings were under complete control. She was perfectly calm, her hand steady, though her heart was soaring, for this was the day of justice, when Chantal would be avenged. Whatever King Henryk finally decided to do with Walderon no longer mattered to Jenia. Only this single day mattered. And afterward – well, she wouldn’t think about afterward. She would take this crisp autumn day as it came, rejoicing in the solid strength of the Nalo Mountains at her back and in the sun’s warm glow. She’d make certain that by the time the sun set that evening, Walderon would admit his guilt. He’d spend the coming night in Thury’s dungeon.

  At the moment, Walderon and his men couldn’t enter the castle because Roarke had ordered the drawbridge raised. Stopped on the far side of the moat, they milled around in a confused way, a very bedraggled little army with their bright clothing and their long, colorful pennants soggy after an early morning shower. They did not look at all like the brave company that Walderon had apparently organized to act as his escort during his triumphant entry into Calean City.

  The breeze sharpened, a harbinger of colder weather soon to come, and Jenia could see that several of the squires on the opposite side of the moat were shivering. Only Walderon, and Burke at his side, appeared immune to the discomfort of the morning chill. From the look of Walderon, baffled irritation was keeping him warm.

  “Who are you?” he demanded of the figure in shimmering blue that stood high above him.

  “Why, Uncle, don’t you recognize your own, dear niece?” she called, mocking him with a truth she distorted only a little. “As you can see, I escaped from your henchmen and came here to Thury to wait for you.”

  “What are you talking about, wench? Thury is my domain. Have the drawbridge lowered at once!”

  “Oh, no, Uncle,” Jenia told him. “I will not permit your people to enter Thury. Never again will they terrorize the good folk of this castle.”

  Jenia could hear the low murmuring of those same castle folk who stood on the battlements or who gathered in the outer bailey just below where she had taken her position. Her words were aimed at securing their loyalty away from Walderon and to her and her companions.

  She shot a quick glance toward Roarke, who remained concealed behind a merlon, as they had previously agreed. He smiled at her and nodded as if to give her courage. But she required none from him. She carried her own courage deep within her soul. The memory of Chantal was all she needed to make her brave.

  “If you want to enter Thury,” she called down to Walderon, “you must come in alone.”

  “What?” Walderon squinted up at her in disbelief. “Impudent wench! How dare you refuse entry to my men?”

  “You heard me,” she called. “Come alone, or not at all.”

  “Don’t go, my lord,” Jenia heard Burke say. “‘Tis a trick. You know that cannot be Lady Chantal up there. The wench is an impostor.”

  “Do you think so, Burke?” Jenia cried. “How can you be so certain? As you see, I survived my plunge into the ocean.”

  “No!” Walderon yelled. “Chantal is dead. She cannot swim. If you were the real Chantal, you’d know that.”

  “I was borne up by the waves and carried safe to shore by my noble outrage,” Jenia told him. “And here I am, resurrected and in control of my own castle.” Sudden laughter bubbled up in her and she let it come, loosing the merry sound so her uncle and his henchman could hear it. Both Walderon and Burke looked shocked and decidedly worried.

  For the space of a single heartbeat Jenia felt Walderon’s corrupt Power brush across her mind. She had expected it, so she held her own, slighter Power so deep within herself that his cursory search could not detect it. She was telling the truth, for the most part, and she was so honestly cheerful and confident that he must have believed she really was Chantal, for his malignant touch quickly departed from her.

  “Do you think I am a ghost, Uncle?” she called. “I assure you, I am not. Do you want to make certain of me? Then, come inside and take a closer look.”

  “Don’t do it,” Burke advised.

  But Walderon, who was no coward, was already dismounting. Tossing the reins of his horse to Burke, he strolled to the place near the edge of the moat where the drawbridge would touch down when it was lowered. He did not venture as far as the short wooden boardwalk onto which the opened drawbridge would fit.

  Above him, in the gatehouse windows, arrows were nocked into position as the archers waited for Garit’s command to fire their shafts.

  “My lord, stop!” Burke cried in unconcealed dismay. “You endanger your own life.”

  “How loyal you are,” Walderon told him in a tone that implied he knew exactly on what Burke’s loyalty was based. If Walderon fell from power, if he was imprisoned or executed, Burke would receive the same treatment, or worse.

  “Move back, Burke, and take my men with you,” Walderon ordered. “They won’t lower the drawbridge while you are all so close. I will call you if I need you.”

  Grumbling and swearing, Burke obeyed. Walderon stood waiting, his head thrown back defiantly, fists planted on his hips, and legs spread wide in a lordly pose that denied any personal concerns, or any notion that he had lost his control over Thury.

  “He wants everyone to see he’s still the master here,” Jenia muttered to Roarke, who was now peering through one of the crenels, the open spaces in the battlements through which weapons could be shot.

  Next to Roarke a man-at-arms stood with his back against the nearest merlon, the thick, upthrusting segment of stone that divided one crenel from the next. The man was armed with a crossbow, its deadly quarrel at the ready. When Roarke moved away to join Jenia, the man-at-arms stepped to the crenel and stood waiting.

  But no flight of arrows came from Walderon’s band, who were all retreating across the meadow as their lord had commanded. Jenia heard the creak of the windlass as the drawbridge began its slow descent.

  “We’d better go down there,” Roarke said to her. “By the time we reach the inner bailey, the bridge will be all the way down and the wicket gate will be open to let him inside. You did wonderfully well, Jenia, as I knew you would.”

/>   His smile warmed her. With an answering smile, she took his arm.

  During the meeting held on the previous evening to plan their course of action, Lord Giles had suggested they receive Walderon in the great hall, in a formal and stately manner.

  “We ought to emphasize that we hold Thury Castle rightfully, in King Henryk’s name,” Lord Giles had said, “and that Walderon is a mere interloper. He won’t like it, of course, but he’ll be outnumbered, so he won’t be able to do anything about it.”

  “I don’t care whether he likes it, or not,” Garit declared through set teeth. He looked from Lord Giles to Roarke, and his glance was fierce with the barely restrained anger that drove him. “Understand, my friends, if I had my way, I’d personally skewer Walderon the instant he walks through the wicket gate, and I’d not care that I’d be striking an unknightly blow.”

  “I feel the same way,” Jenia said. “Even so, we have to keep Walderon alive for now. King Henryk expects us to deliver him to royal justice.”

  “I’d like to show him justice,” Garit muttered. But he had subsided under Lord Giles’s chiding gaze and, as far as Jenia could tell, he was containing his more violent impulses.

  During their meeting Lord Giles had promised to use his Power to bind Walderon, so he’d be unable to wield his own corrupt Power while he remained within the walls of Thury.

  “Even so, my lady,” Roarke had said to Sanal, “I’d advise you to stay in the solar, out of Walderon’s sight.”

  “Yes,” Sanal promptly agreed. “I have no wish to see him.”

  Thus, only Jenia, Roarke, Garit, and Lord Giles stood on the dais as Walderon entered the hall escorted by the squires, Elwin and Anders, and surrounded by Garit’s men-at-arms. Walderon’s face was hard as stone and his eyes were icy daggers when he looked at Jenia. Protected as she was by Lord Giles’ Power and her staunch companions, she displayed no sign of fear to the uncle she despised.

  “What charade is this?” he demanded of Jenia the moment the guards bid him halt before the dais. “Who are you, woman?”

  “I have already told you who I am,” Jenia said. “One of your nieces died below, in the dungeon of this castle, murdered on your order. Your other niece leapt into the sea to escape the rape and murder you had planned for her. I am the niece who came out of the sea, and I am very much alive.”

  She saw Walderon swallow hard and for a moment she thought she had convinced him that she was Chantal. But he looked from her to Roarke, who stood close beside her, and then on to Garit, and a nasty smile played across his lips.

  “You are not Chantal,” he said. “Garit would never stand so far from her when other men are near. You are Matilda Jenia, and you have no right to claim Thury for yourself. Impostor!” he shouted, looking around at the servants. “If you think you can befuddle these ignorant louts and use them to foster your claim to be Chantal, then you are greatly mistaken. You will end badly, Matilda Jenia, just as I always predicted you would, stupid, rebellious wench that you are.”

  For an instant she felt the nauseating touch of his evil in her mind. She slammed the door of her thoughts closed against him, knowing it was too late, though it no longer mattered. He couldn’t hurt her, for Lord Giles made his move, whispering words to bind Walderon’s corrupt Power by a clean, healthy spell.

  By now Roarke had his hand on his sword hilt and Garit’s sword was half out of its scabbard in his eagerness to attack Walderon. The prisoner’s tirade ended when, at a sign from Lord Giles, the men-at-arms who were guarding Walderon took him by the arms as if to drag him away.

  “Let me go!” Walderon demanded. “And you, Giles, you despicable mage, unbind me at once!”

  “Not while you remain inside Thury,” Lord Giles said, unmoved by the other man’s wrath.

  Jenia stepped to the edge of the dais and spoke to her uncle. “We intend to take you to Calean City and present you to King Henryk, not as a candidate for lord of Thury as you had planned, but as a criminal accused of murder and of subverting the king’s wishes.

  “Now, then,” she continued, “you can make your ultimate fate a little easier if you answer our questions honestly. Begin by telling us why you were so insistent upon marrying Chantal off to Lord Malin.”

  “I will tell you nothing, you cursed female!” Walderon shouted at her. “You have no right to question me, or anything I’ve done.”

  “Perhaps you would rather answer to me,” Garit said in an ominous tone. “I warn you, Walderon, my temper is short where you are concerned. I’d love an excuse to kill you. Any excuse will do.”

  “You besotted fool!” Walderon exclaimed with a sneer. “No woman is worth the time and trouble you’ve expended on your fruitless search for Chantal. You never guessed where she was, did you? You never came close. And you, Roarke! A fine king’s man you are, looking in all the wrong places for the subject of your royal mission. A pair of idiots, both of you.”

  “Say instead, a pair of honorable knights,” Lord Giles responded mildly. “Why do you call them fools, when you are the prisoner here? I suggest you talk to us, Walderon, rather than wait for King Henryk’s executioners, who know how to cause the most exquisite, excruciating pain, and how to draw that pain out to the very last, tormented instant of life. Any man with half his wits intact would prefer a simple beheading. And any corrupt mage would avoid if he could the neutralizing power of the Lord Mage Serlion, who will see you before you are handed over to the executioners. You’ll have no defenses left at all against what they do to you.”

  Walderon had gone chalk white during this speech. Still, he glared his defiance for a long moment before his shoulders sagged as he appeared to relent.

  “You seem to know most of it already,” he said. “What more can I tell you?”

  “Start with Lord Malin,” Jenia suggested. “Why were you so insistent that Chantal must marry him?”

  “Malin held – still does hold – a piece of land I wanted,” Walderon said. “He and I made an agreement: Chantal and Thury for the land.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Garit interrupted. “Thury is an important castle. What piece of land could equal it in value?”

  “Oh, I intended to relinquish Thury only temporarily,” Walderon said with a wry smile. “Malin is an orphan with no brothers or sisters, no family at all, in fact. As part of his marriage contract, I planned to have him declare me the guardian of any children he and Chantal might have and Malin’s sole heir in case he died without heirs of his body.”

  “That’s the same arrangement you made with my father and Chantal’s, when they married your sisters,” Jenia noted. “It was why King Henryk named you our guardian.”

  “It was,” Walderon said. “I trusted those two foolhardy warriors to be killed in battle before many years passed, and so they were. I believed what had worked for me once, would work a second time, possibly with a little assistance from me.” He paused to look at Jenia as if wanting to judge her reaction to his explanation.

  “Go on,” Lord Giles ordered. “Tell us your entire scheme for Chantal’s marriage.”

  “Malin is a man with what is best described as an indiscriminate personal life. Men, women, boys, animals, whatever he can get his hands on, they are all the same to his unceasing lust. Such a life inevitably produces enemies. I knew it would be easy to arrange for both Malin and Chantal to die soon after their marriage and to have one of Malin’s enemies blamed for their deaths. As Chantal’s closest male blood kin, I would then inherit Thury, along with Malin’s lands. King Henryk knows what a loyal noble I have always been, so I expected no trouble from him.”

  “Chantal would never have agreed to marry that disgusting creature!” Jenia cried. “She made such an issue of her distaste for Malin that everyone here at Thury and everyone at court knew of her feelings.”

  “That’s true. I began to realize how stubborn she was on the subject of marriage as soon as I told her about the arrangements I had made for her,” Walderon said. “So, I offer
ed her a second possibility, which was that she could sign over her lands to me and retreat to a beguinage. I would provide a suitable dowry to speed her acceptance there.”

  “She wouldn’t do that, either,” Garit spoke up. “Chantal possessed no Power. The last place she wanted to live was an isolated house of female mages. She wanted to marry me.”

  “Many women who possess no Power have been consigned to beguinages,” Walderon responded. “All that’s required is a determined male relative to make up the lady’s mind for her. Or, in this case, a beloved cousin whose very life depended on Chantal’s good behavior, on her compliance with my wishes.”

  “I would never have agreed to such a scheme,” Jenia declared. “And I’d have made certain King Henryk knew about your plan.”

  “Yes, you always were a problem; you are much too independent for a woman. Which is why I decided upon the abduction, and why I arranged for the two of you to hear from your jailors that King Henryk was responsible for your incarceration. I imagined a few weeks in a dungeon, sunk in the belief that the king would not help you even if you could get word to him, would break you until you were willing to do whatever I wanted. Instead, my people reported that you and Chantal spent most of your days keeping up each other’s spirits. I decided to allow a little more time to pass, during which I pretended to aid in the search for the two of you. Since you were safely ensconced here at Thury, I could see little harm in the delay and I thought I might, perhaps, still find a use for one or both of you. I would never destroy a potentially useful weapon unless it was absolutely necessary.”

  “You loathsome villain,” Garit said in a soft and extremely dangerous voice. “What kind of uncle are you? Have you no compassion? They were not weapons, they were innocent girls, noblewomen, and you kept them in that tiny cell. Drawing and quartering is too good for you.”