A Rose in Winter

by Shana Abe

  Temptation

  the image of solange beneath him, naked, alive with pas­sion, would not vanish. Damon straggled to focus beyond it, to form a logical reply to her question, but when her lips moved he saw himself kissing them. When her arms lowered and the comb released her hair, he saw himself buried in it.

  He took a heavy breath. How could she not know? How could she not feel it too? She was no longer an inexperi­enced maiden. She had to realize what she was doing to him, that she was deliberately torturing him. It was enough to drive a sane man over the edge, and he had already been there too many times.

  "Damon?" She placed her hand lightly on his arm.

  The simple touch jerked him back to the present. He pulled away from her and turned, baring his teeth in a sem­blance of a smile.

  Her eyes grew wide, fearful. He almost hated her for that, hated that she could feel fear of him, when all he had ever wanted to do was protect her, take care of her, love her.

  Damon took a menacing step in her direction. "Now, what's amiss with you, Countess? You do not look your­self."

  Solange shook her head in bewilderment. "I don't under­stand you. You are angry. Have I done something wrong?"

  "Something recently, you mean? I don't know, you tell me." He was stalking her now, steadily matching each step, closing the space she put between them.

  "Stop it! Why are you behaving in this odd manner? Are you feverish?" She halted defiantly, daring him to come closer. Brave, foolish little Solange, and so he caught her up easily.

  "Yes, my lady," he drawled. "I think I must be feverish. It is the only reason I can think of to do this," he said. He covered her bps with his own. . . .

  A Rose in Winter A

  Bantam Book / January 1998

  All rights reserved. Copyright © 1998 by Shana Abe. Cover art copyright © 1998 by Pino Dangelico. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.

  ISBN 0-553-57787-5

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  CLS 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Prologue

  france, I287

  The Knight Knelt at her feet and took her proffered hand.

  "My lady," he said. The irony of the words twisted his lips. He kept his head bowed.

  Her hand was cool between his fingers, the smooth, alabaster skin a sharp contrast to his own roughened, dark palms. Her fingers were long and elegant, her nails pink and satiny. He noticed with dull surprise that she wore the garnet and gold ring he had given her all those seasons ago. The stone glowed subtly in the dim light.

  A slight shiver shook her fingers—had he imagined that? Damon looked up, meeting her eyes for the first time this evening.

  Even after these full nine years she appeared un­changed, beautiful, as youthful as the maiden he knew during their schooling together at the castle keep. All those long nights Solange had haunted him, and now he saw his dreams hadn't even done her justice.

  Her face was perhaps a bit more drawn; her fine dark eyes contained a faint sadness now that was not banished even as she smiled down at him. The gold and silver circlet that graced her forehead seemed too heavy for such a slender neck.

  Her hair was swept back into a regal roll beneath an almost transparent veil. He didn't need to see it again to remember the color of it: a rich brown so dark it fooled the eye until sunlight hit, and then it transformed to a halo of russet fire. Aye, he remembered that.

  "My loyal friend," she finally said with a squeeze of her fingers. "I am pleased to see you again."

  Damon remained kneeling, absorbing her presence, content and not content at once to stay at her feet. Her other hand covered both of his, and she raised him to stand on the step below her on the dais.

  The chamber room was cold enough to frost their speech, for all the elaborate tapestries lining the walls and thick rugs on the floor. Behind him he could hear the hushed whisperings of her attendants, huddled around the fireplace. He could feel their speculative eyes on his back.

  "You were sore missed," Solange added softly.

  Damon felt the old familiar tightness in his chest and took a steadying breath. "I come out of duty, my lady." He kept his tone formal, hoping the reminder of his obligation would serve to ease this terrible ache she brought on.

  A flash of emotion—pain? regret?—crossed her face. She released his hands.

  "Of course," she said, then looked away.

  The silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken thoughts both knew neither could acknowl­edge. To distract himself, he studied her gown, em­broidered pale gold cloth encrusted with pearls so luminous, they reminded him of dewdrops. The mate­rial captured and held the soft light of the torches above them.

  His eyes were drawn helplessly to the cut of the bodice. He found himself counting her breaths, strain­ing to see beyond the froth of lace edging her breasts.

  What was he doing? Damon took control of himself and wrenched his eyes back up to hers. She was study­ing him, well aware of the nature of his thoughts.

  The sting of blood heated his cheeks. He was a knight of the realm, and here he was acting no better than a rude young squire. -

  The corners of her lips tilted up slightly. She had al­ways been able to read him so clearly.

  "The lord, my lady?" he asked desperately.

  The delicate smile vanished. Once more she looked at him with grave intensity.

  "I have no lord," she replied.

  "Madam?" He was stunned.

  The world had taken on a shimmering edge, and she was the center, the sun, the moon, all the jeweled stars. He was falling, but there was nothing left for him to hold on to.

  "There is no lord," she said very quietly. "There is only you."

  He gaped at her, unwilling to believe what she said. The tightness in his chest became an unbearable pain. Unconsciously he pulled at the neck of his hauberk to ease it.

  The muted chatter of the ladies behind him faded into silence.

  Solange stood before him unmoved, unblinking. Her lips seemed very red against the paleness of her face, her eyes shadowed as she watched him. There was about her, as always, a fragility that drew him, even though he knew she had perhaps the strongest will he had ever encountered.

  Now the stern purpose of her gaze was belied by the physical trembling he could see affecting her entire body.

  She was mocking him. She could not be serious.

  "My friend," she said, then paused. Carefully she reached out and placed her right hand on his shoulder. Her voice was low and sweet.

  "Wilt thou have me?"

  Chapter One

  ENGLAND, I 279

  AS children they had rarely fought. Her elevated status as daughter of the overlord had placed her in a social restraint that even as a young girl she had fought to outwit. Solange hated embroidery, she loathed the lyre, and lessons in decorum sent her scrambling away to the remotest corners of the castle, where Damon would find her tucked away, spinning stories to invisible companions.

  Many of the serfs whispered that she was an en­chanted child, a changeling elflet traded in the cradle for the true human daughter. Perhaps some of her strange­ness was the influenc
e of her French-born mother, who had died giving Solange life without ever bother­ing to learn the language of the adopted country she had detested.

  But there was no doubt that Solange had a solitary sort of presence, a singular completeness all her own.

  From her mother she had inherited her milky skin, almond-shaped eyes, and fey demeanor. From her fa­ther, the stoic Marquess of Ironstag, Solange received her slender frame and the love of reading. And yet she was widely considered a child of mixed blessings, born of castle folk but not wholly one of them. Most of the servants avoided her, fearful of the unusual.

  And indeed, even as a child Solange often seemed possessed of a sort of magic, ancient eyes in a young face, a crackle of energy ever present in her fingertips.

  Damon didn't care. She was his sparkle, she was his life, even back then. And he was her champion, always defending her oddities, which he saw as proof of her unique beauty, teaching her the ways he knew to get on in the world.

  Sometimes at night she would drift to sleep on his shoulder, her head tucked under his chin, the hot, sweet childish smell of her filling his senses. He would hold her close and let the feeling of satisfaction wash over him in great waves.

  Adults of the castle regarded him as an older brother to her, which by his birth and status he was entitled to be called.

  But he loved her, only her, always her. It never oc­curred to him to be a brother. He was simply waiting for her to grow up so they could be married. Solange belonged to him as surely as he did to her. Marriage was the only possible outcome, and in his youthful naïveté Damon never doubted the day would come when they would drink from the same cup as man and wife.

  So he was content to wait for her, to wipe her nose in the drafty winters, to dry her tears over pets frequently lost in the hunts—for nothing could persuade her not to befriend the great dogs, who always doted on her. To take her hand and show her the safest way to climb the tallest tree in the ancient orchard, since she was determined to do it one way or another anyway.

  She trusted him implicitly, she relied on him as the source of all possible good things in her life. She did love him. But the role of daughter of the castle had confines even she could not shirk.

  As Solange grew older, Damon couldn't help but look at her with a possessive pride that he was careful to disguise. Although he realized his destiny was with her, he also knew it would take every ounce of his tact and cunning to win her from her father, Henry, the powerful Marquess of Ironstag.

  Damon Wolf was not landless, but his parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Lockewood, had died of cholera early in his childhood, leaving him subject to a harsh feudal system that crushed the meek and infirm. Solange's father had accepted the three-year-old boy as his ward, since Damon's father had been a close friend. He could not bring himself to leave the child to die at the hands of ambitious lords.

  Damon's family castle, Wolfhaven, had been rapidly abandoned. It sat perched dramatically atop a rugged hill overlooking both land and sea, perpetually shrouded in mist and thick forest. Rumors had long since claimed it to be a place of pagan demons. Druid devils built the blackened base stones of it, it was whispered, and held their unholy rituals on its grounds. Indeed, the story wound on, the noble family itself was descended from these very pagans and had taken the name of Wolf as their own, from the familiars that they had used in their spells.

  These stories turned both the castle and the family into curious objects of fear and fascination for the peas­ants. The last Marquess and Marchioness of Locke-wood had held the village society together by sheer force of will. But by the time they had succumbed to the disease combing their castle, most of the popula­tion had either already died or fled. Surely, the rapidly disappearing locals pointed out, the place was cursed by God.

  And so Wolfhaven stood alone, a spired monument to a nearly vanished family. True to its name, packs of wild wolves could often be heard crying amid the stones at night. Peasants would not go near it, nobles thought it too inconvenient to bother with. But the land was another matter altogether.

  As the young marquess grew to manhood, he watched helplessly as his ancestral properties were slowly over­taken by encroaching lords. His guardian made little attempt to right matters. Henry was busy enough sow­ing and strengthening the boundaries of his own lands.

  This left the child Damon in the odd position of be­ing a noble orphan, ward of the overlord but not the son this family needed. Not quite impoverished, yet with no practical resources to speak of.

  He slipped in and out of the cracks of the castle soci­ety, a chameleon of social status. Wellborn but power­less, his determination to find his own way won him a small but loyal handful of friends among the serfs and freemen, particularly the castle physician. But no one could say what would become of him.

  Damon himself had long felt the call to be a healer. His persistent but unobtrusive presence on the profes­sional visits of the physician merited him a sort of un­official apprentice status. He learned the basics of medicine but soon discovered his growing thirst for knowledge was no longer satisfied by the aging doctor. So Damon branched out, speaking to villagers about home remedies, cornering visitors to the castle to learn whatever they knew, or had heard of.

  By the time he was a youth, he had expanded his studies to include an array of herbology far beyond that of any for miles around. A steady trickle of patients, all of them peasants, began to come to him for help for their impacted teeth, broken bones, and various ill­nesses. His popularity grew, in part because his cures often worked, but also because unlike Henry's doctor, he charged nothing for his services.

  Damon always did the best he could to help, but he knew there was so much more out there waiting to be discovered. If only he had the means, how much more he could do. . . .

  Years were spent adding to his collection of phar­macopoeia. Solange often secretly accompanied him into the forests and bogs around the village, where they collected anything interesting they could find. He cherished her company not just because he loved her, but also because she had an unerring eye for detail and could spot the tiniest of plants which eluded him.

  By all signs he would become a great healer. How­ever, like the girl he loved, Damon could not escape his heritage. Nobles did not enter into professions. If he tried, he knew he would be shunned by his peers. To take his practice beyond a hobby would be inviting official disaster from Henry.

  He was coming of age to inherit an empty, crumbling castle, the few feral remains of once-green fields, and a neglected village or two on the outskirts of civilization.

  He never doubted he could put it all to rights. There had to be a solution that would allow him to both re­store his castle and heal people, as he dreamed. He was waiting for Solange. They would do it together.

  Their time was coming.

  One early evening, a few weeks after she turned six­teen, Solange called Damon to her chambers. Ordi­narily it would be forbidden to have an unrelated male of his age secluded with her. The fact that he was allowed this freedom made him uneasy, as he began to suspect that he was considered no threat to her maidenhood.

  Solange sat by the open bay window, a dusky figure silhouetted against the sinking sun. She would insist on keeping her windows open in dry weather until the last slice of sun disappeared over the horizon, no matter what the season. She told him once she could not en­joy the fiery pageantry the sun put out every evening if she had to view it stifled behind a thick glass barrier.

  The purity of her profile was etched clearly, re­minding him of a lunar moth he had seen one night in the forest near the village: brilliant, graceful. Ethereal.

  He walked over to her.

  "Damon, what do you think? Lady Elsbeth says a woman is in disharmony without a husband. She says a woman is no match for the earthly temptations of sin, and that woman's natural weaknesses dictate she be controlled by man." Solange turned to look up at him, tilting her head curiously. "She says God made us this way fo
r our own good."

  Damon made an exaggerated grimace. "Lady Els­beth is a pious old hag. Everyone knows she rules Lord Hatrone, not the other way around."

  She smiled briefly, eyes twinkling. "Well, yes, that's rather what I thought too."

  He sat beside her on the bower, letting the cool breeze from the open window drift over him. She scooted over and rested her head on his shoulder. Her arms twined around his waist, securing him closely.

  Even this innocent touch sent his senses reeling. Her long hair draped over his arm and brushed his hand. He spread his fingers and then closed them again, trap­ping the silky strands against his skin.

  "A man and a woman have a mutual need," he said slowly. "They create a balance between them."

  He couldn't think of what more to say. She wasn't ready for him yet; in spite of his burning impatience, he knew she wasn't ready. He lifted his hand and let her hair flow freely over his wrist. The texture fasci­nated him. It was thick and soft, rich and brown and shiny, always smelling of her. The setting sun brought out the copper highlights glinting through it.

  "Damon," she said, and then her voice trailed off. She sighed and shifted a little against him.

  "Yes?" He tried to feel brotherly, but the dark spell she put over him was making him dizzy again, making him want to forget the promise he made to himself to wait one more year for her. She rubbed her face against his arm like a sleepy kitten. It made him smile in the gathering dusk.

  "Damon, when are you going to kiss me?"

  The surprise of it winded him as if he had been thrown from his horse. He couldn't seem to move for a long instant. Solange kept her face hidden in the full sleeve of his tunic.

  Finally she looked at him, peering up through the thick fan of her lashes. She didn't speak again. She didn't smile to show it a girlish prank. She waited.

  Damon had lost and he knew it. Even as he lifted his hand to cup her chin he was sharply regretting his loss of restraint. But he could not stop.