assure ye, ’twill not kill me to go a bit faster.”
Married for less than an hour, the last thing he wanted was to argue. At his new bride’s insistence, Black Richard tapped the flanks of his mount and went faster. Aeschene seemed pleased, even though it couldn’t be considered more than a fast trot.
“What does it look like?” Aeschene soon asked him.
“What does what look like?” he asked, confused by the question.
“Where we are,” she replied. “Usually, Marisse describes things to me so that I can picture it in my mind.”
To Black Richard the landscape was nothing special, for ’twas MacRay lands they were on. “We be in a wide glen,” he told her.
“Be the grass wavin’ in the breeze?” she asked.
“Aye, ’tis.”
“What color be the sky?”
Without looking or thinking, he replied, “Blue.”
She let out a frustrated breath. “Could ye ask Marisse to come closer?”
“Why?”
“She has a way of describin’ things that allow me to see it.”
While he thought mayhap that the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard, he did not want to make her feel uncomfortable. Turning slightly in the saddle, he looked back for the maid. “Marisse,” he called out to her. “Aeschene would like to speak with ye.”
Unaccustomed to hearing her name spoken without disgust or shame, ’twas surprising to hear it said simply and plainly. Marisse was the only person, until this moment, to ever say her name in a tone lacking contempt. Her father and brother’s rarely ever spoke to her. But when they did, ’twas always in anger or with a tone of disgust. It had gotten to the point where she despised hearing her name.
Just the manner in which Richard said it made her stomach feel light, her heart happy. Such an odd sensation and wholly unfamiliar. Mayhap ’tis just the excitement of bein’ away from yer home for the first time in yer life, she told herself. Ye never thought ye’d be married, let alone travelin’ so far away. ’Tis naught more than that.
“I be here,” Marisse announced, drawing her horse close to Richard and Aeschene.
“What does it look like?” Aeschene asked.
Marisse need not inquire as to what Aeschene meant. “It be green for as far as the eye can see,” Marisse said. Even Black Richard could hear the awe in the young woman’s voice. “A thousand shades of green,” she said with a smile. “Ye can feel the breeze, aye?”
“Aye, I can,” Aeschene replied as she closed her eyes.
Marisse smiled warmly at her friend. “Well, the breeze be making the grass sway to and fro, ye ken. There be tiny flowers scattered here and there. Yellow, pink, and blue. The breeze is also ticklin’ the leaves on the trees, they be to yer right.”
Keeping her eyes closed, Aeschene turned her head ever so slightly to the right. “I can hear that too.”
“Me grandsire once told me that the sound of the breeze rustlin’ through the trees sounds just like ocean waves. I do not ken if that be right, but I always believed him,” Marisse told her.
They were silent for a long moment, each of them taking in the sights in their own ways.
“Now the sky, it be right pretty over head,” Marisse said as she leaned over a bit in her saddle. “A bonny blue, ye ken. But ahead, the sky be growin’ dark. A storm be a brewin’, I think. It be a dark gray, the color of auld Liam MacRay’s hair,” she giggled.
Aeschene took in a deep, happy breath before letting it out slowly. “I can see it,” she said. She could picture it all in her mind’s eye, almost as clearly as if her eyes worked properly. “’Tis a beautiful sight, aye?”
“That it is, my friend, that it is.”
Richard sat in bemused silence, listening and watching the two women converse. The manner in which Marisse described what she was seeing was nothing short of extraordinary. He imagined that were he blind, he could have seen everything just as she described it to Aeschene.
His men had drawn closer, listening intently as Marisse spoke. A quick glance at them told him much. They were just as mesmerized as he. Not only by the words Marisse spoke but also by her voice. ’Twas a low and sultry, and made him think of the sirens in the stories his grandminny had told him when he was a boy. Marisse’s was certainly calling his men to her, and she was speaking in naught more than a whisper.
What magic did these two, slight