to Servanne de Briscourt, recent widow of Sir Hubert de Briscourt, and intended bride of the powerful Lord Lucien Wardieu would mean a slow and agonizing death to the men responsible for her safe arrival at Blood-moor Keep.
The object of the captain’s pointed observation, oblivious to his concerns for her welfare—and his own—sat very straight and slim upon the back of her snow white palfrey. Awed by the pure, quiet stillness of the greenwood surrounding them, her startling blue eyes moved constantly this way and that, drinking in the beauty and majesty of the tall oak trees, some of which measured a full twenty feet around the base. A tilt of her lovely chin followed the streaking rays of flickering sunlight to their source high above where branches were tangled together in a thick basketweave, their leaves a still higher suggestion of misty green. The sun broke through in sporadic bursts, the beams splintering into a thousand foggy darts of light that shimmered to shades of palest green in the darker, musty shadows below.
How the captain of the guards would cringe if he knew what was passing through the mind of the future baroness. How shocked he would be if she dared give way to her urge to spur her mare into a caracole, to dance and prance along the earthen road to the end of the forest—if indeed there ever was an end to it. Moreover, she longed to remove the linen wimple that demurely covered her head, ached to shake her long golden hair free of its braids and confining pins, and feel the wind tug and pull at its thickness. As well, she wished she could fling aside the stiff, encumbering surcoat of samite she wore over her gown. Six depths of sky blue silk had gone into the weaving of the rich cloth, but to Servanne, who was uncomfortable from so many long hours in the saddle, it felt more like armour than the chain links worn by the guards. If she attempted to alter the positioning of her legs and rump, or shift more comfortably in the saddle, it was done without the cooperation of the heavy outer garment. If she turned too hastily, she was nearly choked by the stiff collar, which did not budge and threatened her with an awkward loss of balance.
Still, she endured the discomfort in silence. She was eager to reach her destination, eager for the first time in her eighteen years to see what the future had hidden around the next corner.
Orphaned as a child, Servanne had been placed under the wardship of England’s great golden King Richard, known by the soldiers who loved him as Lionheart. When his obsession with the Holy Wars had forced him to look beyond the limits of the strained royal purse for financing, Servanne had been married off to the aging Sir Hubert de Briscourt for a substantial consideration. Barely fifteen at the time, wed to a man fifty years her senior, the succeeding three years had been a trial of boredom, loneliness, and frustration. It was not that Sir Hubert was mean or miserly—indeed, near the end, she had acquired a genuine affection for the gallant old knight—it was just that, well, she was young and full of life, and impatient to do more than spin and sew and weave and be attendant upon her lord in his twilight years. His death had been a terrible blow, and she had truly mourned his loss. And when the missive had arrived bearing the king’s seal, she had broken it with grave apprehension, guessing correctly that she had once again been sold in marriage to the highest bidder.
The name of the prospective groom had leapt from the page like a bolt of lightning. Lucien Wardieu! Young, handsome, virile … the kind of husband one dreamed about and envisioned behind tightly closed eyelids while a lesser truth fumbled and groped about in the dark.
Shivering deliciously, Servanne glanced down at the jewelled broach pinned to the front of her mantle. Bloodred rubies delineated the body of a dragon rampant, emeralds and diamonds marked the snarling body of the wolf. A betrothal gift from the groom, it branded her as his property and she wore it proudly for all the world to see.
“Biddy, tell me again what you have heard of my lord the baron,” she whispered under her breath. “I fear, as the miles shrink between us and the hours to our meeting grow fewer and