Beneath a Midnight Moon - By Amanda Ashley Page 0,17

to take a step without worrying about being thrown off balance by a sudden swell.

Men called to Hardane as he passed by, their voices filled with respect as they welcomed him home. Women smiled at him, sometimes coyly, sometimes brazenly, but all with an unspoken invitation in their eyes.

Hardane accepted their adulation as his due, she noted waspishly, smiling and waving, occasionally pausing to speak to this one or that one.

Kylene stood mute, feeling like a crow in a flock of parrots. She’d never seen such beautiful clothing. Silks and satins in bright reds and blues and greens—stripes and plaids and gaudy prints. She wondered that such bright hues didn’t completely overpower the women who wore them. The women. She had never seen such lovely women, with their dark skin and hair and sparkling dark eyes. The women of Mouldour could not begin to compare with the women of Argone.

Moments later, Hardane handed her into an open carriage drawn by a matched pair of blood bays. Taking up the reins, he clucked to the team.

In a short time, they had left the seaport behind and now they were traveling through a land of gently rolling hills.

“It’s beautiful,” she murmured, hardly aware that she’d spoken aloud. “It looks like . . . like Paradise.”

“Aye,” Hardane agreed. And you look like a seraph who hasn’t yet tried her wings.

“Where are we going?”

“Home.”

Home, she thought, and the word twisted through her like a hot knife. She’d never had a real home. The only place that had come close had been the gray stone abbey of the Sisterhood, and now that was forever lost to her. She had no place to call home, no one to call friend, except . . . She glanced furtively at Hardane. He had treated her kindly on board ship, looking after her needs, calming her fears. Surely that qualified him to be her friend.

“What will happen when we get to your home?” she asked tremulously.

“What do you mean?”

“Will you send me away?”

Hardane let out a sigh. Send her away? That was the last thing he wanted. “Is there somewhere you’d rather go?”

She shook her head quickly. “No.”

“My people will make you welcome, Kylene. My mother has always longed for another daughter. She will receive you with open arms.”

“I hope she’ll like me.”

“She will. And you’ll like her.”

“Does she look . . . different?”

“Different?”

“Someone once told me she was a descendant of the Wolffan.”

“As I am.” Hardane smiled wryly. “You needn’t expect to find her with fangs and claws and blood dripping from her mouth.”

Kylene stared up at him, mute, a flush of embarrassment staining her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t. She has no fangs, Kylene, no claws, only a rather sharp tongue when she is angry. But she is rarely angry.”

“Will we be there soon?”

“By nightfall.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t be afraid, lady. My people are not savages. They do not eat helpless women or small children.”

Kylene’s cheeks burned hotter. Even in the relative solitude of the Motherhouse, she had overheard tales of Argonian treachery, of Mouldourian babies snatched from their cradles and fed to Wolffan young. Often, the Sisterhood had united in prayer for the poor lost souls of Argone who were doomed to burn in the fires of Gehenna for their brutality.

They traveled for some distance in silence. Kylene stared at the passing countryside, wishing she could run barefoot through the tall green grass, stop to touch the petals of a flowering shrub, splash her feet in one of the numerous blue-green pools that glistened in the bright sunlight.

They passed through several small villages. The houses were all neat, the yards well tended. The people they saw smiled and waved. Some flagged the carriage to a halt and plied them with warm wine and bread and cheese, baskets of sweet rolls, bowls of fruit. If they stared at Kylene, it was only with friendly curiosity, but the main focus of their attention was Hardane. That he was loved by his people was evident in every look, every gesture, every offering of goodwill.

How different from the attitude of the people of Mouldour toward Bourke, she mused. She had heard it said that he dared not travel unescorted, that he feared to eat the food that came from his own kitchens until it had first been tasted by another to make certain it hadn’t been poisoned.

It was near dusk when they started up a steep, winding hillside. No trees grew along the narrow pathway, and when Kylene remarked on