not some farmer who will make you old before your time, who will plant a babe in your womb every year, and see you to an early grave."
"You wish me to marry?"
"Is it not your wish, also?"
"Yes, of course, but..."
His gaze held hers. "But?"
" I don't want to marry for wealth, my lord, but for love."
"Love." The word was a whisper, a wish unfulfilled, a dream unborn.
"Have you never been in love, my lord?"
Slowly, he shook his head, his dark eyes filled with such pain, such stark loneliness, that she wanted to weep. Was it only her imagination, or did his cloak seem to wrap more closely around him, as if to comfort him?
"And you?" he asked. "Have you, in your few short years of life, found love?"
"Aye, my lord, though I fear he does not return my affection."
"Then he is a fool!"
A faint smile curved Rhianna's lips. "On that, at least, we are agreed."
Rayven fought back his anger. The urge to destroy the cur who failed to return her love rose up within him, and with it an all-consuming jealousy. "Who is this man?"
"Can you not guess?" Rhianna replied, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
Rayven closed his eyes, pain ripping through him. If he survived another four hundred years, he would never forget this moment, the love shining bright and clear in her eyes, the wonder of it.
A long shuddering sigh escaped him, and then he opened his eyes.
"Go away from here, Rhianna," he said, his voice brusque, his eyes as cold as black ice. "Leave my house and never come back."
She recoiled as if he had slapped her, the hurt in her eyes scorching his soul.
"Be gone," he said. "Pray I never see you again."
"As you wish, my lord," Rhianna said, and turning on her heel, she fled his presence without a backward glance.
Behind her, a black wolf lifted its melancholy cry to the night.
Chapter Nine
She cried for hours after she returned home, and all the while she berated herself for her foolishness. He had never led her to believe he was anything more than mildly fond of her. She had amused him with her naivete, nothing more. She had laid her heart bare, and he had scorned it, and her.
She would not humiliate herself in such a fashion again. And she would marry for love, or she would not marry at all.
Clinging to that thought, she fell asleep.
The maze rose up in the night, a twisting wall of greenery that separated her from the rest of the world.
Drawn into its heart, she collapsed near the statue of the bronze wolf. She drew a deep breath, and her nostrils filled with the scent of roses. Only then did she notice that they were no longer red.
Dozens of blooms grew on the trees, but they were all black.
Curious, she picked one, gasping as a thorn pricked her finger. A drop of bright red blood oozed from the wound, and suddenly Rayven was there, towering over her, his dark eyes ablaze with an unholy light as he took her hand in his and slowly licked the blood from her finger...
"No!" The sound of her own horrified cry roused her from sleep and she sat up, glancing wildly around the room. "Only a dream," she whispered as she snuggled under the covers again. "Only a dream."
The familiar words hovered in the back of her mind.
"Only a dream..."
She closed her eyes, but sleep eluded her. With a restless sigh, she sat up and gazed out the window, her mind filling with images of Rayven as she had seen him last, his fathomless black eyes filled with torment. He was lonely, so lonely. Why? He was a handsome man. A wealthy man. Why did he not marry and raise a family? Why did he live in that cold, lonely castle? Why had he sent her away?
She had learned much in the four years she had been away. She had, on rare occasions, flirted with young men. In Paris, she had learned the power of a coy glance, a shy smile, a come-hither look. She knew when a man wanted her. And Rayven wanted her. He had wanted her from the beginning. Why, then, had he turned her away? Why had he bought her in the first place? She had assumed he had wanted her to warm his bed. She wondered now if he had bought her simply for companionship. But surely a man like Rayven had no need to purchase feminine companionship.
She