Page 37 of The Daughters of Avalon
Calais. Calais. The sanctuary of the hapless.
Considering the deserter now, I fiddle with my ring, wondering over the spell I’ve been meaning to try… and thinking, down in my bones, now could be the time.
Daw is his name.
Daw.
In my native tongue, it means beloved one.
Come here, my beloved,I say without moving my lips.
Blinking, the lad peers up from his tankard, glancing in my direction—fair-haired with bright blue eyes, like a Viking. He’ll do, I decide, and push my hood back, allowing him to see me for the first time. But, of course, he cannot resist, for I am a siren. I am a Goddess. I am lust incarnate.
I meet his gaze, and revel in the bright red aura of desire that ignites about him like a glorious flame. He arises from his bench and the youth in him warms my blood. My nipples pucker, and my hand falls beneath the table, sliding beneath my robe; I am famished.
“Hail,” he says.
“Halloo, Daw.”
In my peripheral, I see the innkeeper comes out from behind the bar and taps the kitchen boy on the shoulder to draw him into the back room as Daw seats himself in the facing bench before me. His cheeks are flushed, and his brow is moist with sweat, but his eyes are filled with lust while mine are filled with bloodlust. My aura draws his in, black swirling tendrils furling about the bright red desire, and sucking it hungrily inside the black.
“May I buy you an ale?” he says, but I know all he has in his purse is a single coin he was given by the innkeeper for cleaning the stable.
“What a dear, dear man,” I say with a warm smile.
I shed my cloak now, revealing myself to his lustful gaze. “I am Morwen,” I say silkily, and the Crone in me revels behind my shy Maiden’s smile.
Chapter
Fifteen
Despite the gritty wine, Malcom was half soused when the knock sounded on his door—a soft, tentative rap he may not have heard if he were not already painfully awake.
Wearied of attempting to finagle a comfortable position in the wooden chair, he rose to answer the door and found a young maid by the name of Alyss shrinking behind it.
He remembered the lass from his last visit. Not daring to look him in the eyes, she deposited a number of items into his arms, begged his pardon for the intrusion, then turned to flee as quickly as her legs could carry her.
Malcom was accustomed to such treatment from the fairer sex. He wasn’t the most agreeable sort, nor, in truth, entirely pleasing to look at. He fingered the scar at the upper right corner of his forehead. Although he’d managed to save his face, for the most part, his body was a testament to the violence he’d engaged in over the past eleven years of his life.
He closed the door again, and supposing the gifts must be for Elspeth, he carried them into the room, placing them at the foot of the bed where she slept so peacefully.
Somehow, the knock on the door hadn’t disturbed her, and he marveled over the trust she’d placed in him to sleep so soundly, even despite the fright she must have taken over Beauchamp.
A blind man couldn’t have missed the look of fear on her face when she’d laid her eyes on the man—or the stiffness in her body when they’d ridden into the bailey.
Skirting around the bed to the side where Elspeth lay, he stood scrutinizing her a long moment, trying to make sense over the protective feelings he was experiencing.
He understood intuitively what his Da must have felt when he’d taken Page into his keeping—enduring even her fury in order to save her feelings. Her father had cast her away, crowing to his Da that he could “keep her or kill her, he cared not which.” In fact, those were his precise words, Malcom remembered. And lest he should wound her more than it seemed she must be already, his father had traveled all the way back to Scotia without ever telling Page the truth, even when his own men questioned his judgment and his sanity. In the end, his father had been prepared to do battle for her honor and defied even their king.
Was Malcom prepared to defy his?
The answer to that question niggled him because it made him question his own moral boundaries—and, of course, his motives as well. Was it a man’s duty to keep his oaths at all cost? Or should he be compelled to break them for the ones he loved?
He didn’t even wish to examine the point that he couldn’t possibly love Elspeth. He didn’t even know her. At any rate, back in those days when his father championed Page, his Da had never truly considered David his king, nor had he given David any oath, so the decision for him had been much simpler. And yet, could he imagine a world or circumstances where his fatherwould not have defended him, or Page, no matter who he must defy?
Remembering that day before the Battle of the Standard, when he’d faced his father across a battlefield, he felt sick to his gut anew…
There stood a man who’d loved his kinsmen well, and his son no less. Yet, compelled by his own honor, Malcom had been forced to call him enemy.
