A Passionate Magic Read Online Free

reached
the lord’s chamber.

Chapter 2
     
     
    “How cold it is,” Hawise said, looking around
the lord’s chamber. “How bare and gloomy.”
    Emma did not say so aloud, but she agreed
with Hawise. They had been conducted to a bedchamber well suited to
a lord who lived near the end of the world on a cliff at the edge
of the sea. It was a room very different from the lord’s chamber at
Wroxley. Here, there were no tapestries to warm and brighten the
bare gray stone walls, no rug on the floor, no chair made
comfortable with thick, bright cushions.
    True, the room was large and well
proportioned, and perhaps it was a more cheerful place when the sun
was shining. On this day of rain and wind the shutters were
securely latched over the unglazed double window that was set into
a niche in the thick wall. With the shutters closed the room was a
place of deep shadows made even more gloomy by the lack of
comforts. Stone benches were built into each side of the window
niche, where ladies might sit together to ply their needles in the
light, but there were no cushions to ease the chill of the stone.
Only two pieces of furniture graced the room. The head of a large
bed with plain, dark brown hangings was pushed against the inner
wall, and an oblong wooden clothes chest rested at the foot of the
bed.
    “My lady, you will freeze in here,” Hawise
protested, looking around at the chilly emptiness.
    “Lord Dain did tell me to order what I
wanted,” Emma said, and proceeded to list for Hawise everything she
would require. While Hawise carried her orders to the castle
servants, Emma made a quick search of the other two rooms on the
same level of the tower keep. The first room, which opened directly
onto the staircase, held a supply of arrows and assorted other
arms, all arranged close to the arrow slits, so they would be
readily at hand in case of attack.
    The second, smaller room also opened onto the
tower steps, and in addition it had a door connecting it to the
lord’s chamber. Since it was empty, and since the window that
looked out over the edge of the cliff was slightly larger than an
arrow slit, Emma decided the room would serve well as a place for
Hawise to sleep and as a storeroom for the belongings brought from
Wroxley until they could all be unpacked.
    When Hawise returned to the lord’s chamber
Emma set her to work changing the bed linens. Soon the scent of the
lavender in which the sheets had been packed at Wroxley filled the
room. Two of the servants whom Hawise had commandeered arrived, one
carrying a brazier, the other with a scuttle full of charcoal.
Immediately afterward a boy about twelve years old by the look of
him, who was evidently a page, rushed in bearing a candlestick as
tall as he was and an armful of fat candles that looked as if they
had come from the chapel.
    “Father Maynard sent them,” the boy said,
confirming Emma’s guess.
    “I’m Blake, my lady,” the boy continued, “and
I am very glad to have a nice lady at Penruan. Father Maynard says
you are nice. Not that Lady Richenda isn’t nice,” he added hastily.
“She is a very good woman, and extremely devout, but she isn’t much
fun.”
    “Please take my thanks for the candles to
Father Maynard,” Emma told the boy. She knew better than to comment
on his opinion of Lady Richenda.
    An hour later Emma was feeling greatly
refreshed, having eaten a meal of cold meat, bread, and cheese,
washed down by fresh cider. She had also enjoyed the hot bath she
so much wanted. Preferring her companion to be as clean as she was,
Emma offered the still-warm bathwater to Hawise to use, so she
could also wash away the grime and chill of travel. The emptied tub
was being carried out and Hawise, shiny faced with cleanliness and
grateful to her thoughtful mistress, had retreated to her own small
room to find fresh clothes for herself, when Dain stalked into the
lord’s chamber.
    He stopped short, a startled expression
spreading across his face as he looked