Almost Innocent Read Online Free Page B

the cold in her heavy velvet dress and wool underdress. Sheran to the parapet, leaning over to look toward the dark forest, visible in the winter gloom only as a lowering shape stretching to the horizon.
    “There has not been a raid for nigh on three months,” she said, and de Gervais was certain he could detect a hint of regret in her voice.
    “You sound wistful,” he observed, strolling to a stone bench carved into the parapet.
    She responded with the semblance of a grin. “At least it is exciting when it happens.”
    This was not going to be as awkward as he had feared, de Gervais reflected, if it was excitement she craved. Sitting down, he patted the bench beside him in invitation.
    Magdalen regarded the hard stone with disfavor. “I was whipped this past hour.”
    “Ah.” Comprehending, he stood up again and resumed his slow pacing. “For what offense?”
    Magdalen hesitated. Would this lord be as repulsed by her actions as her father and aunt were? She found that she did not want to disgust him, yet some perverse prod compelled her to test him. “Visiting with mad Jennet,” she said boldly. “And getting a spell from her.”
    “A spell to do what?” He sounded neither surprised nor disgusted, interested rather.
    “To make something exciting happen,” she replied. There was silence for a minute, and, encouraged, she continued with sudden low fierceness, “How can one be happy when there is nothing to do except study the Psalter with Father Clement, who will never be pleased and always makes bad report of me to my father, or sit with my aunt and sew seams? There is no one to play with, no one to talk with. Sometimes my father says I may accompany him hunting or hawking, but then I offend in some way and I am not permitted to go.” There was an aching loneliness in her voice. “I like to dance and to sing and to play. I wish to ride and shoot with abow and arrow and hunt with a hawk, but there is no one to do these things with except the pages, and that is not permitted. It is so cold and dark and drear in this place, and I do not seem to belong to it,” she finished on a note of despairing bewilderment.
    When provision had been made for the rearing of this child, no one had given thought to the loneliness she would experience in the wild border land, her only companions a confirmed spinster and a childless widower in his middle years. The concern had simply been for secrecy and the safety of anonymity. She must be given the care necessary to ensure her growth to responsible womanhood, if God willed such growth, but happiness was not adjudged a necessary or even desirable condition of childhood. Guy de Gervais tapped his gloved hands together in front of his mouth, thinking.
    He was frowning deeply, staring at the little girl who had fallen silent and looked anxious, as if she had revealed something forbidden. Wisps of brown hair strayed from the cap onto a broad brow; the gray eyes, lashed long and dark, were set wide beneath well-defined eyebrows. Her cheekbones were high, the chin pointed with a deep cleft giving her face a perfect heart shape. Her mouth was her father’s, too wide for traditional beauty in a maid, but de Gervais had not yet seen her smile. Her nose was small and well shaped, her ears lying flat against her head. De Gervais had once seen a portrait of her mother—a portrait kept in the utmost secrecy in the duke’s inner chamber. The similarity was striking, but Isolde de Beauregard had set a land aflame with her beauty and her venom. It was hard to imagine this fierce yet exuberant little girl ever developing the devious skills and knowledge of beauty’s power to—
    “I did not mean to speak immoderately, sir.” The anxious words broke into his reverie. “You will not tell my father that I did so?”
    He shook his head, smiling. “Nay, I would notdream of it. Besides, I asked you a question, and you answered in truth. There is no fault in that.”
    She sighed with relief and