Chance Read Online Free

warden was keeping her from entering her only refuge, the wild place where she had thought no one would see her weep.
    â€œLady, no, you cannot! There is danger. Listen to me, Halimeda!” He took her by the shoulders, met her eyes; she could not see much in him now, not in the dying light. “There is no need to hide your grief from me. I know you loved Blake.”
    She stood still, gazing up at him. “You—you know ?” Her voice rose on the final word; she sounded glad.
    â€œI know much of what happens in Wirral,” he said, then winced and tried to soften it. “Couples walking—clasped hands—”
    She did not care what he had seen. She was weeping freely, and for all that caution cried out to the contrary he gathered her into his arms so that her head rested against his shoulder. Words joined her torrent of tears.
    â€œThe—more—fool I—”
    â€œYou couldn’t know he was a liar,” Chance said.
    â€œHandsome—liar. He—made a laughingstock—of me.”
    â€œNo one is laughing.”
    â€œThey—will be.” She raised her head, tears clinging to her face. “Chance, you don’t—know all.”
    His heart froze.
    â€œHe—I—I am with child.”
    A spasm afflicted his arms so that he pulled her yet closer to him, rocked her against his chest. “Could you be mistaken?” he begged when he could speak.
    â€œNo. I am—sure.”
    She grew still with a despair too deep for weeping, turned away from him and spoke numbly.
    â€œHe sent for me, and I went riding out to meet him like a—like a—”
    â€œBrave and loving lass that you are,” Chance told her.
    â€œHappy,” she said with a bitter wonder. “I was so happy, all the way, I had such news for him. When I reached the lea, I ran to him, he kissed me. And I told him I was bearing his baby—I could scarcely speak for happiness. Then he was laughing at me, and there were men all around.”
    Anger was boiling up in Chance. “I did not see him laugh when you came at him with the knife,” he said.
    She turned her face to him with a grim smile. “I wish I had struck more true! I wish I had done it sooner. But I could not believe what I was seeing, hearing. They were leering, and telling me that I was going to help them kill my brother and take his lands.”
    â€œThe scum,” Chance raged. “The piss-proud dregs! And they needs must tie you to that foul tree, like a felon—”
    â€œNot then, not yet! It was worse. Blake—Blake seemed to think that I would stay with him willingly, that I was so much besotted—”
    Choking on the words, she wept again.
    â€œSo much his toy, that you would betray your own brother,” Chance said huskily. “Well, the more fool Blake, for thinking so.” And I, for thinking it even for a moment. He put his arms around her, and she wept wearily against his shoulder.
    â€œRoddarc was—so magnificent—”
    Chance nodded. Roddarc had indeed been splendid. His feat capture of Blake and his outlawing of the remaining rebels had made him shine in the eyes of his troops and his people. Trouble was behind him, for the time.
    â€œHow am I—ever to—tell him.”
    His despair matching hers, Chance had no answer for her.
    The Denizens danced in the mushroom ring.
    A place of great antiquity, this, where the revels had been held time out of mind. All the woodsfolk came, swarming in their hundreds, as thickly as tadpoles in a rainpool. Not all were like the first ones Chance had met, with their sapling bodies and twiggy limbs, their smoothbark skin and the gall-like swellings between their legs. Many were like them, and there were females like them, too, with tough brown protuberant breasts that reminded him of oak apples. But some of the females were miniatures of the most lovely of human maidens, so slender, so dainty, that