Claudia Dain Read Online Free

his daughters."
    "Which is to the good as he will get little more," Juliane whispered back to Avice with a wicked grin.
    "Come, come," Maud said, clapping her hands and shooing the girls in front of her. "Fresh faces, clean gowns, smiles, and soft greetings; come now. We go to welcome guests to Stanora. 'Tis your function and your place."
    "'Tis not my function," Juliane said with a half smile. "And I will not be found by Ulrich in any place he thinks to find me. Even the finding of me will not come easily to him. And so the game begins," she said to Avice.
    "And so the game is won," Avice said as Juliane ignored their aunt's direction, not joining them as they made their fluttering way down the stairs from the hall to the tower gate and the mighty door that protected them. Ulrich would see the ladies of Stanora, yet he would not see the one lady he most desired to see.
    Avice had seen this game played time upon time and each time Juliane the victor. What would it be like if Juliane should lose? Would she then be given in marriage, the spell of her frost broken? If any man were made for the breaking of a woman's heart, that man was Ulrich of Caen. If tales spoke true.
    Did tales not ever and always speak true?
    If Juliane were the measure, then, aye, they did.
    And so Ulrich was a man worth watching.
    "Come, come, let us be about our calling," Maud said from the front of their skirted troop.
    "I am come," Avice said. In truth, she was all eagerness to lay eyes upon Ulrich. Let the tales of him be tested against the Frost of Stanora. 'Twould be worthy play, if naught else.
    * * *
    Maud allowed Juliane to disappear into the mural gallery on the upper floor of the tower. Juliane had known that she would. It was not in the game for Juliane to be so easily found. Let Ulrich and his cohorts work for their first glimpse of her; it only made the first sighting sweeter when frustration melted into frantic desperation and starving impatience.
    Juliane smiled as she trailed a hand along the uppermost wooden rail that protected against a fall onto the wooden roof of the tower below. She could hear the ladies of Stanora chattering and laughing at the prospect of facing Ulrich of Caen for the first time. He was a man, it was said, to make a lady blush with pleasure. It might even be true. Yet not so with her. No man had the heat to make her blush, not even Ulrich.
    Though...
    The tales of him were strong and sweet, of winged words, of sparkling adoration, of eyes of deepest blue that shone with humor and wit, of hands that stroked a lady's vanity as well as moving gently upon her skin. Within all tales, all tunes, and all times he was spoken of most well. And so had been since she was a girl. He had been out in the world, finding his way, making his name, and leaving his mark upon damsel and battlefield.
    Yet when was any damsel not a battlefield? Aye, they were the same. A man must leave his mark upon the earth, and he did it in what ways he could. Damsels did not fall to words, not easily, not softly. Nay, they fell from breathy battering and whispered entreaty when they fell at all.
    By the tales, Ulrich knew how to make a lady fall into the spell of him.
    And by the tales, Juliane robbed men of breath and will and heat so that they lay spent and cold, all thoughts of winning beaten from them by her very look.
    Would it be so with Ulrich?
    A breeze snaked down from the battlements above her to slide across the rooftop, stroking a gentle hand against her face, moving fragile fingers across her unbound hair—an invisible caress of air, warm and summer sweet and full of birdsong from the fields surrounding Stanora. The wind was her companion when all the others had flown off to giggle and twitch before the men eyeing them.
    Had it always been so? Had Eve paraded her beauty and her charm to Adam in the garden? Had she enticed him when it was just the two of them on the whole great Earth? And had Adam spoken words of love to his woman amidst