Queen of the Summer Stars Read Online Free Page B

away.
    Igraine felt the same wave of warmth steal through herself, and bundling up the falcon, hastily returned to the Hall. But all the while she was fixing the bird’s wing, her mind was on the morning’s encounter. Her hands shook and her body ached with confusion and desire.
    ***
     
    “I was sure something fearful was going to happen,” she murmured, “and that night at the feast I tried every way possible to avoid him.”
    But the Pendragon prowled the Hall like a wolf circling sheep. He was edgy and feverish, greeting people too loudly and breaking off conversations in midsentence. Igraine could feel his presence coming closer and closer, and studiously kept from catching his eye, even accidentally. By the time Uther stood in front of her, he burned with fervor and she stared with equal determination at the floor.
    Without a word to Gorlois the High King took her hand and lifted it to his lips. She raised her eyes slowly, unwillingly, and blushed when their gazes met. For a moment she tried to pull her hand free, but Uther refused to let her go, and turned to propose a toast instead.
    “To the Duchess Igraine of Cornwall. I pay you this singular honor, O Fairest in the Realm, in the hope that you will take kindly to my suit, for rough men such as myself need to be healed by Goddesses like you.”
    The courtiers were horrified at his presumption, and Igraine writhed with humiliation and anger, sure that everyone could see the passion that warred between them. But she held her head high and accepted the compliment graciously. It was only later, when they were back in their quarters, that she turned to her husband in tears.
    “Of course Uther pays attention to you, my dear,” Gorlois said reasonably. “He has a fine eye for the ladies, and a roving nature to boot, and if I did not know you so well, I might worry that he’d turn your head a bit. Believe me, our new monarch’s interest will shift to some other comely maid before the week is ended, so we’ll just wait it out.”
    But his words only made Igraine more miserable, for she could not tell him that she feared her own desire more than Uther’s, and the notion that she was just another woman to be conquered and forgotten cut deep against the quick.
    Great, racking sobs began to shake her and nothing Gorlois said could calm her panic. Before long the Duchess was wailing like a sidhe out wandering in the wildwood, pleading hysterically with her husband.
    “Take me home, M’lord…please, by all the Gods that be, take me away from here, I beg you.”
    “We’ll go directly after the King Making,” he promised, hoping to settle the matter, but the distraught woman only moaned more deeply, and in the end he grew frightened for her sanity, so they left as soon as it was light.
    ***
     
    “Perhaps,” the Queen Mother mused, “Gorlois was right, and if we had stayed, Uther’s interest would have flagged.”
    She began to cough, and her breathing became more labored.
    “You shouldn’t be talking so much, M’lady…you need to save your strength,” I admonished her.
    “What for?” she wheezed, gesturing toward the water pitcher.
    Her hands were too shaky to hold the goblet, but when I raised it to her lips she looked at me over the rim, her eyes crinkling in a half-smile. “The only strength I need is to tell the story straight out, as the Goddess would expect…
    “You must understand that I was not intentionally complicit in what happened. Caught in a web of the Old Gods’ making, clothed in a moira beyond my comprehension, I was, up to that point, honest and honorable in all that I had done or said. Even after we left, racing for the safety of Cornwall, I hoped to avoid the fate I didn’t understand.” There was a pause before she added, “No one can outrun the Gods.”
    They had no sooner settled into Tintagel than a messenger from King Mark of Cornwall arrived. He warned them that Uther had declared Gorlois a traitor for not swearing fealty