The Lady Series Read Online Free

wind.
    Owls House had been built almost a century before when old King Henry, the eighth to bear that name, yet ruled. As was the fashion of that time the house was shaped as an “H”; these days, houses were being built in the shape of an “E” to honor their present monarch. That design resulted in her home’s courtyard being placed in the upper open portion of the “H” with the house’s entry at the center of the letter’s crosspiece while Anne’s parlor was in the forward end of the west leg of the house.
    Seeing into the courtyard from the parlor was a skill Anne had mastered as a child. She leaned out the window as far as she could, her hips balanced on the inner ledge and one hand holding tight to the outer ledge. One foot came off the floor while long experience with this gyration sent her other foot seeking the leg of the heavy desk that stood to one side of the window.
    Once Anne had her balance, she shifted to the side, reached out with her other hand and caught hold of one of the big white blocks of stone that dressed the corner of the house. The stone was cold and slick, but she knew well where to plant her fingers, having long ago found the dips and cracks in its face that served her best. In the room behind her Anne heard her mother’s walking stick hit the floor with three sharp taps.
    “I’m fine, Mama,” Anne replied, stretching to her longest.
    The courtyard came into view and what she saw made her breath catch in dismay. It seemed an army filled that area. At its head was a tall man dressed all in black. Not even the day’s gray light could disguise the glint of the great ruby he had pinned to the band of his flat-crowned cap.
    Anne threw herself back into the parlor and slammed the window shut with such force that the diamond-shaped panes rattled in their frames. As her mother’s stick tapped again, just once this time, Anne whirled to face her.
    Lady Frances Blanchemain sat in a high-backed invalid’s chair beside the room’s narrow fireplace. Like her daughter, Lady Frances also wore black. They mourned the recent death of Anne’s sister, the third of Frances’s four daughters. But Frances’s attire was more bedrobe than gown. Her only nod to fashion was the attifet perched atop her graying chestnut hair, the cap’s heart-shaped front framing a face once lovely enough to cause her banishment from King Henry’s court by a jealous queen.
    No more. Anne’s birth had stolen her mother’s beauty and her mobility. A fit shortly after Anne’s coming had frozen the right half of Frances’s body and silenced her tongue.
    Her mother’s tongue might be dead, but not so her ears, her hazel eyes or her quick intelligence. By the light of the fire and the candles set in sconces around the room, Anne had no trouble reading the message in her mother’s gaze.
    “You were right. It’s Sir Amyas.” Anne loosed a steaming breath. “Who does he think he is, tapping upon our door without so much as a note of warning?”
    Frances’s left brow dropped in chiding as half her mouth thinned to a demanding line. Leaning her stick against the table in front of her, she closed her yet functional left hand and rapped her knuckles on the arm of her chair.
    Anne glared. A persistent faith and the words of the apostle Paul gave her mother the ungodly notion all women should happily submit to the rule of men. Anne, having been raised in a family of only women, owned neither her mother’s deep faith nor her ability to submit.
    She crossed her arms in refusal. “You waste your breath, Mama. I’ll not apologize, not when each time my grandsire comes he takes another bite from your jointure. I give thanks that there’s little left for him to take save me.”
    Fear flashed across half her mother’s face. Regret tore through Anne. With a flash of skirts and petticoats, she flew to crouch beside her mother’s chair. Frances caught Anne’s hand, squeezing as if she never meant to let go, terrible shadows