Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) Read Online Free

the breath in my lungs and never drawing another. I felt her tears dampening my tunic, and laid my hands lightly, reverently, on her slender shoulders.
    At last she drew back, sniffling, and her attempt to smile rent my heart. “Perhaps he will be a good man, my husband. Perhaps he will be gentle and think me pretty.”
    I closed my eyes, remembering the sounds I’d heard so often, through the daub-and-wattle wall that separated my parents’ chamber from the one I shared with Krispin. Those were primitive times, and that particular brand of modesty was in short supply in the countryside and the village alike. I had seen men take their wives in the fields, like dogs mounting bitches in the street.
    “Jesu, ” I whispered, shattered by the image of Brenna lying in another man’s bed. In that moment I wanted to go to the high cliffs south of the village and fling myself off them, into the sharp rocks clustered below. “Yes,” I said finally. “He’ll think you pretty. How could he not?”
    We parted then—surely it was Lady Brenna who broke away first. I descended the hillside toward the village without looking back. I was still half blinded by tears and thus didn’t see Krispin until I’d practically collided with him.
    “There’s a ship on the horizon!” he cried, fairly dancing with excitement.
    I pushed him aside—perhaps I was a bit too rough in my despair. I didn’t gave a sacred damn if the shore was lined with Viking vessels, brimming with spear-waving invaders. Brenna was going away, probably before the winter snows, and I would never see her again.
    Krispin was not content to let me pass; he clutched the sleeve of my tunic and wrenched me back. I swung at him without thinking, catching him up alongside the head and dropping him to his knees.
    I barely noticed the flush of fury in his fine-boned face, or the venomous spark in his eyes. He raised himself and came hurtling at me like a snarling dog, and I cuffed him again, more out of surprise than anger.
    He went sprawling once more, in the chilly grass, and then sat up, wiping blood from the comer of his mouth. His face was utterly expressionless as he sat there, looking up at me, thinking God only knew what.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, extending my hand to him, making no effort to hide the mark of tears on my face.
    Krispin allowed me to help him, though oftentimes when we’d had such a scrap, he’d slap my hand away when I offered it. “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded, dusting off his leggings and tunic. Like mine, they were poor and ugly garments, rough to the touch and virtually useless against the chill of a cold night. “I was only trying to tell you about the ship—”
    I was already striding toward the village again, and the shop, where my mother would be keeping her pitiful vigil, watching for Krispin and me as if we were sailors just home from the sea, while my father watched her, in turn, and seethed. My brother scrambled to get into step with me.
    I dragged one arm across my wet face, and we talked no more of ships. We could not have guessed, in our innocence, what monstrous suffering that vessel would bring to us all.
    That night Father was in a mood, and Mother had taken to her pallet with some ailment born of the strain between them. Krispin slipped out to mingle with the men from the ship and hear their tales, while I sat in my chamber with my back to the wall, brooding over Brenna’s impending departure.
    In the morning there was no sign of Krispin. I shrugged at the realization, filled a basin with water from the ewer my mother kept filled, and washed as best I could. During the night I had conceived a plan—I would go to the Baron Afton-St. Claire, Brenna’s father, and ask for her hand. If he had me clapped into chains or pulled me apart on the rack for getting above myself, so be it. I had to try.
    As it happened, Challes was waiting at the schoolroom door when I arrived, his eyes red-rimmed, fairly bursting