Secret Song Read Online Free Page B

the boredom, the fear, with the awful tension that would never leave her. She was a prisoner and she didn’t know what her captor wanted of her. At the beginning, she’d spoken from her terror, not measuring the possible consequences of her words. She asked him, fear making her voice harsh, “If you ransom me, will you let me go? Is it just my dowry you want? Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you tell me?”
    Edmond of Clare had slapped her, not really all that hard, but hard enough so that she’d felt the pain of it throughout her body and she’d reeled with the force of it, nearly falling to her knees. He watched the pain take her for a few moments, then said easily, this matter of her impertinence duly handled, “You will do as I tell you and you will ask me no more questions. Now, little mistress, would you like to eat some delicious stewed lamb?”
    He baffled her. She feared him, yet he hadn’t struck her since that first time. Of course she’d tried to give him no provocation. She saw violence in him, leashed in her presence, but she could feel it, just as she’d always felt it in her Uncle Damon. She saw his control tested once when a servant had spilled some thickly sauced meat on his arm. She saw the vein jump in his throat, saw his clenched fists, but his voice issued forth mild, and his reproof was gentle. Then why, she’d wondered, had the servant looked like he was shortly to die and was wonderfully surprised when he hadn’t? She still didn’t know anything. If he was ransoming her, as she had to assume that he was, she didn’t know what he’d demanded; she didn’t know if her uncle had responded. She didn’t know anything, and it was infuriating and frustrating. And then she would think: all he did was slap me. And she decided she would ask him again. She wouldn’t demand, she would ask softly, something she should have learned to do with her uncle. Ah, but it galled her to be the supplicant.
    Ena stepped back and folded her arms over her scrawny chest. “Ye’ve grown, a good inch taller ye are, and look at yer ankles, poking out over yer feet, and that gown of yers pulls across yer breasts. Ye must have new gowns, at least cloth so ye can sew yerself something that will fit ye. Ask the earl to fetch ye some nice woolen cloth—”
    â€œThat’s quite enough, Ena. I won’t demand cloth for new gowns. I care not if my ankles offend you—it matters not to me.”
    â€œAh, if only we could leave here and ye could wed with Ralph of Colchester as ye were supposed to.”
    Daria shivered at that gruesome thought. “I would rather become a nun.”
    These sarcastically spoken impious words brought a loud groan from Ena and a quick crossing over her chest. “Ralph of Colchester was to be yer husband. If he was weak, he would still have been yer husband, and that makes all the difference. He’s no savage marauder who should have been a priest, a crazy man who holds ye prisoner and makes ye pray in his damp chapel until yer knees are cramped and bruised red.”
    â€œI wonder,” Daria mused aloud, ignoring her maid, “I do wonder if Ralph of Colchester will still wish to marry me. It’s a matter of the size of my dowry, I think, not the question of my virtue or my captor’s virtue. That and how much his father needs my coin. It’s an interesting question, though. Mayhap I’ll ask the earl.”
    That brought a louder shriek from Ena, and Daria lightly patted her arm. “Nay, I jest. Don’t carry on so.” She turned and walked to the narrow window, only a narrow arrow slit, actually, with a skin hanging above it to be lowered when the weather was foul. For the past three days the sun had shone down warm and bright.
    But Daria shivered. She stared down into the inner bailey of Tyberton Castle. It was a huge fortress, its denizens numbering into the