Read Online The Falcon Throne (The Tarnished Crown Series) by Karen Miller - Free Book Online Page B

goodfather Blane hanker after the girl because she was his dead daughter’s child, or did he see her as a thing of value to be traded? It was possible. The man was a wealthy merchant, after all.
    If his care is genuine and I gift the girl’s wardship to a lord other than Bartrem, then I might well be strewing stones in my own path. But if I gift the girl to myself…
    It was a tempting thought. Liam would need a wife one day. Or if not Liam, then the next son Argante gave him. Surely Master Blane wouldn’t cry foul to see his daughter’s daughter in the care of Clemen’s duke. Such an alliance would sate any crude ambition–or deafen him to Bartrem’s cries, if family matters were his only care.
    And a rich merchant made family by advantageous marriage would surely be most convenient.
    “Your Grace.” Bartrem’s voice was dropped to a pleading whisper, almost lost in the minstrels’ music and the dancers’ merriment. “Thania is all I have left of my dear Mathilde. I beg you, be merciful.”
    The man was a fool. Harald flicked his fingers. “Very good, Bartrem. I shall think on what you’ve said. For now you should forget your sorrows and join us in a dance.”
    Defeated, Bartrem bowed. “Alas, Your Grace, my heart is too heavy for dancing.”
    “Then find a more smiling face in a cup of wine. We are merry here. Would you spoil that?”
    “Never, Your Grace.”
    As Bartrem withdrew, Harald looked for his wife. Tired of Udo, and who wouldn’t be, Argante was dancing with Scarwid. Feeling his gaze upon her, she dropped Scarwid’s hand. Smiled and trod the minstrels’ spritely music towards her husband.
    Harald felt his body stir anew. Young enough to be his daughter, Argante, but what did that matter? It was her youth that gave him Liam, and would give him Liam’s brothers. Youth gave her firm tits and silken skin and lust enough to ride him to a bull’s roar. His heart, which yet beat too fast, beat faster still as her youth and her tits and her lust danced her to him, hands reaching, eyes dark with sweaty promise.
    “Your Grace,” she said sweetly. “You’ve not yet danced with me. For shame. What will the court say? That I am wilted, and you are tiring?”
    He cursed his heart, unreliable, and the stern-faced Lepetto leech. He wouldn’t fuck her now, but he would dance with her… and in the dancing every man and woman here would see the fucking to come later. They’d see their duke virile, the father of many living sons. The whispers would fall silent, the wondering gazes shift to someone else. Abandoning his chair, Harald caught Argante in his arms, held her in the proper way of the jaunty
craka
, away from his chest so she couldn’t feel his cursed, stuttering heart.
    She was laughing, her long honey-brown hair beneath the gold wire-and-pearl headdress bound tight to the fine bones of her skull, shimmering in the light of one hundred burning candles. Her almond eyes, tip-tilted and dappled hazel, shone brilliant in her fashionably pale face.
    “Come!” she cried, dropped-pearl earrings swaying as her be-ringed fingers beckoned to the near-score unimportant northern lords and theirladies who ate his food and drank his wine, who owed him whatever he decided to take. “We haven’t yet danced our joy for the duke’s son, and we must, else we anger whatever mischievous spirits yet dwell here. Those who’ve not been chased away!”
    Their obedient laughter answered her, and soon after the soft sound of heels kissing the Great Hall’s red-and-white tiled floor. Harald laughed too, because he was watched, because–despite the cordial and the dangerous charm–his chest pounded with a dull pain that never quite ceased. He danced for his heir and wished that Roric danced with them. He could pass Argante to his scrupulous, agreeable cousin and not a man in the hall would blink.
    High above them in his nursery, in his charm-covered cradle, little Liam slept. Heart thudding with pain, with love as