Read Online The High Sheriff of Huntingdon by Anne Stuart - Free Book Online Page B

he said as his eyes met Elspeth’s in the dimly lit room. There was an unspoken threat in them, and Elspeth wondered where her panic had dis appeared to. Perhaps she’d run so far and so fast that she could no longer fight him. If h e wanted children she’d at least b e expected to survive another nine months in reasonably s o u n d health. S h e should take that as a good sign.
    She could see the cut on the side of his face. It hadn’t been stitched, and it would leave a scar. One more thing he could blame on her, she thought, wanting to burrow down beneath the heavy fur throws that cov ere d the soft bed.
    He moved further into the tiny cottage with disdainful, elegant grace, entering the tiny bedroom, dwarfing it with his presence. “She’s the one, isn’t she?” he aske d almost absently. “White and black…”
    “ Aye,” his mother s a i d.
    “She’ll destroy me.”
    “Perhaps.”
    He moved closer to the bed. He was wearing a loose black shirt, black h o s e , and tall black boots. He looked impossibly e v i l, and his black-gloved h a n d reached out and took a strand of her pale hair. “She hardly looks lethal,” he said in a deliberately bored voice, which was belied by the g leam in his golden eyes.
    “If you can’t bring yourself to touch her,” his mother said, “I could brew some t e a for y ou as well. That is, if you don’t want her…”
    “Oh, I want her,” he said softly, dangerously.
    “Well,” said Morgana briskly, taking a step back. “Then that’s that. The marriage bed a w a i ts you. I’ve strewn it with lavender and tansy, wolf’s b ane and thyme. There’ll be a son from this night’s work, yo u’l l see.”
    He d i dn’t e ven g l a nc e her way. Slowly, he began to strip off his heavy black gloves, watching Elspeth’s expressionless face. “Make yourself s ca r c e, ” he said. “I’ve no desire for an audience.”
    “I expect you k n o w what you’re about, “ the old w i tc h cackled. “I’ve got some herbs to g a t h e r , and t h e y ’ r e best picked by t h e dark of the moon. Ma y h a p s I’ll head over toward the north ridge. Won’t be back till midday, or later.”
    He nodded, untying the laces of his b l a ck shirt, not moving as the door closed loudly behind the old woman. In the still night air they could hear her voice mixing with t h e sounds of the other night creatures, the cry of the owl, the song of the nightingale. She was muttering something in a singsong voice, familiar words that made no sense, and slowly they faded a w a y in the distance. And Elspeth was alone with her husband in the heart of the haunted forest.
    He sat down heavily on the end of the bed, not touching her, and began to strip off his tall riding boots. She watched him, wondering if there was any way to distract him from his goal. When he’d pulled off his boots he rose and looked at her, and the moonlight speared down through the h o l e in the r oof , hitting his midnight hair, giving the odd and totally inappropriate effect of a h a l o .
    “Why should I destroy you?” she asked suddenly, the first words s h e had dared speak.
    They halted him in his steady advance. “You couldn’t,” he said flatly.
    “Then w hy are you afraid of me?” Not the wisest c h oic e of words, but Elspeth had recently discovered she was very far from wise. After twenty-two years of practical, celibate living, during which she’d viewed men as overbearing tyrants who were at least tolerated, and at most shunned entirely, she was suddenly irrationally vul n er a ble to a man who s e e m e d to combine all the worst traits of the species. She hadn’t needed Morgana’s love philtre. S h e ’ d somehow managed to imbibe one of her own.
    “I’m not afraid of anyone,” he said. “Of anything of this earth or of other dimensions. My mother has seen to t h a t . It’s part of my power.”
    “What about your father?”
    He l a u g h e d softly. “Ah, yes, my father. The devil