Read Online Winter Moon by Mercedes Lackey - Free Book Online

as a pampered pet, and perhaps go on to sire more doves from the lines of Highclere. But the spell was strictly one way, nor would it have been wise for her to be looking for messages among her father’s doves. She could never be sure when a message would arrive, and for one to fall into anyone else’s hands but hers would be a disaster.
    With the dove away, she turned her attention to the chicken yard, then the kennel and stables. All were immaculate, but she expected nothing less from her father. Firstly, he was a man with a powerful sense of order, and secondly, there were visitors to impress. Perhaps the Prince of Jendara was unlikelyto venture up here to look at ordinary hounds and horses, but in case he did, Lord Ferson would want stables and kennels to be ready for him.
    There was no mews here; the lords of the sea-keeps generally kept no birds of prey. The ducks that swam in the sea, coots and scups and the like, tasted like the worst of fish and fowl combined. Not much in the way of game birds populated Lord Ferson’s lands, and even if they had, they didn’t vary greatly enough in taste from dove, pigeon, and chicken for him to care to bother. And at Highclere, no one hunted for pleasure. This was a working, quasi-military keep; there were no highborn fellows idling about. Hunts were purposeful, for meat, and conducted with the intention of spending as little time on them as possible. Boar and deer were tracked, netted, and, if deemed “fair” game, quickly dispatched. Rabbits and hares were snared. The gamekeepers brought the catch in to be stored, and that was the end of it; Lord Ferson himself rarely participated.
    So the kennels here were nothing like those at Viridian Manor; there were coursing hounds, calm and purposeful, but aloof. Nor were the stables full of anything but sturdy workhorses. Still, Moira had enough of sea-keep blood in her that she had never really enjoyed hunting and riding the way most of the other girls fostered with the Countess had. Riding was a way to get from here to there quickly, and as for hunting, why spend all day pursuing something your gamekeeper could take down in an hour? The only thing she had really enjoyed was falconry,and then it was in watching the swift and agile birds, riding the winds like the embodiment of wind itself.
    She followed the kitchen maids with their burdens back down into the keep, noting as the door to the upper stairs closed behind her that the sound of the waves had intensified. The storm would arrive soon, possibly around dinnertime.
    She wondered how the Prince of Jendara would like it. The Khaleemate was not noted for weather.
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    The storm broke over the keep as she was descending into the Great Hall for dinner. She had spent the remainder of her afternoon going over the contents of the chests her maid had hunted up out of storage, and they had been surprising. Her own mother had not been noted for her needlework, preferring to cut bands of fine work from old, outworn garments and stitch them with nearly invisible stitches to new ones, rather than embroider anything of her own. Sometimes, when the sea brought salvage in the way of clothing or fabric, she would use the ornaments from those, or carefully cut long strips of brocade to hem into trim. But Lord Ferson’s next wives, it appeared, had been expert needlewomen. The chests contained fine linen and silk, hemmed strips of frieze for covering with counted stitches, and skeins of fine, beautifully dyed wool for tapestry and the heavy embroidery called crewel. The smaller casket held embroidery silks and gold and silver bullion meant for a truly skilled worker with the needle—and golden needles. The latterwere not for show—a needle made of gold would never snag on even the thinnest of silk, but pass through it smoothly and easily.
    In this, Moira was not like her mother. She enjoyed needlework, and had brought her skills up to a level where even the Countess