For My Lady's Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

he will have and damn the price.
    She only
wished
she might ensorcell him, and turn him to a toad.
    Tonight she must act—this public gallantry of his could not be allowed to
    go on without check. Before the banquet ended, she must spurn him so that he
    and no one else could doubt it. When she looked out upon the trestles, she
    saw the assassin who watched her, tame and plump in her own green-and-silver
    livery, but in truth another spawn of the Riata family, one of the secret
    wardens set upon her. Only by the mastery of long practice did she maintain
    her cold serenity against the hard beat of her heart.
    The food arrived with full pomp and glitter, loaded onto cloths of purest
    linen, the procession winding endlessly among the tables. Lancaster offered
    her the choice dainties from his own fingers. She brought herself to the
    point of rudeness in response to him—by God’s self, must he be so open about
    it, this determined public pursuit in the face of her expressed displeasure,
    when he might have had the sense to send his envoy by night and secrecy to
    measure her willingness?
    But he thought it agreeable sport, she saw, a lovers’ game of disinterest
    and affectation. He full expected that she would have him. She had told him
    more than once that she would have no man, but none here would blame him for
    his confidence. It was a brilliant match. Their lands marched together in
    the north of England: the sum of their possessions would rival the king’s.
    By this alliance the duke could make her the greatest lady in Britain—and
    she could make him greater yet than that.
    It was not passion alone that drove him to these smiles and hot looks.
    She touched him lightly when he leaned too close, to remind him that they
    were in the court’s view. He grinned, sitting back in obedience, but a
    moment later he had leaned near again, grasping her hand possessively,
    holding it in his upon the table in a gesture as clear as a proclamation.
    The Riata stood up from his seat, mingling with the servants as they passed
    up and down the hall.
    Melanthe made no move to disengage herself. It was a game of hints and
    inklings between her and the Riata’s man— a language of act and counteract.
    He moved closer, warning her, reminding her of her agreement with Riata and
    her peril if she thought to wed any man, especially such a one as Lancaster.
    She merely looked at the duke’s fingers entwined with hers on the white
    cloth, refusing to show fear. Her heart was beating too hard, but she held
    to her aloof composure, asking Lancaster for a loaf of trimmed pandemain
    from the golden platter just set down before them, so that he must let go
    her hand to serve her properly.
    When she looked up, she saw the Riata lingered in a closer place even
    though the duke had released her. Verily, Lancaster’s hopes must be crushed,
    or she would be fortunate to see the light of another morning.
    Gryngolet moved uneasily on her perch at Melanthe’s elbow, the falcon’s
    silver bells ringing as she half roused to the sweeping flutter of a sparrow
    that still flew, panicked, among the roof beams. Noble stewards clustered
    and moved behind and before the dais, attending the duke and his guests,
    trimming bread, carving quail: knives and poison and color— she could not
    keep them all in her eye at once, as adept as she had made herself at such
    things. The Riata could kill her as well before the entire hall as in some
    dark passage. It was too dangerous and open a position; she had not chosen
    it; she had tried to avoid it, but Lancaster’s ambitions had overwhelmed her
    subtleties. She must sit at his high table and deny him to his face.
    She had misjudged. These reckless English—she saw that she had been too
    accustomed to the feints and lethal shadows of the Italian courts to recall
    the power of plain English boldness. She would be fortunate to find her way
    to her chambers alive in this castle of unfamiliar