Lord of the Mist Read Online Free PDF Page A

love, they’ll bring great joy to your life.” Mayhap
the only joy .
    “Whereas husbands have other demands.” Oriel cleared her
throat. “Cristina, do you know of…that is…I have a lady friend.” She worried
the pomander’s tassel so that Cristina knew she would need to repair it before
the day was out. “This friend,” Oriel continued, “she and her husband wish a
child.”
    She leapt up and began again to pace. “Much as you wish a
child.” She then rushed back to the bench and sank down once more, her ivory
skirts in a crush beneath her. “My friend is ashamed of her failure, you see.
She has not conceived despite many years of marriage, and,” her hands fell
still on the shredded tassel “she fears her husband’s desire for her wanes as
she fails in her duty.”
    How Oriel’s words echoed Cristina’s own circumstances. Each
time she had failed to conceive or had lost a child through miscarriage or
death, Simon had grown a bit more distant, taken her less often.
    “In what way might I help your friend, my lady?” Cristina
kept her gaze on her needlework. She feared embarrassing the good lady, for
surely it was Lady Oriel of whom they spoke? She found most people covered
their secret desires behind some “friend’s” need. Too much emotion colored
Oriel’s words for it to be otherwise.
    “Have you some potion that will stimulate…that is…will help
a woman to conceive?” she finished in a rush.
    Cristina laid her work aside. She lifted Felice from the
basket, held her close, and took in the babe’s innocent scent. “Women are
forever seeking to please men, are they not? When will men begin to seek to
please the women?”
    Oriel shot to her feet and gave a laugh tinged, Cristina
thought, with bitterness. “Men. They have no need to please a woman. There are
plenty of us about should one fall short of the mark. But have you anything? If
my friend took it now, it might prevent…that is…my friend does not yet think
her husband has strayed, but his disappointment is deep. Will it not soon send
him to another, worthier woman?”
    “If a man wants an heir, he needs his wife,” Cristina
pointed out.
    “Aye, but if a man seeks a son and the wife never conceives,
the bed becomes a place of…duty. Surely that alone will send a man to another?”
    Cristina nodded and rose. “I know of several things your
friend could try.”
    “Thank you.”
    The sudden shine of happiness on Lady Oriel’s face saddened
Cristina. “No matter what I make, my lady, it is still in God’s hands.”
    Lady Oriel no longer listened; she was gone in a rustle of
skirts. Cristina took a moment to pack her needlework into her bag, then lifted
Felice onto her shoulder. The sweet pillows she was stitching could wait. The
husband-luring potion could not.
    As she left Oriel’s chamber of peace and beauty, she cast a
last look at the draped opulence of Oriel’s bed and thought of how she had
taken many potions herself and still had no living child. Yet, she had given
them to others and watched them work their magic. “Mayhap,” she whispered, “my
lady shall lay in her golden bed and be lucky.”
    * * * * *
    Cristina leaned her palms flat on her work table and sighed.
She did not have what she needed for Lady Oriel’s love potion. She could not
ask Simon to secure the ingredients. He would question her endlessly as to
their purpose, then scoff at a belief in such potions.
    Barren women had only themselves to blame for their failure,
he had so often said. Cristina tiptoed to where Felice lay nestled in her
basket. “Felice, we’ll need to spend the day gathering.” She glanced at the
open window. The morning sun shone brightly. “‘Tis best we make use of the fine
weather.”
    A few moments later, garbed in a dun mantle, Felice in a
sling across her chest, Cristina knocked lightly on the castellan’s counting
room door. It opened immediately, but only a few inches. Luke’s bold grin
greeted her. His hair was