Sweet Enchantress Read Online Free PDF

stories of Montlimoux’s past grandeur.
    In short, the Comté of Montlimoux stood for all that Dominique was, all that went before her, and, in her mind, all that was to come.
    Until Paxton of Wychchester had ridden into her mountaintop principality. She should have taken better heed of the beggar’s underlying appearance of brute force that first evening.
    Her trea d measured her chamber’s perimeters in one direction, then she would pivot to retrace her steps in the other. Her maids-in-waiting glanced at one another furtively. “This cannot be happening,” she muttered. “No warning. No declaration of war. The miscreant just appears with his entourage of soldiers and demands that the chateau and village quarter them.”
    Marthe, one of her mai ds-in-waiting, glanced up from the wall hanging she embroidered. "What does he mean to do, my lady?”
    "He means to take full control,” Iolande said, as she quietly entered the room. She sniffled in indignation. "His aide, Captain Bedford, has instructed me to bring the demesne’s ledger to his Lord Lieutenant. The man wants a full account of names and manors within your comital domain.”
    So, even Montlimoux ’s revenues, such as they were, he meant to sequester! Palms rubbing together, Dominique resumed pacing, circumventing the stool on which another maid-in-waiting sat. The curly-locked Beatrix dropped her needlepoint in her lap and, pale, looked up at Dominique. "Does my Lord Lieutenant intend to evict us from the chateau?"
    Abruptly, Dominique halted. One eyebrow arched. “My lord?" Already the man had usurped her authority. But would he go that far? Put her and her household out into the streets? By her troth, how she loathed the oaf with his cursed abundant dignity!
    She swung about. "Summon Bal dwyn.” Within minutes, the Knight Templar lumbered to her chamber door. She shooed the others away and directed him toward one of the low stools. Sitting, he was still almost as tall as she.
    Never had they consulted in her private chamber, but neither her library nor the Justice Room were now to be considered reliable places for her to conduct private business. "What do you know about this man, Baldwyn? Our Lord Lieutenant?" The words on her tongue were as tart as vinegar.
    He clasped his hands between his s pread legs and emitted a heavy sigh. "It’s hard to decipher the man. You know he was at your court earlier this month?”
    Her lips compressed. "I well remember.”
    "He came then as a mendicant, now as a soldier. But he led me to believe he also follows the dictum of the Church.”
    The Templar fairly spit out the last word. The pope, in league with the late Philip IV, had envied the Knights Templars ’ wealth and had had them suppressed. Many of the Templars had been burned at the stake. Baldwyn's antipathy for the Church was shared by Iolande, who, with the rest of the Jews, had been expelled from France about the same time. They were but two of the thousands who had learned it did not serve to thwart the power of the pope.
    These two outcasts, the Jewess and the Tem plar, had raised Dominique as their own from the time she was a toddler. Until she had reached her majority, the two had served as co-regents for the county. Despite their loving efforts, she could not shake the feeling of being abandoned, unwanted, so very alone. Perhaps it was because her parents, by electing to harbor the Jewess and the Templar, had chosen principle and death over her. So, there was a vacuum inside her despite Iolande's and Baldwyn's abiding love for her.
    Often, she had wished them m arried, imagined them as her parents, of whom she had but little recollection. But her nursemaid and the Templar were recalcitrantly independent and had no wish for such bondage. In fact, they seemed merely to tolerate each other. She sometimes imagined herself as they were now, old and lonely. It saddened her. Was there not more to this solitary journey through life?
    ‘ Tour true opinion,