The Lady of Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

fifteen years. Friend, mother, and teacher, she had instructed Meg in all the lore of the daughters of the earth, wise women gifted in the arts of healing and white magic.
    None was more gifted than the one acclaimed as the Lady of Faire Isle, a time-honored title bestowed upon the woman best suited to be the leader among the daughters of the earth in each generation. Meg had been humbled and honored beyond measure when Ariane had chosen her to be her successor.
    It had been a role Meg had not expected to assume for a good many years, as the title only passed upon the death of the previous Lady. But when her health had begun to fail, Ariane Deauville had broken with tradition and abdicated in Meg’s favor.
    “Call me selfish, my dear,”
Ariane had told her.
“But I want to spend whatever time I may have left with my husband and son, traveling to places I have only read of in books, learning the secrets of healing and lore of other countries.”
    Meg would never have dreamed of calling her friend selfish. No Lady had ever served Faire Isle and the daughters of the earth more devotedly than Ariane. If she could find a measure of peace and a cure for the illness that slowly devoured her, Meg could only wish her Godspeed.
    Yet that day last spring when Meg had stood upon the dock, smiling and waving until the ship had disappeared from view, she had blinked back tears. She had been overcome with grief and a panicked feeling of being left to don a pair of shoes her feet would never grow large enough to fill.
    She had striven hard to do so, grateful for the encouragementand support of Seraphine. But now when her friend wielded Ariane’s presumed wishes as a weapon, she could not help telling Seraphine.
    “Are you not the one who has been telling me that when any situation arises, I must stop trying to guess what Ariane would have done? I must learn to employ my own judgment.”
    “Not when you are wrong.”
    “You mean when I don’t agree with you.”
    “Isn’t that the same thing?” Seraphine demanded, then laughed. “Very well. Let us go find this foolish chit who claims to be beset with demons, so you can unbewitch her. With any luck, we may yet manage to avoid the storm and return to Faire Isle before dark. Although it would have been helpful if that idiot boy who came to beg your aid had waited to show the way.”
    “Poor Denys was far too anxious to return. It matters naught. Pernod is a small village and the girl’s family owns the local hostelry, the Laughing Dolphin. Mademoiselle Tillet will not be hard to find.”
    “Lead on, then.”
    Pernod, like many of the villages on the Breton coast, was inhabited largely by fishermen. Over the years, a rough track had been worn up the rocky beach. Seraphine’s boots were far better suited to the terrain than the clumsy pattens Meg had donned to protect her shoes.
    The comtesse had acquired a reputation at the French court as a woman of grace, charmingly seductive and full of a playful indolence. Seraphine, when she was on a mission, was an entirely different creature. Meg’s shorter legs were hard-pressed to keep pace with Seraphine’s lengthy strides.
    By the time they reached the point where the track widened into the lane through the village, Meg was panting alittle. As she had told Seraphine, Pernod was a small place, boasting little more than a score of dwellings, a tiny church, and a hostelry. At least the stout stone walls of the cottages provided a break from the wind, allowing Meg to ease her grip on her hood.
    The dusty lane was deserted, the village eerily quiet, but for the occasional banging of a shutter and the rustle of the trees. The silence rendered Meg uneasy. Given the hour, she would have expected to see fishermen returning with the day’s catch, young boys wending homeward from their toil in the common field, or distracted mothers shooing stray children inside to their supper.
    “What is this, some sort of ghost village? Where is everyone?”