Free Count Scar - SA by C. Dale Brittain, Robert A. Bouchard

enthusiastically, pink marble for the floors, with just a slightly rough texture, and green marble for the walls—wherever the walls showed amidst the hanging tapestries—polished until the stone seemed covered with a layer of glass. Here I spotted the source of the music, a little group of men playing on lute, recorder, and krumhorn. Out-of-season flowering plants stood on small tables throughout the room, and braziers tucked discreetly into corners warmed and softly perfumed the air. Men and women in brightly colored clothing stood in groups around the room. Most of the men, I noticed, had velvet gloves thrust in their belts. Light came from glittering candelabra suspended from the high ceiling.
    The duke introduced me to a half dozen young women, all of whom wore silk dresses cut much closer to the body and much lower over the bust than anything my sister-in-law had ever worn.
    Without my sword I felt awkward and half naked myself. Their smooth white necks were encircled with strands of gold and pearl. All smiled to meet the new master of Peyrefixade and averted their eyes politely from my scar, but they gave no immediate sign of "flocking around," as my servants seemed to expect they would. None of them were the duke's daughter Arsendis.
    And then I saw her on the far side of the room, recognizable at once from her portrait. She was fully grown, perhaps a year or two older, I would have thought, than the age at which a duke would normally marry off his daughter. Rather than having her curly black hair decently covered—as even the ladies I had just met did—she wore it loose around her shoulders, covered only by a thin gold net set with tiny pearls.
    She was deeply absorbed in conversation with a middle-aged lord, smiling up at him, keeping her dark uptilted eyes intently on his face. A few yards away, looking at the man just as intently but scowling instead of smiling, was a knight about my age. Arsendis ignored him pointedly. Jealousy, I thought. It looked as though the duke's daughter already had two suitors even without me.
    Brother Melchior, at my elbow, surprised me by whispering, "The young ducissa refused the count whom her father chose for her two years ago. Three men so far have been killed in duels over her."
    She left the current suitors readily enough, however, when her father called her, and crossed toward us with a swirl of blue silk, giving a saucy smile over her shoulder to the knight she had been ignoring.
    "My daughter Arsendis, Count Caloran," said the duke formally. "I trust you will welcome him warmly for my sake, my dear."
    I went down on one knee—careful not to trip myself on my new shoes' long toes—to kiss her hand gallantly, as Bruno had informed me he had heard southern men used to do when visiting the countess at Peyrefkade. This put my eyes level with her breasts, very full for a woman so slim, and apparently on the verge of breaking out through the low neck of her dress. Flustered, I scrambled back to my feet and fixed my eyes on her face.
    A definite look of mischief lurked at the corner of her red-painted mouth. Back in the north, only the loose women who welcomed merchant travelers to town or who followed the armies painted their lips. Amusement glinted in her dark eyes, as though she understood very well why I was flustered.
    It did not help that she pressed herself briefly against me, standing on tiptoe to plant a kiss on my right cheek— the cheek without the scar. "Welcome to our home, Count Caloran of Peyrefixade.
    We are very glad to have your addition grace our company," she murmured, the polite hostess, then glided away without giving me a chance to answer, to speak again with her middle-aged lord.
    For a second I stood stock still, expecting the duke to challenge me for daring such intimacy with his daughter. Bruno would back me up, but I wasn't sure I could count on my knights in a situation like this, and Bruno and I would not get far opposing steel with velvet.

    But