Free For My Lady's Heart by Laura Kinsale Page A

dagger, the yet-unwritten quitclaim was all that
    preserved her life. It perfected the Riata’s entitlement, giving them the
    advantage over Navona. The Riata wanted their paper precedence, but Melanthe
    was not fool enough to think they would not kill her and forego it if they
    suspected her treachery.
    The true house of Monteverde had already died with Ligurio. She had not
    given him an heir, only a black-haired daughter, and even that poor hope was
    lost, smothered in the nursery. He had done what he could to protect
    Melanthe. He had taught her what she knew: subtlety and corruption, Greek
    and Latin and astrology, charisma and cunning, strength—he had taught her
    the lion and the fox; the chameleon of all colors.
    All colors but white. Ligurio had trained her to trust no one and
    nothing, to lie of everything to everyone. And so at the end she had lied to
    him, too. He had died in the belief that she would take refuge in the veil,
    retiring to the abbey he had founded in the hills of Tuscany, safe in a
    comfortable retreat with Monteverde’s lands and fortune rendered up to the
    mother church, invoking all the heavenly power and earthly greed of the men
    of God. She knew the bitter gall it had been to him to see his house die,
    but better passed to Heaven than into the hands of his enemies.
    Her last gift to Ligurio had been her promise to do as he wished. Gift
    and lie. She had loved him like a father, but he was gone. She betrayed both
    Heaven and her husband. The church would not have Monteverde, or Melanthe—but
    neither would Navona or Riata have them, either.
    She could not live a nun. She could not spend her days praying for her
    dead. They were too many—be likely she would not be able to remember all
    their names, and would get into a great argument with God over the matter,
    and expire of black melancholy.
    Nay, if she must live inside walls for her protection, then let them be
    walls of her own choosing, this one time.

    The tournament procession poured out into the great level meadow where a
    field of color lined the entry to the lists: vivid tents, some orange, some
    blue and scarlet, some formed like small castles flying pennants from their
    multitude of peaks. Each bore the owner’s arms upon a shield hung at the
    entrance. In the wake of the heralds’ trumpets the parade moved past weapons
    and armor, caparisoned horses, and squires bowing deep in honor of Prince
    Edward and his brother.
    Melanthe received her homage also, but the cheers dulled as she passed.
    When she halted before a tent of green trimmed in silver, the voices nearby
    suspended entirely, creating a void, a space of silence within the music and
    the throng.
    Her green knight stood beside his war-horse, outfitted in full armor,
    sending silver sparks into the sunshine from the green metal. As she drew
    up, he bowed on one knee, his bared head bent so that she saw only the
    tousle of black hair, his mail habergeon and the tan leather-padded edge of
    his gambeson against his neck. “My liege lady,” he said.
    “Rise ye, beloved knight,” she murmured formally.
    With an unmusical sound, the metallic note of armor, he came to his feet.
    She extended her free hand. Without raising his eyes to hers, he moved near
    and went down again on one leg to offer his knee as a pillion stone.
    Melanthe stepped from the saddle to the ground, lightly touching his bare
    hand for an instant before Cara hurried up to offer her support.
    The knight rose. Melanthe soothed Gryngolet with one finger as he caught
    his horse away from his hunchbacked servant. Cara melted back from close
    range when the knight led the huge destrier toward them, its caparison of
    emerald silk and dragonflies rippling at the hem as the war-horse moved.
    Having prompted this little play herself, Melanthe saw with wry relief
    that the twisted unicorn’s horn, a yard long, had been replaced by a less
    threatening pointed cone upon the