Free Shadowheart by Laura Kinsale Page B

door, which she herself had barred from within. The heavy rail was still in place. She blinked nervously. “How came you here?”
    “Talent,” he said. “And study.” He moved near, standing over her. Elayne stiffened as he touched her. He took her chin between his fingers, tilting her face up to him. She suffered his leisurely inspection, having no choice. He lost none of his inhuman perfection at closer range. His face was still that graven image of proud Lucifer, fallen from Heaven to stand over her and examine her with eyes as deep black and wickedly beautiful as the poppies.
    “I know you,” he said pensively. “Who are you?”
    She lowered her eyes. “Elena,” she said simply, using the name of her Italian christening, which had long ago transformed on English tongues to Elayne.
    She hoped it would sound common and unremarkable in this part of the world, the name of a girl who had no ransom value to anyone. But his hand fell away as if she had just uttered some dreadful iniquity. Like a priest probing a heretic under inquisition, he leaned closer, searching every inch of her face.
    “Who sent you?” he demanded.
    Elayne swallowed. She shook her head slightly. She was afraid—and yet she felt remote, as if she were not really in this chamber, but safe somewhere, watching from afar.
    He took her chin hard between his fingers. “Who?” He smiled with an affection that seemed warm and terrible at once. She stared at him. Though she had no intention of speaking, she felt the answer hover on her tongue, as if his smile alone could compel her.
    “Tell me now,” he said gently. “You must tell me.”
    “Lady Beatrice,” she whispered, clamping her lips closed against saying more.
    His black eyebrows rifted. “Nay, tell me who sent you. Who put you in her service?”
    “The countess,” Elayne mumbled. “I serve the countess.”
    “The Countess of Bowland?” he asked kindly, his voice very quiet. “Melanthe?”
    Elayne’s eyes widened. But he seemed now not so threatening, more human. He looked at her with a fondness that made regret well up inside her; it was the way she had longed for Raymond to look at her, with love and tenderness. It seemed that if she did not tell him what he wished to know, she would be wrong; unfeeling. “The countess,” she murmured. To gaze up at him made her dizzy. “She said …” She tried to remember, but all the voices of the past months seemed to clamor together in her head, a tumble of instruction and warning. “She said… she told me … trust no one.”
    She felt his hand tighten on her chin. He drew in air with a soft hiss. “Did she?”
    “I don’t know,” Elayne said in confusion. She put her hand on the bedpost. “I’m not sure.”
    He smiled, like the Devil speaking from the shadows. “Then trust me,” he murmured, or Elayne thought he did. She could not seem to see him clearly. He faded, or the light faded, or the shadows crept into her eyes. The lamps went dark, leaving her standing in the blackness, with nothing certain but the wooden carving beneath her fingers and the sound of Lady Beatrice’s snores.

    Under the influence of the hot southern atmosphere, the countess succumbed to a sleeping sickness. She would not rouse to sense except to complain weakly of her head aching, and to take drink and a little gruel. Elayne watched over her, worrying. She seemed to have no fever, even in this stifling heat. Indeed, she seemed cold and moribund, so Elayne tried to ask the Moorish girl for herbs to increase warmth and blood flow. She asked in every tongue that she knew. The girl only nodded agreeably and went away, returning with the same wine and white bread to soak in it. Elayne asked for a physician, and the girl nodded again. But no doctor came.
    Elayne sat in the window embrasure, where she could catch the breath of a cool breeze in the tower chamber. Their baggage had been returned, no doubt after being thoroughly searched for anything of value. It seemed nothing had been alluring enough to