Free Plenilune by Jennifer Freitag

in a forest, a pool whose depths she could not guess.
    “If my lady is ready,” said Rhea, “we will do something with her hair first, and then we will see to the measurements.”
    “Your lady is not ready,” Margaret replied archly, breezing past the maid. “But that does not much matter in this case, does it?”
    Rhea said nothing, though in the reflection on the mirror’s face her eyes seemed darker still and still more secret, and for a long while there was nothing but silence between lady and maid as the maid unpinned the lady’s hair and began to brush and braid it. Margaret thought that if she shut her eyes she might be able to pretend it was Amy brushing her hair, and not this strange, witching maid at all—but then the thought seemed inexplicably treacherous, and she did not shut her eyes.
    Rhea finished and took a step back, hands at her sides. “If my lady is ready,” she said, still in that same low, husky tone which was like the warmth of earth, “we will take the measurements now.”
    Margaret was not ready, but this time she did not say so. She undressed and stood rigidly on an ottoman, moving when told to move, holding still when told to hold still, staring ever straight before her with the constant movement of her heartbeat just on the rim of her vision. It was most pounding when Rhea stepped around and looped the measuring thread around her bust and pulled it tight, tight like a noose, and it was something of a struggle not to throw both off. There was one last hesitating moment as Rhea took the measurement, then the thread fell away and the maid stepped back, saying,
    “Small wonder that the master took a fancy to you. You have an excellent figure.”
    Margaret looked down and around at the cool, dark eyes of the maid. “Is it resentment that I hear?” she asked daringly, cuttingly. “And was your figure to his fancy too?”
    The eyes flashed back at her with a dark, mirthless laughter. “No…but it might have, had it been in my mind to make it so.” She broke off her gaze to turn to the table and begin wrapping up the contents of her sewing kit. “But I am my lord’s maid, and it is well enough to me that you are fit in his eyes.” And suddenly she turned back on Margaret with a look like anger. “Mind that you are sure you do not disappoint him.”
    She was tall-seeming still, for all that Margaret stood on an ottoman and was some ten inches her superior already. A dark chill crept over Margaret, and not merely because she stood in a room that was feeling autumn in its shadows: there was a likeness between Rhea’s look and that which Rupert gave slywise to Skander: a dark, half-murderous look that ill-bore reproach and hindrance. But Rhea was only a maid, so Margaret said scornfully, “Well, I am not your lord’s maid, and as fit as I may be in his eyes he is not fit in mine.”
    The young woman seemed to retreat back into the earthy dark of her own eyes; it was as though a veil were dropped between the two of them, and Rhea was suddenly some distance off, though she stood just below Margaret. “Mayhap it is,” she said coolly, “that you are blind.”
    The hot colour flushed in Margaret’s cheeks. Not even in a neighbour’s house had she ever suffered such insolence from a maid. But the Norman in her, which had long ago mingled with her Saxon Coventry blood, forbade her from rising to the blow. She withdrew into herself, giving back look for look, and watched the maid pack up her kit and retire to the door.
    At the door she turned, head up, eyes hooded like a merlin’s. “Will my lady be needing any more assistance tonight?”
    “Your lady will not.”
    Rhea smiled mirthlessly. “I did not think so.”
    “Stay a moment,” Margaret said suddenly.
    Rhea, her hand upon the latch, stayed obediently, but there was no light of obedience in her eyes.
    Margaret sought her words carefully, and all the while made herself to appear careless. “I am going hunting tomorrow. Are