Free Plenilune by Jennifer Freitag Page A

you native to this country?”
    “I am.”
    “Tell me, are there wolves in these parts?”
    “There are fox and red deer,” said the maid, slowly, consideringly, “but no wolves have yet got wind of the sheep we pasture on these slopes. Good-night, my lady.” The door clicked softly shut.
    Margaret stood on the ottoman with her hands clenched at her sides, cold but ignoring the cold for the low smoulder of velvet-soft anger that kept her warm inside. She had hated before—her mother and her sisters, and even her cousin in a small, shapeless kind of way—but never before had she hated like this, with a warm and passionate hatred, a hatred that like dragon-fire kept her alive inside.
    She slipped off the ottoman and stalked back to her vanity. It was a good face that stared darkly back at her, far different and fiercer than the face she had reflected on that noon before dinner. Anger had touched her cheeks with colour, anger had made the low golden flecks of her eyes stand out with a sparking snap.
    Well, Mother , she thought, I hope you are very happy now!
    The clock on the bureau read five to ten. Heaving up the mantle of a dressing gown about her shoulders, Margaret folded up in an armchair with The Tempest , for with her own temper up she did not feel at all tired. The room withdrew into itself, a little shell of gold candlelight around her where she sat, and she let the tiring word-figures dance across her vision to charm her into sleep.
    Under the quiet of the house there woke a sudden thunder-murmur of sound and she stopped reading, sitting up to listen. With a jewel-vividness she recalled the heart-wrenching howls of last night and the desolation with which she had answered the call. She sat poised on the edge of her seat, expecting to hear it again, her eyes fixed on the pictures around the walls. But nothing began to rattle, and the surf-murmur of angry sound rose and fell in muffled tones but never became the train-roar of last night. It was somehow less frightening thus and without turning back Margaret rose from the chair and crossed to the door, unlatching and opening it to look out on the dark hallway.
    It was no hell-hound crooning. From the direction of the library came the sound of men’s voices, men’s voices raised in a heated discussion. On carefully planted bare feet, Margaret left her room and stole closer, her eyes ever on the shadows of the hallway lest a servant step out and take her by surprise.
    She could hear Skander Rime’s words before she had reached the door.
    “She does not care for you, Rupert! There is not even a spark of affection in her for you.”
    And Rupert’s voice, low and panther-like: “I know what you are doing, Skander, and you had better stop it. I am a jealous man and I do not take kindly to people tampering with my things.”
    “Ah—!” Skander’s voice was momentarily choked off by his own incredulity. “She is not your thing—she is not your thing ! You see, this is exactly the sort of behaviour I was talking about. You look on her as though she were some kind of pawn: something for you to own, to move about to your own ends.”
    Rupert’s voice did not change, which made it somehow more terrible. “You do me very little credit, Skander. That’s very uncharitable of you.”
    “Charity!” There came a scornful snort. “What do you know of charity?”
    Unwilling to hear more, Margaret retraced her steps to her room and shut the door behind her, leaning against it, feeling at once sickly cold and furiously hot. With her head back against the roughness of her door, she stared unseeingly at the barred earth-light that came in through the cracks of her curtains. In the glow of her candles, the earth-light was very like the white claw-marks of a tiger on the floor.
    “I would not call her a precocious little chit. I would call her a force to be reckoned with.”
    She let out a shaky, uneasy breath. Her fingers, questing along the wood, found the cold iron