The Spell-Bound Scholar (6 page)

Quicksilver rode into the courtyard with five warrior women behind her. As a concession to her fiance, they wore trousers and jerkins of stout brown broadcloth with cuirasses and greaves—Geoffrey had been so worried for her safety that he had threatened to escort her everywhere if she did not wear a little armor, and something to protect her fair skin from thorns and briars. Much though she loved the notion of having him with her wherever she went, Quicksilver loved even more being able to rise and go whenever she wished, so she wore tin clothes to please him. Besides, she would never have admitted it, but trousers did make for more comfortable riding than bare legs.

She dismounted, looking about her with a frown, but saw only Cordelia hurrying up to her. "Where is that gadabout brother of yours?'' she demanded, then remembered her manners. "Hail, lady."

"Hail to you, too, lady and captain." Cordelia stopped beside her and drew breath. "Your fiance has gone with mine— or mine with him, more accurately
."
She laid a hand on Quicksilvers arm. "Rinse the dust from your face and come into the garden. We shall have a glass of wine while I tell you the manner of it."

Quicksilver frowned, but considered only a moment before

she turned back to her squadron. 'Take your ease while you may, ladies. We may ride again ere long."

Fifteen minutes later, with Quicksilver washed, perfumed, and luxuriating in a silken gown, they sat in the walled garden beneath the solar. It was fifty feet square, crowded with curving flower beds on the sides, a fountain surrounded by more flowers in the center, and fruit trees espaliered against the walls. Half a dozen gardeners were at work, still planting new seedlings and dividing bulbs.

The two young women sat sipping spring wine and discussing the perfidies of young knights-errant who go haring off to save the peasantry with no thought to the ladies they leave behind.

"They have both gone gallivanting, then?" Quicksilver asked.

"Aye, to save a damsel in distress."

"Oh, have they indeed?" Quicksilver's eye glittered with jealousy. "And did not wait for me? How rude of them! Was the damsel comely?"

"She was, underneath the dust of her journey and the ashes of her hamlet—but I think they took little notice of that. They were fired with zeal to protect a whole village."

"That, at least, is worthy," Quicksilver admitted. "Still, they were fools not to bid you fly above to watch over them."

"Indeed," Cordelia said, her lips tight.

"Well, I shall rest an hour, then don my armor again and ride after them." Quicksilver tossed off the rest of her glass and refilled it.

"I am not sure that would be the wisest course," Cordelia said slowly.

"Wisest?" Quicksilver frowned. "With a baron and all his men to set about them? Surely they will need every sword they can find!"

"True, but surely Geoffrey can disable or confuse many of them with his magic," Cordelia said, "and there is always the chance that this baron, no matter how unscrupulous he is, will have the wisdom to heed the words of the heir apparent."

"I would say it was more apparent that he would give

Alain the air!" Quicksilver eyed her future sister-in-law narrowly. ' 'Surely you do not say that simply because they have not asked our help means that we should not give it!"

"I am not truly worried about their health," Cordelia said. "Besides, should they be truly outnumbered, Geoffrey can summon me, and I may surely fly there quickly enough. Moreover, Gregory can be by him in an instant."

"Gregory is bound to escorting that hussy Moraga," Quicksilver reminded her, then looked past Cordelia to a gray-haired gardener. "Come, fellow, why choke on your own laughter? Let it out—and while you are about it, share the jest with us."

Cordelia turned in surprise, then frowned at the man's mirth. "How are you called, fellow?"

"Why, Tom Gardener, milady." The man knelt up straight and pulled his cap off his head. Then his face buckled with humor again and he dropped his gaze.

"We must be amusing indeed," Quicksilver observed.

"I shall remember what I have said, to divert Their Majesties," Cordelia replied with sarcasm, then turned back to Tom Gardener. "Speak, sirrah! Is our concern for our fiances so amusing as all that?"

The old man managed to choke down his glee long enough to say, "Aye, milady, for I doubt not that the prince and Lord Geoffrey are equal to a country baron's band of thugs. Nevertheless, giving succor to a village is the smallest part of their reason for going there."

Quicksilver gave him a long stare, then turned back to Cordelia. "We are up against a male plot." To Tom Gardener she said, "Explain, viellard! What do the prince and the knight truly plan?"

"Why, naught but what they have said," Tom answered, all innocence. "Yet any old man can tell why they have really ridden away."

"Can he indeed?" Storm clouds gathered over Quicksilver's brow. "Then the old man can tell the young women, and speedily, if he cares for his backside!"

"Surely, milady." Tom couldn't completely throttle his smile. " 'Tis simply and plainly that young men must ever

be proving themselves worthy of their ladies, and the more beautiful the ladies, the more the young men must prove themselves."

Quicksilver gave him a long, level look, then turned back to Cordelia. "There might be something in what he says."

"Aye, the dear fools!" Cordelia smiled, her eyes filling. "Then, Tom Gardener, tell us what would hap if we came to their rescue."

"Why, lady, you would prove that they have no worth!"

"How silly!" Quicksilver scoffed. "Any woman can see their virtues!"

"Do you truly?" Tom Gardener challenged. "Would you, if you had to save them from their own folly?" Quicksilver started to answer, but he kept talking. "Even if you protested that you did not think less of them for it, the young men would never believe you. Indeed, rather than prove their worth, you would have proved their lack."

"Men are foolish in their pride," Cordelia reminded Quicksilver.

Tom Gardener started to say something else but choked it down and turned back to his bulbs.

"What had you in mind?" Quicksilver demanded. "Speak, sirrah!"

"Why, only to ask if women have no pride that makes them think themselves worthy of their men." Tom broke into soft whistling as his earth-covered hands deftly parted lily bulbs, set one aside, and began to replant the other.

"I think we shall ignore his temerity and his question with it." Cordelia wondered briefly if the issue was one she should really consider, but set it aside as ridiculous.

"Still, we should not ignore his advice."

"I gave no advice!" Tom Gardener said quickly.

"I suppose that is trie, to a lawyer," Cordelia allowed.

"Aye," said Quicksilver. "He did only answer our questions."

"If they could be truly answered," Cordelia added. "Still, the point is worth considering. Give answer again, Tom Gardener—do the boys not truly wish to be free of our presence, of the velvet manacles they perceive us to be?"

"
All young men need some time away from their beloveds now and then," Tom protested, hedging, "to restore the intensity of their loves. Have you never heard that absence makes the heart grow fonder?"

"
Aye, fonder of another wench," Quicksilver said darkly.

"
Not if they truly love us." Cordelia laid her hand on Quicksilver's, smiling complacently.
"
Advice or not, what he says is well spoken."

"
He might have scored a point or two," Quicksilver reluctantly admitted.

Cordelia nodded.
"
If what he says is true, we have only to decide whether we can trust our boys." She raised a questioning glance to Quicksilver. "Or do you truly think that, after he has come to know you, no other woman could hold Geoffrey's attention for more than an hour or two?"

"
Even one could be an hour too long," Quicksilver said darkly. "Still, he is not apt to dally in the midst of a battle." She gave Cordelia a challenging stare.
"
What of you, sister-to-be? Are you so sure of your swain as all that?"

"
0h, yes," Cordelia answered with a small, very satisfied smile.
"I
think I can trust him, whether he likes it or not."

The old gardener turned his back as he studiously grafted a twig onto a rose root.

It was time for the big guns. Moraga had tried being nice, she had tried being inviting, she had tried being romantic, and all she'd had from Gregory was a sermon against premarital sex! As though that mattered. Her teachers had convinced her that what all men really wanted was sex without consequences or commitments, that the woman they most wanted was the one who would spread her sheets for him, then bid him a cheery farewell in the morning, so she set about giving Gregory more than he had ever known he wanted.

She took her time arranging her next projection, fashioning a form straight out of the most extravagant adolescent dream and a face that would have launched eleven hundred ships (she had a notion Helen of Troy had gone in too much for beauty and not enough for the erotic). Sloe-eyed, diaphanously gowned, and cherry-lipped, she took up her stance just around a bend in the road from Gregory, struck her most voluptuous pose, and waited.

Gregory went around the bend and froze stiff, staring. The horse, not affected by human standards of beauty, sailed straight ahead toward the reef of femininity lying in wait for the frail barque that was Gregory, propelled by a tidal wave of hormones.

"Prithee, kind sir," the vision purred, "come down to rest a while with me."

Gregory tried (and failed) to pull his eyes back into their sockets and stammered, "I thank you, damsel, but I must forge ahead."

"How unfair to go onward!" The fantasy pouted. "I, sir, am Honey, and all the sweetness that a man could crave. Will you not descend and taste of me?"

The blatantness of the invitation rocked Gregory. "I—I have a mission. ..."

"You will be missing more than your mission could mean."

"It is a trust and a quest," Gregory stammered, "on which I must wend. ..."

"That you went not with this witch will be a regret you may trust with no question." Honey reached up to stroke his cheek, leaving lines of tingling behind as she drew her fingertips down to his lips. "What else could be so important? Pass an hour with me, sir, and it will sustain you the rest of your life!"

"Sustain ... I must... my burden. ..."

"A bird in the hand will sustain you far better than travel." Her fingertips trailed down his chest, parting his robe as they went, leaving a trail of fire as they touched his hand.

"I cannot bear..."

"Then I shall bear you." Honey tugged gently and his hand followed under the filmy fabric, where she molded it to her, then drew it forward, shuddering with the pleasure of his caress.

But he felt it too keenly; alarm shot through him, waking him from the erotic trance. He remembered who he sought

and why, paid attention to the woman's thoughts, not her body, and recognized the characteristic tinge, the signature that let him recognize Finister more clearly than sight.

"Do I seem too good to be true?" the vision asked him. "I assure you, I cannot be accused of goodness! I know my own worth, and this is it: to give pleasure, and seek it." She tugged at his arm. "Not that I have found more than a little. I seek a man who can send me whirling to the heights of ecstasy, not the mere release that is all any have given."

"I... I know not that road, and could be of little use."

'Trust me to know your use," Honey said, "and be sure I know the road. No man will love me lifelong, this I know, so I seek whatever bond I can find with any man, and you are the fortunate one who has met me this day."

Even through the whirl of emotions, Gregory recognized the kernel of truth around which Finister had wrapped this particular lie. She believed herself to be of no real worth, especially of no lasting worth to any man, that males would value her only for her sexual attraction and not for the person inside the body.

Every instinct within him cried foul. He had grown up with a mother and a sister, neither saintly but both very dear, and could not believe that any woman was nothing but a body. Mind and soul were too precious to him. It was the person who mattered to him, not the gender, and several young women had made it clear to him that this was a failing, for he could not relate to them as he could to another man.

"Come down from your high horse, O Favored of Fate," Honey breathed. "Come lay me down, that I may lift you up to heights you can only imagine—for that is what I do best; indeed, it is all that I do well."

"Never think it!" Gregory said sternly, and indignation gave him the strength to sit up straight, clasping the reins with both hands. "Never believe you cannot love and be loved! This is the true worth of every being, to labor for the happiness of another!"

"Make me happy," she said, stretching her arms up to him and arching her back. "Happily make me, and bring me to labor."