Lady of the Crescent Moon Read online

  Then again, she wasn’t at court, was she?

  He paid no attention to any of the news of the king or his nobles. None whatsoever. These days being a d’Ambroisin was akin to having been born with horns and a tail. Almost nobody with a connection to a d’Ambroisin would claim it now. It didn’t matter, all that courtly nonsense, even without taking into consideration the importance of what went on at Bramville.

  Except maybe, he had to admit now—and only reluctantly—that part of him hadn’t wanted to hear tell of her.

  “Have you fallen into some disgrace?”

  “Perhaps you don’t understand. Forgive me for not having made myself perfectly plain, my lord, but you should know I will not be offering the likes of you a single explanation.”

  “If you have, I might be able to help you.” His heart picked up pace.

  She let out a dissatisfied sniff.

  “I know a thing or two about disgrace by now, I should think.” What madness was this? He couldn’t help her. He needed to send her away. She wasn’t safe here. This was Bramville.

  His eagerness was eclipsing his logic. But a few days shouldn’t be any harm. She hated him, and well she should. From her perspective, he’d behaved abysmally—the lowest kind of scoundrel the world over.

  And it seemed the old wounds he’d inflicted had not healed. Good. Let her carry the grudge. She could never know the truth and because of that, she wouldn’t stop hating him. She’d leave of her own accord soon enough.

  But if he could keep her for a few days . . .

  Her gaze went to the moon as if she judged its perch.

  He swallowed, and his heart weakened with a sudden realization. She wasn’t returned, not for good. She was on an errand. And had he not been here, Sidonie could easily have slipped in and out silently—could have come and gone from the château without his being the wiser.

  If he’d come up tomorrow and caught the traces of a dewy violet scent, he’d have cursed his imagination.

  But why had she undertaken this journey? Why had she come back? What did she have to come back for?

  He took in the room slowly with new eyes. The sights were so familiar, sometimes he forgot what the château possessed. It was his mother’s old chamber. She’d lived in these rooms for many years, before this section of the château had begun to crumble, making habitation unsafe. Now it was merely a storage room, packed of things from his mother’s youth—things he might well burn when after . . . after the inevitable happened.

  And Sidonie. Here. Now. Appearing in this room.

  When he looked back to her, she must have seen the ends fastening together in his mind, for her expression went carefully guarded.

  “No.” He shook his head, refusing to believe it, churning through a thousand other possibilities all the while quickly running out of reasons to avoid reaching a harrowing conclusion.

  She leveled her chin. Understanding swept between them with the force of a deadly tide.

  She hadn’t found his mother’s old room by accident. She’d come for a purpose.

  He had to get her out. And fast.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sidonie gasped when, without warning, Roland grabbed her by the arm and began dragging her from the tower room into the dark pit of the unlit stairwell. Her feet tangled in her skirts, but he righted her without missing a step.

  She didn’t recover from the shock until partway down the first curving length. Being discovered had been jarring enough. It wasn’t seeing him again—the man who’d once made her heart sing no longer held power over her. So that could not have put her so off her guard.

  Once, she’d fallen to her knees to beg the divine to make him honor their betrothal. The silly creature she’d been hadn’t existed for years.

  She fell to her knees again, this time to wrench herself from his grasp. Her knees met stone and white-hot pain shot through her legs. She did not cry out.

  “You know not what you do.”

  “Don’t I?” he snarled.

  In one perfect movement, he flung her over his shoulder in a show of unexpected strength. There was no softness in this man, noble or no.

  But there was something else. He moved like a man accustomed to the dark. A man who haunted the night.

  She shivered. Such beasts existed. Unholy, unnatural things. They were rare, though.

  No. Were he something other than—or more than?—a man, surely she would have sensed his otherness.

  But there had been the scream . . .

  There was a mad ancestor or two in the d’Ambroisin line. It was something nobody spoke of but everyone knew. The older d’Ambroisin son, Roland’s brother, Jacques, had been in the grave for years. The sanctioned story was that a wasting disease had brought him to his death.

  What if Jacques had gone mad?

  Was it only a matter of time before . . . ?

  No. Not Roland. Please, no, not him. It didn’t matter so impossibly much until this very moment. A longing swelled in her heart, wistful and completely inappropriate to the moment, never mind their history. It was a longing to put his salvation within her grasp.

  How could it be that everything was going so horribly wrong so quickly? He’d been the last person she’d wanted to see. Yet, here they were. Together.

  He froze mid-stride. The world went still. Without meaning to, she waited with him, her breath suspended a full moment before realizing she’d been caught in the current of his being. He held power over her, this man. The force of his will acted so profoundly upon her, his instincts had become her own.

  Before she could fight to willfully disengage herself, he went back a few steps and shoved open a heavy door. He dragged her into a dark room and pushed her against the wall.

  “Wh—” His hand flew over her mouth.

  She strained her ears, her heart picking up an uneasy pace.

  Nothing.

  When she tried to tug his fingers, he tensed.

  He was close. Almost unbearably so, his body all but pressing her into the wall behind the still-open door.

  It should have frightened her. He’d already demonstrated his capacity for strength, tossing her up like she weighed nothing and charging down the stairs with her without a hint of strain. In the empty darkness of the room, she couldn’t detect whether he was the least bit exerted.

  She didn’t feel threatened. On the contrary. Perverse as it was, the sense of him protecting her wormed uneasily in her depths where an unadulterated trust in this man lurked. She tried suppressing the instinct. Her faith couldn’t—wouldn’t—be given over so easily. He needed to earn it. Which he assuredly had not.

  Footfalls approaching up the stairs jarred the air, rescuing her from further reflection.

  With a “Don’t move,” bitten out from between clenched teeth, he left, shutting the door behind him. She was left alone in a tomb of black.

  She rubbed her arms, not cold, precisely, though the air was frigid. Unsettled, more like. Roland was her former betrothed, a man with so little regard for the wishes of his father . . .

  No. He’d respected his father. In everything except the arrangement of their marriage.

  With so little regard for her, then. There. Holding the truth in her mind didn’t elicit a harsh sting in her heart. How could it? If he’d married her, she wouldn’t have come to know what she was. Life without understanding her true nature wouldn’t have been worth living. Even with Roland.

  Voices beyond made her press her ear to the door, the light fragrance of the old oak a lingering reminder of the ancient château’s former decadence.

  Roland’s tone was commanding, but his exact words were inaudible. The indistinct murmur of a second voice offered no clues about its owner.

  Didn’t matter. This was her chance. Her chance
to slip out of Roland’s life forever. If the stakes weren’t so dire, she never would have returned.

  She felt along the bare wall. He already suspected something and would never permit her an audience with his mother. She’d slip away now and find another way in.

  A draft pierced the gloom, nothing more than a whisper, but enough to alert her of a gapped door or an improperly shut window.

  She jumped when her hand brushed cloth. When she pushed the fabric aside, the light from the low of moon flooded the room. She unlatched the pane and leaned out. The steep slant of the roof from the newer section of the château wasn’t but two body lengths below. Two and a half at most. The tricky part would be not sliding to her death when she leapt.

  The door opened and she raised her arm to shield her eyes, momentarily blinded by a candle. She squinted as her vision adjusted. Roland’s heavy stare narrowed on her. His hair was shoulder-length, the thick black locks loose about the face that, no matter how many years passed or how different her life had become, never strayed far from memory.

  But she wasn’t here for him.

  Heart fluttering madly, she flung one leg over the sill.

  He shot across the room and caught her.

  Damn her indecision. Damn her hesitancy. If she’d not listened, she could be fleeing by now.

  Maybe it was better this way. He’d already found her and every evidence suggested he had a fairly certain idea what she was after. He’d be lying in wait for her second attempt. As it stood, she hadn’t the luxury of patience.

  “I need to see your mother.”

  She searched him again for signs of madness. His eyes said nothing of the soundness of his mind.

  “So I suspected.” His face was carefully blank as he reached beyond her to shut the window and set his candle on the ledge. The air between them became charged, the silence so thick she could have sliced it with a knife.

  Sidonie remained calm. “If you won’t let me, I’ll find another way.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “I can. And I will.” He spoke with the same finality of a stone lid slamming down upon a sarcophagus.

  “You don’t know what’s at stake.”

  “A moment ago, you had no time for explanations.” He raised his brows menacingly.

  “Lives, Roland. So many lives. Only . . . I’m not strong enough.”

  “And you never will be because whatever it was you wanted of my mother, I will never let you see her.”

  “You have no right to—”

  “You might think I wronged you all those years ago, but I did what I had to do to keep you safe.” He sounded like a man burdened by regrets, not madness. “I’ll be damned before I let you throw your life away now. Not after all we gave up.”

  “I gave up nothing. It was you who gave up everything, and I’m glad you did.”

  At that, he remained silent. There was no question he did not share her sentiment.

  Desperation beat in her breast. She tried again. “Please, you don’t understand.” Begging cost her nothing.

  At last, his low voice rumbled. “I understand better than you’ll ever imagine.”

  Chapter 3

  Sidonie balked at what she was hearing. Him? Understand? How dare he say so when he blatantly refused to give her what she wanted.

  She pitted reason against her flare of temper. Remember who his mother was, after all. Roland might be aware of certain . . . certain facts.

  Facts, though, little else. Never should knowledge be mistaken for understanding.

  Lest she lose yet more time, she forced her anger to cool—or at least to not rule her actions—and she quelled the impulse to fight. “With whom did you speak just now?”

  “A servant heard the commotion. He’ll bring food in a moment, and embers to start the fire.”

  A twinge of alarm made the hair on her nape stand on end. “A servant?”

  Roland’s steady gaze didn’t falter. “Have no fear, madame, your identity has been concealed. I want it known you’re here as little as you do, I’m sure.”

  Because her father could never find out. Years ago, when her future with Roland crumbled, Sidonie had slipped from Cordumont’s grasp. She’d begged her sister to come. Manette had refused. For most of the last ten years, she’d lived at court, not married, and not far from their father’s watchful eye. Meanwhile, Cordumont claimed Sidonie was dead.

  If rumors of her appearance were to reach his ears, there was no telling how angry he would be, or what shape his anger would take. Sidonie knew only too well that their father could easily punish Manette for what he would call Sidonie’s wrongs. Then he would claim Sidonie forced him to do it, that she’d given him no choice. Blame her for the evil he inflicted. Cordumont had a darkness inside of him. What he was capable of doing to his own children was only the beginning.

  At a light tap, Roland cracked the door just wide enough to take what had been brought. The narrow gap afforded neither Sidonie nor the servant a view of the other.

  “We won’t be disturbed again.” From the tray, Roland removed the lid from a palm-sized ceramic pot, revealing a red glow. He took straw from the side of the hearth and mixed them with the embers in the wide firebox. The wood must have been dry, for it caught almost immediately. Then he grabbed a candelabra from the stone ledge above the hearth and lit all three of the tapers, each as thick as a large man’s fist.

  The soft glow revealed a room almost bare. The ancient stone walls were uncovered, the black of soot and time darkening their appearance.

  Roland took a bit of linen off a plate and offered her cuts of meat.

  Her hollow stomach twisted over itself. Dizzy with longing, she turned away, forcing away the impulse to devour the makeshift meal, the aroma taunting her. She didn’t want him to see how much she needed food. What she’d denied herself to come to Château Bramville. Didn’t want him to see how easily she could fall for the want of creaturely needs.

  “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

  “It’s no concern of yours, my lord.”

  “You’ll be good to nobody at all if you collapse from hunger. The least you can do is avail yourself of my hospitality.”

  “I haven’t time for such things.”

  “The last thing I ever knew you for was a fool. Don’t become one now.”

  She chanced a glance upward. “There are lives at stake.”

  “So you mentioned.” He lifted his gaze to her. “Sit. Eat. Then you can tell me.”

  “You won’t listen. You mind is already set against me.”

  “Everything will be easier once you have eaten.”

  “So long as they’re being starved—”

  “You will help none of them by purposefully and obstinately weakening yourself.”

  Purposefully and obstinately?

  Maybe he was right. Maybe that was why the future was blank to her. Why she’d lost what slight gift of sight she had. She’d been eating enough to keep herself from fainting, but naught else.

  He wasn’t pushing her because he was trying to control her or protect her. It was merely common sense.

  Sidonie sat at the tray. It felt as if she were about to partake in sin. But her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled. Roland was correct. She had to eat.

  ~ ~ ~

  Most of the food on the tray remained, but Roland would not push her further now. Not about food, that was. “Ready to elaborate?”

  “I don’t know how much you’ve heard”—she wiped her hands on a bit of old linen and replaced it on the side of the tray—“having cut yourself off from the world, but things in Paris are . . . not good. The king suspects everyone and his men, like Reynie and those he employs . . .”


  Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, she meant. He was a king’s minister. About a decade ago, he’d been made Préfet de police. Lieutenant General of Police.

  “Is the king displeased with you?” Roland was already fairly certain of the answer, but he could hope. Living under the king’s censure was bearable.

  “I have no business with the king. It’s gone further than that.”

  Then it was as Roland suspected. It couldn’t have been otherwise, not with her having come to see his mother.

  Sidonie continued. “In Paris, they’ve been captured. Other . . .” She pressed her lips together.

  He knew all too well what she was driving at. Other witches.

  There, he’d allowed himself to think the word. It wasn’t what most people thought, not at all. It wasn’t evil, at least not by necessity.

  Paris was mad for witches these days. The whole city had worked into a frenzy born of ignorance and superstition. After the fortuneteller Magdelaine de La Grange had been arrested two years ago, there was a push to exterminate every last witch in the land. And it wasn’t only Reynie who was after them. The kingdom over, they were being hunted, tortured, and killed.

  Which was what would happen to Sidonie if she wasn’t careful.

  “None of those lives are worth yours.”

  Her whole body tensed. “You know nothing of what I must do. Nothing. They would be worth mine, if it came to that. But it won’t.”

  Who was she trying to convince? Him? Or herself? “It will and they aren’t.”

  He reached for her hand, but she snatched it back. “Either way, you have no right to judge.”

  “Judge what your life is worth?” A tightness crept into his voice. “Haven’t I?”

  “Why ever would you?”

  He gave her a hard look. “Have you ever married?”

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “Have you?”