Rage erupted from a tender core p.r.i.c.ked to bitter life by his words. "I will not be dutiful and complaisant when I can think for myself. I will not be my mother!"

"What has the Lady Felicia to do with this?"

"She listened to the men who told her to be quiet and submissive. She played the simpleminded wife when she was three times as clever as my father or any of the men who served in our house. It was she who made all the decisions that allowed their lives to run smooth as the pebbles beneath the stream, but always she was careful to make them think the shrewdness was theirs. She had the eye and aim of a hawk with her bow, but took care to miss the mark so she would not put my father's aim to shame. At chess, she could see the way to corner a queen in five moves, when it took my father twenty, but always, always she let my father win. I watched her weep over books she could not read and refused to learn, even when my father would have granted it, because she said a woman should not be more knowledgeable than her husband. She smiled for my father, but the frustration ate her up inside. Before she died, she told me..." Isabel stopped and pressed a hand to her lips. Where had those memories come from? She had scarcely thought about her mother's suppressed longings for years.

"What did she tell you, Bel?"

The gentleness of Lucian's voice shook her almost as much as the sudden vision of her mother's forlorn face.

"She said-" The vision blurred, smeared by Isabel's tears "-she hoped G.o.d would have mercy on the minds of women and let them read in heaven."

Another anguished memory bubbled up. The little girl peeking through the door of her mother's chamber, watching her cry, hearing a panicked plea for forgiveness from Heaven for the stubborn desires of her heart. Small though she was, Isabel had vowed to embrace the life her mother had shunned, at whatever the cost. In time, the memory had faded as her father deferred to Isabel's every request, so long as she kept his life running smoothly. His yielding nature had allowed her to become this horrid, arrogant creature who must command every detail of her family's life and prove to herself that she could match any man, Lucian most of all, for only he had ever tempted her to wonder if the cost might be too high.

"Oh, there it is!" Ronwen's voice rang out. "Sir Eustace, do you see it? It is gleaming there in the snow."

Lucian pivoted and dove for the spot where Ronwen reached. Isabel saw him scoop a palm full of snow. His fingers brushed the white dusting away until all that remained was the ring.

Ronwen sprang to her feet, her face aglow with excitement. "Silly, you did not need to hide it in an apple tart. You had only to ask me. Yes, Sir Lucian, I will marry you gladly."

Ronwen held out an eager hand and waited for Lucian to place the ring upon it. Isabel closed her eyes to shut out the scene. At the first sound of Ronwen's voice, he fled back to the woman who would happily play her mother's meek role without suffering her mother's silent grief. Isabel never could. However she had come to be what she was, she could not change herself now, even if it left her heart as empty as her mother's, albeit in a different way. Just now, she felt more desolate than that day when she first sent Lucian away.

"Bel?" The voice came from so directly beneath her that Isabel knew Lucian had moved back to the tree. She slitted her eyes open to look narrowly down at him.

"Lucian, what are you doing?" Ronwen's voice quavered.

"Sir Eustace, will you please escort the Lady Ronwen back to the Yule fire while I fetch the Lady Isabel safely down?"

Of course he would not leave her standing in the tree. He was too obstinate for that.

Sir Eustace stiffened in his stance near Ronwen. "I beg your pardon, Sir Lucian, but you heard the Lady Isabel say that she wished to be my w-"

Lucian turned his head towards the other knight. Isabel knew the sort of look he used to cut off Sir Eustace's protest. He had quelled Isabel with it a handful of times, though afterwards regret of her cowardice always drove her to an act of rebellion to rea.s.sert her mettle.

"Ah... er..." Sir Eustace stammered. "Lady Ronwen, your fingers must be chilled from sifting through the snow. Let us thaw them out by the fire, as Sir Lucian suggests."

"But Lucian-" Whatever Ronwen saw in Lucian's face silenced her, too. She sniffled loudly, but let Sir Eustace draw her hand through his arm and lead her away.

Lucian turned back to the tree and stared up at Isabel for a long, silent moment. She felt him trying to search her face as she sought to search his. She wondered if her features were easier to read in the height of the branches than his were with the shadows that snaked across them. His fingers fidgeted together uncharacteristically.

"Bel... I know it is not your color..."

The ring. He still held the ring! Her heart jumped high as the elusive mistletoe. Fear that she had misunderstood led her to repeat Ronwen's question. "Lucian, what are you doing?"

"Asking you to marry me."

Her heart threatened to explode, but indignation laced her euphoria like the stars that meshed across the sky. "With another woman's ring?"

"I will trade it for a ruby if it will please you better."

"That is not the point. Just a few moments ago, you wanted to marry Ronwen."

"That was hours ago, not moments-before I heard you laugh at dinner, before you danced with me, before I remembered..." His words suspended her breath where the wintry air had failed.

"Before you remembered?"

"How much I love you."

Her motions became a blur. She remembered letting the sword fall into the snow, and then somehow she was off the branch and in his arms, face buried against his neck as he held her tight against him, her toes dangling in the air.

"What about Ronwen?" she whispered.

"I was lonely, Bel, and hurt. You said you did not love me anymore. You said we were a mistake-"

"I-I am the mistake. Oh, Lucian, I can never be the meek, obedient wife you wish. I stole Abatos when you commanded me not to ride him. I was ever so relieved when I saw you cutting through the woods on my father's big bay, and even when I heard the way you growled when you pulled me from the saddle, just as I felt the reins slipping from my fingers, and I knew how I should have listened... even with all that, I cannot promise I will never do anything like it again!"

"I never wanted a meek wife, Bel. I never wanted to change you. I only wanted to keep you safe from your own headstrong ways. And so I will, if I have to fight the fiends of h.e.l.l and your own silent demons to do so, for I want to live to a very old age with you."

She wondered if he minded her soaking his neck with her tears. "Oh, Lucian, how can you? I broke your nose!"

She would never forget the awful crack at the back of her head snapping into his face when he pulled her free of Abatos. She had squirmed her way out of his stunned hold to land on the ground, whirling about to deny her need for the rescue she had so fervently prayed for only moments before. But her words had choked off at the sight of blood streaming from his nose and tears from his eyes. Mortified at the consequence of her act of defiance, she had run sobbing through the woods all the way back to her father's castle. The next time she had seen him, with two black eyes and a crooked nose, she had sent him away with frigid words to conceal the shame that still shuddered in her heart. How could he want her now?

He laughed into her hair. "You did me a favor. I was altogether too handsome before. My face has more character now. There, Bel, if you squeeze my neck any tighter, I won't be able to breathe."

She loosened the stranglehold of her arms and drew back to search the face she could now see clearly, bathed as it was in the light of the moon.

He must have seen the fear in her eyes, for he said, "This does not feel like a mistake, Bel. Nothing has ever felt more right than holding you in my arms. If you love me-if you have the courage to try-we will find a way to make us work."

"A challenge?" She grinned. "You know I cannot resist a challenge."

They were well lost in a kiss before she realized she had not answered the first part of his question. It did not seem very urgent just now to free her lips to tell him that she loved him. They had not needed words that summer day when he had held her almost exactly like this and kissed her beneath this same oak tree. When they had sat afterwards together in the sweet-smelling gra.s.s, her head on his shoulder, his cheek pressed to her hair, their hands tangled together in the promise of the oneness she had thought their future held. A promise she saw renewed in his eyes when he set her feet in the snow and ran his chilled thumbs along the high bones of her cheeks.

"Ronwen told me your father was eager to be rid of you," he said. "I think Epiphany is altogether too long a wait to satisfy him, don't you think?"

"I cannot simply abandon him," she said, even as she felt her center melt in the warmth of Lucian's gaze. "I must find him a wife before I let you carry me off."

"He has Agnes."

"Who will very soon be wed herself."

His brows shot up. "To whom?" he asked, then almost immediately guessed the answer. "Sir Theo? It'll take six months to loosen his tongue enough to court her."

"Then I must find a way to hurry him along."

Exasperation mingled with laughter in Lucian's face. "I've no intention of waiting six months to make you my wife, nor even twelve days. This is one time, Bel, that you will listen and obey me."

She felt the rebellious cloud fall across her brow. "Lucian-"

His c.o.c.ked his head cut her off. "Do you hear that?"

She thought for a moment that he meant the beating of her heart. Then she heard it too-the lilting sound of a flute and bright rhythm of a drum.

"It is my father's serfs," she said. "They like to dance caroles on the green."

"Do they spin with hands clasped like you taught us to do?" He caught both her hands in his and whirled her in the snow as he'd done in the hall.

Her laughter rang like a bell on the winter's air. "No, I made this step up."

"I do not know which makes me dizzier, this spin or your kisses."

She knew her own answer. She would trade dancing for kissing any day, as long as the kisses were Lucian's.

He stopped and caught her against his side, holding her there, steady and strong, safe until her senses steadied.

Safe, as he'd promised always to do. Perhaps it would not be so bad to lean on his steadiness and strength just once in awhile. Perhaps it would not be so bad just this once to listen.

"Shall we go watch them, or shall we return to the Yule fire to hurry Sir Theo along?"

Had it not been for the serfs and their caroles, she would not have danced with Lucian tonight and everything would be the same as the day she had sent him away. She knew if she watched them now, singing and skipping and clapping, the joys of this night would flood her again, and she would be Lucian's wife before the week was out.

She slid her hand into his. "Let us go down to the green."

About Joyce DiPastena.

Joyce DiPastena moved from Utah to Arizona at the age of two and grew up to be a dyed-in-the-fur desert rat. She first fell in love with the Middle Ages when she read Thomas B. Costane's The Conquering Family in high school. She attended the University of Arizona, where she graduated with a degree specializing in medieval history.

Joyce loves to play the piano and sing for her own amus.e.m.e.nt, and she sings in her church choir. Other interests include reading, spending time with her sister, trying out new restaurants, and, unfortunately, buying new clothes. The highlight of her year is attending the Arizona Renaissance Festival, which she has not missed once in its twenty-four years of existence.

Joyce enjoys hearing from her readers and may be contacted at [email protected] You can also visit her on her website at www.joyce-dipastena.com, keep up with her latest news on her JDP NEWS blog (http://jdp-news.blogspot.com), or follow along as she researches her novels at Medieval Research with Joyce (http://medievalresearch.blogspot.com). Visit her Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/AuthorJoyceDiPastena.

Other Works by Joyce DiPastena.

Loyalty's Web.

http://www.amazon.com/Loyaltys-Web-Joyce-DiPastena/dp/1599921235/.

Illuminations of the Heart http://www.amazon.com/Illuminations-Heart-Historical-Romance-Novels/dp/1935217267/ Dangerous Favor.

http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Favor-Joyce-DiPastena/dp/159992806X/.

A Winter's Knight.

By Donna Hatch.

Chapter One.

England, 1813.

Clarissa Fairchild stared out of the coach window at the forbidding fortress crouched atop the bluff. Dark clouds closed in around it as if to echo the evil lurking inside the grey stone castle, a castle teeming with secrets Clarissa longed to discover.

Next to her, Great Aunt Tilly shivered. "Do close the curtain, Niece. That cursed place gives me the chills. Filled with murderers, you know." She waved a gnarled hand at the window and shifted as the carriage hit a particularly large rut in the road.

Fascinated, Clarissa couldn't tear her gaze away. All her life, stories whispered furtively about Wyckburg Castle and its terrifying lords had captured her imagination-a dark and terrible place with an equally dark and terrible earl. What a grand adventure it would be to explore the forbidding castle, a gothic novel come to life. If only she could find a gothic hero of her own.

Clarissa tapped her chin absently. "I wonder if they hid their wives' bodies inside the castle, or if they buried them in the churchyard to make it appear as if they died naturally."

Aunt Tilly pulled her cloak more tightly around her and shifted her feet. The warming bricks had cooled since they left the village, leaving the floorboards cold. "You'd have to be foolish to venture amid murderers to view the headstones."

Tired from shopping, they fell silent as the carriage b.u.mped along the country road. Again, Clarissa considered Wyckburg Castle, where, for generations, the mysterious lords were born, lived, married, and killed their wives. Of course, no one ever proved the wives had been murdered. After all, who would have the audacity to accuse an earl of murder? Yet, for generations, every Countess Wyckburg had met an untimely death shortly after marrying each successive earl.

Clarissa conjured all sorts of possibilities, each more wonderfully frightening than the last. The current lord had been reclusive even before he married, but had made no public appearances since his wife's death. What manner of man was he? Openly evil? Slyly sinister? And what manner of woman had dared marry him, knowing the family's reputation?

A new thought hit Clarissa and she drew in her breath in horrified delight. Perhaps the earls abducted maidens and forced them to wed. Or maybe the earls were so darkly handsome, no lady could resist them.

How delicious! She shivered. "I wonder if any of those poor women knew of their doom before they were murdered, or it if it happened suddenly."

"It's not proper for a gently bred young lady to dwell on such morbid thoughts," Aunt Tilly said primly. "You should be thinking of finding a nice young man and settling down. After all, you'll be twenty soon. You don't want to be an old maid, do you?"

"Oh, Aunt, all the men I've met are so dull." Murderous earls were so much more fascinating than real men wearing bored expressions while playing polite social games. Her gaze wandered back to the castle. "What would drive generations of men to kill their wives?"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, child!"

"Sorry, Aunt." Clarissa laughed at herself and her obsessive thoughts. Perhaps she did read too many Gothics. "I won't speak of it again." But oh, she could imagine.

Moments later, wind shook the carriage, and swirling whiteness overtook them, forcing the coach to slow. The castle and bluff blurred into shapeless dark ma.s.ses.

"The storm has caught us," Aunt Tilly gasped.