Lark and Wren Read Free Page A

eyes down. Rune knew why, too-Stara flung it in her face often enough. Stara had one bastard; she was not minded to attract the master's eye, only to find herself in his bed and saddled with another bastard.

    But since Jeoff put off his mourning bands, Stara had transformed from a drab little sparrow to a bird of a different feather entirely. She was rinsing her hair with herbs every night, to make it yellow as new-minted gold and smell sweet. She had laced the waist of her skirts tight, kilted them up to show ankles and even knees, and pulled her blouses low. And she was painting her face, when she thought no one could see her; red on the lips and cheeks, blackening her lashes with soot, trying to make herself look younger. Where she got the stuff, Rune had no idea. Possibly a peddler, though there hadn't been any with things like that through here since before winter.

    Stara didn't like being reminded that she had a fourteen-year-old daughter, and she certainly didn't want Jeoff reminded of the fact. It helped that Rune looked nothing like her mother; Rune was tall, thin, with light brown, curly hair, and deep brown eyes. She could-and occasionally did-pass for a boy in the crowded common-room. She was nothing at all like soft, round, doll-pretty Stara. Which was exactly as Stara wanted things, Rune was sure of it.

    For there was a race on to see who'd snare Jeoff. Maeve was no competition; the girl was plain as well as simple-although it was a good thing she was plain, or she would have been fair game for any fellow bent on lifting a skirt. Rune wasn't interested-and half the time Jeoff absentmindedly called her "lad" anyway.

    Stara's only competition would come from the village. There were a couple of young women down there in Westhaven of marriageable age, whose fathers saw nothing wrong with running a good, clean inn. Fathers who would not be averse to seeing their daughters settled in as the innkeeper's wife. None were as pretty as Stara-but they all had dowers, which she did not. And they were younger, with plenty of childbearing years ahead of them.

    Much younger, some of them. One of the possible prospects was only sixteen. Not that much older than Stara's daughter. No wonder Stara wanted to be thought younger than she was.

    Rune got out her fiddle and began tuning it. It was a little too cold to be playing outside-but Jeoff liked hearing the music, and once she started playing it was unlikely that Stara would order her to do something else.

    The gift of the fiddle had been Rose's idea. She'd watched as Rune begged to play with traveling minstrels' instruments-and had begun to coax something like music out of them right away-she'd seen Rune trying to get a good tune out of a reed whistle, a blade of grass, and anything else that made a noise. Perhaps she had guessed what Rune might do with a musical instrument of her own. For whatever reason, when Rune was about six, a peddler had run off without paying, leaving behind a pack filled with trash he hadn't been able to sell. One of the few things in it worth anything was the fiddle, given immediately to Rune, which Rune had named "Lady Rose" in honor of her patron.

    It had taken many months of squealing and scraping out in the stable where she wouldn't offend any ears but the animals' before she was able to play much. But by the time she was eight, minstrels were going out of their way to give her a lesson or two, or teach her a new song. By the time she was ten, she was a regular draw.

    Rune was smart enough to remember what the common room had looked like on any day other than a market-day before she had started to play regularly-and she knew what it was like now. Rose's "investment" had paid off handsomely over the years-gaining in new business several times over the worth of the old fiddle.

    But Stara-and there was no doubt in Rune's mind who was behind all the changes-evidently didn't see things that way, or thought that now that the extra custom was