The Huntress Read Free Page B

share my happiness no matter how hard he will try to pretend. He’s going to be so afraid for me.”
    “You’ll pardon me saying so, but doesn’t he have a right to be afraid?” Cat softened the reminder by pressing Ariane’s hand, the woman’s palm rough and calloused, but her touch comfortingly warm. “He almost lost you once.”
    “I suppose so,” Ariane murmured, but after all these years all that she recalled of that time was not her own near death, but the face of her stillborn child. The devastating sorrow of gazing upon the small, wizened body of her daughter. The babe she had so longed for, a girl child to teach all the old wise ways, passing on the healing arts that Ariane had learned from her own mother, a daughter who might one day succeed her as Lady of Faire Isle.
    The old pain of loss and grief threatened to engulf Ariane, along with her terror for the child she now carried, but she stemmed the dark emotions. She had resolved early on during her pregnancy that this babe would be nourished only by her life’s blood and breath, her calm and strength. It would not be poisoned by its mother’s apprehensions and fears.
    “I will tell Justice soon, I promise you. But it’s going to be different, this time, I know it.” Ariane splayed her hand over her womb. “This babe is strong. I can sense that. This child
will
survive. You must believe me.”
    “If you say ’tis so, then ’tis so,” Cat responded gravely. “But—”
    Ariane squeezed Cat’s hand firmly, anxious to bring the subject to a close. “Please finish what you were telling me. You said something about fearing that someone far worse might be hunting Megaera?”
    “Did I?” Still looking worried, Cat straightened to her feet. Averting her face, she scuffed the toe of her well-worn boot against a thick tree root. “Well, you—you know me. Sometimes I get carried away, tend to exaggerate my tales. I daresay it is the Irish in me and—”
    “Cat, don’t.”
    The command in Ariane’s voice obliged Cat to look at her.
    Ariane continued, “I know what you are doing. My brief spell of weakness alarmed you and now you seek to spare me. As much as I appreciate your solicitude, I need you to make a full and honest report to me. Trust me. Whatever you have learned, I am strong enough to deal with it.”
    I have to be, Ariane thought grimly.
    Cat blew out a gusty sigh. She withdrew the flask she kept tucked in her belt and fortified herself with a gulp of usquebaugh. How Cat could swallow such a potent whiskey before she had even breakfasted, Ariane had no idea. Her own stomach roiled at the very thought of it.
    Cat corked the flask and hitched it back in her belt. She paced the garden path as she regaled Ariane with the rest of her story, her tale punctuated by many gestures and sweeping waves of her arms. Ariane had often reflected with some amusement that it would not be necessary to gag Catriona O’Hanlon to silence her. One would only have to bind her hands.
    But she was not even tempted to smile as she listened to the rest of Cat’s report. She did not want Cat fretting over her, but it was hard for Ariane to maintain a calm façade as Cat described the soldiers who had charged the cliff top.
    “…I recognized Gautier almost at once, which left little doubt who had sent him.”
    “The Dark Queen,” Ariane whispered. As if this matter did not promise to be difficult and dangerous enough without the threat of Catherine de Medici’s involvement. A shudder coursed through Ariane. She gripped her hands tightly in her lap to conceal the depths of her dismay from Cat.
    Her voice was surprisingly level as she asked, “You are absolutely certain it was Gautier?”
    “Aye, I marked the man well when I accompanied you to court the day you received your pardon from the Dark Queen, and like the most gracious of thieves, she restored everything she’d stolen from you. Gautier was the smirking bastard who stood behind the queen. Did you