Autumn Lord by Susan Sizemore

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    eyebrow. It's up to you to protect Diane."
    "I didn't bring her here."
    "But you care for her."
    "I care for peace in my household. She's different," Simon went on angrily. "People fear the unknown.
    She's a beautiful, exotic stranger, an entertainer with no status, and under a curse besides. One man's
    already been tempted by that combination. Others will be, too."
    "Not if you—"
    "No."
    "Ah, but you must."
    Jacques sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. Simon was warned by the calculatingly
    innocent look on the old man's face.
    "What?"
    "You want to do something to help the girl, don't you?"
    "I want to keep peace in my household. All right, I want to help her," Simon conceded after a long,
    skeptical silence from Jacques. "But making her my lover isn't what she needs."
    "It's exactly what she needs."
    "She was nearly raped last night. She won't want a man."
    Jacques shook his head. "Listen to my words, lad, not to your own notion of how the world should
    be. I said she needs you. She needs to love you."
    Simon laughed. The sound echoed through the room, colder than the autumn wind that moaned
    outside. "I'm a dead man, Jacques. We both know it. The last thing anyone needs is to love me."
    Jacques casually waved his words away. "You act as if you know exactly what the future will bring."
    "I have a fairly good idea."
    "You're far too much the pessimist."
    "Realist," Simon countered. He knew it would do no good to continue the argument with Jacques.
    Jacques always saw the best in everyone and a ray of hope in the darkest situation. So he took a deep
    breath, kept his voice quiet, and asked, "Just how is it that Diane needs me?"
    A bright smile broke over Jacques's features. "You mentioned it yourself last night."
    Simon could remember no conversation from the night before. He remembered a rare, burning fury.
    He hadn't felt any emotion so intense since the day he'd learned his daughter had been abducted and
    there was nothing he could do about it. No, last night his anger had been even more intense, somehow
    more personal. At least there had been a way to save Diane, and that surely counted in part for the
    protectiveness he'd felt holding her in his arms.
    "What did I say last night?"
    "That if she had her voice back she could have called for help."
    Would anyone have come to help her, he wondered, even if she could speak?
    "Of course," Jacques answered the question he hadn't voiced. "But the point is, she needs to get her
    voice back."
    "You laid the geis on her," Simon reminded the wizard. "You can break it."
    Jacques shook his head. "You never have understood that magic has rules, and that those who use it
    have to abide by them."
    "I've never understood magic," Simon agreed. "What was it you said would break the geis?"
    Jacques's shaggy brows lowered in annoyance. "She has to fall in love. Have you forgotten?"
    He had forgotten. Deliberately. Simon got up and built the fire without bothering to call a servant to do
    it. When he moved back to the waiting wizard, he said, "With me, specifically?"
    Jacques tugged on his beard. "Yes."
    He was lying. Jacques always pulled on his beard when he lied. Simon crossed his arms on his chest.
    He deliberately did not look toward the bed, though he thought he'd seen the curtains stir when he turned
    from the fire. Whether she was awake or not, he didn't think Diane could have overheard their
    whispered conversation.
    "The Second Coming might arrive first if we have to wait for someone to love me," Simon said.
    "Bah. You're too modest. Why, I remember tales of you from Court. All you have to do is—ah,
    Diane! Good morning, child."
    Simon found himself across the room at Diane's side, almost before he saw her. He'd scooped her up
    and deposited her in his own chair before she had a chance to flinch away from him. "You've had a bad
    beating and a worse fright," he told her as he set her down. "I'm not giving you a chance to faint on my
    floor as well the moment