The Black Lyon by Jude Deveraux Page B

thread that held them together could not stand another blow.
    "Lyonene, you are easy to read. Does he distrust you so much?"
    "You have yet to say what you want from me." Her shoulders sank wearily.
    "Gold."
    "I have naught but my clothes. He has given me nothing."
    "Do not play the fool." He looked outside the stable and saw that the flames no longer lifted above the stone wall. He returned his attention to Lyonene. "I see your husband succeeds in taming the fire more readily than I had thought. Listen to me now. He will be tired when he returns and will sleep heavily. When you are sure he will not wake, toss me a jewel from the pouch on his belt."
    "Nay! I cannot."
    "This letter is the least I can use for payment if I am not obeyed. What think you of becoming a widow so soon?"
    "You do not know what you say. Do you forget he is the Black Lion?"
    "I see you do not forget," he sneered. "I am not as these lordly knights of the kings, as you well know. They are governed by rules that have no hold for me. How think you I came to be inside these castle walls? No one sees a serf. Think you he will notice when a serf walks past him? He will not know until he finds a blade between his ribs."
    Lyonene could not speak, the terror climbing along her spine, crawling, creeping, a slimy, many-legged thing.

    "Ah! I knew I guessed right. Now I must go. Do as I say and do not betray me."
    He left her alone, her breath shallow, her body trembling, but trembling deep inside, as if her very bones shook. What to do, she screamed inside her throbbing head—what to do! She made her way inside the deserted donjon, trying to run but finding herself unable to do so. A dark comer showed a stool, and she sat on it, nearly falling against the cold, plastered wall.
    Her first thought was, "What if ..." If she had gone away with Ranulf after the marriage, if she had not left him at all the day of the wedding, if she had not gone outside ... Useless, wasteful thoughts. She wished her mother were near her, that she'was not so alone with a husband who had fallen on her in violence one night and this day had offered her a truce—one that promised now to be shattered.
    Giles was insane, for surely no man could act as he had and have all his mind. She could see it now, see what she had so long ago overlooked. M elite had once said that Lyonene always took the runt of any litter and made it her own, be it pig, dog or, at times, people, and, as everyone laughed, she added that she usually succeeded in making the runt into a peacock.
    Giles was proof of her failure. She remembered the first time she had seen him, hiding in a corner, afraid of his own shadow, awed by his two handsome older brothers, awed by the lovely seven-year-old girl named for a lioness and adored by all. Lyonene had hardly looked at the two boys, but instantly sought out the puny, colorless Giles, his thin legs weak from lack of exercise.
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    Sir John had protested when the two children, the same age but so incredibly different, had clasped hands and walked together outside into the April sunlight. M elite had stopped him, and they watched the children leave.
    Lyonene and Giles had spent much time together for the next ten years. She'd once heard Giles's father protest that his son was no use at home anymore, and he'd stand and watch as the little girl would bully and badger the boy until Giles did what she wanted.
    That was what surprised Sir John the most, that she did not coax and plead as he would have thought. He himself had tried every way possible to get Giles to stay atop a horse, but he could not.
    "What do you mean you cannot ride a horse? I can!" the eight-year-old girl had bragged. "Now get on and cease whining!" She had little patience with his excuses, and before Sir John's eyes, the boy blossomed into a healthy lad.
    Lyonene tried to focus on the present, to pull away from the memories, once so sweet but now lowered to the filth of the London streets. She could not, of