The Legacy by T. J. Bennett Page A

live, to leave the memory of your beauty and the fragrance of your life behind …”
    He looked at her, his gaze arrested.
    She smiled. “Why not love a flower? If it must have a purpose, then let it be that.”
    “To be loved?”
    She nodded. “Perhaps, after all is said and done, it is the only purpose which matters.”
    He stared at her and his grip tightened, though it was still gentle. The wind pushed his hair into tangled waves.
    “You speak as one who has known such love,” he finally said.
    She sighed. “Rather, I speak as one who has not.” She tried to ignore the shaft of yearning that lanced through her at his touch, and carefully removed her hand from his grasp. “But we talk of flowers when there are so many other important matters to discuss.”
    “Are there?” he murmured, his gaze following her as she moved away. “I’m not so certain anymore.”
    Their eyes met, and the heat she had felt between them yesterday sparked again. Her body felt heavy, while her heart floated. He took her hand again, lacing his fingers with hers and leading her to the shelter of a pine, out of the brunt of the wind. There he released her.
    “So tell me how you escaped from the convent,” he said, and the bittersweet moment passed.
    She was both grateful and disappointed.
    She supposed there was no harm in telling him the truth at this point.
    “Dr. Luther rescued me,” she said.
    “Dr. Luther? The same man of whom we were just speaking?”
    “The very same.” At his perplexed expression, she added, “Mayhap I should begin at the beginning.”
    He nodded. “Yes, mayhap you should.”

Chapter 7
    T he wind gusted, and a lock of hair escaped from the braid beneath Sabina’s head cloth. She pushed it aside impatiently. Dead leaves drifted in a lazy circle around their feet.
    “Even in the convent,” she began, “we had heard about Dr. Luther’s ninety-five theses, though we were not supposed to. Copies circulated everywhere. The sisters, only a few of us at first, would gather in secret and read them aloud for those who could not read, and then debated the ideas.
    “Dr. Luther’s belief, we are saved by grace through faith alone, and not by works—it was revolutionary.” She smiled in wonder at the memory. “What I felt was like the Apostle Paul’s experience of being blinded, then suddenly able to see.”
    Wolf touched her temple, and she started. She realized he only intended to brush back the hair that would not stay confined in her scarf. With a ghost of a smile, he secured the strand back into its mooring.
    “Go on.” He gave her a gentle prompt. “So, did what you learn from Luther’s writings make you hate your confinement all the more?”
    “Y—yes. But let me be clear. I do not hate the people of the Church. Many are good souls who serve it honestly. There are many others, however, without the will to avoid sin who take advantage of the poorest of the poor. Monks who sell indulgences to destitute mothers who can barely afford to feed their children, bishops who keep mistresses during the week with impunity, then preach about the sins of the flesh on the Sabbath.” She shook her head. “It became very disheartening.”
    He leaned against the tree, once again disturbingly near. She resisted the urge to move away.
    “That sort of behavior always goes on,” he said. “Whenever you have people of influence in control of the uneducated and uninformed, you will have the abuse of power. This is nothing new.”
    “Perhaps not to you, but it was to me,” she said. “I have never been comfortable with cynicism. It is not in me to simply look the other way.”
    “Nay.” His mouth turned up in a brief smile. “I imagine not.”
    She allowed her gaze to linger on him for a moment, and then forced it away again. “Well, a copy of Dr. Luther’s writings on monastic vows fell into our hands, and that, as they say, was that.”
    “I’m familiar with the work. An underground publisher printed