The Warlock's Daughter

The Warlock's Daughter by Jennifer Blake Page B

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Authors: Jennifer Blake
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last he said, “She must have been a woman of uncommon beauty.”
    “They say so; I never knew her.” She heard the regret in her own voice, something else she had never noted before.
    “I expect you are her image.”
    The flush that rose at the compliment was painful in its intensity. Her vanity, however, was untouched. “My aunt says not, though the resemblance is there. I am more like my father, which is unforgivable. I have his strength.”
    “You would, of course,” he said, and smiled to himself.
    Carita watched him, and she wondered. But no, it was unlikely that he could know anything of her situation. He was only a chance-met stranger, and perhaps an accomplished trifler with the female sex. He might be—was without doubt—good at reading the desires of a woman's heart. But that was all.
    Or was it? The warmth of his smile seemed for her alone; the look in his eyes caressed her. She was encompassed, held prisoner, by the sheer male force emanating from him. With these things was something more that was like mystic recognition. And possibly the handiwork of fate.
    “What of your mother?” he asked, delicately probing. “Did she regret the loving?”
    It was a personal question, like his personal comments. She should not answer, should not stay to exchange another word. Yet the compulsion was strong. She said, “There is nothing to show that she did. My aunt regrets it enough for both of them.”
    “And has accomplished her revenge against your father by transferring it to you?”
    A frown drew her brows together. “Why should you think so?”
    “She has made the memory of your mother bitter with regret and turned you, with her claims, into the daughter of a murderer. Encouraging you to despise your father, she has taught you to disavow the part of yourself that is like him.”
    “Not—intentionally.”
    “No? But you can't deny she has proved her lack of concern for your well-being. After all, she has sent you here alone, without a chaperone, on All Hallows’ Eve, the one night in the year when anything can happen.”
    Carita had never thought of it like that. Still, she said, “Perhaps I came of my own choice.”
    “I salute your loyalty; it is a lovely virtue. But does your aunt deserve it?”
    Between confusion over the compliment and recognition of her own doubts, her protest was weak. “She must be given some consideration for caring for me since I was born.”
    “But if she can't or won't protect you, now that you are a young woman, it could be time for you to seek the safety of a gold band.”
    “Hardly,” she said, “if you mean the kind that comes with a husband attached.”
    Laughter flashed like lightning across the darkness of his eyes, then vanished. “You sound so certain. Perhaps you've been married?”
    The violent shake of her head threatened to loosen her small hat of feather-trimmed felt. “No, thank goodness. Rather, I've seen the husbands chosen by my aunt for her daughters.”
    “You weren't impressed?”
    The solicitation in his voice was, she thought, completely spurious. “One of them drinks all day and falls asleep at dinner with his face in his soup; the other sleeps during the daylight hours and drinks all night with his male friends.”
    “And on the strength of their example you shun matrimony.”
    “I haven't the temperament for it.” Her face was without expression. He could not know the subject was distressing to her.
    Renfrey was thoughtful. “I will grant that I have little experience with the cool and pallid passions of the church, but you don't have the look of a nun.”
    “The problem,” she said in stringent tones, “is not a lack of heat.”
    “What an intriguing admission—” he began with a wicked smile, then stopped. “No,” he corrected himself. “That was a statement of information, I think, not an invitation to dalliance. The question is, then: What are you afraid of?”
    The night wind shifted the fullness of her wide skirts so

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