My Beloved by Karen Ranney Read Free Book Online Page A

moved off to a second tree, then a third. At the fourth she found what she needed. She began gathering the oak galls, piling them into her basket. She could boil acorn caps, but it was the oak galls that would produce the kind of ink she needed, the blue-black mixture that wore well and did not fade.
    She bent and retrieved another gall and placed it in her basket. She was lucky to have found a tree so infested. Otherwise, she would have had to strip the bark, an action that could sometimes damage a tree. She chastised herself for her slowness. The quicker she finished this process, the quicker she could begin her work again.
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    He told himself that it was foolish to be here. But she was not inside the keep, and he was infused with curiosity about this woman circumstance had made his wife. He stood in the middle of the oriel with his eyes closed, scenting the air like a wolf seeking its mate. Roses. Faint, as if the breeze blew the scent in from the window. But it came from a woman who perfumed herself.
    She was tidy in the arrangement of her tools.There was a pile of quills, some carved and ready, some not yet curved to the necessary point. A small saucer held a drop of drying ink, a horn the powder that produced it. In the center of the space was a book bound in wood, its worn leather hinges testament not only to its age but its use. Next to it, a piece of parchment, half the page completed, the letters carefully inscribed.
    He had learned to read the way he’d done most things as a boy, with a great show of reluctance and a secret joy. Magdalene had taught him Latin and Greek and his numbers, so that he would need no scribe to write or read for him. But more than that, she had made his lessons interesting. He’d discovered that he loved to learn, enjoyed exploring the abilities of his own mind.
    Why did he think of Magdalene so strongly right at this moment? Because she had been a woman of learning? Or because she would have felt the same as he did now? Impressed at the skill of the writer who had transcribed the words on the parchment before him.
    He did not touch anything, merely lowered his hand, covered in a leather gauntlet, until it was only an inch from those implements Juliana used every day. It hovered there as if to absorb the warmth of a hand not present, touch a finger that would lightly press against the parchment the next day.
    A sound, no louder than a brush of wind, stilled his movement. He breathed silently, each sense alert to danger. Too many years had been given up to survival not to be alert. Even at Langlinais.
    He should have moved, left the room, but he did not. He wondered, later, if he had deliberately ignored the warning in order to see her again.
    She entered the room in a rush, but abruptly halted at the sight of him.
    The moment was ripe for apology, for telling her that he had not meant to startle her, or to satisfy his curiosity so overtly. But his words were muffled by his own sense of wonderment. He had not imagined her, then, nor made of her something she was not. Too tall to be considered delicate, too brightly colored to be called a lady fair. Still, she reminded him of spring. Or perhaps something more elemental. Her hair was piled in braids atop her head. He wanted to see it tumbled to her shoulders, a mass of untamed, ebony curls.
    â€œWhy were you in the forest?” The question slipped from his lips before he knew it was there, yet curiosity was the safest of all the feelings he had at this moment.
    Her eyes opened wider, as if she was surprised by his knowledge of her movements. Both her hands moved to grip the handle of the basket tight, as if guarding the slab of lichen inside.
    â€œI was harvesting oak galls,” she said. Her voice echoed with a soft quaver. Shy? Or terrified? More like the latter. He had not become less frightening with a second glimpse.
    â€œAnd what is an oak gall?”
    She glanced up at him. “The egg of a gall wasp. Laid in the