Winter Moon by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online Page B

some of his underlings thought he could see what was in a man’s mind. He was also cautious. Living in a sea-keep tended to make you cautious; the sea was temperamental and unforgiving; slip once, and she tended to kill you for your carelessness.
    He also hated risk. He always measured risk against gain. But he wasn’t creative, and he never initiated anything if he could help it.
    Any overtures would have to have come from the Khaleem, and the promises of reward would have had to be quite substantial before he would even have considered answering the initial contact.
    Whatever Lord Ferson had been promised, it had to have been something big enough to override that intelligence and native caution. And whatever was afoot, it had to be something that Lord Ferson was quite sure of bringing to fruition without being caught.
    This was probably the Khaleem’s idea. He had promised her father a great deal—and might even have already paid him some of what was promised as a gesture of good faith. Until this moment, there would not have been a great deal that anyone could point to as evidence of treason. Even now—well, entertaining Massid for the winter was a dubious move, but not precisely treasonable. It could even be said, and likely Ferson would if he was caught, that he had been trying to open negotiations to end the Khaleem’s piracy.
    Only if he made some more overt move, such as pledging his daughter to Massid, would he enter the realm of treason, and he had timed things so word of that was unlikely to escape before the greater plan came to fruition.
    Now, something about that tickled her mind, but she couldn’t put a finger on it. Mentally, she set it aside in the back of her mind and continued pursuing her original train of thought, jumping a little as the fire popped.
    Nevertheless, even with powerful incentives, and a strong likelihood of success, there was something missing from this equation. There were too many things that could go wrong, too many uncertainties. The Khaleems were not known for fidelity to their promises in the past. Lord Ferson had never been noted for being a risk taker.
    Something in his life must have changed in the past year to make him even consider such an overture, much less follow through on it.
    She took in a shuddering breath. This was getting more complicated by the moment. She was going to have to watch every step she took, every word she spoke.
    So far her options were marriage, and escape. Both were fraught with the potential to go wrong. There was a third option—to delay—but she didn’t think that she would get very far with that—except…
    Hmm.
    There was a narrow path through all of this, perhaps. She had boldly told the Countess there was noway her father could force her into a marriage against her will. Legally, that is, and when she had claimed that, she had assumed any such marriage would be to a fellow countryman, who would be bound by the law and custom of the sea-keeps. But that assumed there would be someone here to oppose her father’s will; she had also assumed that no actual marriage could take place before spring, and that such a wedding would involve the invitations to the other lords of the sea-keeps. At least one of them would have answered to an appeal from her. Especially since all of them were very jealous of their equality in power, and would resent anything that made the Lord of Highclere the most powerful of the lot.
    The arrival of Massid put rest to all of those assumptions.
    However….
    Part of what had been tickling the back of her thoughts finally bloomed into an idea. She couldn’t depend on the law…but she could use it.
    She closed her eyes briefly and said a little prayer of thanks that she had managed to keep her father from knowing precisely what kind of person he had welcomed back into his keep. The good God must have been in the back of her mind, keeping her from betraying her