Coulter, Catherine. Rosehaven / Catherine Coulter.

whips.

The man’s cloak rippled yet again. There was an unearthly shriek. She stuffed her fist into her mouth and sucked herself farther back into the shadows.

The man slipped his gloved hand beneath his cloak and pulled out a thickly furred animal with a bushy tail. There was a low hiss of fear from all the Oxborough people in the great hall. Was it a devil’s familiar? No, no, not that, not a cat.

It was a marten. Sleek, thick-furred, deep brown in color save for the snow white beneath its chin and on its belly. She had a beautiful sable cloak made from this animal’s fur. She’d wager this animal would never have to worry about being a covering for someone’s back. Not held so securely by this man. What was this warrior doing with a marten?

The man brought the marten to his face, looked directly into its eyes, nodded, then very gently slipped it once again beneath his cloak inside his tunic.

She smiled, she couldn’t help it. The man couldn’t be all that terrifying if he carried a pet marten next to his heart.

Graelam de Moreton stepped up behind him and slapped the man on his back-as if he were just a man, nothing more than a simple man. The man turned and smiled. That smile transformed him. In that moment when he smiled, he looked human and very real, but then he wasn’t smiling, and he was as he had been, a stranger, a dark stranger, with a marten in his tunic.

The two of them were of a size, both taller than the oak sapling she’d planted three summers past, big men, too big, taking too much space, crowding everyone around them. She’d never feared Graelam, though, she knew from stories her father had told her since she’d been small that

he was a warrior whom other soldiers backed away from if they could, that her father had once seen Graelam sever a man in half with one swing of his sword and kill another three men with the same grace and power. She had never before considered that a man could be graceful while he butchered other men.

“Graelam,” the man said, his voice as deep and rough as a ship pulling at its moorings in a storm. “It has been too long since I have tapped my fist into your ugly face and watched you sprawl to the ground. All goes well with you?”

“Aye, too well. I don’t deserve what I have, the luck God has bestowed upon me, but I give thanks daily for my life. I caution you never to call my face ugly in front of my wife. She has a fondness for it. She may be small but she is ferocious in her defense of me.”

The man said, “She is a special lady, unlike any other. You know why I am here.”

“Naturally,” Graelam de Moreton said. “I regret that Fawke of Trent is very ill and cannot be in the great hall to welcome you. Hastings should be here to greet you but I do not see her. We will sup, then I will take you to him.”

“I wish to see him now. I wish to have this over with as quickly as possible.” » “Very well.” Graelam nodded to her father’s steward, Torric, so thin Hastings had once told him that she feared he would blow away whenever there was a sharp wind off the sea. Graelam then motioned for the man to precede him up the winding stone stairs that led to the upper chambers. “Then,” he said to the man’s gray-cloaked back, “you will want to meet his daughter.”

“I suppose that I must.”

When they were out of sight, Hastings drew a deep breath. Her future would be sealed at her father’s bedside. Her future and the future of Oxborough. Perhaps the man would refuse. She walked into the great hall. She called out to the thirty-some people, “This man is here to see Lord Fawke. We will prepare to dine.”

But who is he? she heard over and over.

People were whispering behind their hands, as if he could hear them and would come back to punish them. Their faces were bright with curiosity and a tinge of fear. This was the sort of man who would wage a siege and show no mercy.