Susan Carroll
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Excerpt


Chapter  One

Brittany, 1605

There was little hope of returning to the  island that night. Ominous dark clouds dimmed the sun, robbing the day of  precious hours and a more gentle passage into evening. The wind picked up,  rendering the waters of the channel whitecapped and choppy.

The Lady of  Faire Isle struggled to keep the hood of her cloak from being tugged back,  exposing her countenance to the rough salt tang of the breeze. Soft brown hair  framed a face that was pale, her unblemished complexion and short  stature making  her seem younger than her thirty-­one years. But her  green eyes, always too  solemn, too watchful, made her appear far  older.

Picking her way  carefully along the rocky shore, she peered  across the channel for a last glimpse of her home, but the distant outline  of Faire Isle was obscured by the  shadows cast by the clouds. Margaret  Wolfe hitched her breath, feeling that  peculiar pressure in her chest she  often had when she left the security of her  island, a sense that disaster  loomed just over the next horizon.

That was  because the newly  appointed Lady of Faire Isle had the sight, folks on the  island and the  mainland would whisper in awed tones. To a certain degree she  did, but  Margaret Wolfe attributed her tension more to her uncertain childhood.  Anyone who was the daughter of a mad witch like Cassandra Lascelles was bound to  face life with a high degree of apprehension. As her old nurse, Mistress  Waters,  had oft told Meg, “You are a wary old soul, my pet. I do declare  you were born  anxious.”

Meg’s present anxiety was heightened by the  behavior of her  traveling companion. Seraphine Beaufoy, la Comtesse de
Castelnau, was a golden  blond goddess of a woman, as tall as Meg was short. The comtesse barked  out orders in clipped tones, commanding  the oarsmen who had rowed her and Meg  from the island to drag the dinghy  further up the beach and conceal it beneath a  pile of driftwood and  seaweed. The wind snapped at Seraphine’s cloak, revealing  the masculine  garb she had donned, a disguise that would have fooled no one, for  her  short doublet and breeches only accented her lush curves.

But  Seraphine was more concerned with practicality than deception. One could not  wield a sword trussed up in a corset and petticoats. And Seraphine was armed  with both a pistol and a rapier strapped to her waist. Clearly she  had a
presentiment of possible danger, but there was one marked difference  between  them, Meg thought. If trouble came, Seraphine would relish it.

Seraphine  strode back to Meg, looking satisfied with her  disposal of the dinghy. “There.  At least the boat will remain secure and we  shall not be cut off from our only  route of escape. I have ordered Jacques  and Louis to stand  guard.”

“Surely you are being a little dramatic.  I have come across to  the mainland many times to treat ailments and never  had a need to
escape.”

“There is a huge difference between  delivering some peasant’s  babe and trying to cure a girl who claims to be  possessed of demons and well you  know it, Margaret Wolfe.”

“Not the  way I have heard some poor women  shriek and curse when in the midst of  their labor pains.”

Meg’s mild  attempt at humor did little to ease  the scowl on Seraphine’s face. “I will tell  you again, I don’t think you  should be interfering in this matter.” Her tone  softened as she added, “You  are not obliged to atone for all the evil your  mother did while she was  alive. You don’t have to ride to the rescue anytime  someone breathes the  word witch.”

“That is not what I am doing,” Meg  started, but was  stopped by a look from Seraphine, the shrewd assessment of one  who had been  her friend for too many years and knew her far too  well.

“Well, not  entirely,” Meg amended. “As the new Lady of Faire Isle, is it not my duty  to be a protector of women, especially other daughters of the  earth?”

“I don’t think Ariane would have wanted you meddling in the  superstitious affairs of folk on the mainland. My aunt would have counseled you  to be prudent.”

“Since Ariane is no longer here, we cannot ask her.”  It  was a source of great sorrow to Meg and she was unable to keep the
quiver from  her voice. Ariane Deauville, the former Lady of Faire  Isle, had been all  things to Meg these last fifteen years. Friend, mother,  and teacher, she had  instructed Meg in all the lore of the daughters of the  earth, wise women gifted  in the arts of healing and white  magic.

None was more gifted than the one  acclaimed as the Lady of  Faire Isle, a time-­honored title bestowed upon the  woman best suited
to be the leader among the daughters of the earth in each  generation. Meg  had been humbled and honored beyond measure when Ariane had  chosen her to  be her successor.

It had been a role Meg had not expected  to assume  for a good many years, as the title only passed upon the death of the  
previous Lady. But when her health had begun to fail, Ariane Cheney had broken  with tradition and abdicated in Meg’s favor.

“Call me selfish, my dear,”  Ariane had told her. “But I want to spend whatever time I may have  left with my  husband and son, traveling to places I have only read of in  books, learning the  secrets of healing and lore of other  countries.”

Meg would never have  dreamed of calling her friend  selfish. No Lady had ever served Faire Isle and  the daughters of the earth
more devotedly than Ariane. If she could find a  measure of peace and a cure  for the illness that slowly devoured her, Meg could
only wish her  Godspeed.

Yet that day last spring when Meg had stood upon  the dock,  smiling and waving until the ship had disappeared from view, she had 
blinked back tears. She had been overcome with grief and a panicked feeling of  being left to don a pair of shoes her feet would never grow large enough to  fill. She had striven hard to do so, grateful for the encouragement  and  support of Seraphine. But now when her friend wielded Ariane’s presumed  wishes  as a weapon, she could not help telling Seraphine.

“Are you  not the one  who has been telling me that when any situation arises, I must  stop trying to  guess what Ariane would have done? I must learn to employ my  own  judgment.”

“Not when you are wrong.”

“You mean when I don’t agree  with you.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” Seraphine  demanded, then laughed.  “Very well. Let us go find this foolish chit who  claims to be beset with demons,  so you can unbewitch her. With any luck, we  may yet manage to avoid the storm  and return to Faire Isle before dark.
Although it would have been helpful if  that idiot boy who came to beg your aid had waited to show the  way.”

“Poor Denys was far too anxious to  return. It matters naught.  Pernod is a small village and the girl’s family  owns the local hostelry, the  Laughing Dolphin. Mademoiselle Tillet will not  be hard to find.”

“Lead on  then.”

Pernod, like many of the  villages on the Breton coast, was  inhabited largely by fishermen. Over the  years, a rough track had been worn up  the rocky beach. Seraphine’s boots  were far better suited to the terrain than  the clumsy pattens Meg had  donned to protect her shoes. The Comtesse had  acquired a reputation  at the French court as a woman of grace, charmingly  seductive and full of a  playful indolence. Seraphine, when she was on a mission,  was an entirely  different creature. Meg’s shorter legs were hard-­pressed to  keep pace  with Seraphine’s lengthy strides.

By the time they reached the  point  where the track widened into the lane through the village, Meg was panting  a little. As she had told Seraphine, Pernod was a small place, boasting little  more than a score of dwellings, a tiny church, and a hostelry. At least the  
stout stone walls of the cottages provided a break from the wind, allowing  Meg  to ease her grip on her hood. The dusty lane was deserted, the  village  eerily quiet, but for the occasional banging of a shutter and the  rustle of the trees. The silence rendered Meg uneasy. Given the hour, she  would have expected  to see fishermen returning with the day’s catch, young  boys wending homeward
from their toil in the common field, or distracted  mothers shooing stray  children inside to their supper.

“What is  this, some sort of ghost  village? Where is everyone?” Seraphine demanded.  “Mayhap the Tillet girl’s demon  has carried everyone else off as  well.”

“Don’t say that! Not even in  jest. It is more likely that  everyone has retreated indoors for fear of the  approaching
storm.”

Meg sought to reassure herself as much as Seraphine, but a  part of her could not believe it. These Breton coastal people were hardy  folk, accustomed to dealing with rough weather. They would not be driven to bolt  their doors against the mere prospect of a little rain, thunder, and  blustering  wind.

Meg could think of only one thing that might have  sent such a  redoubtable breed of people into cowering inside their  cottages: the fear that a  witch walked among them. Meg prayed it was  not so. She had hoped to deal  quietly with the Tillet girl’s claims of
bewitchment, resolve the matter before the rumors and panic had time to  spread. The kind of panic that could result in  innocent women being accused  of witchcraft, tortured, and hung.

As she  and Seraphine rounded a  bend in the lane, Meg spotted the inn sign creaking in  the wind. The  Laughing Dolphin was a modest hostelry that seldom saw much custom  beyond  local travelers. But on this somber dark afternoon, a stranger lingered
in  the doorway.

The man looked as out of place in this rugged fishing  village as a satin doublet would have appeared strung on a wash line of coarse  homespun shirts. Despite the dust that clung to his boots and the short  cape  that hung off one shoulder, there was a quality about his garments  that marked  him as a gentleman. He was of no more than medium  height, his figure far  from imposing, but something in his self-­assured manner gave him the appearance of being taller. A fine-looking man, Meg could not help noting. Some
might even have said a beautiful one, with his lean chiseled features and smooth-­shaven complexion, rather pale for one traveling during the summer months. The breeze stirred the feathers of his toque set upon waves of golden brown hair. His head tipped up as he studied the darkening sky.

Seraphine let out a low whistle between her teeth. “So who is this fine young buck?”

“I would have no idea,” Meg murmured, uneasily. “It is rather unusual for such a visitor to pass through a remote village like Pernod.”

“You are afraid he might be the devil you have been summoned to exorcise? He looks far too pretty for that.”

Meg glared up at her friend, but stopped as a sudden thought struck her. “Good lord, ’Phine. You don’t think  your husband might have sent him?”

Seraphine looked  taken aback by the notion before giving a derisive laugh. “What! Monsieur le Comte engage someone to find his errant wife and drag her back to Castelnau by the hair of her head? Gerard would not have the spine. And I doubt my dear husband wants me back any more than I desire to return to him.”

Meg could not agree with that, but she knew it would be of little use to argue the point. She had tried ever since Seraphine had
arrived on Faire Isle five months ago.

“Moreover, that man isn’t even French,” Seraphine continued. “Very likely he is English.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Only look at the square cut of his  doublet. No self-­respecting French gallant would venture abroad wearing a garment so lacking in style.”

She and Meg had been speaking in low tones as they neared the inn, but the stranger’s attention riveted upon them. He straightened from the doorway and he stared. Meg felt the full weight of his gaze, hard, assessing, and far too intimate.

Meg shrank deeper inside her hood, her cheeks burning. “What business would an English gentleman have here in Pernod? And why does he stare so?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I should ask him and give him a lesson in manners.”

To Meg’s dismay, Seraphine halted, staring back at the stranger. With a challenging lift of her chin, she drew back her cloak, resting 
her hand upon the hilt of the rapier strapped to her side.

“Seraphine! Stop it,” Meg hissed. “I hate it when you do this.”

“Do what? Honor my father by wearing the sword he gave  me?”

“I don’t object to you wearing it, so much as you itching to stick it in somebody.”

Meg held her breath as she awaited the man’s reaction to Seraphine’s aggressive gesture. The moment stretched out before
he lowered his gaze. He bent in a grave bow and disappeared into the inn. Meg’s relief was so keen, a tremor coursed through her. But Seraphine—­damn the woman—­actually looked disappointed.

She eased her cloak back over her sword. “That’s that. Both of us are a little too much on edge, getting into a fret over nothing. Just some fool Englishman who has doubtless lost his way and seeks shelter from the incoming storm. He likely hoped to pass his time with some local wench.” Seraphine’s eyes danced with mischief as she added, “Just a hint, my dear. Next time you venture off your
island, you really should try not to attract so much attention.”

Meg choked between a laugh and a vexed oath. “Wretch! If men are of a mind to stare, it is always at you.”

“But you are the one they never forget. I daresay it is those fey green eyes of yours. One look into them and a man is lost
forever.” Seraphine teased, but there was a wistful note to her voice as well.

Meg shook her head, dismissing Seraphine’s words as nonsense or wanting to because she had striven most of her life to be forgettable, to be invisible, hidden by the mists of Faire Isle.

Perhaps she had overreacted to the stranger, her irrational fear just another part of the bleak legacy left her by her mother. For most
of her childhood and youth, she had every cause to fear, to know what it was to be hunted. Every stray glance, every stare that
lingered too long, every stranger that crossed her path could herald danger.

But surely those days were long behind her now. Her great enemy, the Dark Queen, Catherine de Medici was dead these fifteen years and more. Meg’s witch of a mother, Cassandra Lascelles, was gone longer still, swallowed up by the  waters of the Seine. Likewise Cassandra’s coven of fanatic devotees had all been destroyed, slain by witch-­hunters or imprisoned, tried, and put to 
death.

There was no one left to menace Meg’s peace anymore, no one to come after her. So why should the encounter with this stranger cause the back of her neck to prickle? Some voice inside her whispered that his coming here, his interest in her was no mere chance.

When she was younger, she would have heeded that voice. As she grew older, she became less attuned to the fey side of
her nature, more inclined to question her instincts, to dismiss her extraordinary senses as folly.

Her pulse tripped nervously as she and Seraphine crossed the yard and approached the  archway where the stranger had
vanished. Meg wished that Bridget Tillet was a fisherman’s daughter, dwelling in some remote cottage far up the beach.
More than anything, she wished herself  back on her island.

When Seraphine shoved open the inn door, they were beset by a cacophony of noise and overpowering scents, the odor of strong
spirits and cooked meats mingling with the stench of unwashed bodies. At least the mystery of the absent villagers was solved. Meg’s heart sank as she entered the crowded taproom. Most of Pernod appeared crammed inside, every vacant stool and bench filled. Others leaned upon the bar counter, gesturing and  arguing, the sound like the buzzing of a wasp’s nest that had been disturbed.

Meg could make out little of what was being said, but the tone was unmistakable, angry and frightened.


  

To learn more about this book, visit The Lady of Secrets site at Random House.   Click here.
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