If she wanted Hugh – and she wasn’t ready to say she did – but if she did decide that she wanted him, she would have to approach it very carefully. By tomorrow the man who’d gently touched her would disappear and the old Hugh d’Ambray would take his place. That man wouldn’t respond to overtures of peace. If she came to him, looking for relief or reassurance, or offering him either, he would either view it as a weakness or try to use it to his advantage. Nothing that went on between the two of them was either tender or loving. She would have to back him into a corner or let him think he backed her into one. And if she ever let him into her bed, she would fight him in there too.

Was it worth it? She still wasn’t sure.

Elara closed her eyes and went to sleep.

11

Elara strolled through the sunroom. At some point it had been a rampart, one of many extending from the main tower. When they first took over the castle, the battlements here were badly damaged, so instead of repairing them, she chose to extend the roof and install floor-to-ceiling glass panels. As with every available space in the castle, soon the sunroom acquired plants, some grown in large floor containers, others dripping from hanging pots. Tall hibiscus plants offered bright red and cream-colored blossoms next to the delicate orange blooms of flowering maple. White jasmine rose above purple oxalis leaves, sending a sweet perfume into the air. The pottery came from the village shop and the children had painted them in bright vivid hues. There was even enough sun for some herbs, although they found herbs grew best outside. Johanna had added long constellations of colored glass hanging from wires. When the sun hit them just right, the entire room glowed with turquoise, indigo, peach, and red. Dugas had delivered a huge wooden table, enough to seat sixteen people, and the sunroom was complete.

Today the table held an assortment of their herbal offerings. She supposed to some the sight of jars, bottles, and dried bundles would’ve seemed ominous. Most of their concoctions wouldn’t be touched unless someone’s health was in question. But to her, it brought a deep, quiet sense of joy. She’d needed comfort after last night, and so she came here.

A whisper of movement made her turn. Rufus Fortner knocked on the doorframe. Behind him Rook waited, impassive, next to Johanna.

“Good morning,” Elara said.

“Good morning,” Rufus answered. “May I come in?”

“Of course.”

The big man walked into the sunroom. Behind him Rook slipped in and parked himself by the wall, a silent shadow. Johanna glanced at her, a question in her eyes. Elara barely shook her head. She could handle the Commander of the Red Guard on her own. Rook was more than enough backup. The blond witch retreated into the hallway.

“Nice selection,” Rufus said, looking at the collections of jars and bottles on the table. “It’s like a pharmacy in here.”

“Not like. We are a pharmacy, one of the best in the area.”

“Herbal pharmacy. Natural cures.”

“Do you know what they call natural cures that work, Commander?” Elara’s lips curled into a soft smile. “They call it medicine. For two and a half thousand years people extracted salicin from the leaves of white willow trees and used it to soothe headaches and inflammation. A French chemist, Henri Leroux, extracted salicin in a crystalline form in 1829. An Italian, Piria, produced salicylic acid from it. Then in 1853 another Frenchman synthesized acetylsalicylic acid. Finally, in 1899 Bayer packaged it into pills and put it on the store shelves. They called it aspirin.”

“How about that?” Rufus said. He picked up a jar of wolfsbane and looked at it. “Good color on the wolfsbane.” He set the jar down and picked up a small green bottle. “What is this one?”

“An all-purpose antibiotic,” she said. “Excellent against urinary tract infections.”

Rufus rocked his head side to side, nodding in appreciation, set the bottle down, and pointed to a red heart-shaped jar filled with chick pea-sized pills. “Love potion?”

“Hardly. The heart symbol comes from the seed of a once extinct plant, silphium, used by the Romans and Greeks as a cure all for many ills. Also, as a contraceptive for women, just like the contents of that jar.” She reached over and picked out a tall vial of pale green liquid with a dropper at the end. “But we do offer a love potion of sorts. They don’t make Viagra anymore. This is the next best thing.”

Rufus’s eyebrows crept up.

“Three drops in a glass of water half an hour before the date. Don’t mix with alcohol. It tastes vile, and the drops are hard to get out, and that’s on purpose.”

“Why?”

“Because there hasn’t been a man alive who doesn’t subscribe to the philosophy that six drops surely must be better than three. Three does the job. Six will leave you in an uncomfortable situation and possibly warrant a trip to the hospital.”

Rufus pondered the bottle. “There was a commotion last night.”

She met his gaze. “We live in the middle of a magical wood, Commander. Once in a while something scales the wall in the deep of night and tries to eat the children. The Iron Dogs took care of it. And then Hugh insisted they bring the hounds on patrols. I’m sorry the barking was distracting.”

Rufus nodded, his face thoughtful, and set the jar back on the table.

“Is something bothering you, Commander?” Elara asked.

The big man leaned back. Last night at dinner – which felt like a month ago – he’d played the brawler so well. Just a good old boy, not too bright, easily pacified with good food and beer. Today his eyes were shrewd. Rufus Fortner was a lot sharper than he wanted people to believe.

“I get him,” he said. “This is a great place. Defensible, well-supplied, and isolated. No law enforcement to get in the way. No troublesome politics. Nobody tells him what to do. His men are fed and housed. He’s got everything a man could want: a castle, of which he’s lord and master, an army, and a beautiful wife. But what do you get out of it?”

There it was. Loving spouse, she reminded herself. I don’t want to kill Hugh on a daily basis. He is my favorite. I adore him, and he makes my toes curl. “He’s my husband,” she said.

Rufus grimaced. “You’ve got to know the man is a butcher. People call me a rough man. I’ve got a rough reputation, and I’ve earned it. I’ve done things that keep good folks up at night. Hugh d’Ambray scares me. He is the monster rough men like me fear. I’ve got blood on my hands. Hugh is up to his neck in it.”

The memory of thick blood spreading on the surface of the water came to her and she glimpsed Hugh again, standing with his feet in her pool, a twisting fiery maelstrom of raw pain and guilt burning behind him.

“He’s not that anymore,” Elara said.

“A tiger doesn’t change its stripes,” Rufus said.

“You misunderstand. I don’t want him to change his stripes. You said it yourself, he is the monster rough men fear.” She smiled at him, sharp, pinning him with her gaze. “He puts himself between evil creatures and small children. He protects us. He is my monster, Commander. Should any rough men come here and try to take what is ours, he will remind them of that.”

Rufus studied her. “I see you are well matched.”

“We are.”

“What happens when he takes his army and marches out to conquer?”

Elara almost laughed. If he’d only seen Hugh’s troops a month ago, when they had gotten their first helping of fresh bread in weeks. The Iron Dogs had been strays for too long. They knew where their food came from. They were in no hurry to leave and neither was their Preceptor.

“This castle is my home, Commander. I’m not going anywhere. I can’t leave my people and Hugh won’t leave me.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Elara motioned to him. “Come.”

Rufus walked over to where she stood at the window. She pointed to the empty moat far below, past the curtain wall. “You see that man testing the concrete pad over there? That’s him.”

“How can you tell from this distance?”

“I know him. I know the way he holds himself. The engineer came and got him at dawn.” Rook had dutifully reported it to her. “They finally got their Roman concrete to set. Does this look to you like a man set on conquering or does it look like a man obsessed with fortifying the castle for his people?”