long journey.”
Leaving Mary and Arabella to plot their day, Princess Anne moved away to speak with her other guests. And while Arabella was pleased to have escaped Tristan Carlisle’s notice this time, she wondered how long it would be before the knight remembered their meeting. Would he compromise her position at court with tales of her uncivilized behavior?
Or did the heated awareness the English warrior incited within her pose an even darker threat?
Across the great hall, Rosalyn de Clair stamped her foot in frustration under the concealing skirts of her richly jeweled surcoat. She watched as Mary Natansia walked off with Arabella Rowan. Rosalyn had been trying to catch Mary’s ear so she might gain the simpering twit for an ally at court, but the Rowan witch engaged her in conversation and remained steadfastly at Mary’s side.
Rosalyn hoped to appeal to Lady Mary’s heralded sympathetic nature with a clever mistruth she had been working on. Everyone knew the emperor doted on his precious ward. Rosalyn just had to make the most of it, and she was sure she could. Hadn’t her lover once told her she was the most cunning woman he had ever met? Having clawed her way from her status as a bastard castoff to an enviable position among the nobility, Rosalyn considered those words a compliment.
She turned to find other company for the evening meal. Mary could be cornered another time. There would be plenty of opportunities on the way to England. In fact, maybe she should use the extra time to find an English nobleman to woo prettily, rather than the Bohemian gentleman she had tentatively marked. Everyone knew no one in Bohemia had money these days. Even King Wenceslas had stooped to sending his sister to England without a dowry. It was a disgrace.
Yes, an English lord would be all the more beneficial. Rosalyn’s smiles were restored at this new development of her plan. And, as fate would have it, she had just spied the most delicious Englishman she could have ever dreamed of.
Chapter Three
A bazaar took place once each fortnight on the Vltava River in Prague. Everywhere Arabella looked as their carriage rolled past the marketplace, she saw vibrant colors and lively people. Hundreds thronged the merchants’ stands to haggle over vegetables, spices, cloth, animals and tools. Gypsy wagons provided entertainments of all kinds, from dancing to fortune telling.
Astonished by the sights, Arabella thrilled to each new discovery. She was as impressed by the Gypsy street entertainers as she was by the Venetian mosaic of the Last Judgment on St. Vitus’s cathedral wall. At the moment, the bazaar caught Arabella’s eye and she wanted desperately to take a closer look.
“We have time to stop, don’t we? It is all so colorful.” Arabella tugged on Mary’s sleeve as she asked their driver to stop. She jumped from the small conveyance they had been given for their expedition. Briefly, she wondered whether exploring the market was a suitably ladylike pursuit, but she pushed her reservations about her place at the Bohemian court from her mind. Surely Zaharia would approve. Arabella could almost smell the herbs at a local wise woman’s stall.
“I don’t know, Arabella. Our driver wishes to take us home before dark.”
“We won’t stay long. And I would remember this bazaar more than the university or the city palaces, long after we depart.” Her gaze already roamed the marketplace for anyone selling unfamiliar tinctures or medicinal oils. “Please?”
Mary bit her lip, clearly unsure of herself in the raucous setting.
“If you promise we won’t stay very long—”
Arabella gave her friend a quick hug before pulling her to a booth overflowing with fabric samples. Perhaps that would be more to Mary’s liking.
“Feel this. Isn’t it sumptuous?” she exclaimed over a piece of brightly colored silk with an exotic Eastern design. Mary chose two bolts, giving the merchant her name to have them delivered.
Moving away from the cloth merchant’s booth, Mary soon engaged another merchant in haggling over a jeweled comb. Now that Mary was enjoying herself, Arabella hoped she might find the local herbalist. She was searching through the crowd when a large figure garbed in black caught her eye.
Tristan Carlisle.
Arabella was not ready to face the familiar figure striding among the Gypsy booths, speaking briefly with several of the peasant families who ran them. Ducking behind a pie-maker’s stand, Arabella watched the English knight as he perused the items of a silversmith.
Observing him while he was not looking at her, she decided his face was handsome enough when he did not have a glower set upon his brow.
His eyes, however, were nothing short of beautiful. A silvery shade of gray rimmed with long, dark lashes. After her few days at court, she already understood the ladies of that realm would have done crime to possess such lashes. The slash of the knight’s brows, however, gave him a slightly fearsome aspect even when he did not scowl. The rest of his face could only be described as angular, with a hard, square jaw and prominent cheekbones.
She blushed to realize how carefully she studied Tristan Carlisle when he failed to hold women in high regard. She guessed he was the kind of man her family had warned her about before her trip.
Pausing to finger a delicate bit of silver that he had picked up off the cloth full of wares, Tristan spoke to the boy behind the counter. Arabella could see the knight held a small knife in his hand.
It was ridiculous to stray near him. Yet she found herself walking closer, avoiding his notice but suddenly curious to hear what he asked the Gypsy boy about the blade.
“…from India,” Arabella overheard the boy telling Tristan. “I brought it all the way here myself.”
While the boy boasted, Tristan took the flat-handled dagger in his palm. Arabella looked longingly at the little weapon, thinking it looked similar to the one she lost before she came to Prague.
“Is that why you can charge an exorbitant amount? Because it weighed you down on the long journey here?” Tristan reached to give the boy’s arm a gentle pinch. “You might swing a sword more often. Then mayhap a little knife wouldn’t seem like such a burden.”
Puffing out his chest, the lad defended himself with the courage of youth.
“It is not exorbitant because it was a burden. It costs much because it is a witch’s knife. It is used to draw magical rings for worshipping demons.” The boy almost whispered the last words, as if imparting great wisdom to the knight.
Arabella scoffed at the tale. Demons indeed. According to Zaharia, other healers used the weapon in a symbolic way, as if to cut away the world and focus inward to pray.
Tristan laughed at the peddler’s ploy. “You may keep your wondrous weapon. I believe I already have a knife that is similar to the one you sell.”
The knight produced something from his pocket and held it up for the boy to see.
Arabella’s herb-cutting knife.
“Saints!” the boy cried, his dark eyes wide. “I hope you had it blessed. That blade surely came from a powerful sorceress.”
Arabella was tempted to run up and snatch it out of the warrior’s big hands. How dare he steal it?
“A powerful sorceress, eh? Mayhap she was.” Tucking the dagger back in his pocket, he tossed a coin up in the air for the boy to catch. “Thanks, lad. You’ll make a fine storyteller one day with tales such as those.”
Mayhap she was? What was that supposed to mean?
Arabella wondered if the knight was teasing the boy or if he indeed thought he had come across a spell-casting sorceress in the forest. Thinking back to their strange encounter in the oaks, Arabella imagined she had looked a fright with her hair covered with twigs and leaves, and her eyes wet with tears. Indeed, she had been wailing at the top of her lungs as though the skies were falling, but only because she thought she was alone.
Yes,