Murdoch snorted. “Any man who doesn't notice a woman like you would have to be blind. You're succeeding very well in your concealment. I'd say you've had practice, if I did not remember otherwise.”
“I never had to hide from you,” she said primly, watching the boats bobbing in the harbor, hoping to see a familiar one.
“You had to hide from others? Who?” As his mind turned to the possibility that she referred to suitors like him, he demanded, “Why? What did they do to you?”
She gifted him with a look of scorn. “Use your head instead of your temper. It's not difficult to figure out why I might hide from others.”
She had used an illusion of cold efficiency to hide her inadequacy from everyone, including her mother, but she let Murdoch brood over his competition while she searched their surroundings. Trystan and Mariel had lived safely in this town for years. Could she do as well here?
It seemed so alien. The wind blew too hard. The twisted, gnarled trees gave evidence of the harshness of winter storms. The colorful flowers were pretty, but they would not last through the cold.
Lissandra didn't know why she considered such a thing anyway. Her duty was to Aelynn, even if the gods rejected her as Oracle. Even she could acknowledge she would be an inferior Oracle. The admission tugged a smile out of her.
“What do you have to smile about?” Dragged from his surly contemplations, Murdoch guided the cart into a stable yard.
“I was trying to imagine standing in front of the Council, telling them they must learn to preserve food and build warships. Chantal's father would outshout me, declaring that what we need is peace and equality. Old Arnold would start yelling that we need not fix what isn't broken. And I would be left no choice but to mentally swat them all or walk out.”
Murdoch choked on what might have been laughter. “Agreed, you were never meant to be Council Leader. That doesn't mean you can't be Oracle.” He handed the reins to a stableboy along with a small coin.
“An Oracle should be able to See the sacred chalice, predict the approach of danger, give comfort in times of trouble. I'm more likely to be delivering a breech birth or reading a medical text.”
That was who she really was, a mere midwife and a good student, with no pretensions of glory. But her name alone gave a semblance of authority, and her illusion of dignified omniscience had sustained it. People often preferred illusion to reality.
She shuddered, realizing that was what Dylys had doneâgiven everyone an illusion of security. Shaken, she had to force herself to keep up with the conversation.
“If you waste time hiding, as you say, people learn to overlook you. Or to avoid you.” Murdoch caught her elbow and led her down the cobbled street to the harbor. “I have watched you go about with your don't-touch-me princess air. You have a way of looking at men that reduces them to ashes. Although I wouldn't precisely call that hiding.”
“I suppose I could have welcomed all male overtures as you did female ones,” she responded with sarcasm.
He clenched her elbow tighter, and Lissandra glanced around with curiosity to see if the roof blew off any buildings. Apparently, he was managing his temper. She ought to be more careful about how she riled him, but she was still testing her wings. And his, she admitted.
“It's different for men,” he finally grumbled.
She debated shoving him down the flight of stone steps to the pebbly beach, decided that would set a bad example, and gave him a mental swat instead.
He retaliated with a vision memory of both of them naked in the grotto at home. His hair and face were dripping, and he stood up to his hips in water, fully aroused. She remembered that moment. She'd just turned eighteen, he was twenty-four, and he'd asked her to marry him. She'd refused, and he'd sailed out of her life. . . .
She jerked her arm away and walked faster, although every particle of her burned with lust. How could anyone think while aroused like this?
He barely broke stride to keep up with her. “Most women don't require that men be their equals or more, but you do. You never knew a man besides me who was your match or better.”
“And you did?” Scorn dripped from her tongue.
“Find a man or a match?”
She didn't acknowledge his wickedly bad wit because he was right.
She
was the only match for him. She gazed over the line of derelict fishing boats. “They don't appear seaworthy.”
“The sound ones are out fishing and earning a living. We need to find the harbormaster. Play dumb for a change, will you?” He grabbed her elbow again and started down the cobbled walk.
“
Oui, oui, citoyen
,” she mocked in her bad French.
“On second thought, don't speak a word.”
“Overbearing, arrogant, domineering . . . ,” she whispered under her breath while searching for more telling adjectives.
“For good reason,” he grunted in an undertone as they approached a self-important-looking man wearing a blue uniform with brass buttons.
Lissandra adopted an insipid smile and steered the man's mind to Murdoch and away from her. Child's play.
If she concentrated hard, she could translate their rapid Frenchâmore Breton than French, she gatheredâbut she didn't doubt Murdoch's ability to talk birds from a tree or ships from a harbormaster. Her task was to observe their surroundings and watch their backs.
So she knew before he did that an Aelynner was waiting for them around the corner.
Fifteen
Acknowledging Lis's tug on his arm by squeezing her hand, Murdoch continued his inquiry about hiring a small boat, while opening his awareness more fully to his surroundings.
His ability to sense the presence of other life-forms was second nature. Unfortunately, in a town filled with creatures, large and small, the skill wasn't entirely useful or practical.
He'd obtained as much information as he could from the harbormaster, and turned away before he found what Lissandra had warned him ofâa living creature with no discernible emotions in the alley. Even rats cast images of food or vibrations of hunger. Trained Aelynners did not.
His first instinct was to walk directly toward the alley and see who lurked there. Only a few Aelynners possessed his and Lissandra's sensitivity to emotions. Most would not realize he could sense their presence from their shielding. Chances were excellent, however, that an Aelynner could recognize someone as visible and powerful as an Olympus.
Ignoring the instinct to confront the lurker, heeding the rational thought to get Lis to safety, Murdoch steered her back up the hill in the opposite direction of the alley.
“We must see who it is!” she whispered, jerking her arm free of his hold.
“They must not see who
you
are,” he corrected. “Don't you realize that, like Helen of Troy, you could launch wars? All Aelynn would rise up in arms should anyone harm you. What if this is the same person who was with the committee the other night? Let's not give Ian and company failure of the heart because you've been taken hostage as the priest was.”
“But what if it's someone who is stranded here like us? We cannot abandon him.”
“This is a village. I'll find him easily enough. Do you have any money on you?”
“A few coins in my pocket. More in my hem. What do you mean to do?”
“Assuming you won't return to the house, I'll hire a private room at the inn where you can wait while I look for our spy.”
He willed her to understand without his having to explain what a valuable hostage she'd be for anyone who wished Aelynn harmâor who simply wanted the use of their strength for some unfathomable reason. He'd rather believe his fellow Aelynners were better than that, but he'd lived in the real world too long not to be distrustful.
To his relief, she didn't argue. “No Aelynner of your ability would challenge you unless they thought you were causing me harm,” she reluctantly agreed, “and anyone less would have to be mad to confront you. It is what I don't know or understand that I fear most.”
“That is wise. What we don't know can kill us. It will be easier for me if I know you're safe.” He took one of the coins she slipped to him and talked to the innkeeper, who showed them to an empty chamber with a small table and chairs beside a cold fireplace.
“Don't take too long,” she warned.
Knowing she cared enough to worry about his sorry hide warmed the hollow space where his heart should be. He brushed a kiss of affection across her brow, revealing his weakness, before he turned and left her there.
Hurrying back to the port, fretting over Lis's safety while studying alleyways for the blankness of the person he sought, Murdoch almost didn't hear the childish cry of “Monsieur LeDroit! Stop, please!”
Only the rattling of an empty milk pail caught and held his attention. He spun on his heel in time to catch both pail and child as they tumbled down the hill toward him.
Filthy gold curls spilled from a torn bonnet, and small fingers clutched his coat sleeves as he tried to release her once he had her standing upright.
He recognized the child he'd tried to rescue, along with her father and the other prisoners, on the fateful day he'd nearly burned down a village. After what he'd done, he was amazed she dared approach him. “Amelie, what are you doing here?”
“Monsieur,
please
,” she begged in a husky whisper. “Papa is ill and the boat left without us. Help us, please.”
He couldn't ignore a child's cry. “Where is your papa?” he asked. Pierre must be near death's door for the others to have left him behind.
Amelie tugged his hand and led him down a dark side street of huddled medieval buildings that Murdoch recognized as the kind that housed the owners in cramped apartments above their ground-floor shops. This wasn't the squalor of a city slum, but the humble abodes of simple artisans.
He followed her down a bleak alley between a shoemaker's shop and the ovens of a bakery. A crude wooden lean-to had been erected behind the shop to protect crates of leather and other supplies of the trade. Between the crates a haggard man rested on a dirty blanket, an awl in one hand, a shoe in the other. His eyes were closed as he leaned against a barrel, and Murdoch felt the man's extreme exhaustion, a deep desire to die, and an even stronger love that kept him alive.
The intensity of that love almost bowled Murdoch over.
“
Citoyen
Durand, we meet again,” Murdoch said softly, so as not to startle the man.
Pierre opened his eyes and looked up at Murdoch with the child clinging to his arm. “Monsieur LeDroit, you lived. That is good.”
“The priest told me you saved my life by throwing me in the cart and fleeing the fire. I owe you,” Murdoch told him. “But why did you not set sail with the others?”
“I lacked the coin,” Durand said with a bleak smile. “I have found work here, and no one asks for my papers. We would not be alive if it weren't for you.”
If the Tribunal's representatives had reached Pouchay, they would be asking for the shoemaker's papers soon enough. Inevitably, if he lived, he'd be returned to prison.
“I believe I made a promise to take you to England, and I failed you.” That these two suffered because of him gnawed at his pride. The strong and wicked would always survive, but the innocents who shed lightâand loveâon the world often needed aid.
The shoemaker focused his glassy gaze on him. “I doubt that I could endure the journey, but Amelie . . . ,” he said in his poor English, before his voice trailed off in a plea.
The child fell to her knees beside her father and flung her arms around his neck. Huge blue eyes turned up to Murdoch's as if he were truly the paragon the village had called him. He knew nothing about children or their ages, but he assumed this one couldn't be much more than six. She didn't have to speak a word. The emotions of Outsiders were easy to read.
“I've hired a vessel,” Murdoch said carefully. “There should be room for both of you.”
That was a huge lie. The harbormaster had told him little except when the fishing boats would return and which had the most reliable sailors. But he knew Lis would scratch his eyes out if he left these two here to die. And she would know without his telling her. She couldn't read his mind, but she knew his heart inside and out.
She was his conscience.
“If you would just take Amelie, please.” Durand laid his stained and callused hand on his daughter's head. “She's no trouble. I have a cousin in London. . . .”
Murdoch wasn't a man for argument or explanation. Action was simpler. Without further ado, he crouched down, lifted the nearly weightless man in his arms, and jerked his head at the child. “Come along. My wife will wish to meet you.”
His wife.
Under the circumstances, he couldn't have said less, but the phrase came naturally. He was a man without a home, but in his mind, Lis was his and always would be. After four years away and every reason to erase the arrogant princess from his thoughts, his feelings for her hadn't changed. He would have to be a coward or a fool to pretend he could ever want another.
Durand was too weak to struggle, and Murdoch ignored his protests as he carried the ill man down the street and through the front door of the inn, causing heads to turn. He made his way back to Lis, the child clutching the leg of his borrowed breeches.
Lis had the door open and was ordering hot water before he even came within knocking distance. Although the shoemaker was too weak to think straight, the child was clearly generating enough emotion for Lis to notice. She might fool others with her placid ice-princess air, but Murdoch knew she was a Healer at heart.