Elizabeth Mayne - Lady Of The Lake

Cover Page

Excerpt “Release me at once, Viking!” Tala commanded. “Lady,” Edon warned her, his patience dwindling fast. “Speak to me again in that tone of voice, and I will have no choice but to teach you to respect the man you see before you.” “Strike me and I will kill you with my bare hands, Viking.” Tala gulped, struggling for her breath. “And how will you do that, hmm?” Edon taunted her. “With what weapon will you slay me, woman? Your viper’s tongue?” Edon used his head as a pointer, nodding to her bared breasts—exposed in the beam of moonlight that spilled into the chamber from the open portal. “The only success you have had thus far is in baring your breast. Continue the show. I shall enjoy seeing what other charms your struggles reveal.”

Dear Reader Dear Reader, A pagan princess and a Christian warrior must form an alliance if either of their people are to survive in RITA Award nominee Elizabeth Mayne’s Lady of the Lake. Forced to surrender her heritage and marry Edon, the man responsible for her father’s death, Princess Tala fights her feelings for her new husband, afraid that she will let down her guard and reveal a secret that could tear their gentle truce apart. Don’t miss this intriguing tale. Cally and the Sheriff, by Cassandra Austin, is a lively Western about a Kansas sheriff who falls head over heels for the feisty young woman he’s sworn to protect, even though she wants nothing to do with him. And in Judith Stacy’s The Marriage Mishap, two people who’ve just met, wake up in bed together and discover they have gotten married. In our fourth title for the month, Lord Sin by Catherine Archer, a rakish nobleman and a vicar’s daughter, whose lack of fortune and social position make her completely unsuitable, agree to a marriage of convenience, and discover love. Whatever your tastes in reading, we hope you enjoy all of our books, available wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold. Sincerely, Tracy Farrell Senior Editor Please address questions and book requests to: Harlequin Reader Service U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Title Page Lady of the Lake Elizabeth Mayne www.millsandboon.co.uk

About The Author ELIZABETH MAYNE is a native San Antonian, who knew by the age of eleven how to spin a good yarn, according to every teacher she ever faced. She’s spent the last twenty years making up for all her transgressions on the opposite side of the teacher’s desk, and the last five working exclusively with troubled children. She particularly loves an ethnic hero and married one of her own eighteen years ago. But it wasn’t until their youngest, a daughter, was two years old, that life calmed down enough for this writer to fulfill the dream she’d always had of becoming a novelist.

Dedication With love, Delores Maynard Cherveny

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Author note

Copyright

“Lady,” Edon warned her, his patience dwindling fast. “Speak to me again in that tone of voice, and I will have no choice but to teach you to respect the man you see before you.”

“Strike me and I will kill you with my bare hands, Viking.” Tala gulped, struggling for her breath.

“And how will you do that, hmm?” Edon taunted her. “With what weapon will you slay me, woman? Your viper’s tongue?”

Edon used his head as a pointer, nodding to her bared breasts—exposed in the beam of moonlight that spilled into the chamber from the open portal.

“The only success you have had thus far is in baring your breast. Continue the show. I shall enjoy seeing what other charms your struggles reveal.”

Dear Reader,

A pagan princess and a Christian warrior must form an alliance if either of their people are to survive in RITA Award nominee Elizabeth Mayne’s Lady of the Lake. Forced to surrender her heritage and marry Edon, the man responsible for her father’s death, Princess Tala fights her feelings for her new husband, afraid that she will let down her guard and reveal a secret that could tear their gentle truce apart. Don’t miss this intriguing tale.

Cally and the Sheriff, by Cassandra Austin, is a lively Western about a Kansas sheriff who falls head over heels for the feisty young woman he’s sworn to protect, even though she wants nothing to do with him. And in Judith Stacy’s The Marriage Mishap, two people who’ve just met, wake up in bed together and discover they have gotten married.

In our fourth title for the month, Lord Sin by Catherine Archer, a rakish nobleman and a vicar’s daughter, whose lack of fortune and social position make her completely unsuitable, agree to a marriage of convenience, and discover love.

Whatever your tastes in reading, we hope you enjoy all of our books, available wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

www.millsandboon.co.uk

is a native San Antonian, who knew by the age of eleven how to spin a good yarn, according to every teacher she ever faced. She’s spent the last twenty years making up for all her transgressions on the opposite side of the teacher’s desk, and the last five working exclusively with troubled children. She particularly loves an ethnic hero and married one of her own eighteen years ago. But it wasn’t until their youngest, a daughter, was two years old, that life calmed down enough for this writer to fulfill the dream she’d always had of becoming a novelist.

With love,

Delores Maynard Cherveny

Summer, 889 A.D.

Eleventh year of the reign of

Alfred of Wessex

Mercia

Silently, the atheling of Leam, Venn ap Griffin, followed his sister up a trail to the Seven Sisters and their overlook of the Avon Valley. The standing stones thrust up from the earth at the edge of the forest. Neither Venn nor Tala could read the ogham symbols etched upon the stones, though both were well versed in the Latin of the abbeys and the court of their cousin and guardian, King Alfred.

Venn cupped his hands together and boosted Tala to the topmost ledge. She lay down on the hot, sun-heated stone and drew her mantle across her fiery hair to hide it from sight. Far below, the forest ended at the confluence of the shrinking Avon and the positively dusty Leam.

This time of year the Leam should be running deep and fast, feeding the river Avon. But no rain had fallen since Beltane, the first of May. The gods were unhappy, the earth in turmoil. Spirits old and new warred against one another for who would dominate the world of men. The people were confused, not knowing who to beseech for relief from the bitter drought.

“Tell me, little brother, what price did you ask for Taliesin the White at Warwick’s market?” Tala broke their silence when she was settled on the flat stone.

“He is a worthy horse, full of spirit and courage. I asked a hundred gold marks, but one Dane wanted to steal him from me for twenty and six pitiful sacks of last year’s moldy grain.”

“Six sacks of grain is a lot.” Tala studied Venn’s profile as he intently scanned their parched, dry valley.

“Knowing Vikings, it could have been six sacks of stones,” Venn replied scornfully. “I did not want to be cheated and was wary of making any trade for fear of coming up the loser.”

“Ah, I see.” Tala nodded. Venn prized the white horse and really did not want to sell him.

“It won’t be a problem. I can take Taliesin farther afield to graze.”

“Strong horses like oats and grass,” Tala replied. “So do cows and sheep. They care not for oak leaves and dried-up ferns. We can’t keep them if the drought continues.”

“I know how to make the drought end,” Venn answered.

Tala cut a sharp look at his set profile. Venn was just a boy, too easily influenced by the old ones in Arden Wood. “I don’t want you listening to Tegwin’s babbling. He speaks nonsense, Venn. Do not credit his far-fetched predictions as truth.”

“That’s men’s business,” the lad argued peremptorily. “And no concern of a woman.”

“I beg your pardon.” Tala responded with a scowl that effectively squelched her little brother’s high-and-mighty attitude. “You will do as I say, Venn ap Griffin!”

“Yes, yes,” the boy said, dismissing her concern with an impatient wave of his hand.

“Look to this side of the river Avon, Tala. That is what I brought you here to see.”

Between the sluggish river and the dried-up course of the Leam, a dozen Vikings labored, guiding oxen and plow, cutting furrows in the earth. Pairs of them stripped the bark from logs gleaned from the felled trees. Others tended a huge brush fire, burning drought-dry leaves and limbs.

The smoke from the hot fire was acrid with the scent of tannin. The black plume rose straight up to the sky, then flattened like an other worldly goshawk soaring in flight.

Venn eased himself up beside Tala on the hot stone. He didn’t bother covering his head. His brown hair, tanned skin, leather jerkin and breeks all blended into the neutral colors of the rocks. Only the vivid gold and red in Tala’s hair and the glittering torque at her slender throat needed to be hidden in this landscape.

Tala gave the valley a cursory inspection, from the high stockade dominating Warkwick Hill to the distant slopes at the limits of the fertile valley. Two ancient Roman roads bisected it, Fosse Way and Watling Street. Warwick controlled the crossroads and the bridge over the Avon River. Every scrap of land not covered by Arden Wood was taken up by fields planted by Viking usurpers.

In truth, the forest shrank by the day because Vikings constantly slashed and burned trees to till new fields, and yesterday’s oaks became the grazing pens of the next herd of cattle.

Near the fields stood their longhouses, each one spawning countless other wattle-and-daub outbuildings. They multiplied like poisonous fungi on the trunks of the sacred oaks in the wet years.

Tala saw much difference between the land today and what she had seen on the first of May. Not a drop of rain had fallen in two months, so the earth was drier, browner, the river Avon lower, its current slower. “What am I supposed to see, little brother?”

“They felled the oaks on this side of the Leam.” Venn pointed to the new cut.

“No!” she whispered. “They can’t. Watling Street, on the high ground north of the Avon, is the border. They can’t cut into our grove. It’s against two kings’ laws.”

“What heed do Danes pay to Wessex law? I see no man of King Alfred’s ordering the Vikings to keep to their side of Watling Street,” Venn sneered. “They will not stop until they reach the sea at Glamorgan.”