Read Two to Conquer for Free Online

Sight, as some of mother’s maidens have done, or perhaps to live among the priestesses of Avarra, on the holy isle, belonging only to the Goddess. Does that seem so strange to you.”
    “Yes,” Bard said. “I have always heard that every woman’s greatest desire is to marry as soon as possible.”
    “And so it is, for many women, but why should women be any more alike than you and Geremy You
    choose to be a soldier, and he to be a laranzu ; would you say that everyone should choose to be a soldier?”
    “It’s different with men,” Bard said. “Women don’t understand these things, Carlie. You need a home and children and someone to love you.” He picked up her hand and carried the small soft fingers to his lips.
    Carlina felt sudden anger, mingled with a flood almost of pity.
    She felt like giving him an angry reply, but he was looking at her so gently, with so much hopefulness, that she forbore to speak what she thought.
    He could not be blamed; if there was blame, it was her father’s, who had given her to Bard as if she were the red cord he wore about the warrior’s braid, a reward for his bravery in battle. Why should she blame him for the customs of the land which made of a woman only a chattel, a pawn for her father’s political ambitions?
    He followed some of this, his brow knitted as he sat holding her hand. “Do you not want to wed with me at all, Carlie?”
    “Oh, Bard—” she said, and he could hear the pain in her voice—“it is not you . Truly, truly, my foster brother and my promised husband, since I must marry, there is no other man I would rather have.
    Perhaps one day—when I am older, when we are both older—then, if the gods are kind to us, we may come to love one another as is seemly for married people.” She clasped his big hand in her two small ones, and said, “The gods grant it may be so.”
    And then someone came up to claim Carlina for a dance; and though Bard glowered again, she said,
    “Bard, I must; one of the duties of a bride is to dance with all who ask her, as you very well know, and every maiden here who wishes to marry this year thinks it lucky to dance with the groom. Later we can speak together, my dear.”
    Bard yielded her, reluctantly, and, recalled to his duty, moved about the room, dancing with three or four of Queen Ariel’s women, as was suitable for a man attached to the king’s household, his banner bearer. But again and again, his eyes sought out Carlina, where her blue robe, pearl-embroidered, and her dark hair, drew his awareness back again.
    Carlina. Carlina was his , and he realized that he hated, with a violent surge of loathing, every man who touched her. How dared they? What was she about, flirting, raising her eyes to any man who came to dance with her, as if she were some shameless camp follower? Why did she encourage them? Why
    couldn’t she be shy and modest, refusing dances except with her promised husband? He knew this was unreasonable, but it seemed to him that she was trying to win the approval and the flirtatious smile of every man who touched her. He restrained his wrath when she danced with Beltran, and her father, and the grizzled veteran of sixty whose granddaughter had been her foster sister, but every time she danced with some young soldier or guardsman of the king’s household, he fancied that Queen Ariel was
    looking at him triumphantly.
    Of course what she had said about not wanting to marry at all—that was girlish nonsense, he didn’t believe a word of it. No doubt she was cherishing some girl’s passion for some man, someone not
    really worthy of her, to whom her parents would not give her; and now that she was handfasted, and old enough to dance with men who were not her kinsmen, she could seek him out. Bard knew that if he
    found Carlina with another man, he would tear the man limb from limb, and Carlina herself he would
    —would he hurt her? No. He would simply demand of her what she had given the other man, make