Riddermarch - Ellen Quellery (books to read romance TXT) 📗

up her skirts. She hurried through the crowd to their mother.

Azuesh and Grennanod turned, staring. Then they also ran to their mother. Their brothers were quickly there. All of them struggled to pry apart her fingers.

The crowd around them backed off.

It took all their effort, but the children finally dislodged a gold ring from her fingers. It burned them upon touch. Their mother collapsed to the ground.

"Mother!" cried the littlest ones, trying to lift her up.

The older ones turned, glaring at the baroness who stood smugly on the other side of the ballroom.

Azuesh snatched up the white hot ring and dropped it in the nearest drink.

But it was champagne. The alcohol caught fire, bursting upward from the mouth of the crystal flute.

The wasps scattered to the flower displays. Everyone screamed. The server dropped the flaming glass, crystal shattering. But the fire went out.

Erleon bent down and picked up the ring, peering at it.

"Sorcery!" exclaimed an out-of-town lord, pointing a finger at Azuesh.

She rolled her eyes, hanging her shoulders with disgust. "No."

"Well, not from you," whispered Grennanod, with a step towards her sister. She peered at the ring in her brother's hand. It was now cool. 

But other out-of-towners pointed at Azuesh and the other Riddermarches, saying "Witch!"

"No." Ranoft took a bold step forward. "We are heirs to the Elfking. Call us what we are, at least."

But it was too late. The damage had been done.

Prince Logan Roswood squared his shoulders and boldly approached. "Yours is the family that has been causing sorcery around the kingdom!"

All the Riddermarches stared dryly at him, enough that he shivered down into his boots.

"It's worse than that," announced Lord Baron Rooke silkily. He walked toward the prince with commiserating calmness. He looked sideways to the family as he said, "I have been watching them for many years and have discovered a vile secret. It turns out, their mother is not Lady Letita Dapperfold."

The crowd all gasped dramatically. Only the Riddermarches did not react. They maintained dark looks on the lord baron and his smug wife.

"It turns out, after much investigation, I discovered that Lady Letita Dapperfold had been sacrificed to placate the Elfking by their father!"

"Nonsense!" Ranoft led the outcry from his brothers and sisters. All of them bristled, looking as if they could transform right there into elvish beasts to slay them all.

Their mother sat dumbly on the floor in the center of them, her youngest children propping her up with the help of the deer, attempting to make her stand. Cedalot whispered to the others what had happened and how they got to Rookshill in the first place. Their mother had found the ring, and it seemed to give her life. She had screamed that she had to return the ring, and then ran faster than all the servants, going through the town in her bare feet - without stopping. Only the deer and children could keep up, and that was after making their feet lighter and faster. The rooks came on their own with the hornets. The bees had joined the children to drive off the rooks and hornets.

"Our father loved Letita Dapperfold!" Jastalettel snapped, Dale standing at her right. "He had devoted his life to her!"

"That thing sitting there is not Letita Dapperfold," the Lord Baron said, viciously savoring his words. "But a doll he created to replace her!"

More gasps came from the crowd. They looked to see if it was so. But the children mostly blocked their view, their bodies encircling her.

But the Riddermarches did not deny it. The sisters bristled, scowling. The brothers squared their shoulders, clenching their jaws. The youngest glared as if they would bite out the throats of anybody who dared take their live doll from them.

"Look at it!" the Lord Baron declared. "Look!"

No one wanted to get close to the Riddermarches, but most peered in with savage curiosity.

"In the image, but not alive," Lord Baron Rooke said. Then he waved an arm to her offspring. "And these...children are impossible! Your father magicked you alive. Or they are all changelings."

More gasps.

And Dale took a small step back, paling.

"Lady Latita is dead. Their father made that doll to avoid punishment for murder." Lord Baron Rooke stood smugly before them all. "To placate her parents, who were never quite entirely convinced...."

"Enough." In walked Ranalon Riddermarch. He was not dressed for a ball. He looked wrinkled, like he had just woken up from a weary nap. Shaking his head at his children, he said, "I told you not to come."

"Seize him!" ordered the lord baron to his servants.

Shooting a particularly distasteful look at anyone who dared step near him, Ranalon Riddermarch crossed through the crowd directly to his wife and lifted her off the ground, taking especial care of her so that she could walk on her own. The youngest ones helped him.

The lord baron's guards stepped up to arrest Lord Riddermarch, yet hesitated before getting into arms' reach.

"Seize him," ordered the prince this time.

And the guards stepped in closer.

"Really?" Lord Riddermarch lifted his eyebrows when the men approached.

Ranoft and Erleon quickly stood in their way. The air around them seemed to grow solid. The guards could hardly move.

"My boys..." Their father shook his head. "Enough is enough. It is time to return home."

"Murderer!" shouted some from the crowd.

The Riddermarch sisters blanched. Yet they went to their mother's side to help her out.

"You killed Letita Dapperfold!" shouted another.

Lord Riddermarch halted. "Killed?"

"Sacrificed to the Elfking!" shouted yet another.

"Shall we handle this, Father?" whispered Ranoft.

Lord Riddermarch shook his head.

He said in a loud voice, "And you get this from whom? Lord Baron Rooke?"

The cries from the crowd answered him, calling him a sorcerer, a demon, and a murderer. Baroness stood smugly behind them.

Sighing, Lord Riddermarch shook his head. "Of all the nonsense...."

"It is not nonsense!" Prince Roswood replied.

Meeting his gaze, Lord Riddermarch replied, "It is Lord Baron Rooke's word against mine. You have no proof."

"We do!" declared Lord Baron Rooke. And he snapped his fingers.

Immediately Lady Riddermarch collapsed. Like a marionette whose strings had been cut, she hit the floor, her limbs at inhuman angles. She even looked like a doll now, with hinges in her arms. Her children screamed. "Mother!"

Everyone else in the room screamed "Sorcery!"

Lord Riddermarch turned, teeth bared, dark eyes afire. "You finally did it!"

"You are the one who did it!" Lord Baron Rooke advanced on him, drawing his sword. "I merely ended this charade. You sacrificed Letita. And now you will pay!"

But Lord Riddermarch's sword came out to meet Lord Baron Rooke's. And he was faster.

"Ended the charade?" Lord Riddermarch laughed. "You want an end to it?"

The Lord Baron thrust, but Lord Riddermarch deflected the steel.

The crowd around them widened to give them room. The Riddermarch children dragged their mother-the-doll back, weeping over the state of her immobile body and her entirely vacant eyes. The elder sons turned an angry eye on the battle. Jastalettel sobbed, cradling her mother's head, trying to lift the doll onto her feet.

"You will die!" Lord Baron Rooke slashed.

Lord Riddermarch dodged easily as an elf. "Not with this lie."

He grabbed something in the air. No one could see what. But he pulled on it. And something unraveled.

A sharp, surprised yelp came from across the room. The baroness clapped her hands over her face.

"Are you all right?" the ladies around her exclaimed.

Azuesh pushed through the crowd toward the baroness, most of which parted for her in panic. Seeing her, the Lord Baron rushed after - blocked immediately by her father, Lord Riddermarch. Azuesh grabbed the Baroness's hands and yanked them from her face.

"Show them, Baroness, that Letita Dapperfold is not dead!"

The ladies around them yelped. Then the men shouted out.

In that instant, the swordfight paused. For there, in front of them all, stood Letita Dapperfold. Older, but it was her.  

Chapter Eleven: The Doll

 

 

 

 

"Not possible!" gasped Prince Roswood.

Dale staggered nearer his friends Earnest and Alder, who had gone to Erleon and Ranoft again.

"Unfortunately, it is," said Lord Riddermarch. He waved toward Lord Baron Rooke. "Scandon Rooke had been courting Letita Dapperfold a long time before I came to the West Steppes. But I had thought that she and I had formed a bond that was more than just attraction and matching station in society. Which was why I had asked her to marry me. I had no idea what truly happened until recently. I assume she was kidnapped, rather than went along with this charade from the beginning. But I will never truly know, will I?

"I did everything to restore you. I consoled your parents, searched high and low for any clue of what had truly happened - but you and the baron had covered your tracks too well. Your mask was perfect. Excellent sorcery. I was convinced that my beloved had been cursed by the Elfking to get back at me for refusing him."

The crowd gasped.

" - but eventually I found out the truth." Lord Riddermarch, lowered his sword with a scathing look at the baroness.

"I kept the secret for the sake of my children," he said. "When I finally realized the mistake I had made, my life was already what it was. How dare you do this to us? What kind of vanity led you to perform such a prank?"

"Prank? How dare you!" the Baroness, Letita Rooke, shouted back, jerking from Azuesh. "I waited for you, the great and powerful Lord Riddermarch, heir to the Elfking and all his magic, to figure out you had been played. And what happened? You believed that dumb, stupid, clumsy doll was me!"

"I believed you were cursed!" Lord Riddermarch's face creased with distraught. "The Elfking is unforgiving!"

"Whom you've never met in all your life!" Letita retorted, chest up. She breathed hard through her nose, glaring at him. And more, at all his children.

Shaking his head, Lord Riddermarch pressed his fingers to his brow. "The Elfking had driven my father mad. He comes to each one of us when we are of age - and I met him the day before you vanished. Lord Baron Rooke knew of it. I had confided in him - the time when he had played at being my friend. All this time I had thought the Elfking had found you to punish me, for he knew I was engaged."

"Fool!" Letita then snarled at Azuesh. "Get away from me, vermin!"

Azuesh stepped back, but did not take her eyes off the baroness. She slowly made her way back to her sisters.

Baroness Rooke pointed at Azuesh, then the other children. "What about that? Those...things? What dark magic did you use to produce them?"

"They are called children. They were born." Tiredly, Lord Riddermarch shook his head. "I used all my magic to restore my bride to her former self. Where she was lifeless, I tried to give her life. I had no idea she was a doll the baron had created to deceive me. Dark sorcery indeed. How she bore me children, I can only attribute to a miracle. I thought she was you."

The people around them all inched away, from the baron and baroness as well. Lord Baron Rooke looked unsteadily to the prince. But the prince's eyes were wide on him. The prince's guards encircled their master, backing away from Lord Riddermarch and the lord baron.

"But you punished