D. A. Houdek

Deb Houdek Rule

Web designer - Science Fiction author - Civil War historian - Genealogy researcher

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Of All the Western Stars

by Deb Houdek Rule

Chapter 22

Ashur hurried away from Lisette and her aunt as rapidly as he dared. Silently he cursed himself and hoped Lisette hadn’t been able to read his thoughts. How could she not? He must have been projecting them at a thousand decibels, all the while wearing the expression of a love-struck fool. Why had he stared at her so? He was an idiot. That meddlingly obvious Aunt Agnes of hers was just making things worse, didn’t she realize that? So Lisette was unhappy. Certainly he wasn’t the one who was going to make her happy. And he wasn’t going to destroy her life as he’d destroyed so many others.

Still… when he heard the whimper, the sound of Lisette’s sweet voice in such obvious despair, when the sight of her misery wrenched at some place deep inside him, he wanted to take her in his arms and hold her close. He wanted to soothe her and hush her, to take any tear she shed and wipe it away even as he cherished each precious drop that touched his unworthy fingers.

Maybe it was this appallingly quiet countryside that was affecting his mind. Ashur had never wanted to comfort a female like that before, never imagined he could feel rewarded if only he could make her smile, never yearned with his whole being that he could take her pain and make it his. Leaving the cottage behind, Ashur vaulted over the fence back into the wooded pasture without consciously choosing his path. He just wanted to run from these bizarre and unwanted emotions that had seized hold of him. Was he insane? Or was this what love felt like?

Running in the hope that the sheer physical exertion would burn this nonsense from him, Ashur tried to deny these absurd and dangerous thoughts. Sure, he’d loved before. He loved the way the Nebula colored the night sky. He loved his home world and even, a little bit at least, Earth. He’d loved his mother and father in that coolly obligatory way one owed those who brought one into the universe. He’d even loved his elder brother Barton, as trying as that was to do. Barton was far from a lovable sort, cold, self-centered and indifferent of the concerns or feelings of others. It annoyed Ashur no end when fawning, well-meaning idiots had exclaimed how alike they were… as if that was a compliment. But, yes, he loved Barton… not as much, of course, as he loved his A.I. unit, Baby.

Of women, he’d had many. Some he’d felt strongly about, craving them, their presence, and their touch in a way that always seemed a wondrously consuming madness at the time. Of course it always went away, the emotion curiously spent when the initial exciting passion faded. Never would he have offered one of these females platonic comforting. Never would he have felt he had been given a great and grand reward just to be granted the privilege to hold her hand for a few moments.

Only when he held the purring, exquisite Aureala, his dear, lost cat, did Ashur even experience a hint of that which Lisette sent surging within him. It wasn’t lust with Lisette. Well, he amended, imagining her again in floating, translucent silk, it wasn’t only lust.

As he burst out into the small opening by the stream, sending the panicked ewe bolting into the bushes followed by the bleating lamb, Ashur stopped. He stood, panting. In the quiet of this spot, all trace of Tudor England hidden from his sight, Ashur closed his eyes, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, and tilted his head upward to the brightness of the sun. Even through closed lids the sun’s dazzling light could be seen, casting a red haze over his vision. So it seemed was Lisette’s radiance in his heart.

"You fool!" he said out loud. "You bloody, raving fool. You can’t have her. The rules are different here. It would only hurt her and destroy you."

The admonitions did no good. His traitorous heart still craved her with an intensity he’d never dreamed possible. Was this love? Real love? The kind that made one willingly lay down his life for another, or made him miserable when she was absent? Whatever it was he felt, Ashur knew with leaden certainty that he could never be truly happy again if Lisette was not a part of his life.

He opened his eyes and looked down, trying to blink away the afterimage of the sun. It shone down on him like an accusation, a perpetual reminder of what he’d done. No one had come yet. No pursuers. There was no way to be sure, but it seemed he’d managed his escape into the past without pursuit. He couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. With his ship a hopeless wreck, his enemies were his last link to home.

Ashur had a sudden urge to laugh wildly. He was free. By God, he’d found the women of his dreams, he was free of the binding duties and obligations of his life in his time. Even his horrendous crime was a thousand years remote, the star he destroyed — would destroy, taking with it the billions of lives on the worlds circling it — yet shone in the night. How could he be guilty of a crime not yet committed? He was free…

Sinking down on the grass, Ashur put his head in his hands as Lisette had. But he couldn’t cry. That release to this gnawing, burning ache was denied him. Rolling over onto his side, he studied Lisette’s little bundle of belongings and his own tunic spread there by her on the grass. That’s what he’d been wearing when the rain of bombs started to fall on his home world, turning the magnificent city of Penrose into a flaming hell. It was what he’d been wearing when that blinding fireball shone like a new sun over the Rindler Hills, and it was what he was wearing when he realized that the spaceport had been vaporized by a fusion bomb. It was what he’d been wearing when he ran through the firestorm back to his home… too late… too late…

Ashur shook himself, fighting off the black whirlpool of memories pulling at him and strove for better thought. He fingered the material of the tunic. And it was what he was wearing when he opened his eyes to the sixteenth century and first saw Lisette. He fingered her sewing kit as if some little portion of her would come to him through contact with it.

From his pocket he pulled the holo crystal. Triggering it, he watched the play of images move through its surface, each looking as real and alive as if these tiny moments of time had been captured and held in here to be lived in eternal stasis, an unending, unaging "now". Reaching over he tucked the crystal into the pocket of the torn tunic. Lisette would be sure to find it there.

He and Agnes would be leaving again in only a few hours. Was it always to be a series of leavings and too-brief moments between he and Lisette? Not likely he’d see her again. But, he told himself stoutly, that was for the best. Really, it was. If only he could make himself believe it.

Agnes and her blasted schemes. He couldn’t tell her, of course, that it was Baby, not he, who was the mastermind behind his suggestions and manipulations of Agnes’ business interests. All she knew was that the things he told her had, in a few short weeks, increased her revenues greatly. Ashur suspected it was less the money that interested her than the thought of irritating her step-children by having even more they couldn’t touch. Though, Ashur allowed, the streak of pure materialistic greed was strong in both the Stafford and Weston families. He wondered how Lisette would react if he offered her all his time had to offer, the luxury, the wealth, the new worlds… Well, that was no more than an idle thought.

Right now he couldn’t even offer her so little as a rundown cottage like that in which she now lived. True, Agnes had been paying him, but it was easy to see that true wealth wouldn’t come from her miserly wages, nor anyone else’s. Agnes, bless her conniving heart, was teaching him what he needed to know to make a fortune here. For the last three weeks she’d dragged him all over Wiltshire and Hampshire, teaching him her business affairs and leeching his "native wizardry and intelligence" — that of Baby’s artificial intelligence, actually — and, inadvertently, giving him a priceless education in the world in which he was exiled. Confident he could handle sixteenth century England, Ashur had pondered stripping his ship of the gold and other valuables and striking out on his own. The trouble was, he had no idea where to go or what to do. He was an orphan as no other man had ever been before, separated by centuries from any he might count as friend or kin. So when Agnes said she meant to settle him into some house of hers to run her businesses in that area, he’d readily agreed. Why not? There was absolutely no hurry to do anything and he needed a base of operations and the respectability her name and titles lent.

West Tetherly, she’d told him, was the name of the village nearby her property. He had no idea where that was. Somewhere isolated and remote, most likely. Ashur fervently hoped it was more like the prosperous, growing Tudor villages he’d seen, than that pitiful Medieval cesspit by the Stafford’s castle. While even the best of towns in this country were sorely lacking in the basics, and had absolutely no understanding of sanitation or building codes, at least the sense of progress, of being on the fringe of a burgeoning, enlightened age thrived in some towns he’d seen. He hoped there were some reasonably pretty, clean and compliant young women in West Tetherly in whose arms he could forget. Maybe one with green eyes and long brown hair… That would be fine.

Lisette gaped with astonishment at the table Bess set for their dinner. Never had the like been seen in this unhappy household in the weeks before. Agnes’ scolding must have touched a strong cord in Bess. A clean, if somewhat worn, linen covered the old, scarred oak table, and the plates and utensils were laid out neatly. The food, however, her nose told her, no more than met its usual standards. She found herself yearning for the simple bread, cheese and ale she’d left by the stream.

Still, she straightened herself with as much dignity as she could muster as mistress of this household. She’d changed into her finest, the green silk with the fine white smock beneath. It occurred to her that this was the very same gown she’d been wearing when she’d first seen Ashur. A secretive smile played across her face. She remembered that first moment, when his eyes opened and met hers. Would he remember? Lisette’s hand went to her hair, braided and tucked away beneath a demure little cap. She’d worn her hair loose that day, perhaps she ought to again today.

Lisette frowned. Loose, flowing hair was for unwed maids, a sign of their innocence. Blinking rapidly to overcome the sudden sting of hot tears in her eyes, Lisette repositioned the cap. What was proper for a woman who was still a maid but who was wed and therefore, presumably, no longer a maid? Oh, it wasn’t fair. Even as she lamented, another thought returned the smile to her lips and sent glad singing through her… Ashur would be near here. They could see each other again. They could…

No. They couldn’t.

She was Geraint’s wife. She was not free to love another or engage in idle dalliances with him. Agnes meant well, she knew, but, oh, to take her to this high mountaintop and say, "All this may be yours…" She’d not give in to temptation. However much she longed to.

Fixing a proper smile on her face, Lisette bobbed a small curtsy to Ashur when he reappeared at the cottage door in response to Bess’ bellowed summons to dinner. How fine he looked as he bowed in return. Those strange, foreign clothes of his, so plain in their lack of decoration, with not even so little as a single slit in the sleeves, or bit of lace, suited him far better than the gaudy, padded affairs worn by the most fashionable gentlemen.

While she studied Ashur she couldn’t help but notice his examination of her. His expression remained curiously ambiguous, and she couldn’t decide what thoughts were hidden behind those magnificent eyes. It mattered not. Just his gaze upon her gave her a greater satisfaction and sense of being appreciated than her husband’s very wedding vows spoken to her before God and witnesses.

No. She was doing it again. Oh, how insidious was temptation, how subtle. Lisette dropped her eyes, reminding herself sternly that he was Agnes’ business associate and employee, not a suitor come courting her.

"Please, come in to dinner," she said coolly to Ashur, focusing her eyes on the floor by his feet and wishing she’d been able to make Bess sweep away the dirty, smelly rushes scattered across it. "There’s a basin to wash in right there. My aunt Agnes should be here in a moment."

From the corner of her eye, she couldn’t help seeing him splash the water on his face, and rub the soap onto his hands. As he was drying on the cloth provided, Agnes sailed into the room like a grand schooner with sails all in scarlet.

"Such hair," she exclaimed. Ashur grinned at her as he pushed back his long hair.

"Agnes is all the time trying to get me to cut my hair short like the English men wear it," Ashur explained to Lisette, who tried hard to look disinterested, busying herself with the table.

Agnes snorted. "Not that it matters. He’d still be taken as a foreigner with that outlandish accent and those peculiar clothes he insists upon wearing. I had the finest of fashions made for him, coats and doublets and hose, but he still prefers those barbarian styles." Ashur gave her an indulgent smile. She sailed up to Ashur, pulling a red ribbon from her sleeve. "This may help, though." Patiently, Ashur stood while Agnes swept back his hair with her hands, all the while giggling like a girl, and tied it with the ribbon.

Try though she may not to watch, fussing with the table settings, Lisette couldn’t halt the black tinge of jealousy that surged briefly within her. Was Ashur her aunt’s lover, as well? Nonsense. She stuffed the thought, and the bitter taste of the jealousy, away as best she could.

"Well, then. Shall we eat?" Lisette indicated where her guest should sit. She toyed with seating either Agnes or Ashur at the head of her small table but, instead, chose the seat herself.

"Will not your husband be joining us?" Ashur asked when they were seated. Agnes gave her a look of sympathy. She’d heard Lisette’s tale of woe poured out.

Lifting her chin and summoning all her dignity, Lisette answered, "Geraint is away on business."

"Ah."

As the food was dished out, Lisette’s mind raced. Her initial joy at seeing Ashur again and learning he would be so near was rapidly being replaced by trepidation. What exactly did he mean by that "ah" when she said her husband was away? If he took Geraint’s absence as a sign that she was available… well, that simply was not to be. As they downed the poorly seasoned mutton stew, Agnes kept up a course of chatter about the trip she and Ashur had been on and all the things they’d seen. Lisette and Ashur were silent, Lisette lost in the fuming swirl of her own thoughts. What Ashur’s thoughts were, she dare not hazard a guess, save she could not help but note his quick glances at her. His expression he kept unreadable.

Lisette wished her troublesome musings would vanish that she might wholly enjoy this rare treat of having someone with whom to dine. Too soon it would be over and she’d be once more alone. Trying to smile, Lisette asked her aunt questions about their journey and then forced herself to ask some of Ashur. Once drawn into the conversation, she found much of the tension drained away in the pure pleasure of their talk.

Some of Ashur’s comments were odd, and she was ever reminded of the mysteries surrounding him. "Such history to see everywhere. Like South Hampton, the city wall, the place from where the Pilgrims left for the New World in sixteen…" He stopped abruptly.

"Pilgrims to the New World?" Lisette asked. "You mean you saw a pilgrimage leave to the Holy Land, do you not?"

"Yes," Ashur agreed quickly, suddenly seeming to find that his food required all of his attention.

Agnes chuckled. "No, we did not. Though, to be sure, many a ship came and went. Ashur sometimes says such odd things. I truly thinks he confuses the meanings of English words, though he seems to speak it well enough. Brilliant as is his work with numbers and mathematics, you ought to see his writing. Goodness! Odd shapes to the letters and his spellings are such as you’ve never seen before."

More puzzles, Lisette mused. "It is from South Hampton that the late King Henry V left with his forces for his victorious campaign in France. I did see the place once when I was with father on a wool selling trip."

"Oh, yes! The royal expedition that began the ignoble rise of the Weston fortunes," Agnes added, laughing her infectious laugh.

By the end of the meal they were all smiling and well at ease in each other’s company, for that was, Lisette knew, Agnes’ great gift with people. How much ‘at ease’ Agnes wanted Ashur and Lisette to be cast a slight shadow over Lisette’s pleasure. Still, she wished this day and warm companionship would never cease. Too soon they were standing by Agnes’ carriage bidding each other a sad farewell.

Lisette bravely kept up her smile as Agnes hugged her.

"I do hate to leave you alone here, my dear," Agnes told her. "I feel better knowing this good fellow will be near, should you need help."

Ashur turned to stare at her. "Madame?"

"Why, yes. As I told you, my property is near West Tetherly."

"I don’t know where that is."

Agnes laughed. "You know not where West Tetherly lies? Ha! Dear lad," she pointed through the trees. "It’s just this side of yon hill. I’ll bear it upon you to be mindful of my niece when her husband is away."

Ashur bowed over Lisette’s hand, his lips brushing the back of her hand sending shivers coursing through her body. How dare Aunt Agnes say that, Lisette thought furiously. How dare she actually employ him to come to her when her husband was gone?

As he straightened, Ashur murmured in a low voice, "I’ll not come here unless you send for me." He straightened and for an instant met her gaze with an enigmatic look.

Aloud, Lisette said, "I’m sure he will be too busy tending your affairs to see to that which is rightly my husband’s work." There, she thought, ‘tis said. Such verbal webs in which we engage.

Lisette stood for a long time, watching the place where the carriage had vanished from her sight down the road. She ought to go back to the pasture, she thought over and over, even as she remained rooted in the spot staring into nothingness.

A shouting shook her from her reverie. Up the road a young lad on a lathered, panting horse galloped. "My lady!" he called as he pulled the horse up beside Lisette.

"Easy there, lad. What is it?" she asked the flushed boy.

"I’ve an urgent message for Her Ladyship, the Duchess," the boy gasped.

"She’s just left from here, not more than an hour hence for her estate at West Tetherly."

The boy yanked at the reigns. "I must hurry to her."

"Wait!" Lisette snatched at the boy’s arm. "‘Twill do no good if you or the horse die with the message undelivered. Rest and water for the both of you. The message can wait that long."

"Aye, Madame," the tired boy agreed, turning the horse toward the cottage.

"What is this urgent message?" Lisette asked as they neared the house.

Shivers coursed through the boy’s body as he answered, his eyes looking inward with a haunted look. "Allyngton Manor has been burned to the ground," he said. Lisette gasped. He went on, "Two men came, wizards, I suspect, with powers beyond our poor ability to fight. They tore the house apart, searching for we knew not what. Then they tortured some of the staff unto death, burning the rest alive as they torched the house." He shuddered and Lisette laid a hand on his arm as she listened to his recitation of the horrors he’d seen. "Only I escaped, Madame. Only I."

"Merciful God," she whispered, crossing herself. "What did they want?"

He turned to face her and Lisette recoiled from the torment in his eyes. "They sought the lord Ashur."