Soul of the Fire

The Minister only acknowledged him with a brief glance. He was busy sharing a lusty look with a woman at a table to the right of the dining hall. It looked as if she could be making suggestive gestures with a piece of rolled beef. The Minister was smiling.

Rather than being repelled by Bertrand's sexual indulgences, many more women were actually attracted to him because of it, even if they had no intention of acting on that attraction. It seemed to be a quirk of the female mind that some women were irresistibly drawn to tangible evidence of sexual virility, regardless of its impropriety. It was a visceral whiff of danger, something tantalizing but forbidden. The more some men behaved the rogue, the heavier many women panted.

"I hope you've not been too bored," Dalton whispered to Teresa, pausing momentarily to appreciate the glow of her faithful affection.

Other than his brief smile to Teresa, he was doing his best to maintain his customary placid face with the fruition of all his work close at hand. He took a long drink of wine, not tasting it, but impatient for its effects to settle in.

"I've missed you, that's all. Bertrand has been telling jokes." Teresa blushed. "But I can't repeat them. Not here, anyway." Her smile, her mischievous smile, stole onto her face. "Maybe when we get home, I'll tell you."

He mimed a smiled, his mind already racing forward to weighty matters. "If I get in early enough. I have to get a new batch of messages out yet tonight. Something"-he forced himself to stop drumming his fingers on the table- "something important, momentous, has happened."

Tantalized, Teresa leaned forward. "What?"

"Your hair is growing out well, Tess." It was as long as her present station allowed it. He couldn't keep himself from hinting. "But I do believe it may have considerably longer to grow."

"Dalton…" Her eyes were widening as she considered what he could possibly mean, but confusion visited her face, too, for she was unable to imagine how the fulfillment of his long-held ambition was possible, given present circumstances. "Dalton, has this anything to do with… with what you have always told me…"

His sober expression took the rest of her words. "I'm sorry, darling, I shouldn't get ahead of myself. I may be reading too much into it, anyway. Be patient, you will hear in a few minutes. Best if news such as this come from the Minister."

Lady Chanboor glanced briefly to the woman with the rolled meat. The woman, as if doing nothing more than minding her table companions, pulled her curls across her face as she returned her gaze to them. Hildemara gave Bertrand a brief, private, murderous glare before leaning past him toward Dalton.

"What have you heard?"

Dalton dabbed wine from his lips and returned the napkin to his lap. He thought it best to get the perfunctory information out of the way, first. Besides, it would help put into perspective the importance of what had to be done.

"Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor are working from sunup until sundown, visiting as many places as they can. They are speaking to crowds eager to hear them.

"The Mother Confessor draws crowds agog to see her, if nothing else. I'm afraid the people are responding to her with more warmth than we would wish. That she recently married has won the hearts and love of many. People cheer the happy, newly wedded couple wherever they go. Country people come from miles around to the towns where she and Lord Rahl speak."

Folding her arms, Lady Chanboor muttered a curse to the newlyweds, expressing it in remarkably vulgar profanity, even for her. Dalton idly wondered at what obscene attributes she ascribed to him, when he had unknowingly displeased her and wasn't about. He knew some of the colorful invectives she used about her husband.

Although some of the staff knew all too well the petulant side of her, the people at large believed her so pure that vituperation could not possibly cross her lips. Hildemara well understood the value of having the support of the people. When she, as Lady Chanboor, loving wife of the Minister of Culture, champion of wives and mothers everywhere, toured the countryside to promote her husband's good works, to say nothing of cultivating their relationship with wealthy backers, she received fawning receptions not unlike the ones the Mother Confessor was receiving.

Now, more than ever, she would need to play that part well, were they to succeed.

Dalton took another drink of wine before going on. "The Mother Confessor and the Lord Rahl met with the Directors several times, and I hear the Directors have expressed to them their pleasure with the fair terms of Lord Rahl's offer, and with his reasoning, in addition to his stated purpose."

Bertrand's fist tightened. His jaw muscles flexed.

"At least," Dalton added, "in the company of the Lord Rahl they express pleasure. Once Lord Rahl left to tour the countryside, the Directors, after more reasoned thought, had a change of heart." •