Page 2 of A Waltz with Lord Death
A bad omen hung in the air, shredding its way through once blue skies. Dread pressed heavy on her shoulders, crackling through the air to send shivers racing across her sun-kissed skin. She nervously wrapped her brown curls around her finger as another flash of lightning stole the very breath from her lungs.
This wasn’t just any storm. Her gut told her as much.
“Step away from there,” Lady Justine said in a haughty tone, shaking her head piled high with blonde curls. “I don’t care for dreary weather. Besides, my father is not paying you to stand around.”
“Right,” she muttered, glad for the fierce wind that disguised her annoyance. Closing the shutters and turning, she pasted a smile on her face and returned to the table to sit across from the eighteen-year-old young woman.
“Now, about these suitors. Which one should I marry?”
Meira reached across the table for Justine’s hand and turned her palm upward. She traced the heartline with the tip of her finger. The line began below the middle finger, with multiple breaks.
“I see your heart is troubled,” she murmured in the tone that often had her customers leaning forward in eager anticipation. “More than one man is involved, and your heart yearns for them, tearing you in different directions.”
The girl leaned closer. “You are correct. Which man is the right one for me?”
“Tell me… Have you been itching your hands?”
Justine’s eyes widened. “Now that I think about it, I have been itching them more than usual.”
With a sage nod, she continued as she traced the sun and fate lines, which intersected. “It seems your future is about to change drastically. Which man you choose will either lead you to greatness or to destruction.”
Justine gasped and snatched her hand away. “You must tell me who to choose!”
Her suitors were no secret. Out of three, one suitor with brown hair was handsome, yet in Meira’s comings and goings, she’d spotted the seemingly fancy clothing with small, nearly unnoticeable repairs, possibly indicating a struggling kingdom. Another man was handsome with blond hair, but dull. The third man also had blond hair, and he was exciting and rather talkative, but his teeth were crooked, his eyes too far apart, and splotchy red skin when he blushed. Which was a lot.
Meira did not care either way, as long as she pocketed a few coins at the end of the day.
“I see a letter…” she said slowly, squinting her eyes as she rubbed a hand over her crystal sphere. “It’s anL, I believe.”
“Could it stand forLord?”
“Yes! That must be it. And I see a hair color…”
Justine sat on the edge of her seat. Any further and she just might fall off.
Continuing, she watched her out of the corner of her eye and said, “The hair color is brown.” Justine’s face fell a fraction. “No, it must be a trick of the light. It’s blond. Most definitely blond.”
The young woman leaped to her feet and squealed, clapping her hands excitedly. “It must be Lord Edgar. Is this who you see?”
The dull one? Honestly?
Keeping a neutral expression was difficult. Little did she know, Justine answered her own question. “That’s who it is. Hurry! You must go to him. Tell him your feelings before it’s too late.”
“I will!” Justine rushed toward the door but stopped briefly at the doorway. “What will I do without your guidance? My father is a fool to let you go.”
Dread climbed up Meira’s body as she watched the girl disappear. She sat back in her chair, stunned. The baron planned to sack her? But where would she go? How would she make a living for herself? She would not be able to afford to continue living on the baron’s land without the income she received from him.
She took a deep, steadying breath and fidgeted with the tarot cards on the table, which resided next to her crystal sphere. Her mother had taught her the art of divination, and since her death nine years ago when Meira had been fifteen, she’d been on her own in the world. Especially since her father had left them long ago.
Her eye twitched at the thought of him. Did he even realize how much she and her mother had suffered because of his absence? Was he even still alive? Did he even care?
Not able to sit still when her legs needed to move, she kept her hands busy as she arranged and rearranged vases of flowers throughout the room. Thoughts entered her mind of how she might convince the baron to allow her to stay within the castle walls. But none of them didn’t involve trickery. What she did now was harmless, but if she were to fabricate something large enough to catch his attention?
Her neck suddenly felt tight, air too scarce as she imagined a noose around her neck. Fortune-tellers walked fine lines in this world. One false divination, and they could find themselves with a thick rope squeezing the life out of them. Or worse, tied to a burning stake.
A shudder ran through her, followed by chills as a frigid wind broke through a crack in the window frame. Impulse led her to unlatch the window once more and stare out at the foreboding dark clouds. Her mother had always taught her to heed her gut, and she didn’t dare dismiss her own apprehension.
A rustle of beads covering the doorway alerted her to another customer. She latched the shutters and turned to the newcomer with a smile. No matter what town she traveled to, she made it her job to learn everyone’s names, old or young, large or small. And this woman was rather large with child. A man accompanied her, a worried hand on her elbow.
