Daughter of Fire by Carla Simpson Read Free Book Online Page A

strike the first spark.” Watchful eyes gleamed in the flat planes of his face, reminding her of a weasel and she remembered Rorke’s warning.
    “It requires no great skill,” she answered carefully. “I was fortunate to find dry wood.” She put more wood on the fire.
    He crouched before the fire with an agile movement that belied the thickness of his body. A blade gleamed at his hand—one that had not been there before. He probed the tip of it into the embers that had begun to form at the fire, then turned to look up at her, his lips pulling back over stained teeth. He passed a hand over the slash at his cheek. But her gaze was fixed on the blade at his hand. He was playing with her, much the way an animal plays with its prey before striking.
    She sensed his dangerous thoughts as clearly as if he had told her of them, and sensed, too, the humiliation that seethed within him like a festering wound. She had disgraced him before his men. It mattered little that she was protecting those she loved.
    “FitzWarren is a fool to leave you unbound and unguarded.”
    “Not as big a fool as some,” she countered.
    He sprang at her like an animal, his hand snaking out and seizing the thickness of her hair as the blade came up in the other.
    “The blade is hot. It will burn as well as cut.” His hand twisted in her hair, pulling her closer until it was wound tightly about his fist.
    “Before I am through, mistress, you will cry mercy.” His foul breath made her skin crawl as if she’d been touched by something evil. Bile rose in her throat. Pain throbbed where his hand knotted in her hair, but she refused to cry out. Like an animal, she knew fear would only make him bolder.
    “I will tame you,” he vowed as he brought the blade up beside her face. “And then I will force that stubborn Saxon pride from you as you lie beneath me.”
    “You will die before you will ever know that victory,” Vivian vowed, ”and you will burn for what you have done to my people.”
    Rorke heard the painful cry like that of a wounded animal, and swore as he crossed the encampment. He shouldn’t have left her alone.
    In the light of the campfire, he saw Vachel at the edge of the clearing, standing a few feet away from the healer who lay sprawled at the ground. His hand closed over the handle of the short blade at his belt.
    Several of his men and Vachel’s followed close behind, their hands also at their weapons. His hand went still at his own blade as he realized it was not the healer who had cried out. Vachel screamed in agony as he clutched one hand in the other.  His sword hand was reddened with raised with angry welts as if he had laid it to the fire.
    “The Saxon whore attacked me!” he screamed. “See what she’s done. She burned me! ” And then on a snarl, “I will have the bitch’s head on a pike!”
    “Cease!” Rorke ordered.
    “I will have justice for this,” Vachel spun back around and held his hand aloft for all to see. “Either that or she will be subject to William’s justice for attacking one of his knights!”
    “I see two people before me,” Rorke said, his gaze traveling from Vachel to where Vivian lay in the dirt before the fire. “A knight fully trained and armed, and a young girl with only a pouch of herbs and powders.”
    “You doubt what I say?” Vachel demanded.
    “I do not doubt that you have suffered some injury,” Rorke told him, “but I will also hear the cause of it from the girl.”
    Vivian slowly lifted her head and gazed at the circle of Norman knights that surrounded her. On the faces of Vachel’s men she saw an animal lust for blood. Rorke’s men seemed less certain. The strangely dressed, blue-eyed warrior watched her with quiet curiosity.
    Norman justice, she thought. The same justice that William had seized the crown of England?
    “He burned himself with a blade at the fire,” she answered, telling the simple truth.
    “She lies!” Vachel accused. “She burned me, with a