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

stick! She has it in her hand.”
    Rorke extended his hand to her. She placed her empty hand in his.
    “Your other hand as well, demoiselle.”
    She looked up at him with eyes as brilliant as blue flame. If he thought to discover either malice or deception there, he saw neither.
    “You do not believe me?”
    “I do not disbelieve you.”
    Anger leapt into her eyes. She extended her other hand to his.
    A vibrant strength coursed beneath the warm satiny skin, pulsing strong and sure at the slender curve of wrist where tendons joined bone. That same hand had calmed his warhorse and brought ease of suffering to the sick and wounded of Amesbury. He could almost feel an energy like that of the sun in the flesh, muscle, and bone cradled in his hand. With something very near reluctance he released her hand and turned to Vachel.
    “There is no weapon.”
    Fury twisted his features as Vachel stalked past him to his own men.
    “She attacked me,” he insisted, knowing they would believe whatever he told them. “She has hidden the weapon to keep blame from herself. The Saxon is dangerous and should be punished.”
    “Perhaps this is the weapon you speak of,” Tarek al Sharif suggested as he rose from where he had crouched before the fire. He handed a knife to Rorke FitzWarren.
    Rorke turned it over in his hands, a distinctive blade with a boar’s head handle. “I believe this belongs to you, Vachel,” he suggested, holding the weapon out to him.
    Vachel’s gaze narrowed as he stared at the blade. “It must have fallen when she attacked me.”
    As he reached for the knife to take it back, Rorke seized him by the arm. With a powerful grip, he dug his fingers in between tendon and muscle at Vachel’s wrist forcing his hand open.
    “You claim she burned you with a stick from the fire.”
    “I have said it is so! It is there for anyone to see.” Vachel flung back at him. He swore an oath and struggled, but could not free himself.
    What was there for all to see in the light from the campfire was the long, slender, burn mark like a brand across Vachel’s palm, much as he would hold a blade, and identical in shape to the one he claimed to have lost.
    “As all can surely see,” Rorke shoved Vachel away from him. Once again, he’d been humiliated before his men.
    “Return to your campfires,” Rorke told them. “There are many hours before dawn and we have a long ride ahead of us.”
    They slowly turned and retreated, until only Vachel remained. With a barely controlled violence, he resheathed the knife at his belt, then turned and stalked away, slipping into the darkness beyond the campfire.
    As she watched him, Vivian was seized again by the foreboding of something that lay in the future, something that seemed to have followed them from Amesbury but which she could not see. It lay shrouded in darkness like a pervasive evil and she shivered as if taken with a sudden chill in spite of the warmth from the fire. It was Tarek al Sharif who spoke her thoughts aloud as if he had read them.
    “It will end in blood.”
    “If he so chooses,” Rorke replied.
    They saw no more of Vachel that night, but it made Vivian feel no easier. She knew he was out there, like the darkness, waiting just beyond the edge of the campfire.
    Tarek al Sharif slipped into the woods and later brought back two partridges which were set to roasting over the fire. Across the clearing other cook fires burned, the aroma of roasting meat mingling with thick woodsmoke. At others, men murmured amongst themselves as they sat bundled in thick furs against the cold that hovered at the edges of the campfires.
    Vivian hadn’t realized how hungry she was, her stomach grumbling noisily as the blue-eyed warrior nimbly carved a leg portion from the roast partridge and handed it to her. She shivered again at the precise, slicing strokes as she imagined that other curved blade in his hands. Each movement was perfectly executed with no waste, accomplishing precisely what