Desire by Amanda Quick Read Free Book Online Page B

that you found room for so many. I trust I shall not find any of these great oafs sleeping on the stairs or in my solar?"

    "Nay, my lady," Eadgar assured her earnestly. "There were chambers enough for his lordship and some of the others on the upper floors. The rest will sleep on pallets in the main hall or in the stables. Rest assured all will be carried out properly."

    "Calm yourself, Clare." Joanna looked up from her needlework and smiled. "All is under control."

    Joanna was five years older than Clare. She was a pretty woman with golden blond hair, soft blue eyes, and gentle features.

    Married at the age of fifteen to a man who had been thirty years her senior, Joanna had soon found herself widowed and penniless with a small son.

    Desperate, she had arrived on Clare's doorstep three years earlier to claim a very distant relationship based on the fact that her mother and Clare's had once been close friends. Clare had taken Joanna and William into the household.

    Joanna had immediately begun to contribute to the income of Desire by virtue of her brilliant needlework.

    Clare had been quick to see the possibilities inherent in Joanna's talent. The revenues from the sale of Clare's dried flower and herb concoctions had increased markedly due to the fact that many were now sold in exquisitely embroidered pouches and bags of Joanna's design.

    The demand had grown so great that Joanna had instructed several of the village women in the art of embroidery. Some of the nuns of Saint Hermione's also worked under her supervision to create elegantly made pouches for some of Clare's fragrance blends.

    "Eadgar, inform cook that she must resist the temptation to dye all of the food blue or crimson or yellow tonight." Clare stalked along the graveled path, her hands clasped behind her back. "You know how much she likes to color the food for special occasions."

    "Aye, madam. She says it impresses guests."

    "I see no need to go out of our way to impress Sir Gareth and his men," Clare muttered. "And personally, I do not much care for blue or crimson food."

    "Yellow is a nice color, though," Joanna mused. "When Abbess Helen visited last fall, she was much struck by being served a banquet done entirely in yellow."

    "It is one thing to entertain an abbess. Quite another to be bothered with a bunch of very large knights and their men-at-arms. By Hermione's sainted sandal, I'll not waste the vast quantity of saffron it would take to dye everything on the table yellow tonight. Saffron is very costly."

    "You can afford it, Clare," Joanna murmured.

    "That is beside the point."

    Eadgar cleared his throat. "I shall speak to cook."
    Clare continued to pace. The walled garden was usually a source of pleasure and serenity for her. The flower and herb beds had been carefully planted so as to achieve a complex and tantalizing mixture of scents.

    Normally a stroll along the paths was a walk through an invisible world of enthralling, compelling fragrance. Clare's finely honed sense of smell delighted in the experience.

    At the moment, however, all she could think about was the very unflowerlike, very unsettling, very masculine odor of Sir Gareth, the Hellhound of Wyckmere.

    Beneath the earthy smells of sweat, leather, horse, wool, steel, and road dust that had cloaked Gareth, had lain another scent, his own. During the ride from the village to the hall, Clare had been enveloped in that essence and she knew she would never forget it.

    In some mysterious fashion that she could not explain, Gareth had smelled right.

    Her nose twitched in memory. There had certainly been nothing sweet-smelling about him, but her reaction had reminded Clare of the feeling she got when she had achieved the right blend of herbs, spices, and flowers for a new perfume recipe. There was a sense of completion, a sense of certainty.

    The realization sent a shiver through her. Even Raymond de Coleville, the man she had once loved, had not smelled so right.

    "Was the