Fairest Of Them All by Teresa Medeiros Read Free Book Online

the treasure away prompted Carey to blurt out, “Dps?”
    A pained mist captured his master’s eyes. “Soft. Yielding. Made a man want to sink between them and . . .” His voice faded on a groan.
    Carey scribbled madly. This was even better than he had hoped. ‘Temperament?”
    Austyn’s resignation erupted into passion. “Such boldness! Such brazen vanity! Saucy wench hadn’t a morsel of sense. Too foolish to shrink from an armed knight in a deserted garden, yet sniveled like an infant when I laid my blade to her precious hair.”
    Carey tucked the quill between his teeth and nibbled thoughtfully. “So you found her distasteful, eh? Perhaps your repugnance will protect you from—”
    Ausryn’s fist closed in the front of his tunic, driving him back until his shoulders struck a handy oak. Carey quailed before the desperation in his master’s face. “Distasteful? Repugnance? Would to God that it were so! I wanted to drag her to the ground beneath me and plow her like a fallow field. I wanted to drop to my knees, bathe her feet in my kisses and swear her my eternal fealty. I wanted to lock her away so no man but me would ever lay eyes on her again.”
    In his friend’s eyes Carey caught a glimpse of the beast Austyn had struggled his entire life to tame. A tremor of foreboding shook him. Ignoring the curious gazes of the passersby, he whispered, “ Tis not too late to turn back.”
    Austyn released him, absently smoothing the wrinkle he had made in his tunic. Even as a boy, the weight of responsibility had straightened his shoulders instead of bowing them. “That’s where you’re wrong, lad. Twas too late to turn back before I was born.” He squatted to retrieve Carey’s scattered quill and papers, noticing them for the first time. “And what1 s this?”
    Carey rescued his precious notes, trying not to squirm. He’d been hoping to put off this moment for as long as he dared. “While you were gone last night, I passed the time with some bards brought by their masters from
Normandy
. It seems the tournament is to commence with a test of chivalry.”
    “Chivalry?” Austyn spat out the word like an epithet.
    “Aye. After the earl’s daughter opens the tournament with a song, her suitors are to engage in a brief contest of—he dropped his voice to a mumble— ‘Verse.”
    Austyn spun on his heel and marched back toward the tent
    Carey rushed after him. “Don’t be so rash! Tis only the earl’s ploy to separate the civilized from any unschooled savages who might attempt to win his daughter.”
    Austyn’s long strides did not falter. “Then you can congratulate the man for me. This unschooled savage is going home to Wales. Being damned for all eternity is one thing, but being made an ass of is quite another.”
    Carey scampered ahead of him, waving the papers beneath Austyn’s intractable nose. “
Ill
not let them make an ass of you. That”s why I’ve been up all night writing these masterful tributes to the lady’s beauty.”
    Austyn stopped dead, a scant inch away from trampling his man-at-arms. His nostrils flared like an angry bull’s. “Very well.” He stabbed a finger at the beaming Carey. “But if she dares to laugh at me, I won’t kill her.
Ill
kill you.”
    Austyn’s hackles prickled as they passed through the inner bailey of Castle Tewksbury to be swallowed by the yawning jaws of the great hall.
    The sturdy weight of the hauberk worn beneath his surcoat soothed his raw nerves. He refused to leave his back unguarded in such a mob of armed English. No peace decreed by treaty or surrender could banish the centuries of distrust bred into his Welsh bones.
    A retinue of extravagantly garbed knights led by a hooded lord jostled past Carey, sneering at his worn tunic and faded boots. Carey waved a fist at their backs. “Flee my wrath, will you? Be ye knights or damsels?”
    Austyn clapped a restraining hand on his man’s shoulder, itching to caress his own sword hilt He refrained,