Mathis, Jolie by The Sea King Read Free Book Online

answering him, she lifted her chin, her lips sealed more tightly than a regent's missive.
    Could she not confide a simple fact to him? Irritated, he strode to his mount to retrieve linen to bind the wound.
    Upon turning he found himself completely alone. He searched for something to kick, to curse, but there was only the condescending silence of the primeval forest around him.
    He swung onto the horse and, with a jab of his heels, set off after her. She had run nearly to the tree line when he sighted her. Leaning low he claimed her by the waist and dragged her into his lap.
    The princess sat between his thighs, an effigy of silent disdain. An occasional shiver broke her stillness. Encased in leather, Kol had little warmth to share, but still he pulled her against his chest, and banded his arm beneath her out-thrust breasts. Her garments had hidden the extent of her slenderness. Her rib cage was as delicate as a bird's. Cold-hardened nipples jutted in defiance of her tunic.
    Kol closed his eyes. Exhaled through his nose.
    Each shift of her thighs along his, each press of her buttocks against him, enticed. Tempted. Deep within his chest, and even more so in his loins, his arousal grew rampant, but he would not allow this impulse to sway him from his course. The extermination of his final enemy could be his only goal.
    Isabel shared his enemy's blood. The girl who had once saved his life—who had unknowingly, but valiantly challenged his demons—no longer existed. Perhaps that girl had never truly existed at all.
    Ranulf lived. Kol sensed that much in the air about him. He would use the princess to draw the king forth. There could be no more escapes. No more defiance.
    Already he held the key to her submission.

Chapter 4
    Two winters before
    "I cannot have heard you correctly. For a moment I thought you said the princess... was with child." The timber walls of the women's chambers absorbed each of Ranulf's words instantly, leaving the room so silent Isabel wondered—nay, prayed each of its occupants had been swept away to some faraway land. A land where they would lose all memory of what they had just heard.
    On the bed she lay, with the furs pulled over her head. She clenched her hands into the bedclothes, and promised to whatever divine being granted wishes, that if she were, indeed, taken to another world she would never shed a tear over not being allowed to say goodbye.
    Not to family or friends, not even Merwyn, whom she had not been allowed to visit, not even for a pat on the nose, since—
    Since the afternoon the Dane had pulled her from the river.
    Cursedly near-deaf, the medicus shouted as if he truly believed Ranulf had not heard his revelation the first time.
    "Aye, the babe wilt be born before the first frosts settle upon the fields."
    "Shhh!" Berthilde reprimanded sharply. Isabel covered her ears with her hands.
    Surely countless other ears strained against the outside of the door. Curious servants hoping to be the first to carry news of the princess's mysterious ailment to the multitude. Isabel pressed her face into the linens. Already there were too many witnesses to her shame.
    "Isabel?" Ranulf's hoarse utterance stabbed past the barrier of her flat-pressed hands. She knew he stood at the edge of the bed. For an eternity silence throbbed about her.
    "Tell me these are lies!" His shout tore the breath from her.
    The fur coverlet flew from her body. She cringed, exposed. Air and light razed her skin but Isabel remained just as she had since the medicus' humiliating examination, curled tight as a sheave. Berthilde's ragged sobs emanated from the corner of the room. Isabel embraced herself even tighter, as if the fragments of her heart could be held together by force alone.
    " 'Twas the Dane!" Ranulf raged.
    "No," Isabel whispered into her pillow.
    Her angel would not have done such a thing. In her mind she had pondered every moment of their togetherness. Despite the black moments, the missing memories, she was