Noble Hearts 03 - The Courageous Heart by Merry Farmer Read Free Book Online Page A

she would ever wanted to see him again, but he was the only person she knew in the giant city of strangers.
    “Who, Dunkirke?” Bess asked. Joanna clamped her jaw and nodded. “Outside.”
    Sucking in a breath, Joanna marched across the room, dragging Wulfric with her. He whimpered in complaint.
    “Miss,” Bess stopped her, “Want me to take the boy?”
    “Yes please,” Joanna sighed in relief. She let go of Wulfric’s hand as Bess crouched to smile at him. To his credit, Wulfric let her brush out the kitchen door into the back garden without putting up a fuss.
    Joanna didn’t have to search far to find Ethan. He stood beside a large wagon , helping a scrawny young man unload it.
    “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
    Ethan jerked his head up but took his time replying. The sight of him laboring like a common drudge went against everything Joanna had ever known about the man and his pride. It only fed her urgent sense of wrongness.
    When he had carried a fat sack of grain to the wall beside the kitchen door he answered, “I live here.”
    Joanna looked around. The inn’s courtyard and garden were sheltered from the street but neighboring buildings peeked over the high stone walls as if listening to their c onversation. “Where is here?”
    “The Stag Hunt inn.”
    His answer didn’t help at all. Joanna shifted Meg once again to hold her against her shoulder. Ethan continued to unload the wagon. The young man he worked with sent her curious stare after curious stare, his blue eyes wide, until one sharp glare from Ethan put his eyes back on his work. Ethan brought a heavy cask to the garden wall. Instead of returning to the wagon he rubbed a hand over his face, half of it beard, and let out a breath.
    “You look good, Joanna,” he mumbled, shifting towards her as though it was the last thing he wanted to do. His eyes took their time meet ing hers.
    “You don’t, Ethan,” sh e snapped in reply. Her breath came in shallow gasps all the same. She wasn’t ready for this. Two and a half years was not enough time to dull the pain of all that Ethan represented to her . Especially not when everything else had just gone to hell. Meg fussed and she was grateful to have something else to focus on.
    “I assume that’s Jack and Madeline’s baby,” Ethan ventured. He took a few steps closer to her, craning his neck to get a look.
    “She is.” Joanna stepped away from him towards the garden wall. She told herself that her stomach was tied in knots of worry over Aubrey and Crispin and Jack, that her heart pounded because she’d r un all the way from the Tower.
    “There’s no mistaking that ginger hair.” Ethan followed her, making small talk. “When was she born?”
    “Before Christmas,” Joanna answered. “It was a difficult birth. We were all on pins and needles for days, praying for Madeline to pull through. The midwife said she wouldn’t survive, but she did. You should have seen Jack when-” She stopped herself and frowned. Ethan had no right to the fears and triumphs they’d all gone through, none at all.
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” he mumbled, lowering his head. “I’ve always been fond of Madeline.”
    Joanna huffed an ironic laugh and turned away from him as she sat on the edge of the wall.
    “So, I guess life in Derbyshire went on without me?” he asked.
    She glared at him over her shoulder, anger and longing mounting higher at the deeper question in his eyes. “Yes, Ethan, life went on without you. Just like it did five years ago when you - ” She whipped her head back to stare into the neatly-kept herb garden and the well in the middle of it. She would not open that gaping wound now.
    “Oh.” He actually had the nerve to sound disappointed. “You found someone then I guess.”
    She twisted towards him, jaw dropping . “ Aubrey, Crispin, and Jack have just been arrested and locked up and risk having their heads put on spikes on the Tower , Madeline is on death’s door, and