Only For A Knight by Sue-Ellen Welfonder Read Free Book Online Page B

traipsing about these hills alone, I warrant you could not venture far in your present state, if your sweet life depended on it.”
     
He tilted his head to the side, gave her his best smile again.
     
She remained unmoved.
     
“My life, sir, is my own concern,” she said. “And my good conscience depends on reaching my destination—a task I cannot accomplish if you persist in keeping me from the solitude I need to recover my wits.”
     
Robbie glanced up at the gathering clouds and tried to keep the corners of his mouth from twitching. Any village idiot could see the lass had wits enough to spare. She suffered no need to recover them. They were merely . . . misguided.
     
“What you need, my lady, is warmth and comfort,” he said in a tone of absolute reason. “You shall receive suchlike a-plenty at Eilean Creag, that I promise you.”
     
“And who shall you charge with spending me this . . . care?” She fixed another penetrating stare on him. “Mayhap your soon-to-be lady wife?”
     
“If I tell her to see to your comfort, aye,” Robbie declared, knowing he’d ne’er spoken more untrue words. “But it is my stepmother, the lady Linnet, who will lend you the greatest service. She has a healing touch and a kind heart.”
     
“And you think to simply take me there? To your home? To these women—these ladies who neither expect nor know aught of me? In especial with me all but mother-naked and wrapped in naught but your shirt and borrowed plaid?”
     
Robbie nodded. The plan seemed more than logical to him.
     
Unless there was someplace else he ought better take her.
     
A notion he did not like.
     
“You lack adequate provender and plaiding to journey far on your own and your coin will serve you scarce little in these rough bounds. Or”—he waited just the sliver of a heartbeat—“were you heading someplace none too distant? To Kenneth perchance?”
     
She glanced away, her gaze settling on the dark-
     
watered lochan, each tension-fraught moment of silence making Robbie feel all the more a doltish lout for mentioning the man’s name.
     
A name that clearly disturbed her.
     
But he had to ask.
     
He could not keep her with him if she was bound to another.
     
That much honor he did possess.
     
“Is Kenneth your husband?” he asked into the stillness. “Were you taking him the siller?”
     
Or perchance running from him?
     
Leaving that last unspoken, Robbie folded his arms and waited.
     
She impaled him with a gaze that bespoke more answers than any words.
     
Urgency shimmered in her beautiful eyes and the luminosity of her unyielding, leaf-green stare made his heart beat fast. But above all, her eyes held a truth that sealed her fate and charged the living air with enough promise to encourage him to press her yet again.
     
“Kenneth,” he repeated, his dread of her answer lying like bitter ash on his tongue. “Who is he?”
     
Juliana blinked, something inside her beginning to waken and focus . . . but not quite enough.
     
“I do not know who Kenneth is,” she spoke true, her heart clenching on the name. “I do not remember . . . save that he is dear to me and that he is not my husband. Of that, I am in no doubt. He feels . . . otherwise.”
     
The knight nodded, his expression unreadable. “And the coin?” he probed, the pulse hammering at his throat revealing everything his face did not—in especial, how unpleasant he found the question.
     
Or the possibility she might be a thief.
     
“You understand I must ask?” His voice was deep but surprisingly gentle. Soothing. “I assure you it shall make no matter to me what you say.”
     
“I can tell you naught about the coin.” Juliana’s fingers tensed against the soft leather of the money purse. “To be sure, though, no ill deeds brought such wealth into my care.”
     
Raising her chin again, she narrowed her eyes at him in her best challenge. But he only smiled—a dimpled smile that slid through her like sun-warmed honey, its distraction almost swaying her from