Shana Abe by The Truelove Bride Read Free Book Online Page B

lip with the urge to yank her head away from his light touch. She felt so odd, like nothing she had ever experienced before. He seemed to set off a kind of nervous hum throughout her entire body, a sensation of heightened awareness.…
    This was insanity, she had no idea why she was reacting so strangely to this man, but they could not be discovered here. If Bryce found out he would kill them all, he would have to, and desperation made her words that much more convincing.
    “I am no one, milord.”
    “No one?” He flicked back her hood with dismaying ease. Avalon heard Elfrieda give a little cry.
    The stranger ignored it, silent and musing. Avalon felt for the veil, praying it still covered her hair, and found it in place. She remembered to lower her face again.
    Imprinted in her mind was all that she could see of him with the light behind him: black hair tied back, unsmiling lips, pale eyes that reminded her of frost.
    “No one,” he repeated softly, almost to himself, and she heard something new in his cultured voice, something wild and alarming. “I think not.”
    She tried to brush past him but he stalled her once more.
    “What is your name?”
    Astonishingly, amazingly, nothing came to mind. She blinked down at his chest, unable to say a single word.
    “Rosalind!” squeaked Elfrieda. “We must leave! We will be late!”
    The stranger again spared a glance for the girl behind him, then looked back at Avalon. She had abandoned the idea of looking down and met his gaze steadily. Hiswinter eyes were narrowed; there was a tautness around his mouth, as if what he saw didn’t please him.
    “Rosalind.” He seemed almost to taste the word, saying it with cool speculation.
    She dipped a little curtsy on the stairs, wondering how to escape this man and this moment, the strangeness surrounding him, that heated sting still lingering on her chin where he had touched her.
    “Please, milord,” pleaded Elfrieda now. “Let my sister be. We must return to our father’s house or be punished.”
    The man shook his head, just once. The light behind him reflected off the ebony of his hair.
    “Rosalind.” Even in the way he repeated it he implied disbelief, as if he could easily see through their thin plot. It unnerved her so much that at last she found the will to move, ducking quickly under his arm and hopping over two stairs to regain her footing. Elfrieda started moving again just as fast, both of them almost running down the remainder of the stairs.
    He didn’t follow. Something told Avalon he wouldn’t. And as the two women made their way out of the inn and back into the night, Avalon thought about that delicate moment in time, when she had acted and he had not, though it would have been simple to block her escape and keep her there with him perhaps forever, there with his thick black hair and frost pale eyes, his muscular body almost engulfing her own.
    But he had let her leave. Avalon tried to be glad about it.

    T he night had held no peace for her. When morning arrived Avalon shrank from it, burying her head under the blankets of the pallet, wanting to sleep on and on, slumber a shield between her and the looming problems of her life.
    The sun was insistent, however, and eventually she sat up and faced the brightness surrounding her.
    Directly across the room in front of her was the long row of her trunks, each filled with fine clothing—Maribel’s delight—and Avalon couldn’t help but feel a little sorry that she was going to have to abandon the handiwork of all those seamstresses.
    Perhaps she could pay one of the servants to send the trunks back to Maribel in Gatting after everything died down. Perhaps Elfrieda or her lover would do it.
    The door opened quietly, and Avalon watched the little maid appear and creep softly into the room, carrying a tray with bowls and a cup on it.
    She tried to smile when she saw Avalon sitting up.
    “A fine day,” Elfrieda said, and then burst into tears.
    Avalon crossed