Sweet Enchantress by Parris Afton Bonds Read Free Book Online Page B

least, if not par armours . And had he even been interested in only an affair of the heart, she would never had been considered, as he was a gentile and she a Jewess.
    Despite his disfigurement, he was still supremely male. Not for him the sexless leper’s castanets, gloves, and breadbasket. She turned her attention back to her ring of keys, discarding the pantry key for the right one. "What mischief do you seek now?” she asked rudely of him.
    “ I fear for my Lady Dominique.”
    She straightened, her keys clink ing back together on their ring, and frowned. "I know. I fret, also.”
    " ’Tis not just her way of life that’s in danger. Tis her very life, I fear."
    “ Has the English lieutenant said as such?”
    The Templar shook his shaggy gray head. "No, but her missive to Denys was intercepted. I listen and watch. The Englishman, I am told, is ruthless, thorough, and unforgiving. I fear his reprisal is yet to come after she has formally yielded her title and county to him.”
    "What can he do to her?” Unconsciously, she rubbed her age-knotted fingers that ached with the cold. "And on what pretext?”
    "The missive to Denys was pretext enough, but the Englishman burnt it. Nevertheless, he could find a reason of one kind or another.”
    "You come to me now because you finally need my help, do you not, leper?”
    "You know what it is I seek.” It wasn’t a question but a statement.
    She lowered her head. Even now this stag of a man had the power to make her foolishly yearn for all that could never be. "I have thought of it, also. But I cannot.”
    "This is different, old woman. Tis our Dominique, she needs our help.”
    Miserable, she shook her head. "I cannot, I tell you. My knowledge of herbs . . . I can only use it for good. To poison him . . . No, we must trust. We must trust.”
    He stretched out his hands and flexed his sausage-sized fingers. "I have thought of strangling him at an unguarded moment I would not mind forfeiting the few years left me to keep our Lady Dominique safe. But if it were not Paxton of Wychchester seeking to claim her county and her life, it would be another like him.”
    Her words were anguished with the future she feared. "There is no other like him.”

 
     
    CHAPTER IV
     
    Paxton felt as irritable as a dog chained for too long. Outside, a spring rain performed a mad dance, an d the wind howled like demons.
    From Dominique de Bar's library came the brass rattle of the abacus. He found her at her escritoire, calculating numbers from a ledger. At the same time she dictated to a secretary, a pipe-stem of a man in his forties.
    Paxton 's mailed step must have given him away because at once she glanced up from the Chinese counting instrument. Her gaze turned cold and empty, like that of a marble statue. “You desired me – my Lord Lieutenant?”
    Desired her? Did he?
    He really looked at her. An intriguing damosel, her features arresting. But her intelligence, her willfulness, her remoteness—they put off a man. No wonder the virago had not been taken to wife, despite the county’s potential wealth. A man wanted in a woman the softness and gentleness that was his complement, a compassion that did not condemn weakness.
    Weakness? If any female would suspect it, surely this virago would. All his weaknesses. Remorse, ye arnings, cynicism . . . aye, hatred, even, though the Church condemned that as the most foul of sins.
    "The tourn ey draws near," he said brusquely. "You should be apprised of your part in the ceremony.”
    "Can you not just send one of your lackeys with the instructions?"
    So that she would not have to endure his presence. That was what she implied. Her condescending attitude infuriated him. He wanted to throttle her, but such an act would give her an advantage, confirming her opinion of him as a brutish lout.
    With an effort, he stifled his peppery temperament, br ought on by the confining weather he told himself. Nudging aside a gold-and- rock crystal chess set, he