Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) by Jude Chapman Read Free Book Online

you go?” The moonlight captured the amulet on a shimmer. “You can’t stay here. There are men about. They want blood. They’ll stop at nothing until they find you. Oh, Drake,” she said on a sob.
    Tears streaked down her pale cheek. Even in darkness, Jenna was beautiful beyond words. Day or night, summer or winter, she never changed, and hadn’t changed since they were children. Jenna was his first love, his only love, and he hers. There had never been another for either. “William is sending me to the continent. I leave at dawn.”
    Her sobbing increased. She barely had breath enough to say, “F-for how long?”
    He cradled her in his arms and used his mouth to find all the delectable parts of Jenna de Berneval. Her winged shoulder blade. Her willowy neck. The underside of her moist jaw. The throbbing pulse behind her ear. “As long as it takes for him to clear my name.”
    “And how will he do that?” She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “Everyone is convinced you did what they say. The town is against you. We’re to be wed next month, or did you forget?”
    “How could I?” He fondled the betrothal ring encircling the middle finger of her left hand. The master jeweler of Winchester used moonstone and Welsh gold to fashion it. The wedding contract had been signed. The nuptials were set for the end of September. 
    “Where is your father sending you?”
    “He hasn’t said.”
    The normally soft planes of her heart-shaped face were drawn tight in worry. “I don’t want to lose you.”
    “You won’t.”
    “I will if you’re God knows where.”
    “Then I’ll pretend to be Stephen. I’ll steal you from your aunt’s manor and spirit you away on my white steed. We’ll live like sprites in the weald. Eat nuts and berries year-long. Bear sons and daughters beneath eternal summer skies.”
    An angry slap rang out and stung his ear. “It’s dreadful what has happened! How can you make light of it?” Her eyelids lifted with interest. “Have you done that before? Pretended to be Stephen?”
    “Oh, aye. As boys, we switched places every other day, excepting holy days or if William was in a particularly bad mood.”
    “And no one found you out?”
    “Not even William.”
    Her fingers stroked his face. Her touch became a healing balm to his bruises. “Then how do I know … who’s to say … the times we were together … it might have been Stephen.”
    “I beg your pardon, ma demoiselle . I’m a much better lover than my brother.”
    “How would you know?” She tweaked his nose. Her eyes laughed. “The first time, mayhap?”
    He was fifteen, and she had just entered her twelfth year. Following the sudden death of Richard’s older brother, Old King Henry released Queen Eleanor from her strict imprisonment at Sarum Castle and installed her at Winchester, where the walls were not as formidable, and her guardians more amenable. That spring, Jenna and her family joined her father when he delivered the queen to her king. Summer, the season for farming and war, lay on the horizon. “When Stephen and I were about to begin our service with Richard, and we skinny-dipped in the river. Innocently. And then not so innocently.”
    She twirled a sprig of clover between her fingers, and remembering, looked shyly at him. “Christmas court at Winchester?”
    Reuniting after a decade of strife, the royal family gathered for a public reconciliation at Windsor. Prominent in their display were the three surviving sons of King Henry and Queen Eleanor: Richard, Geoffrey and John. Later, when the Plantagenêts returned to Winchester for the balance of the winter season, the brothers spent time with William at Itchendel. Never could he forget the second time they lay together. “When Eleanor tried to make up for so many wasted years, and we first discovered the aerie.”
    She giggled at the memory. But still skeptical, she said, “The following spring, when Queen Eleanor held Easter court in