Temptress by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

stranger.”
    “And how will we do that?” Isa demanded.
    “We’ll talk to him, once he awakens.”
    “ If he awakens,” the older woman said with a disgusted snort. “It has been over a week since we found him and yet he doesn’t respond.”
    Over a week? That long?
    Isa added, “He may never awaken.”
    The crone’s words were like a prophesy, for struggle as he might, he was losing the fight and soon he slipped back into the oblivion of darkness.
     
    “ ’Tis not idle gossip,” the fat merchant insisted. Wedged into the chair before the fire in the great hall at Heath, he licked his fingers and then plucked another jellied egg from the platter laden with wedges of cheese, slices of salted eel, and dates. “I was at Calon but two days ago. The guards who knew me well, they stopped me and questioned me and searched my cart. They would not say why, but later in town I was playing dice and having a few cups when I spied Wilt, the apothecary. Though he had to be urged into speaking, he finally admitted that Carrick of Wybren had been located and brought to the castle.”
    Lord Ryden, sipping from his mazer, listened while the obese man told the story of a savagely beaten, near-death stranger found close to the castle gates. Ryden’s blood heated and he tried to tamp down his anger, or at the very least, disguise it. The thought of Carrick of Wybren infiltrating the fortress that was Calon infuriated him. It mattered not that Carrick was near death; the fact that he was close to his fiancée, Morwenna, caused Ryden to clasp his mazer in a death grip.
    The merchant was caught up in his tale. He gestured wildly in between bites and, no doubt, exaggerated the captive’s wounds and the ensuing mayhem at the keep, playing up his own part in risking his life to bring Ryden the information.
    But the tale had merit. This was not the first person to have brought him news of Carrick’s capture, which was all the more distressing.
    Ryden wasn’t a man who deluded himself. He knew that Morwenna of Calon had agreed to become his bride only after she’d been jilted by Carrick. Ryden had no illusions that she loved him; nor did he love her. But Calon was her dowry, so the marriage would be a strong union, solidifying two baronies that abutted each other into one stronger, with vaster lands over which he would rule. He itched to see it happen and wouldn’t let anything or anyone stop him.
    Especially not Carrick of Wybren, the lying spawn of Satan who had bedded and then mercilessly killed Ryden’s sister, Alena, in that unforgivable fire. Ryden felt his rage return as he thought of the sibling who was young enough to be his own daughter. She’d had so much life within her. With straight flaxen hair, a melodious, near-naughty laugh, she’d also been blessed with a twinkle of devilment in her gold eyes. She’d been beautiful, had known it, and at the age of seventeen had pronounced she was madly in love with Theron of Wybren and had married him scarcely six months later.
    Ryden hadn’t been fooled. Alena was too much of a flirt to settle down with one man, and not long after the nuptials there had been trouble, rumors abounding that she had taken up with Theron’s brother Carrick. Ryden had even sent a spy to watch his sister, and the spy, curse his soul, had never returned. Just taken his hefty fee and disappeared.
    Now, as the merchant rambled on, losing pieces of fish in his heavy beard so hasty was he in stuffing the food into his thick throat, Ryden silently considered his options. He’d known of Carrick’s fate long before this smug trader had driven his cart through the gates of Heath.
    Managing to appear only slightly interested, Ryden sipped from his cup, plotted his revenge, and heard the man out. Carrick would have to be dealt with; he’d known this from the moment he’d heard that the wounded man brought into Calon was suspected of being the missing son of the dead baron Dafydd.
    Eventually the