The Fallen One by Kathryn Le Veque Read Free Book Online

was incredibly beautiful but,
unfortunately, she was also a de Lara. He had warned his brother against her.
Now, he was not so apt to heed his own warning. There was something about the
woman that was very, very special. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of her
because she muddled his mind so; she was bewitching.   He finally had to force himself away.
    “I will not be long,” he said as he made
his way back over to the horse, who tried to bite him.   He frowned at the animal. “These animals are
sometimes quite difficult to handle for those they are not familiar with.”
    Cathlina watched him with interest as he
pulled another red-hot shoe out of the fire and began hammering at it.
    “It is a very big horse,” she said. “A war
horse?”
    Mathias nodded as he pounded. “This nasty
boy has seen several battles.”
    Cathlina eyed the scarred horse. “We saw
several knights in town yesterday when we arrived,” she said.   “My father says there is to be a tournament
in a few days.”
    Mathias nodded as he put the shoe back into
the fire. “So it would seem.”
    Cathlina studied the man as he stirred the
fire; he was wearing leather breeches and a leather apron, and a rather worn
linen tunic that in greater days had probably been a bright shade of red. It
was very worn, and the neckline was torn just enough so she could see portions
of his muscular chest.   The man had the
biggest arms she had ever seen, muscular to a fault, and his chest seemed to
match that particular pattern.   She’d
never thought much about men’s chests before but in peeking at Mathias’, she
thought his rather attractive.   The man
was purely big and beautiful, and her cheeks began to flush.   She averted her gaze and sought to divert her
innately passionate thoughts.
    “Where… where were you born, Mathias?” she
asked, struggling to think on something else to speak of.
    He continued to stoke the fire, his face
and body riddled with lusty, oozy sweat, causing his inky hair to kink up in
small curls around his neck.
    “Throston Castle in Northumbria,” he said.
“It is near the eastern coast.”
    “I see,” Cathlina said, cocking her head as
she tried to imagine where he was from. “You must have learned your trade from
a very young age. Did you ever think to become anything other than a smithy?”
    He pulled the red-hot shoe out of the fire
again and set it on the anvil.   He didn’t
want to tell her his deepest, darkest secret for many reasons, not the least of
which was the fact that she was a de Lara. Therefore, for all she knew, he was
what she saw: a smithy. There was no reason to tell her any differently because
it would have been far too complicated to explain, anyway, and it might
possibly frighten her away. He didn’t want to frighten her away.
    “Like what?” he asked, glancing up at her
with a twinkle in his eye. “A farmer? A sailor?”
    Cathlina took the question seriously. “You
are big and brave and intelligent,” she said. “Perhaps you could have found
someone to sponsor you as a page or squire at a young age.   You could have been a fighting man. You said
you were born at Throston Castle? Who is the lord at Throston?”
    My
grandfather, he thought. They were heading deeper into a subject he wanted to
avoid.   He pounded on the shoe.
    “An old man by the name of Lenox,” he
replied, then shifted the course of questions back onto her and away from
secrets he did not wish to divulge. “Your father is a knight, is he not? Allied
with the Earl of Carlisle, you said?”
    Successfully diverted, she nodded. “My
father is a cousin to the earl,” she replied. “During the wars between the king
and Roger Mortimer, my father served the earl and the king. But he sustained a
very bad injury in the battle at Stanhope a few years ago and resigned from
fighting.   He simply administers the garrison
at Kirklinton now and has knights and other men who do the fighting for him.”
    “What is your