The Last Knight by Candice Proctor Read Free Book Online Page B

Damion de Jarnac was not irreversible; once they had delivered Walter into the care of Saint-Sevin's infirmarer, she could always change her mind and continue on alone.
Comforted by the thought, she narrowed her eyes against the glare to study the distant monastery, its cluster of golden-white buildings looking solid and comforting in the midst of ripening fields striped yellow and green with wheat and barley. The afternoon had turned hot, the sun a golden ball that beat down to fill the air with the scents of baking earth and steaming green leaves and lush grass. She glanced back anxiously at Walter Brie, slumped unconscious over the neck of de Jarnac's roan. He had not stirred.
They had tied him to the saddle with strips of cloth tornfrom the tunics of the dead routiers . The squire led Walter's injured gray and de Jarnac's second spare mount, a bay, but Attica herself had taken the roan's lead rope. Her arm was beginning to ache from the strain, although she barely noticed it, since it was only one small ache lost amid the shrieking agony of sore thighs and stiff back and raw knees. She considered herself an accomplished horsewoman, but she had been riding now for hours, and she was exhausted.
She shifted her gaze to the broad, smooth back of Damion de Jarnac, trotting ahead of her. He sat easily in the saddle, one gloved hand resting negligently against a solid thigh. He had his dark head up, his strong-boned profile sharp and alert as he scanned the road ahead. He looked as if he could ride to the ends of the earth, Attica thought, and never suffer any discomfort. Watching him, she felt herself fill with a wistfulness that was part admiration, part envy, and part something else she could not name.
A warm wind gusted up, rustling the oak leaves overhead and billowing the hem of the dead courtier's surcoat out around her. She watched the summer breeze ruffle the knight's dark hair where it lay against the taut, tanned column of his neck, and she knew a strange, swift sensation, as if everything in her world had shifted suddenly, then realigned itself in an unfamiliar, frightening, yet somehow exciting pattern. Perhaps it was the male clothing she wore or the strange company with which she rode, but she felt …
She felt as if she were someone else, she decided. As if she were moving through someone else's life. A swift thrill of exhilaration tingled through her at the thought. She knew it made no sense; she had never been more frightened in her life than she was at that moment. She was worriedabout the threat to Stephen's life and to his liege lord, the English king; she was worried about Walter's wound and about her own safety. And yet she also knew that she hadn't felt this alive, this free in years. She felt as if she had escaped. Which was odd, since she hadn't even realized, until now, just how hedged in she'd come to feel as she'd grown from the rather wild young girl she had once been into the affianced wife she had become.
A flock of swallows arose from the valley floor ahead to dart screeching across the sky. Looking up, Attica saw the knight check the black Arab for a moment, his hand resting on his sword, and she realized there was a definable edge to his watchfulness. She cast a quick, nervous glance around and spurred her horse up beside his. “You don't think they're still about, do you?” she asked. “The routiers , I mean.”
He brought his gaze to her face, the edges of his lips lifting in a wry smile that flashed, then was gone. “They're still around. They wouldn't leave without robbing their own dead back there, if nothing else.” His eyes narrowed as he stared off down the valley. “We'll ride across the fields from here, I think, rather than follow the road past that clump of trees. No reason to present ourselves for an ambush simply because they've prepared one for us.”
She straightened in her stirrups, trying to peer in the direction he'd indicated. It might have been her imagination, but for a moment