The Mistress Of Normandy by Susan Wiggs Read Free Book Online

innocence and worldliness she was. At once fragile, forceful, and forthright, she awakened powerful desires in him. She looked like a girl immortalized in a troubadour’s lay, yet her behavior contradicted the image. Jussie, he recalled, had never concerned herself with affairs of state.
    “France is more at war with herself than with England,” he said. “King Charles is drooling mad, and the noble houses bicker like fishwives while the peasants starve.”
    “And will subjecting ourselves to Henry’s usurpation improve our lot?”
    “Better a sane Englishman than a mad Frenchman on the throne,” Rand said.
    She stopped walking, whirled to face him. “Under whose banner will you fight? What cause do you champion?”
    He swallowed, then affected a rakish grin. “Widows and orphans, of course.”
    She sniffed. “A convenient reply.”
    Discussing intelligent subjects with a woman, he thought, was not altogether unpleasant. “You speak ably of affairs that most men know nothing of.”
    “I’m not one to hide myself away and pretend ignorance. ’Tis exactly what the English god-dons would like, and I’ll not oblige them.”
    It’s not what every English god-don would like, he thought, watching the sunlight dance in the silvery mantle of her hair.
    They found his horse grazing placidly on salt grass in a glade of water beeches. Nearby stood a weathered stone marker, its four arms of equal length marking it as St. Cuthbert’s cross. The horse looked up, ears pricked. His dappled flanks gleamed in the heatless light of the March sun.
    Lianna stopped walking to stare at the hard-muscled percheron, then at Rand. “I think you should explain who you are,” she said. Her gaze slipped from the top of his blond head to the spurs on his mud-caked boots. “You are simply dressed, yet that horse of yours is no plowman’s rouncy.”
    Inwardly he winced at the distrust in her tone. She was too straightforward to be easily deceived. “Charbu was a gift.” His hand strayed to the lump created by the amulet beneath his mail shirt. Henry had given him Charbu as one of many gifts and another thread in the web of obligation he’d woven around Rand.
    Lianna set down her gun and approached the horse. “Charbu,” she said softly, stroking the handsome blazed face. “A fine, strong name. Tell me, Charbu, about your master. Does he hail from Gascony, as he claims? Does he ride you on raids with a band of écorcheurs? ”
    The horse whickered gently and tossed its head. Momentarily captivated by the sight of the small girl with her cheek pressed against the horse’s neck, Rand stood speechless. At length he found his voice and strode forward. “If you think me a brigand, why aren’t you fainting or screaming?”
    “I never faint,” she replied smugly. “And rarely scream. And you’ve not answered me.”
    “I am a...traveling knight, Lianna. I swear to you I do not ride with brigands. But I would like to ride with you. Let me take you to Bois-Long.”
    “No,” she said quickly. “I think it best you stay clear of the château.”
    Why? he wondered. Did the chatelaine treat trespassers harshly? God, did she mistreat Lianna? He touched a strand of her hair; it felt like spun silk. “Is Bois-Long such an inhospitable place?”
    “I fear it has become so,” she replied, her eyes brimming with unspoken regret.
    Rand felt a great urge to fold her against him then, to surround her with the tenderness that had been blossoming in his heart since he’d first laid eyes on her. “At least let me take you partway,” he suggested.
    She balked; he persisted and, finally, prevailed. Her gun across the saddlebow, her arms clasped around his waist, she rode behind him and they talked. He learned that she often saved crumbs from her breakfast to feed a family of swallows that nested in the castle battlements. He told her that he invented songs to play on his harp. She confessed to a passion for comfits, and he admitted to holding