The Protector by Madeline Hunter Read Free Book Online

not have to go. Stay with me.”
    “You ask too much. There are limits to Christian charity.”
    “I ask only that you stay until I sleep. Your presence eases my mind. I would have you here only to keep the demons away. I will not offend you.”
    She thought about his death watch, and again remembered her own. How much harder to be a man, who could not show fear or even admit it to himself. What would it have been like without Ascanio there to comfort her?
    That invasive intimacy flowed, heightening her empathy. What could it hurt to sit with him a while longer? He'd promised not to offend her. If he tried…well, she had dealt with that before and always could again.
    “If you will take your rest, I will stay a little longer.”
    Feeling extremely awkward, she followed him back inside. When they reached the cots he turned to her. She hesitated, not knowing where to go or what to do.
    She remembered Ascanio's physical closeness during those desperate hours, and how it gave her such comfort. She could not embrace this man or lie beside him as she had with Ascanio, however. The way he watched and waited looked anything but priestly. She walked over to one of the cots and perched stiffly on its end.
    “Sleep now, Sir Morvan. I will sit by your head.”
    He sat and removed his boots. Unfurling a blanket, he stretched out. He was a tall man, and his head settled not beside her on the cot, but on her lap. She stiffened even more in surprise.
    He reached up and guided her head down. He gave her a long, sweet kiss before releasing her lips. He held her thus, inches from his face, and his dark eyes gazed into hers. She worried that he could hear the clamoring pulse of her heartbeat.
    He smiled ruefully. “It appears that I will die with two regrets instead of one, my lady. When the angels visit you next time, you must demand that I get full credit for my restraint.”
    He dropped his arm and turned on his side, his head cradled on her thighs and his hand resting on her knee.
    She sat motionless, awed by the sensation of his weight on her, stunned by the physicality of it. Still confused by that kiss, she barely breathed until she sensed his body loosening as sleep began to claim him.
    The low fire sent dim lights and shadows down his resting form to his face. He looked younger now with those planes softening in his repose. She reflected onthis poignant friendship which the plague had brought her and would soon take away. A dagger, edged with regret and resentment, pierced her heart.
    She raised her hands without thinking, and they hovered in the space above him. Hesitant and awkward, she let her hands fall and come to rest on his shoulder and in the black waves of his hair.

C HAPTER 5

    S ENSATIONS ASSAULTED HIM as he drifted on the edges of the black fog. Restraining weight … Slick, moist heat … A few flashes of light …
    He struggled toward wakefulness, but only touched it, barely. A smell was all that he reached—the stench of corrupted flesh and death. His spirit recoiled, retreating from the odor, but it followed him into the fog, bringing new images that flew at him, filling the blackness, merging into memories worse than any vision wrought by the demons….
    The chamber stunk of corrupted flesh and death.
    Two eyes gazed up from their sunken hollows. A hand summoned weakly, no more than a vague gesture.
    He swallowed sickening bile and leaned over his dying father. How unfair that one chance arrow could lay waste to such a man as Hugh Fitzwaryn.
    “Has Edward come?” The chest wound made the question little more than a gasp for breath. “They know I am dying, so I think that they lie to me. I ask you for the truth.”
    He should lie too, he felt, but he could not. He shook his head. “He has not come. Nor has word that he will.”
    Lids lowered over eyes glazed with pain. His father grew so still that it appeared death had grabbed him.
    The eyes opened again, and bored into him. “It is left to you, then,