The Temptation (The Medieval Knights Series) by Claudia Dain Read Free Book Online

are called upon to prove nothing. Your very name proclaims your worth." Gautier smiled, breaking the tense moment. "I misspoke. You will forgive?"
    "If you seek forgiveness, you shall have it, though you have done nothing to earn my wrath, Lord Gautier," Hugh said. "Yet forgiveness and blessing shall pour forth from me this day to any and all who have need of it. I have taken a bride today, and I tremble at the bounty of the gift."
    All eyes then turned to Elsbeth, startling her. She knew not where to land her gaze; there was no soft and quiet spot on which to turn her eyes when all looked so resolutely and avidly toward her.
    "Look upon me, Elsbeth," Hugh said softly. "I will be your haven when all others have flown."
    "I need no haven," she said, looking down at her lap. "It is only that I am not at ease with such speech. I have said it; I have no need for flattery."
    "Perhaps, then, it is your father who needed to hear from me that I would cherish his daughter. Sometimes, the need goes beyond ourselves."
    She looked sharply at him, forgetting all thoughts of serenity at his prick. "I am not thinking of myself! Not in the way that you mean. It is no sin to run from empty flattery, my lord. I should think you would know that. And I can promise you that my father did not have need of any reassurance. He is well pleased with this union, if you had eyes to see."
    "Oh, I have eyes to see," he said, his voice lowered to an angry pitch, "and ears to hear."
    "My lord?" she asked, startled again by his intensity.
    He had seemed to her all of courtesy and mildness, perhaps somewhat like the bathwater warrior her father had named him, though he came from Jerusalem. Perhaps because he came from Jerusalem. There were stories of their Levantine ways, an overfondness for bathing and good food, and the softness that was the inevitable result of such living. Yet no tales abounded of Hugh of Jerusalem's softness; nay, it was all his battle prowess and his golden beauty that were touted.
    Yet what troubadour would sing of bathwater?
    "I now must echo your father," he said, smiling. "I misspoke. Will you forgive me my harsh words and hasty anger? It is not the way of Christ—this we both well know."
    "Yet it is of Christ to forgive, even to seventy times seven," she said. "I forgive and gladly. It is forgotten."
    Except that she could not forget.
    Who was this man she had married?

 
     
    Chapter 3

     
    He had married into a vipers' nest. The trouble was, he needed the viper's venom and so he must persevere. To have come so far and not to achieve his purpose would be a loss he could not bear, and one he could not bear to report to Baldwin.
    All he did was for Baldwin and Jerusalem, and because it was for them, he would abide no regret and no defeat.
    Hugh looked at the startled face his bride and smiled to soothe her. He understood much of what she was and what she attempted. Even knowing, he found no fault with her. She was a woman caught in a net fashioned by ambitious men, and she only thrashed to be free of it. But she was caught fast, and he would not let her go. Not now. Not when he had come to the far northern reaches of the world to this damp and dreary isle on the edge of nothing.
    He had need of her. He would deal gently, or as gently as he could, and then, perhaps, if all went well, he would release her to the cloister she hungered for. But that was far off. Now, there were other things to be done, words to be spoken and a part played out.
    Whatever else happened, he knew he would manage Elsbeth well.
    She was a woman who needed careful and soft management. That such a woman of striking beauty and abundant wealth could not see her own value, that she had not found the measure of her worth in the eyes of a distant admirer or the words of a protective father, were her bane. She had been much ignored, much discarded, but no longer. He was her husband now, and he would see all repaired. He would leave her better than he had found