Tori Phillips by Silent Knight Read Free Book Online Page A

was an odd tenor to their hissing. Suspicion formed in the back of Guy’s mind. More noises, sounding for all the world like a number of fools’ wind bladders, confirmed his theory. When next Brother Fly touched his ear, Guy whirled in his saddle.
    Celeste froze, her eyes wide with surprise. In her hand, she held a long stalk of roadside grass, its downy tip inches from Guy’s shoulder. He opened his mouth, remembered his vow in time, then pressed his lips tightly together.
    “Poor Brother Guy!” Celeste murmured, recovering her composure. She held up the offending grass as if it were a queen’s scepter. “What? Nary a smile? Not even the barest movement of your lips? Pah!” She sighed as she tossed the grass away. “Surely a smile is not breaking your vow of silence, good Brother? A smile is very quiet.”
    Her eyes sparkled with merry mischief, and her bowed mouth curled upward before it broke into a beguiling grin. Sweet Lord! How could any man resist such a charming aspect—even if she was just a mere girl!
    “I ask you this, Brother Guy,” she continued, as her smile increased in warmth. “If the good God above did not want us to laugh, why did he make it so pleasant to do so? Oui , it is easier by far to laugh than to frown, n’est-ce pas? ” Cocking her head again, she regarded him through her long dark lashes.
    Guy stared at her without moving a facial muscle, though his lips quivered to return her smile with one of his own. By the rood! Celeste had played a goodly trick on him with her piece of grass. In an earlier time, he would have—Nay! He could not give in to her teasing. Their journey together had just begun. He must maintain a firm upper hand. Pride goeth before the fall, a little voice whispered in the back of his mind.
     
     
    The travelers picnicked in the forenoon by a clear spring that bubbled out of a cleft in the rocks before it continued on its rushing way to the sea, sixty miles to the southwest. The October breeze held the last warmth of the year, and wanton puffs of wind occasionally lifted the light veil covering the lady’s hair. A few stray tendrils of black silk had worked their way loose from the confines of her French hood, and these tantalizing bits of beauty kissed her cheeks as the breezes did what Guy’s fingers longed to do. Catching his wandering thoughts before they continued to their natural conclusion, Guy withdrew from the lady and her men. Seated on a grassy knoll beside the spring, Guy looked heavenward and began to say the office for the sext hour.
    Behind him, he heard the low murmur of French, punctuated by male laughter. Daisy and the horses champed on the clumps of grass with noisy satisfaction. Above him, a flock of wild geese winged southward, to the warmer climes of Spain, honking their progress as they flew. An idyllic day. Just the sort of day Guy used to go a-hawking. In his mind’s eye, he saw his favorite female peregrine soar from his wrist into the polished blue overhead, then pause at the zenith of her ascent. She could hang in the air, as if frozen in place—a black dot against the canopy of the sky. Then, folding her wings, she would drop at tremendous speed, snatching a dove in flight, before the gentle bird ever realized her fate.
    Guy closed his eyes against the beauty of the day, trying to shut out images of bygone pleasures—pleasures he had happily renounced only a few months ago.
    “Bro ther Guy?” Her husky voice swooped upon his thoughts as surely as his hawk had attacked the dove. Slowly, he opened his eyes.
    “Does your vow also mean you do not eat?” Lady Celeste proffered a fine linen napkin on which she had arranged a tempting choice of bread, baked that morning in the priory’s kitchen, wedges of apple, a soft white cheese and a half breast of cold roasted chicken. “If you grow faint with hunger and fall off that most ridiculous animal of yours, none of us will be able to lift you up again. You are far too...