Valentine by Heather Grothaus Read Free Book Online Page B

words. The woman in the red confessional had come all this way to find him ? And she was his wife , who needed him to accompany her back to England?
    She needed him to accompany her back to England.
    “Valentine?” Stan prompted. “What say you? If we refuse the woman, surely she will raise a hue and cry and betray our location.”
    “And divulge to her betrothed the sordid details of her marriage to a criminal?” Adrian challenged. “I do doubt it.”
    Roman held out a large palm. “Perhaps Valentine should not have the arrangement annulled. What if he were to remain married to her? Perhaps it would alleviate his boredom with our captivity, and, if she is wealthy, any resources she possesses might benefit us.”
    Adrian snorted. “Oh, yes, let’s do keep her. Like a pet . May we, Victor? May we?”
    “She cannot stay here,” Victor said, choosing to ignore Adrian’s snideness. “She is missing from her home, and now from the group of pilgrims with whom her priest arranged for her to travel. Should she not return before her wedding, her betrothed will surely retrace her journey to Melk. It would not do to have authorities from the Crown sniffing about the abbey.”
    “Valentine?” Stan prompted again.
    “What can I say?” Valentine said, forcing a great sigh and holding out his hands. “I must go.”
    “The journey will be dangerous,” Roman warned.
    “No worry, my friend—I am a dangerous man myself.” He looked to Victor. “She will pay me for my trouble, yes?”
    “That I do not know,” Victor said. “Perhaps once the agreement is terminated, she might compensate you for your return journey. I’ve given her a chamber for the night so that she might evade the group she came with, and she has agreed to leave at first light so as not to be seen. I have prepared a letter for you that you might take to some friends of mine in Vienna to outfit yourself properly for your journey. You’ll continue on to Prague from there, I assume. It will be cooler in the north.”
    Valentine looked at the priest and raised an eyebrow. “You were so certain of my cooperation?”
    “Yes.”
    Valentine felt his mouth pull downward at this admission, but he had to agree. Stay at this damnable abbey for an unknowable amount of time or accompany a beautiful woman on a journey across the map—leaving tomorrow, no less? No choice at all.
    Happy birthday to me, indeed.

Chapter 4
    L ady Mary Beckham waited in the abbey’s great courtyard in the darkness before sunrise, the mount beneath her and the quiet abbot her only companions. Her nerves jangled as she checked and rechecked her seat on the saddle of the small horse she’d bought from the religious house, adjusted her skirts, patted her purse beneath her kirtle, looked over her shoulder at her small satchel strapped behind her.
    Valentine Alesander was here. Here, at Melk.
    And in a few moments she would at last come face to face with the man she had traveled a thousand miles to find. She should have been triumphant at her amazing good fortune, but instead she felt only like a bundle of raw nerves. A notorious criminal. A disgraced Spanish noble. For the next several weeks, her husband.
    She wondered what he would look like.
    Then her heart leaped into her throat as a shadow emerged from the darkened arch near the abbey’s wide gates. Two shadows; three.
    The men moved into the light cast by the torch attached to the nearest support column, and one by one Mary took measure of them:
    The first man was stocky, well built, his expression serious beneath his mane of tawny hair. He moved with the confidence of a noble. But this was no Spaniard.
    Mary came to the same conclusion as the wide black shadow that followed revealed itself to be a mountain of a Norseman, with white-blond hair and a hooded falcon, of all things, perched on his shoulder.
    She held her breath as the third shadow limped into the circle and revealed itself to be a long-haired man of aquiline visage,