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The Knight's Return

Год написания книги
2018
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Or could the stranger bring an honest offer to Sorcha that might save her from the convent? Onora’s romantic nature rejoiced at the possibility.

“Lady Onora?”

From outside the wall, a man’s voice startled her.

Her hand flew to her waist and the protection of her dagger as she turned. There, standing at the base of the wall, stood a frowning young groom she recognized as the caretaker for Sorcha’s horse.

“Eamon,” she whispered, wishing she did not feel a pang of feminine pleasure at the sight of someone so wholly inappropriate to her station. Why couldn’t her heart beat with such speed at the sight of a noble who came to court her instead of a man destined to wed a village girl?

He was broad shouldered in a way that made the female servants of the court sigh, his muscular form filling out his tunic admirably. His dark hair and blue eyes marked him as Irish, while the deeper shade of his complexion suggested a hint of the exotic, as if his mother had been wooed by a spice trader at the village fair.

“Come down at once before you are injured.” Eamon glared at her with the displeasure one might cast upon a disobedient child. Then he began to scale the wall.

Hand over hand, he climbed quickly, his nimble fingers finding purchase between the mossy rocks. Alarm tingled up her spine.

“You cannot order me about.” It was difficult to infuse her voice with the proper authority while striving to whisper, but she did not wish anyone to hear them.

“I am keeping you safe, Princess,” he retorted, closing the distance between them rapidly.

“Shh!” she hushed him, fearful now for him as much as her. At least her rank would save her if she was discovered. “Have a care with your voice. My sister is within.”

Eamon reached the top of the wall, his long, tanned fingers splaying along the rock so that the smallest of the digits rested a hairsbreadth from her bottom. She scooched back a bit, the pine tree impeding her movements.

“All the more reason you must descend.” He pulled one leg over the wall so that he straddled it like a horse.

He faced her, his thighs bracketing her without touching.

“You, sir, are highly improper.” She glared at him to cover her nervousness.

“Unfortunately, sneaking out to your sister’s cottage against your father’s orders is even more improper.” He winked, a wicked smile revealing straight, white teeth. “It’s not me who’ll have to worry if we get caught. If you’ll allow me, I’ll help you descend safely.”

He extended his hand like a high king shuttling his queen about the great hall with much ceremony. Being the center of a handsome young groom’s attention would not have been a hardship, except that Onora had the impression that Eamon thought she was more of a bother than anything. And that wounded her feminine pride far more than a tumble off the wall would injure the rest of her.

“I will allow no groom to command me.” She looked down her nose and ignored the girlish urge to accept his hand.

Her heart fluttered oddly in her breast as she kept her eyes trained on the garden. Unfortunately, she had moved too far behind the pine tree to see Sorcha or her knight any longer. She could see only a pitch-covered trunk and, if she looked to her right, a small waterfall in the brook that trickled through the garden. Peering to the right was not an option, given Eamon sat so near.

“You see naught but a groom then?” He lifted a hand to a leafy limb of an overgrown apple tree and followed Onora’s gaze. “Are you always so quick to believe what you see?”

“What else would I believe?”

He plucked a white flower tinged with pink and rolled the stem between his fingers.

“We sit among branches that bear naught but decorative flowers today.” He stilled the bloom and offered it to her. “Yet the tree has not revealed its true purpose with the fruit that will follow, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Do you mean to suggest you are working toward a higher purpose?” She knew some ambitious villagers lifted themselves out of drudgery to become clerks or even clerics.

But as she cast a wary eye upon her strong and virile companion, she could not envision him taking priestly vows.

“I mean you have not discovered my hidden task in dismissing me as a mere groom.”

He turned his sea-blue gaze upon her, unsettling her with the frank assessment contained therein. The look he gave her bore none of the subservient ducking or downcast eyes she usually received as the king’s daughter. Eamon studied her the way a man might research a keep he wished to conquer. He seemed to seek out her weaknesses and strengths, as if he viewed her for the first time.

Awareness swirled inside her, a warm, tingling sensation that danced through her veins like a sip of well-made wine.

“You overreach to suggest otherwise,” she complained, although he certainly gave her pause. Why claim to be something he was not? “I have seen you tend my sister’s mare these last many moons.”

As soon as she said it, she regretted the implication that she’d noticed him at all. Flirting with grooms—even grooms who aspired to a higher station—was out of the question. If her sister had been exiled for being with a knight, what would the king do to a daughter who dared dally with a servant?

Turning on the wall, she lifted her legs over the other side so she could climb back down. Her visit with Sorcha would have to wait. She didn’t wish to have witnesses to the news she brought from the keep.

“Allow me to help you, Lady Onora.” The man plucked the apple blossom from her fingers and tucked it behind her ear, using the stem to secure a bit of her hair along with it.

He touched her so quickly that she scarcely had time to protest. Her pulse pounded in her veins, warming her skin all over. Even now, he moved to steady himself on the top of the wall, lying on his belly so that he might guide her down the sheer face of the enclosure.

“Nay.” Shaking her head, she refused his help. “I will depart on my own, but it will be the last time you chase me away from my own sister. Whether or not my father approves of my visits, he shall hear of your presence if I see you on the premises again.”

“That would only aid my true purpose, and for that I would thank you.” He kept his eyes upon her as she made her way carefully down the wall, her toes seeking chinks in the rock more slowly than his had done. “Be sure to mention I tried to keep your pretty neck intact.”

She flushed even warmer, confused by the strange encounter. Shoving the thought from her mind, Onora leaped to the ground.

“I will not give any credit to you for saving a neck that was never in danger.” She turned on her heel and wondered how she could mention the strange meeting to her father. She was curious now, and wanted to know about this mysterious groom even more than she wanted to know about Sorcha’s new Norman.

But she could not risk her father’s wrath in admitting this visit since that might encourage Tiernan Con Connacht to rid himself of his eldest daughter all the sooner. Onora had only come to tell Sorcha her time avoiding the convent was almost over. Their father made plans to send Sorcha away before harvesttime.

And Onora would not lose her sister to the nunnery without saying goodbye.

“I think you’d better take your leave.” Anger poured through Sorcha. Did Hugh think her so daft that she would believe such idle flattery?

“Have I offended you by declaring a fascination with you?” He remained seated, a fact she appreciated since his physical size would intimidate her even with a whole slew of her father’s knights to protect her.

And, truth be told, his imposing presence made her acutely aware of her femininity. Her petite stature and slender limbs. The sexual element of that contrast was never far from her mind and she could not understand why. How many times had she regretted her passionate decisions? She could not afford any more. Especially not with a man who bore a strange resemblance to Edward.

“Nay. You offend me by not speaking the truth.” She knew he had come to Connacht for reasons he did not reveal. Anyone looking upon his fine, strapping form and the sharp intelligence in his eyes would see a knight in his prime. A knight accustomed to command. He must have a reason for being here besides courting an exiled princess far from his homeland.

“Do I not?” He shot to his feet and a few quick strides carried him close enough for her to touch. “I would be more than happy to prove my…interest.”

She bit her lip, unsure how to respond. Unsure what exactly he had just offered.

“That will not be necessary.” Her voice failed her, emerging from her lips in a cracked sound.

Her first lover might have only visited her bed a handful of times before fate and an enemy’s sword had felled him, but their time together had taught her the way of things between a man and woman. And even if the coupling had not fulfilled her every last romantic dream, it had taught her much about the way a man could turn a woman’s steely will to molten want. Edward hadn’t provided her with that elusive pinnacle of pleasure, but his embrace had taught her she was as passionate in bed as she’d always been outside of it.

She would do well to rein in that fire now before she allowed it to dictate the course of her life again. Except Hugh’s sinewy form emanated a heat that warmed her, while the spicy male scent of him tempted her to lean closer and take a deeper sniff.

“You’ve no right to call me a liar, lady, lest you are willing to let me prove I speak the truth.” His amber eyes locked on hers, the whiskey-golden gaze seeming to see past her defenses to the woman beneath.

A foolish notion, and yet those eyes undid her.
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