LITMIR.BIZ

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was telling her to flee, to hare off into the woods again. But it was madness to think she could ever outpace a man like this. He would catch her every time. Below the shadow of his steel-grey helmet, a wide mouth was set in a firm, dangerous line. His broad shoulders were encased by the sweep of his dark-blue tunic, which fell to his knees. Gold fleur-de-lys had been embroidered down the length of cloth. So, he was one of them, one of the soldiers on the beach.

      Her confidence leached from her, sank into the ground beneath her hips. Exhaustion swept through her small frame; she wanted to turn, lie on her side and howl in the face of such physical masculine strength. To give up. But, no, she told herself sternly, Katerina of Dauntsey never gave up. Bunching her hands into small fists at her sides, she drew her spine up to its full length. She didn’t trust herself to stand, not yet. Shock had weakened her legs; at this precise moment, they possessed all the strength of wet, flapping cloth.

      ‘What have you done with him?’ she demanded, with as low a voice as she could muster. ‘Where have you taken him?’

      ‘Get up.’ The soldier ignored her question, nudging her leg with one toe of his scuffed boot.

      In response, her mouth set tight with annoyance; she wrestled with the notion of remaining where she was.

      ‘Do it.’

      His brusque tone forced her to shuffle her legs awkwardly beneath her, tipping her body to one side so she could lever herself to her feet. Although his eyes were hidden, she felt the power of his gaze upon her and she flushed, humiliated that he could control her like this. Resentment boiled within her. Standing upright, she kept her head rigidly lowered, then swayed as a faint wooziness spiralled through her head.

      A large hand wrapped around her upper arm, steadying her.

      ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

      ‘I could ask the same of you,’ she spat back, viciously, drawing her elbow down sharply to shake off his grip. His hand stayed, clamped firmly to her arm. Hostility shimmered in her eyes, darkening them to sparkling granite. ‘You attacked me, wrenched me from my horse and then pursued me, bringing me down like a common vagrant! How dare you!’ Her rage had made her forget that she was supposed to be speaking with a boy’s voice; she growled the last three words out, in an effort to keep up the semblance of masculinity.

      Gritty leaf-matter, like flecks of peat, stuck to the alabaster smoothness of her cheek. She wiped her face angrily, with a brisk shake of her head. Perched on her tip-toes, edgy, volatile, she reminded him of a nervous cat, ready to spring, or take off, at any moment.

      ‘You are a common vagrant,’ Lussac pronounced slowly. ‘You stole a horse.’ He studied the face beneath the hood, the hint of rippling, amber-coloured hair. Did she really believe she could hide the fact she was a woman?

      ‘I wasn’t going to keep it!’ she flashed back at him. ‘It was your soldiers, ignorant brutes, who took my friend! What was I supposed to do?’

      Her wavering tone, one moment high and shrewish, the next almost growling when she remembered her charade, made him want to laugh. The corners of his mouth twitched upwards. She obviously believed he thought she was a boy. And to be fair, seeing her ride that stolen horse like the devil himself, then pursuing her through the woods on foot, he had truly believed she was. But now, the game was up.

      He ripped the hood back from her face.

      ‘Nay!’ she howled out loud, reaching up and back to grab the collapsing folds, gathering in soft layers around the base of her neck.

      ‘Leave it,’ he barked, reaching up to pull off his helmet. A shock of chestnut hair sprung out around his head, a few strands falling over his tanned forehead. ‘You’re not fooling anybody. Any idiot can see that you’re a maid.’ He cast a disparaging eye over her diminutive frame, the patched, baggy tunic disguising any curves that she might possess. ‘Although there’s not much of you.’

      ‘Enough of me to steal a horse, though,’ she retorted, unthinking, then met the astonishing turquoise scorch of his eyes and immediately regretted her words. Her toes curled, preventing an involuntary stagger backwards. She ducked her gaze, unwilling to meet that bold, determined stare, the colour of the sea on a cold, frosty day, and fixed instead on a neutral spot on his tunic.

      ‘Tread carefully, maid. You are too bold with your words.’ His speech flooded over her, a dark warning. ‘In my country the punishment for thieves is severe.’ Who did this maid think she was, to address him so? From the look of her, she was a low-born wench, no more, with the lean, hungry look of someone who didn’t have enough to eat. Yet her voice, when she spoke normally, held the modulated tones of a noblewoman, albeit one who was truculent, confrontational.

      At his words, her heart clenched with fear, her large grey eyes widening as she stared up again at his rigid, tanned features. Her skin paled, a sprinkle of tiny freckles standing out across her small, tip-tilted nose. A pulse beat frantically in the shadowed hollow of her neck. She took one large step backwards, so she stood beyond the sweep of one of his long, muscular arms. Would he punish her for what she had done? Would he drag her back to the beach, cast her on her knees before the Queen?

      She had no intention of waiting around to find out.

      Chapter Three

      Fear, laced with anger, a volatile combination, spurred her on. The athleticism in her body would provide her only defence against this man; she prayed it would be enough. As she sprung to her left, a quicksilver movement, she acknowledged the snaking reflex of his arm in the corner of her vision. She flinched away, evading his outstretched fingers. She had two advantages: she was small and she was light; he was not. Within a moment, she had plunged into the undergrowth, reaching her hands up to grab, then pull herself up on to a low branch. With all her training, the task proved easy; the muscles in her arms and legs were strong, practised. A sense of bravado, of success, drove her on; that horrible, arrogant man would be too heavy to climb this tree, this spindly birch with its frail, waving branches, with its few silvery, elegant leaves still clinging.

      Below, a branch cracked beneath his weight. Scrambling upwards, Katerina smirked to herself. He would never catch her now. She stopped, scissoring her legs to secure her position on the thin branch, and peered down.

      He was climbing. Undeterred by the broken branch, he had tried another, more secure, and was heading her way, threatening the safety of her high perch. His glossy chestnut head moved inexorably closer.

      ‘Go away!’ she shouted down. ‘You have your horse back, take it, and be gone! I have done nothing wrong!’

      He reached up and, before she had time to draw her foot away, his hand grabbed the toe of her boot. She jerked her leg upwards, roughly, to dislodge his grip, but instead, the boot slid from her foot and came off in his hand. Cursing, he threw the leather to the ground, then seized her dangling ankle before she had time to whip it away, fingers digging into the fine bones. She wore no stockings; her skin was pearly-cold, icy beneath his touch.

      ‘Give up.’

      ‘Never. I’d rather die.’

      ‘Then remind me to kill you personally.’ His response was dry, sarcastic. ‘But first you need to come out of this tree.’

      Warmth flowed from his fingertips into the marble coldness of her ankle, her leg; her belly shivered. She tried to ignore the odd, fluttery sensation and concentrate instead on how to extricate herself from the situation. Her choices had been severely curtailed.

      ‘You need to come out of this tree,’ he said. ‘Now.’ Truly, he couldn’t remember meeting a maid quite as stubborn as this! And the way she had climbed the tree had been remarkable; he had watched the lithe body pull up and up the branches, bright hair glinting, every movement graceful and precise. Strong. More than anything else, he had noticed that. The strength held that small frame.

      But he was stronger.

      Lussac yanked on the fragile ankle, none too gently. He had dallied far too long in these woods,

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