LITMIR.BIZ

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loosed a long, weary sigh. What manner of woman was his bride-to-be that she’d let this girl, clearly little older than a child, dabble in weaponry?

      Lianna was staring hard at him. He sensed his questions had aroused her suspicions and so left off his queries. Instinctively he’d kept his identity from the girl. Now he was glad. Soon enough she’d learn he was Enguerrand Fitzmarc, the English knight come to claim the demoiselle and the château. Until then he merely wanted to be Rand to her.

      “You’re trespassing,” she said matter-of-factly, pointing to a line of blazed poplars in the distance.

      “So I am,” he replied, looking at the boundary of trees. He took her hand and helped her to her feet. Her hand felt small but strong and seemed to fit his own like a warm little bird in a nest.

      “Come,” he said, “I want to be certain your gunshot didn’t frighten my horse all the way to Gascony.” Dropping her hand, he bent to retrieve her cloak and apron. The weight of the apron surprised him. He peered into the pocket, then stared at Lianna. “I don’t know why I expected to find winter stonecrop blossoms in here,” he said. “You’re a walking arsenal.”

      She picked up her gun and stood while he tied the apron at her waist and draped the cloak about her shoulders. He let his hands linger there. “Your mistress is wrong to allow you to venture forth with a gun.” Silently he swore to stop Lianna once he took possession of the castle.

      “My mistress understands the necessity of it.”

      “Necessity?”

      Her little wooden sabots kicked up her hem as she walked by his side. “We’ve had no peace since Edward the Third crossed the leopards of England with the lilies of France.”

      What a curious mixture of innocence and worldliness she was. At once fragile, forceful, and forthright, she awakened powerful desires in him. She looked like a girl immortalized in a troubadour’s lay, yet her behavior contradicted the image. Jussie, he recalled, had never concerned herself with affairs of state.

      “France is more at war with herself than with England,” he said. “King Charles is drooling mad, and the noble houses bicker like fishwives while the peasants starve.”

      “And will subjecting ourselves to Henry’s usurpation improve our lot?”

      “Better a sane Englishman than a mad Frenchman on the throne,” Rand said.

      She stopped walking, whirled to face him. “Under whose banner will you fight? What cause do you champion?”

      He swallowed, then affected a rakish grin. “Widows and orphans, of course.”

      She sniffed. “A convenient reply.”

      Discussing intelligent subjects with a woman, he thought, was not altogether unpleasant. “You speak ably of affairs that most men know nothing of.”

      “I’m not one to hide myself away and pretend ignorance. ’Tis exactly what the English god-dons would like, and I’ll not oblige them.”

      It’s not what every English god-don would like, he thought, watching the sunlight dance in the silvery mantle of her hair.

      They found his horse grazing placidly on salt grass in a glade of water beeches. Nearby stood a weathered stone marker, its four arms of equal length marking it as St. Cuthbert’s cross. The horse looked up, ears pricked. His dappled flanks gleamed in the heatless light of the March sun.

      Lianna stopped walking to stare at the hard-muscled percheron, then at Rand. “I think you should explain who you are,” she said. Her gaze slipped from the top of his blond head to the spurs on his mud-caked boots. “You are simply dressed, yet that horse of yours is no plowman’s rouncy.”

      Inwardly he winced at the distrust in her tone. She was too straightforward to be easily deceived. “Charbu was a gift.” His hand strayed to the lump created by the amulet beneath his mail shirt. Henry had given him Charbu as one of many gifts and another thread in the web of obligation he’d woven around Rand.

      Lianna set down her gun and approached the horse. “Charbu,” she said softly, stroking the handsome blazed face. “A fine, strong name. Tell me, Charbu, about your master. Does he hail from Gascony, as he claims? Does he ride you on raids with a band of écorcheurs?”

      The horse whickered gently and tossed its head. Momentarily captivated by the sight of the small girl with her cheek pressed against the horse’s neck, Rand stood speechless. At length he found his voice and strode forward. “If you think me a brigand, why aren’t you fainting or screaming?”

      “I never faint,” she replied smugly. “And rarely scream. And you’ve not answered me.”

      “I am a...traveling knight, Lianna. I swear to you I do not ride with brigands. But I would like to ride with you. Let me take you to Bois-Long.”

      “No,” she said quickly. “I think it best you stay clear of the château.”

      Why? he wondered. Did the chatelaine treat trespassers harshly? God, did she mistreat Lianna? He touched a strand of her hair; it felt like spun silk. “Is Bois-Long such an inhospitable place?”

      “I fear it has become so,” she replied, her eyes brimming with unspoken regret.

      Rand felt a great urge to fold her against him then, to surround her with the tenderness that had been blossoming in his heart since he’d first laid eyes on her. “At least let me take you partway,” he suggested.

      She balked; he persisted and, finally, prevailed. Her gun across the saddlebow, her arms clasped around his waist, she rode behind him and they talked. He learned that she often saved crumbs from her breakfast to feed a family of swallows that nested in the castle battlements. He told her that he invented songs to play on his harp. She confessed to a passion for comfits, and he admitted to holding frequent, absurd discourses with his horse.

      Then she was silent for a long time. Glancing over his shoulder, Rand asked, “What are you thinking, Lianna?”

      Softly, so softly he could barely hear, she said, “I’m thinking that you’ve come too late.”

      The soft throb of sadness in her voice made something inside him ache. His hand stole to hers, cradling it. “Too late for what?”

      She withdrew her hand. “For...nothing. It matters not.”

      Although curious about her melancholy, he asked no more of her. If she yearned for a suitor, he could not be the one to court her.

      Presently they came to a coppice of elm trees, and Lianna asked to dismount. Rand leapt to the ground and, grasping her at the waist, helped her down.

      “Lianna?” he murmured, his voice deep and husky. He placed his fingers under her chin and raised her face to his. “Have a care for yourself, pucelle.”

      “I will. And you, too, in your travels.”

      Their eyes met and held for a breathless moment. Rand lifted a wisp of pale hair from her cheek and set it aside. She smiled, and her smile made everything inside him clamor with joy and fear. God, he thought, will she look at me so when she learns who I am, why I’m here?

      His hands came up to frame her face, thumbs tracing the lyrical lines of her cheekbones. Slowly, like a man moving through a dream, he leaned down, drawn by a force that resisted every harsh rule that had been schooled into him. Their lips touched lightly at first, searching, tasting, and then their mouths fused into a kiss of desperate abandon. High, shattering waves of yearning crested within Rand, lifting his soul. He wanted to fill himself with this brave, winsome creature who smelled of soap and sulfur and who tasted of springtime.

      His vows began to waver, but guilt bored a hole in his passion. Like it or not, he was betrothed to another woman. In kissing Lianna, he was betraying his obligation to the demoiselle and belittling his years of devotion to Jussie.

      Slowly, unwillingly, he released her and drew his fingers

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