A Knight to Remember Read Online Free PDF Page B

understand. “What?” She leaned close to his face. “Did you say something?”
    Her breasts. He remembered resting against them, and now he could see them. Her shift had been negligently tied, and her wrap gaped at the neck. She looked as if she’d just been roused from bed.
    He would take her back. Reaching out, he cupped her breast through the material. “Mine.”
    His dream Edlyn disappeared from view then, and he closed his eyes. She must be quite a woman, because just laying his claim on her wearied him. Then she started working on his side again, and energy surged through him. He woke to touch her, but when he reached out, he touched coarse material and heard Wharton’s raspy voice. “Master, what do ye require?”
    Sleep. He required sleep, so he could dream of Edlyn again.

3
    “ How are you going to get me back into the dormitory?” Edlyn desperately needed privacy to regather the shreds of her composure.
    Hugh had tried to suckle on her like a baby, and while she could delude herself that his action had been nothing more than a sick man’s attempt to return to the comforts of childhood, nothing could change that elemental gesture of ownership he had made afterward.
    “Mine.” He had cupped her breast through her wrap and her shift and said, “Mine.” And it hadn’t been a tentative touch, either. He had grasped her firmly and rubbed his thumb across her nipple with such certainty she’d had to reassure herself she was decently covered.
    “I don’t want ye t’ go back.” Oblivious to her discomfort, Wharton stood with his feet apart and firmly planted on the dispensary floor. “I want ye here if he needs ye.”
    “I am not mistress of this abbey,” she said. “I must conform to the rules or be banished. Before the sun rises, I am to join with any other guests and together we make our way to the church for Mass.”
    “Your soul’ll not miss Mass one day.”
    “This is an abbey. They don’t see it that way, and anyway, that’s not the point.” Exhaustion and frustration made her slow. “I must be seen coming from my chamber, or as the only full-time resident not bound by holy vows, I must explain my absence. And since no one saw me leave, it will be difficult to explain.”
    “What do ye do that they’re so suspicious?” Wharton demanded. “Have ye a lover ye visit?”
    Unwittingly, her gaze went to Hugh, and she jerked it back to Wharton when he laughed.
    “As ye wish, m’ lady. Ye’ll see, that monk’s still snoring at his station an’ we’ll slip right past him.”
    She hoped so. She prayed so. Abbeys were obsessed with two things: salvation and sin. Nocturnal wanderings would automatically be assumed to be sin. She would be required to explain her actions, and how could she do that?
    As she followed Wharton through the garden and across the abbey yard to the guest quarters, she kept her head down and her hood up, and with every step she trembled with fear. She’d been out in the wide world for a brief time, living hand to mouth, never knowing where the next meal would come from or whether the next place she begged at would be her last.
    So many cruelties. So many horrors. They had scarred her. She had to get back into her room without discovery.
    “Keep close behind me.”
    Wharton spoke softly, so softly she wondered if he comprehended her fear.
    “Take off yer shoes.” He paused in the overhang of the guest quarters while she did as he instructed. “If th’ sleepy one wakes, I’ll distract him while ye slip past me an’ down th’ hallway t’ yer room.”
    She didn’t like the way that sounded, and she didn’t trust Wharton. “Don’t hurt him,” she warned.
    “I don’t hurt ol’ monks,” Wharton answered scornfully.
    He swung open the door that led to the entry, and Edlyn wondered briefly how he had opened it in the first place. When one wanted admittance, one knocked and Brother Irving looked through the high, covered peephole. If he liked the