Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy Two 02] Read Online Free PDF Page A

will keep such opinions to yourself. I’ve a good mind to tell your brother Simon I found you in here, listening at doors.”
    The remaining color drained from her face. “You . . . you wouldn’t!”
    “Don’t count on that,” he said, praying she would believe him. “I’ll be here all day and for the Queen’s coronation tomorrow. If you have any wits at all, you’ll come to your senses and tell me the truth before we both leave Scone.”
    He waited, hoping she would tell him at once. But he had taken her measure, whether he liked it or not, and he was not surprised when she kept silent.
    “One thing more,” he said. “If you won’t tell me, then pray have the good sense not to tell anyone else. You cannot possibly know whom to trust.”
    “I trust no one,” she said bluntly. “Are we just going to walk out together?”
    “We are.”
    “Then you’d better tell me your name, sir, lest someone see us together. It will hardly redound to my credit, or yours, if I cannot name you to anyone in my family or the princess’s household who may see us together.”
    “I suspect that anyone who’d wonder at it has gone into the kirk,” he said.
    “Are you so ashamed of your name?” she asked. “I should think you’d be proud of it. I do recognize a knightly girdle when I see one, after all, and yours is similar to the one my good-brother, Buccleuch, wears on such occasions.”
    “If you hoped to startle me by announcing your kinship to Buccleuch, you’d have done better to consider what his opinion would be of your behavior here. I warrant I can describe it for you if you cannot imagine it for yourself.”
    When she nibbled her lower lip again, he knew he had made his point. But then she said, “So you know Buccleuch. Must I ask
him
to tell me your name?”
    He did not want to explain himself to Buccleuch any more than she did, so accepting defeat, he said, “My name is Garth Napier.” That was not all there was to it now, but she had deduced his knighthood, and he saw no reason to reveal more.
    “I hope,
Sir
Garth Napier, that you don’t mean to escort me into the kirk and all the way to Isabel in front of everyone else in there.”
    “Nay, lass,” he said, suppressing a smile at the reaction that would stir. “You’ll have to walk that path alone.”
    She wouldn’t like that any better, but she had no choice.

Chapter 2
    A malie walked with Sir Garth downstairs, outside, and along the winding path to the abbey kirk without incident. As they wended their way through the crowd, she saw that the prelates, officers of state, and other powerful lords, all in their festive robes, had gathered at the front of the kirk, ready to take their part in the procession. Buccleuch was somewhere among them and would likely see them and ask questions later. But she could not worry about that now.
    Onlookers crowded them, making her extraordinarily aware of the tall, broad-shouldered, athletic looking knight beside her. With her hand resting on his muscular forearm, she noted its steadiness and recalled with awe his strength and the ease with which he had carried her. No one had carried her since she was a child, and Sir Garth Napier had done it as if she still were one.
    Although she had seen him well enough to recognize him in the abbot’s chamber, the light there had not been good. At Dunfermline, she’d had little time to note his features and had seen only a stalwart man of fierce demeanor. Now, knowing he would vanish again and she might never have another chance, she wanted to get a good look at him. But their relative positions made it difficult.
    She had seen that his face was a long oval, deeply tanned, and his cheekbones and the line of his brow were strongly chiseled. She noted now that his heavily lashed blue eyes sat deep under eyebrows a shade or two darker than his sun-streaked brown hair. His nose was aquiline, his mouth a straight line, for his lips pressed thin as he guided her deftly through the