An Honorable Rogue Read Online Free PDF Page A

the dying flames burn till they were little more than a soft glow. Then at last, his eyelids drooped, and he too found sleep.
    Rozenn woke when the first fingers of light were edging round the shutter. She was conscious that her mood was lighter than it had been in months, if not years. Hazy with sleep, she rolled on to her back. She dare not linger long because her neighbour's cockerel was crowing and Countess Muriel had commanded her presence in the solar at first light.
    The Countess and her ladies were working on a wall-hanging intended for the Great Hall, above the dais. Rozenn had been commissioned to design it and, though the designing was done and the Countess and her ladies were perfectly capable of embroidering it without her, the Countess liked her to be present when they sewed.
    This was another reason why Rozenn had not made public her intention to journey to England to find Adam and Sir Richard. If she feared upsetting Mikaela and Adam's mother, she was twice as worried about Countess Muriel. As a rule the Countess was even-tempered, but when crossed she could be spiteful and vindictive. And since the wall-hanging was her current obsession... Oh, Lord.
    Eyes firmly shut. Rozenn stole a few more moments in bed, her thoughts drifting. When complete, her tapestry--half-a-dozen yards long and as many deep--would dwarf the other castle wall-hangings. At her first sight of the unworked linen unrolled on the trestle in the solar, the Countess had been delighted.
    'Rozenn Kerber..." The Countess had smiled, lightly fingering the charcoal figures Rozenn had sketched on to the fabric. 'You are a wonder. Our hall will be the envy of Brittany. This figure riding out to hunt before all his men, is it Count Remond?'
    'Yes, Comptesse.'
    'And this, the lady in the orchard by the castle--is this me?'
    'Yes, Comptesse.'
    'You have done well, Rozenn. This will indeed enhance my husband's prestige."
    And that, more than decoration, was the purpose of the wall-hanging. Luckily Rozenn had been quick to realise this. That was why she had designed the hanging with her two powerful patrons in pride of place. Count Remond was ambitious, his Countess was ambitious and the wall-hanging was a visual representation of their aspirations. Rozenn understood about ambition; she had ambitions of her own--she was going to marry a knight. A man of honour, Sir Richard would never have given her the gold cross if his liking for her was not strong.
    Sighing, Rose stretched and opened her eyes. Her heart gave a crazy lurch.
    Ben.
    Fast asleep on his stomach on the pallet on the other side of the room with his face turned to the wall. His dark hair was tousled and he must have pulled off his tunic and chainse --his shirt--in the heat of the night, for his torso was bare. He was not as large as her adopted brother Adam or her husband Per, but he was beautifully formed, with wide muscled shoulders and a narrow waist...
    One arm was trailing over the edge of the pallet on to the floor. She looked at his hand, the hand she knew so well, with its slender musician's fingers relaxed and still. She wanted to touch him. How silly. She must have missed him more than she had realised.
    Rozenn's gaze wandered down Ben's length to the cloak twisted at his waist, to the curve of buttocks concealed beneath it and finally to the naked foot sticking out at the bottom. Ben was no warrior, no Sir Richard of Asculf, and yet his body was strong, well muscled and athletic, like the tumblers and dancers that had visited Castle Hellon last month. But then Ben, she remembered, could tumble and dance along with the best of them.
    She swallowed, and a disturbing sensation of longing made itself felt in her belly. Shaking her head, Rozenn flung back her sheet. No, not longing. It was not longing that she felt when she looked at Benedict Silvester. She, Rozenn Kerber, whose first marriage had been contracted on the grounds of practicality, and whose second would, like Countess