At The King's Command Read Online Free PDF

For all their strength and speedand endurance, horses were simple creatures easily led by their appetites. Not unlike men, Catriona would say.
    Though tension burned in her shoulders and the need for haste pressed at her, she fed the mare another piece of turnip and moved close, running her hand down one side of the smooth, firm neck and up the other. All the time, she kept up a soft patter of speech, English words, mostly nonsense, the lulling language of a mother soothing a child to sleep. In moments, she knew the horse was relaxed and docile.
    She glanced at the gate; the guards had neither stirred nor noticed her. A man appeared beneath the portcullis. From this distance, she had only the swift impression that he was tall, broad and tawny haired.
    Filled with a sense of impending triumph, Juliana untied the braided cord that secured the horse to the iron loop. She placed one bare foot in the stirrup and reached for the raised cantle of the saddle to hoist herself up.
    “Stop, thief!”
    For a fraction of a heartbeat, the shout froze her. But in the next instant, Juliana swung up as if lifted by the hand of God and landed astraddle. Without breaking the flow of motion, she slammed her heels against the sides of the horse and made a loud smooching sound.
    The horse took off like an arrow shot from a bow. Juliana gloried in the sensation of riding the best horse she had mounted since her frantic flight from Novgorod five years before.
     
    “I see the gypsy’s stealing your horse, Wimberleigh.”
    Stephen was so shocked to see the woman galloping off astride Capria that he had not realized King Henry, surrounded by his entourage, had appeared on the high walk between the gate towers.
    “She’ll not get far,” Stephen stated loudly. He whirled toward the stables where a groom was leading a saddled hunter out into the yard. “Bring me that horse at once,” he shouted.
    The groom looked momentarily confused. Then, apparently convinced by the thunderous scowl on Stephen’s face, he hurried toward the gate with the horse.
    “I’ll make you a wager.” Henry shaded his eyes and squinted at the fleeing figure of the woman, tattered skirts and tangled hair flying on the wind. “A hundred crowns says you’ll never see that mare again.”
    “Done,” Stephen snapped, mounting the hunger. He dug in his spurs and clattered across the bridge, out onto the open road. The horse had an indifferent gallop and a hard mouth. Stephen would have a bit of a chase on his hands, for Capria was the superior animal. And, he conceded, the gypsy wench was a skilled rider.
    She flew past a grove of copper beeches, and a large white dog joined her on the road. Surprise stabbed at Stephen. The lanky, long-haired dog was nearly as swift as the horse.
    He bent low over the pumping neck of the hunter. The brown clay road streaked beneath him in a blur. The gypsy whipped a glance back and banged her bare heels against Capria’s sides.
    Stephen closed a bit more of the distance between them. A sense of certainty surged up in him. He did not have to ride the woman down. He knew another way to bring Capria back. He needed only to get within earshot.
    When he was sure his quarry lay close enough, he put his fingers to his lips. Shaping his mouth with his fingers, he emitted a long, ear-splitting whistle.
    The mare jerked her head to the side. The reins slippedfrom the gypsy’s grasp. Capria slid to a stop, wheeled, and charged back the way she had come.
    “No!” The thief’s faint cry carried across the undulating downs along the river. She groped for the flying reins, but the whiplike length of leather eluded her.
    Stephen took a dark pleasure in her struggle. A lesser rider would have fallen, possibly to her death, but the woman’s legs stayed tight around the horse’s girth, her feet firmly in the stirrups.
     
    With her throat locked in terror and her hands gripping the mare’s gray mane, Juliana exhorted the horse to turn, or at the very