Bound to Be a Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    “You answered me in Latin, you impostor!” he crowed.
    She tried to fight the rush of crimson heat that spread up her chest and neck. “So… why can’t my name be Sol and why can’t I have a passing knowledge of Latin?”
    He waved his hands—those strong hands from her dreams… Must he flaunt them about like that, right in my face? she wondered—and his smile returned. “You may! You may!” He was happy about something or another.
    He turned to the other two men. “Sebastián de Montizón and Marco Delgado, please allow me to present… Sol.” He turned back to face her when he said her name, to watch her reaction as he curved his lips around the simple syllable. The other two were still across the small camp, and he leaned in and whispered, “I suspect Sol is your lady-in-waiting.” Then he pulled away quickly, bent to pick up the blanket he had given her last night, and finished with the introductions. The two men now stood a few feet in front of her, looking surprisingly rested and ready for the day despite having woken up a few moments ago from a night spent on the bare ground. “Sol… it is my pleasure to introduce Sebastián de Montizón and Marco Delgado.”
    Both men bowed with formal precision, one leg cast in front of them and one hand extended as they bent elegantly forward. The taller one, de Montizón, looked familiar and his name was one from her great-grandmother’s side of the family, though not totally uncommon. Isabella avoided his gaze. The shorter one seemed safer. Unfortunately, the one named Sebastián was not going to be put off that easily. She set her shoulders back as best she could, seeing as the devil had still not seen fit to untie her.
    “Señora… or señorita?”
    “Señora!” Too loud, she chided herself. “Yes, I am married.”
    All three men looked at her pale hand, conspicuously free of any jewelry.
    “Oh.” She lifted up the ropy bundle that was now feeling like a permanent nest for her hands. “Oh, well of course I did not think it wise to wear any jewelry while I was escaping through the forest. What if I came upon bandits? Or worse?”
    Javier burst out laughing at the prospect. “Yes! What if?” He continued laughing as he began breaking down their camp, dousing the fire, covering the evidence of their stay as best he could. Marco and Sebastián resaddled the horses and packed up the other supplies. Everyone had a job and performed it with the efficiency borne of familiarity. Who are these odd men , Isabella wondered, who sleep on the bare earth and awake rested, like those Apaches I’ve read about who fought those vicious raids against the innocent Spanish settlers in the New World? Men of the earth. Savages.
    But Sebastián, Marco, and Javier had obviously been educated in a noble tradition, instructed in classics, history, philosophy. Isabella suspected that at least two of them were noblemen in their own right, raised in a world of luxury and ease similar to the one she would have known if she had gone to meet her original fate yesterday. The vision of Javier sleeping on the forest floor was immediately replaced with the mental image of him sprawled lazily across one of the massive tester beds in an elegant guest room at the castle in Feria. In her mind’s eye, he was half-asleep and naked. He looked up from tying his saddlebag at that very moment and Isabella shook herself briskly and tried to rein in her wild imaginings.
    Once the camp was neatly dismantled and all three horses were fed, watered, and ready to move on, Javier took one last look to make sure they had not left so much as a stray button. Finally, his look landed on Isabella. He stared at her in that devilishly invasive way of his.
    “So. Sol…”
    “Yes.”
    He waited her out. She finally burst like a flood. “See here. I can cook, and I promise I shan’t talk too much—I’ve been told men despise that—and I shan’t expect your protection or any other contrivance. I