Gisborne: Book of Pawns Read Online Free PDF

rubbed my hand over my face. As I did, I noticed it was spattered with blood and cried out, holding it away from my body.
    Gisborne jumped off his horse.
    ‘Here,’ he pulled me down by the waist and held me by the elbow as he passed me a cloth from his saddlebag. ‘Hold it and I’ll wet it from my fla sk and you can clean yourself.’
    My hand shook as I held the fabric that proved to be a chemise. He placed his palm underneath to support it and I looked up at him as he did so.
    ‘I owe you thanks, Ysabel, for my life.’
    His voice barely showed the emotion of what we had just been through. A slight hoarseness, but it’s depth smoothed like balm as he rubbed the damp cloth over my hand, removing the blood as tears rolled own my cheeks.
    ‘I’m sorry. I should stop crying but I find I can’t.’
    ‘It’s shock. You were very brave.’ He gave my hand a final wipe, lifted it to his mouth and kissed it. ‘Fearless. Wilf and Harry would have been proud.’
    ‘Fearless?’ My mouth stretched into a grimace. ‘We must go back. I won’t go on until we have done our best for them.’
    ‘I don’t agree. Wilf and H arry would understand, Ysabel. When you fall in the field of battle, you are lucky if you are buried.’
    I took my hand back. ‘Then they shall be lucky. If I only give you one order w hilst you are my father’s steward, it’s that we must go back.’
    His face hardened and I wished it had not because i t was as though every plank of the br idge between us had been axed. I lay my hand over his arm and squeezed.
    ‘ Please, I beg you to understand. I am not being presum ptuous by saying it is an order but if I have to use my father’s name, I shall.
    ‘I d o understand, Ysabel. I understand that you have known Wilf and Harry for years and that y ou shared a life at one point. Tha t you feel for their families. T hat it is your Christian duty. D on’t think I don’t understand. But wha t I know is that it will be foolhardy and dangerous.’ He left my hand on his arm, his own closing over it. ‘You need to remember that for you to die so soon after your mother would inevitabl y be the death of your father. Think on that.’
    I hadn’t really thought my demise would affect my father one way or the other because he had been so vaguely affect ionate in his treatment of me. Loving when he was with me, but when he wa s not, I barely heard from him.
    ‘But if my father had fallen, I woul d hope someone would bury him. If you fell, I would want the same for you.’
    He slipped away from my grasp at that point and cupped his hands to giv e me a leg up into the saddle. He mounted his horse and made no comment at all and I felt chastened. Had I been too person al? I only spoke my mind after all. But I felt vindicated as we turned our horses and headed back the way we had fled.
     
    I wished we had not.
    Eight bloody and disfigure d men lay in frozen death throes. Eight men who had wanted to kill us and steal everything we had. We had to move through them on foot to find Wilfred and Harold, Gisborne with his sword drawn, me with an arrow nocked into the Saracen bow.
    Gisborne ’s eyes were everywhere and I forbore to talk because we listened t o every sound from the forest. Every rustle, every creak and crack. Besides, my breathing was so fast I doub t I could have uttered a word. I had never ever seen human death and the brutality of what lay around u s was almost beyond my coping. I took a huge breath and Guy must have heard because he turned and in that one glance that passed between us, I felt fortified. I don’t know if he saw the fear in my eyes … panic where my mouth filled with bile and legs waved beneath my gown like strips of ribbon. All I saw in that quick glance was support, as if his arms were around me to guide me away from this hell.
    But then I tripped and looking down, realised it was the felon Wilf had chased and whose leg he had almost severed, the limb at an obscene angle. I began to