Heart of a Knight Read Online Free PDF Page B

hearing the horn ring again. She smiled. No doubt, Mary was off to meet the king of fairies, who called her on his magical horn.
    The king would be a boy from the village, dressed in green, and he'd dance with a village maid, and the pair would start the debauchery of midsummer. In the morning, all would have thick heads and closed lips, and none would speak of the festival, even under cover of night, until next year when another girl and boy would be singled out.
    Smiling a little, Lyssa leaned out the window to watch the flickering torches winding up from the village to the hilltop. A secret part of her longed to be among them, celebrating a long-revered god among the trees. As a child, she'd repeatedly begged to be allowed to go, and her father, grim-faced, always refused.
    With a faint sigh, she turned away and doused the rushlight. Leaving the shutters open to the night breeze, she fell asleep with the sound of pagan horns ringing faintly through her dreams.
    In his room in the southern tower, Thomas tugged off his boots, a task the boy sleeping in the corner probably should have performed, but Thomas was loathe to wake him. In truth, the page had unnerved him more than a little. He was unused to such a wealth of servants that scurried through this castle, day and night. It was a rich place, Woodell, His chamber was rich as any he'd seen, though no carpet lay on this floor, only cold stone.
    He tested the bed, half-smiling as the soft mattress met his weight. Thick curtains hung round it to shut out cold winter winds.
    But it did not smell of the lady Elizabeth, only of faint dust and fainter herbs left from some forgotten season. He lay back on it, missing already the pleasant dreams he'd had in that woman-smelling bed. He would miss the brush of carpet under his feet of a dawn, too, and the view of sunsets over the trees that he'd enjoyed from her chamber.
    Still and all, 'twas more than he'd dreamed he'd enjoy. And the lady herself far outstripped his expectations of her. Thomas had braced himself for a woman as plain as the chatelaine at Roxburgh, a thin-lipped noble of carp-white flesh and thinning hair she plucked away at the forehead. The lady Elizabeth had need of no such alteration. Her dark hair sprung away from a widow's peak on a brow as smooth and white as clouds.
    He sat up restlessly, wishing the villeins were not so enmeshed in their festival this night. Tonight of all nights, he'd like a girl upon whom to ease the lusts the lady had roused. There were three who came to him willingly enough, without his even asking. There was Gwen, and the widowed Mary Gillian, and the red-haired and hot-tempered Mary White, else called Tall Mary. One fair, one red, one dark; one small, one tall, one plump and jolly.
    They had surprised him at first, creeping into his chamber quiet and none-too-shy, carrying spiced wine from the cellars of the castle, or the cherry cider so famous hereabout, or ale. Their bodies were oiled and washed for his pleasure. In the beginning, he'd sent them away from his chamber night after night, wishing not to dishonor any. They gently laughed at his chivalry, and returned.
    And like any man, he had finally taken what they gave so freely. Tonight he would have been glad for any one, but all danced about the pagan fire, and Thomas would be forced to sleep alone and unsated, his loins thick with thoughts of the highborn Elizabeth.
    He poured a cup of ale from the jug left on the table for him, and gazed out over the darkness in the trees, unbroken by fire or river or road. Quietly, he tested her name in his mouth:
Lyssa
.
    The burred sound of his tongue on her name made him wince. He had not liked that she was so astute to hear the difference in his speech, a difference none of the villagers had thought to question. He'd do well to keep his wits, for by the saints, she did befuddle him, and he could not afford to have his ruse uncovered.
    It could mean his death.
    Sipping his ale, he thought of