Knight In My Bed Read Online Free PDF

bake-oven protruding from the thickness of the opposite wall.
    A delicious smell drifted past the seams of the oven's closed iron-plate door, but Isolde ignored that temptation, too. "The ale will do," she said simply, accepting the cup Lugh offered her. "I thank you," she added with a forced smile for the lad. "And for giving Bodo a bone as well."
    Lugh's cheeks flamed a deeper red and the corners of his mouth lifted in a hesitant smile before he turned away to head back to the bench and his unfinished task.
    "Ho, laddie." Devorgilla shuffled after him, moving her hands in a flapping motion that underscored her resemblance to an oversized, black-garbed bird. "Out with you now." She urged him toward the door. "I'm a-thinking you ought gather a bit more moss and ferns for your sleeping pallet."
    Without further protest, he took the basket Devorgilla handed him, and let himself out of the cottage. Isolde's heart twisted for the lad. He'd scarce uttered a word since his mother died of fever some years past, but as much affection u she bore him, she had other, heavier problems weighing on her mind.
    She waited until Devorgilla hobbled away from the door, but the moment the crone paused at the central hearth and reached for a long-handled ladle to stir the simmering stew, Isolde's patience snapped.
    "He compared me to a she-goat ," she railed. "Claimed he'd rather see his man root wither and fall off before he'd deign to bed me."
    Devorgilla shot a sharp glance her way. "He already knows what you would have of him?'
    “Nay, he knows naught ... as yet." Warmth crept into Isolde's cheeks. "He simply meant to hurl nastiness at me."
    Seemingly unperturbed by Isolde's outburst, the crone dipped the ladle into the cauldron and began to stir the aromatic stew. A cloud of fragrant steam rose to encircle her grizzled head, and to Isolde's ire, she imagined she heard the old woman snicker.
    "There is naught amusing in such insults," Isolde said, hoping her voice disguised the sound of her stomach growling in reaction to the delicious-smelling stew.
    "'Tis not amused I am, but intrigued." Devorgilla glanced at her, a cagey expression on her wizened face. "Why do you wish more of the potion if he vexes you so? Riled as you are, I would think you' d have no need of my anti-attraction infusion?"
    Isolde ignored the crone's questions and asked a few of her own. The same ones she'd posed upon arriving. "I know you went to see him. Is he the one? The man you glimpsed in the cauldron's steam?"
    Devorgilla cast Isolde another of her impish looks, then waved her hand through the steam drifting up from her stew. "Would that he appear now so you could see him yourself. Then you'd ken the answer without asking me."
    "But I am asking you."
    "Such things cannot be rushed." The crone returned the ladle to the tabletop. "Ofttimes the answers we seek are already deep within our own hearts, if we'll but look."
    "I have looked. At him . And I did not like what I saw." Isolde blew out a frustrated breath. "Nor did I care for what he said."
    A tiny chuckle, nay, more a cackle, escaped the crone's lips, and her hunched shoulders trembled with what Isolde highly suspected to be mirth.
    "I told you, there is nary a thread of humor in his slurs," Isolde said, relieved her great respect for Devorgilla kept her tone from revealing the depth of her indignation.
    The cackling ceased and Devorgilla peered hard at Isolde. As ever, she seemed to hear Isolde's unspoken words as clearly as the spoken ones.
    "How many men do you suppose would keep a civil tongue under such circumstances?"
    Isolde glanced up at the smoke-blackened ceiling rafters rather than give the crone a scathing look.
    Devorgilla was right.
    Donall the Bold's slights were born of his outrage at awakening bound and chained to a dungeon wall, and not truly directed at her.
    But after seeing him, she preferred anger to acknowledging the way her heart had skipped a beat upon noticing his resemblance to the