Lindsay Townsend Read Online Free PDF Page A

to work as she fought to answer him. Any
anger that he might have felt at her folly in leaning out so far vanished. He
could tell—and he had seen enough battlefields to know—that she was uninjured
in body, but shocked to her core. He saw, too, how very thin she was, and now, once
fallen from her cage, how very pale.
    “Peace, lass, you are safe.” He brought her before him
onto his saddle, settling her sideways so she was cushioned against him. “All
is well.” He stroked her shivering limbs and heard the burly knight growl in
his ear, “You are excused duties, Fletcher, 'tis clearly safe enough. Take the
silly wench away and let us move on.”
    Around him, seeping back in tides of sound, he could
hear the crowd gasping and applauding and Prince Edward saying to the French king
that the maiden had been overcome by his royal presence.
    Stephen dipped his head to the shivering girl. “Forgive
me, lady, I forgot myself in that moment. You are fallen a long way from a
glovers’ shop.”
    Her eyes snapped open then, very blue and wide.
    “Forgive me.” Her voice was low and sweet, but steady,
as her breath was now steady. “I am sorry, sir.”
    “You should be, and I demand a forfeit.” Before he
knew what he would do, Stephen was kissing her, gathering her even closer, her
unguarded lips yielding and quivering under his. He ran his tongue across her
teeth and caressed her mouth with his, sorry now to have startled her, but by
God he had startled himself.
    He broke their embrace, then, unable to stop himself,
he kissed her again. Her skin was smooth as a pearl and inexorably he was drawn
to the deep, enticing groove between her breasts...
    Enough, man. Restraining
himself, he lifted his head. “No debt,” he said, stripping off a glove and
cupping her flushed face with his hand.
    “I am sorry,” she repeated, and then, more quietly, “Thank
you.”
    “Move on!” grunted the knight, prodding his gray horse with his booted foot. “You are holding up the
prince!”
    Abruptly, Stephen became aware again of the onlookers
and nobility, the prince, Edward of Woodstock, smirking with a knowing
expression on his long, narrow, bearded face and the retinue taking their cue
from him, laughing as if he and the woman were court jesters. Keen to be away
from their scrutiny, Stephen reined back and turned his mount out of the
procession into one of the side streets.
    This alley was clogged with filth and rotting scraps,
ankle deep in waste and rats . I am mighty glad she did not fall down here .
Still, despite the sudden gloom and ordure stench he allowed his horse to plod
at its own pace and his dog to browse and nose as it would, giving them all
respite.
    “My friend. Please, I must tell her I am safe,” his
passenger whispered. “She has such a dread of heights.”
    “If she saw you fall, she knows I caught you.”
Answering, Stephen remembered a tall black woman in a red dress, staring from
an upper window. Recalling the black woman’s horror, he felt aggrieved on her
behalf and now sharpened his address to the girl. “Were you overcome by the
sight of the French king? I know he and Edward of Woodstock are both fair, and
I have learned at court that such coloring is greatly
admired.”
    “I am not of the court,” she said at once, then
stopped. He knew then, from her tiny pause, that whatever she said next would
be false. “It is a very warm day, sir.”
    “Indeed.” And from that blush, you are a very poor
liar. Usually falsehood irked him but if there was more here than a simple
misstep, he decided that he did not care. She had fallen out of her cage when
he, Stephen, was passing. “And now we meet again, Mistress Angel. Or should I
say Mistress Truant?”
    Her color deepened.
    Enjoying himself, Stephen went on. “You know my name,
may I ask yours?”
    “Isabella.” She cleared her throat. “Isabella of
London.”
    “But no glover.”
    It should have been impossible for her to blush any
more but she