Lord of the Manor Read Online Free PDF Page A

offered his arm for support. Chain mail met her touch, but beneath the cold metal lay strength and warmth. She was careful to keep her bloody palms from wetting his hauberk.
    “Philip, bring that beast over here and we will tie him to the wagon,” Richard ordered.
    The wagon driver pulled up within inches of where they stood. Without warning, Richard’s hands encircledher waist. Instinctively, she grasped his shoulders. He lifted her up, effortlessly, until she hovered a few inches from the ground.
    She stared straight into his green eyes, his wondrous green eyes. Flecks of gold shimmered within their depths.
    He set her down on the wagon bed.
    “Such beautiful eyes,” he said. “I do not think I have ever seen their like before. Like violets they are.”
    Only a true dolt would respond to such flattery, but she’d been deprived of compliments for so long her vanity got the best of her.
    “Not so very uncommon, my lord.”
    “Rarer than you might imagine.”
    Richard seemed to realize at the same time she did that they hadn’t let go of one another and were staring into each other’s eyes like moonstruck lovers. He let go and backed a step.
    He crossed his arms again and looked down at her feet dangling over the wagon bed. “Do you think it broken?”
    “Not likely,” she answered truthfully. “Had it broke, I could not walk on it at all.”
    “Should we bind it?”
    “Nay. My boot holds it fast. If I took my boot off, I might not get it back on my foot again.”
    He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Philip and that mule do not get on well.”
    Poor Philip. He pulled on the lead rope with all of his might but the mule wouldn’t budge. Lucinda’s frustration bubbled up.
    “More than once I have taken a switch to the beast to get him to move.”
    “You have come far with him?”
    “Too many leagues.”
    “How many yet to go?”
    She didn’t know, because she didn’t know where she would call her journey to a halt.
    “Too many. I thank you for your kindness, my lord. Mayhap you could stop at the next abbey. I could beg hospitality from the monks for a few days while my ankle mends, then Philip and I can be on our way again.”
    Richard nodded. “We shall be in Westminster day after next I know the abbot well. You will receive good care there.” Then he turned and headed toward Philip.
    The abbey at Westminster? She hadn’t known she was that close!
    Granted, she’d thought to go to Westminster, but now that it was close at hand, she must make her decision. The thought of going to court still didn’t fully appeal, but her options were running out.
    Nor did she wish to spend two days in the company of Richard of Wilmont. Thus far, he’d been kind to a woman he thought a peasant, but that would change if he learned she was Basil’s widow.
    For all Basil had hated every Wilmont male, Lucinda had to admire Richard. Merciful heaven, she was even physically attracted to the man. How very odd. This man who was her enemy had touched her, but her stomach hadn’t churned in revulsion.
    Who is she? Richard wondered again, as he had for most of the day and into the evening.
    Standing in the open flap of his tent, he could see Lucinda sitting just outside the brightness of the campfire, with her back against a tree and her foot propped on a rolled blanket. Philip sat nearby, as didEdric, the captain of his guard, who seemed to have appointed himself the protector of the woman and boy.
    Lucinda and Philip weren’t peasants, though they were garbed in peasant clothing. He’d seen through the ruse within moments of rescuing Philip. Hoping to calm the boy, Richard had spoken comforting words to Philip in peasant English. Philip had responded in kind, but as he’d become more excited while relating his tale, the faint lilt of Norman French became more pronounced. The longer the boy talked, the more Richard became convinced that the boy’s first language wasn’t English.
    The names Lucinda and Philip