Love and Deception: a Clean Medieval Historical Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

ungraciously draped over her head. She groaned as she was jostled unseeingly on a hard surface filled with all sorts of odds and ends.
    She wisely kept her mouth shut when she felt the carriage come to a halt. The sound of heavy footfalls crunching on the ground underfoot gave her the impression that they were in a grassy area. She closed her eyes and opened her other senses to the sounds and motions all around her. One of the knights in Westin Keep had taught her the trick when her father started receiving offers for her hand in marriage. It was not uncommon for other lords to steal away ladies from neighboring lands and force marriage upon them.
    “Rise and shine, princess!” a rough voice bellowed. She heard some drapes being pushed away roughly before she was unceremoniously hauled like a sack of potatoes.
    “Today is going to be a great day for me!” the voice continued. “You see, me and his lordship’s boys have discovered something very intriguing about dear Count Braxton.”
    Rosamund felt sick as she was bent over a smelly shoulder, her shrouded head bouncing against a back that smelled like the eighteenth level of hell. The sack draped over her head seemed quite inadequate to counter the stench that permeated her nostrils and she fought the urge to spill over the contents of her dinner.
    “You see, princess,” that awful voice went on, “we have never before seen that prick of a Count show an ounce of affection for a female. Oh, we thought Lady Catherine would have been up to the job but sadly, she was found wanting.”
    Her heart pounded in her chest as she quietly listened to that horrible man narrate the brilliance of his plans. It would seem to Rosamund that most of this nefarious plot revolved on drawing Count Braxton out by dangling her as bait.
    Only Rosamund was not as certain it would play out as well as he’d hoped.
    The Count had treated her cordially, that was true enough. However, it seemed unlikely for her betrothed to leave the safety of his castle to go gallivanting around the countryside to rescue her. Her brief conversations with the young lord hardly matched the besotted young man her abductor portrayed him to be.
    She squirmed as she was dumped onto a rickety old chair that had nails poking into her skin, desperately trying to find some semblance of sanity in this whole situation. Sadly, she found none and panic began to creep in her heart when she realized that she might very well die from this.
    The sack was jerked back roughly from the head and she stared back mutinously as she blinked back the last vestiges of the darkness from her eyes. The room she was in was small, sparsely furnished, and covered in a thick layer of dust. She wrinkled her nose when she realized that the smallest movements could send a cloud of the matter floating in the air.
    “Well, what d’you think of my castle, princess?” Harry jeered. “Ain’t like Braxton Hall, but the man makes the castle.”
    She shrank back from the lewd look he gave her and wondered how her cousin could have been so entranced by such a man. Where Catherine was delicate and fragile, he was crude and uncouth and all other things evil besides. She sent a silent prayer for the repose of her cousin before she focused her mind on the creature before her.
    Harry, it would seem, had gone mad in the course of the few hours since she had secretly met with him to discuss her cousin. His dark hair stuck out every which way. His neatly trimmed beard was tangled and matted in some places. Dust, dirt, and the occasional foliage clung to his clothes. His dark eyes leveled themselves on her and the realization that this man was quite comfortable with murder made her go cold with dread.
    “Your father would never have approved of me,” he murmured, sitting close to her on his haunches so he could be at eye level with her. “That high and mighty brother of his, too. It would have been so much easier for all of us if he just allowed me to marry