Love's Magic Read Online Free PDF

took in one of my father’s tunics for you.” She quickly grabbed a folded garment and handed it to him.
    “You did not do it?”
    “I can mend bones, but clothing is beyond me. Unless you want a ragged hem?” Celestia piled the dishes into a bucket of water, quickly cleaning them and then setting them to dry. Next, she mixed the tisane.
    Raised in a monastery, he was hardly a judge on womanly character. He knew nuns, and he knew whores. Celestia was neither. Was that why she fascinated him?
    Nicholas slipped the fine fabric over his head, noting the way she deliberately kept her back turned, granting him privacy, despite the fact that she had seen him naked already. His heart warmed. She made him feel … a dangerous thing for a man with revenge on his mind.
    “Before you go to bed, my lady, could you tell me what you know about the baron?”
    She paused before nodding. “But I do not know much.”
    It was important that he know his enemy, Nicholas thought. “Please.”
    “He is our liege lord.”
    “I also swore fealty to him,” Nicholas interrupted gruffly.
    “How is it you never met him?”
    “I promised a blood oath through his head knight. Not Petyr, but another Montgomery. He was killed.” In Tripoli. “Enough about that—do I really have his looks?” Nicholas rubbed the scars on his wrists bitterly.
    “Very much in the face. Your body,” she blushed, “is slimmer.”
    While he’d been starving and nauseous, the baron most likely dined on creamed trout and fruit pies. Nicholas tightened his jaw.
    “I have twin brothers. They are being fostered at his estate on the Scottish border. Peregrine Castle. It is a fine opportunity for them.” She folded her hands in her lap, and he sensed that she was being overly careful with her words.
    Why? she wondered.
    “Is he a cruel man?”
    She sucked her lower lip between her teeth, and Nicholas’s belly clenched with a sensual hunger.
    “My brothers do not complain, not much. But they are not the best of writers. They’re only twelve, and they’ve been with the baron for less than a year.”
    “How many siblings do you have?”
    “I am the oldest, then next is Galiana, and then the twins, and then Ela.”
    He remembered the youngest girl on the stairs. “They all have red hair? Except you.”
    Sighing, she twiddled her thumbs. She wondered if he would find Galiana more to his taste; most men did, especially when comparing the two. “Aye, ‘tis the truth. Well, except the boys, they have blond hair, like our father. And they are tall—everybody is, except for me.”
    He realized that this bothered her. “There is nothing wrong with being short.”
    Her lower lip trembled.
    “Is there? Something I do not know about. Can you not ride a horse? Or climb a tree—well, you are a young lady and probably don’t climb trees, so are you upset because,” he looked around the room and noticed all of the footstools, “you have to use a footstool to reach the highest shelves?”
    Covering her mouth with her hand, she teased back, “I challenge you to a horse race, sir. And as for climbing trees? How else do you get the choicest apples? I am not afraid of heights, as Gali is. It simply would be nice to be tall.”
    “You must admit it, though,” he pressured. “There is nothing wrong with being short.”
    She rolled her eyes. “I will admit to nothing, except that we have gotten quite off topic.” Feigning a yawn, she stood and said, “I have to sleep. May I trust that you will not try to sneak off before morn? We have guards around the perimeter, and you might accidentally get shot by an archer.” Smiling, she added, “You’ve no breeches, and your legs are as white as milk. They’d think you a ghost.”
    “You were looking at my legs?” Nicholas pretended to be shocked. She’d seen all of him, including his scars, and hadn’t run away. Lady Celestia was made of stern stuff. “You would protect me?” His body tensed with an unidentifiable