My Lady Imposter Read Online Free PDF Page B

snorted, and turned back to Kathryn with some distaste. “If you fail to learn, girl, you will be punished.”
    Kathryn stared at him as if she had swallowed her tongue.
    “Do you understand me?” He turned again to Richard, “She’s not wanting in her wits, is she?”
    “I understand, my lord,” she whispered, throat aching.
    The golden eyes grew hard. “Lady Wenna will teach you all she can. You will obey her in all things, as you would me. If you disobey her, or me, or Richard, if you are wicked, girl, you will be whipped. Do you understand that?”
    Her eyes dipped to hide a furious gleam of anger. “Yes.”
    “Tomorrow morning, you will begin.”
    He turned away, as if eager to be gone from an unpleasant duty, but paused with his hand on the door. “Richard, I leave this to you. Don’t fail me.” There was a command in the words, and perhaps the hint of a threat.
    Richard bowed his head. The door closed. Kathryn turned to look at him, her eyes reflecting the last light from the window. “I don’t understand it.”
    “Think of it as a game,” he said, in a clipped, cold voice. “A game to show us how clever you are.”
    “But it makes no sense!”
    “Kathryn, do as you are bid.” He reached out and gripped her shoulders, giving her a little shake. “And don’t annoy Wenna. Practice being humble, even if you’re not.”
    “Richard!” Lord Ralf”s voice, impatient to be gone.
    A flicker of something, perhaps irritation, passed over his handsome features. He released her, sketched a bow, and was gone. She sat down suddenly, staring at the closed door, the last of the sunshine warming her neck. What did it mean? Kathryn, to learn to be a lady so that she could visit some lord’s castle in autumn? And why should Lord Ralf go so white when he saw her? It made no sense. But her heart still swelled a little at the thought. Childhood dreams, it seemed, were not quite so impossible after all.
    Shadows came crowding closer, and suddenly Kathryn realized she was weary. For the first time since her arrival in the room she allowed herself the luxury of examining her surroundings. A table of heavy, plainly carved wood, a stool, a chest, more intricately patterned, with a bolt and, by the far wall, a narrow wooden frame upon which lay a straw-stuffed pallet and a number of coverings. It was better than anything she had been asked to sleep on before, and for a moment she wondered if she dare. But her eyelids were drooping, and she was cold, and it looked so soft and comfortable. And if she was to be a lady, she had better get used to a lady’s ways!
     

     
    She woke with wonder at the strange silence of her room. Where was Grisel and her noisy brood, where was Snuff and his coughing? Everything seemed wonderfully still, and she rose, huddling her arms about herself in the soft gown, and went to the window.
    The woods lay misted and still, and the sky was turning to rose before the birthing of a new day. She was at Pristine, locked in one of the high towers. She was a prisoner.
    The sun had already risen well over the trees when the bolts on the door drew back and a page came with food to break the fast. Kathryn pounced upon it ravenously, and had already begun cramming the food into her mouth when she realized another woman had come in and was silently watching, scorn curling her finely drawn lips.
    A fair woman, abundant hair plaited under her headpiece. A smooth round face with pink mouth and deep grey eyes under arching brown brows. She wore a fine woollen gown, a brooch adorning her bodice, and her fingers were heavily ringed. She was, Kathryn thought, the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. And the most disdainful.
    “I am Lady Wenna,” she said, in a high, clipped voice. “I am come to teach you to be a... highborn lady.” She sounded scornful, as well as looked it. “We will begin with your eating habits. You will not eat with both your hands. One will suffice. And you will eat with