The Wife Test Read Online Free PDF Page B

behind the cart were staring at the maids and listening intently. It was eager, girlish talk from lilting young voices. His stomach began to knot. He had been so concerned about disguising their appearance that it hadn’t occurred to him that their
voices
could give them away!
    “Silence!” he ordered, turning his mount to ride alongside the cart. “You must be quiet.” Their smiles and chatter evaporated. He looked through the group for the elderly sister, trying to recall her name. He didn’t see her and scowled. Wasn’t she the one he had “tossed” into the cart? “From now on, you will speak only to each other and only in whispers.”
    “Why?” one of the maids, who looked oddly familiar, demanded.
    “Because it is necessary”—then he added, more for his own conscience than for them—“for your safety. Where is the sister who accompanies you?” He craned his neck to see past them. “I would speak with her.”
    “She was taken ill at the last moment and could not come,” the familiar one declared, rolling up onto her knees on the bench built into the side of the cart and gripping the top edge. “She asked me to see to the others. Whatever you would have said to her, you may say to me.”
    It took a moment to register.
    “Do you mean to say”—he forced himself to remain calm and lowered his voice—“that there is no nun amongst you?”
    “There is not,” the appointed one declared. “Are we in some kind of danger? I was given to understand that the countryside was quiet.” He felt his gaze drawn to hers and frantically forced it to the top of her head instead. Was she the one he had tossed arse-over-elbows into the cart?
    “Blessit, yes, you’re in danger. And you will be until you’re wedded in London. From now on … you’re not to gawk at the countryside or my men … you’re to talk only to each other … and never above a whisper.”
    “A whisper?” She indicated what she thought of his edict by flagrantly violating it. “We are not criminals or madwomen,” she said succinctly, “to be forbidden that most normal and natural of human intercourse.”
    He felt color draining from his face.
    Natural … intercourse.
    “You have your orders, Sist—” But she wasn’t a sister. “Just who the devil are you, anyway?”
    “Chloe of Guibray.”
    “Very well then.
Sister Chloe.
Keep your group together, their heads down, and their voices low.” He glanced down at her face, and his gaze dropped inexplicably lower. Was it her legs that had been burned into his— A muscle near his eye twitched, and he jerked his head irritably. “I wouldn’t want to have to haul the lot of you to London trussed up like gooses for roasting.”
    He jerked his reins sharply and shot off toward the head of the column, leaving Chloe staring after him in disbelief. Her cheeks caught fire and her eyes burned as if he’d thrown sand in them … which, after a fashion, he had.
    “Chloe?” The others crowded around, and she turned to find herself facing four alarm-filled faces. “What’s happened?” Helen spoke for them all. “Did we do something wrong?”
    Chloe had no more idea than they did about what they might have done to deserve such a ban on their behavior. But she did have the vivid memory of the high-handed knight taking one look at her and demanding that the abbess put bags over all their heads. Her face flamed. It seemed he hated the sound of women’s voices as much as he hated the sight of women’s faces.
    Wretched man.
    “We’ve behaved with nothing but maidenly virtue.” she declared, to bolster her own confidence as much as theirs. “We will continue to do so, and Sir Hugh can save his blessed ‘goose-trussing’ for someone else.”
    “Being ordered to speak only in whispers is a grave punishment,” rosy-faced Margarete said, clearly unsettled. “We must have offended someone with our thoughtless chatter.”
    “My chatter is not thoughtless,” Alaina said