Until the Knight Comes Read Online Free PDF Page A

its spaciousness, bore little furnishings save the two bracken-stuffed pallets and scratchy old plaiding the women used for bedding.
    The meager light of a few candles and a poorly burning cresset lamp illuminated the remains of their supper: a half-eaten round of coarse brown bread and a rind of moldy cheese, and the shiny opened hulls of fresh black mussels, gathered only hours before. Simple fare, washed down with spring water.
    Testament enough to Cuidrach’s dearth of comforts.
    A lacking she hoped would work in their favor.
    “Even if someone wished to come here,” she ventured, “on such a night of mist and rain they’d need a hawk’s vision to find us.”
    Nessa clucked her tongue and twisted water from the long coil of her dark hair. “They do be saying the Devil’s eyes are well peeled. He—”
    “The Fiend is not below, only a company of men,” Mariota disclaimed, ignoring how her heart thumped. “They will be travelers,” she asserted, wishing her damp palms did not say otherwise. “Simple wayfarers.”
    Nessa snorted. “Whate’er their purpose, if you’d heeded my warning about throwing open the shutters, like as not, they would have ridden on, thinking this an abandoned shell.” She stepped from the tub, stood dripping. “Now they will have seen the candle glow, ken we are here.”
    “Oooh, to be sure.” Mariota’s stomach gave a lurch. Chances were, they’d seen much more than the flickering light of a few tallow candles.
    Wincing at the thought, she crossed the room, handed her friend the drying cloth. “No matter, we will greet them as we discussed. So soon as we stand before them, I am lady of this castle. Dutiful wife to my absent husband, the present Keeper of Cuidrach.”
    Nessa raised a brow, her expression more eloquent than words.
    Secretly agreeing with her, Mariota pulled on her gown, not even bothering with a camise, though she did attempt to plait her still damp hair into some semblance of decency.
    “They are only passing through—you shall see,” she declared again, willing it so. She waited until her friend scrabbled into her own clothes, then added, “Once they see we can offer them scarce more than slaked oats and water, they shall be eager enough to leave.”
    But the foolery no sooner left her tongue before a great clamor sounded from below. The champing of horses’ bits and the
clop-clopping
of hooves, the unmistakable
clink
of steel . . . a cacophony well recognizable to Mariota.
    The undeniable sounds of the arrival of knights.
    A great many knights and with the ruckus they caused rising up from
within
the curtain-walled bailey.
    Her stomach churning, Mariota grabbed a candle from the room’s small table and hurried for the door. “Come you,” she said, urging Nessa into the darkened corridor. “Let us intercept them before they ride their presumptuousness right into our hall.”
    A feat of boldness already in full progress as the two women hastened down the winding turnpike stairs.
    An invasion straight from the depths of Mariota’s blackest nightmares, for
he
was no longer contained safely in his grave in distant Assynt, but stood grinning at her from the middle of the great hall.
    Hugh Alesone in all his golden splendor.
    “Oho!” he cried, his voice ringing with mirth. “Not one angel, but two!”
    Another man, older and well-bearded, plunked down a heavy-looking travel coffer and stared. “Mercy me—and to think we didna expect to meet up with anyone save old Ranald or a few wood pigeons!”
    Hugh
just peered owlishly at her, his good humor scarce contained.
    Mariota set down her candle, too stunned for words.
    She drew back her shoulders, readying herself for a confrontation. But then torchlight flickered across the man, revealing not just his amused grin and brawn, but also his youth.
    That, and the astonishingly large bulge at his groin.
    She swallowed, her error obvious. Whoever this knight was, he was
not
Hugh Alesone.
    But he was standing