What the Heart Sees Read Online Free PDF

could gather in haste, filled with expectations of being fed and protected by their liege. His walls were tall and thick, but his harvests had been burned in the field, and his stores were dwindling. Only this morning he had ordered one of the last bullocks slaughtered so there would be meat on the table and hot broth to warm their bellies. Thankfully the well was still sweet and deep and there was water aplenty, but the ale was running low and he had grudgingly ordered the seneschal to water it by half.
    Now the servants were squabbling and the seneschal, who should deal with such nonsense, was nowhere in sight. He recognized Rosie the laundress, but not the one she was pushing and shoving and ordering forward. As the girl came closer, he noted the green of her tunic and the tassels on her belt that danced side to side with each step she took. A gleaming cloud of blonde hair surrounded her face and shoulders, the light from the candles sparking it with gold and fiery shades of russet.
    Closer still he could make out the features of her face as she passed from one pool of light to the next, though her eyes were lowered and her mouth set in a grim line. Her complexion was tanned and smooth, with blushed cheeks and a lovely little nose. She was tall and slender and there was something about the way she walked...
    His eyes widened and his brows lifted.
    It was the fletcher’s daughter. The archer. The layers of grime had been scoured away, the boyish clothes had been exchanged for a softly feminine tunic, and while her expression looked a little like a deer staring down the shaft of a hunter’s crossbow, she moved with a measure of determined pride that had the other knights at the dais stopping in mid-sentence to mark her approach.
    Thomas stood, though he had no memory of doing so. He was on his feet when she climbed the two steps to the dais and walked toward him. Her hair flowed around her shoulders like liquid sunlight, spilling down her sleeves, so silky and fine it fanned out in the breeze produced by simply walking.
    She stopped before him and dropped into a curtsey. “God’s grace to you, my lord.”
    “And to you,” he murmured. Becoming conscious of the stares from the dais as well as the hall, he indicated the chair for her to sit down, then sat again himself. Conversations around them resumed and a lackey appeared to set a trencher of bread before her on the table. At a nod from Thomas, a goblet was produced and filled with wine.
    Normally not at a loss for words, especially with the fairer sex, he found his tongue to be firmly squeezed against the roof of his mouth. She smelled of some sweet flower he could not put a name to, and he found himself sorely aching to touch a strand of that silky hair, to know if it was as soft as it appeared.
    His life, of late, had been far too busy to think of women, and his physical needs, when they pressed in upon him, had been released hither and yon with any number of castle wenches who were only too happy to oblige. He was mildly surprised to find his body reacting to the girl beside him now. Reacting in such a way as to make him shift forward on the chair and reach for the platter of cold meat and cheeses.
    “You must be hungry,” he said with the profundity of a scholar.
    She raised her eyes to his for the first time and he was stymied again. Dark deep green they were, as clear as a still pond in the forest.
    “I do thank you, my lord, but I broke my fast earlier today with the other archers, and it would hardly be fair to fill my belly again while they go without. We are promised broth for our supper, and so I shall be content with that.”
    “Your intent is honorable and loyal, girl. But if de Caux’s men find their courage again and return to the catapult, and if I put you on the south tower to keep discouraging them, none will know if you have taken a piece of cheese or not.”
    “I will know it, my lord.”
    He leaned back in his big wooden chair and regarded