With Her Kiss (Swords of Passion) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the trickle of water, feeling the ooze of walls too rough, too cold for human habitation.
    Suddenly, the ground flattened and a faint ray of light from a hole in the stone wall above shone on a huddled mass in one corner. Silent, still, the dark creature reached out a limb. A hand. And put up a palm to ward him off.
    “Katherine?” he asked of the filthy heap burrowed into a niche.
    Reg moved closer with a light.
    Matthew groaned at the sight.
    The being stirred. Two dark eyes stared at Geoff from a wizened face, once oval, now taut from torment. “Katherine,” he whispered and rushed to her, bent over to reach into the alcove where she hunched.
    A low animal’s moan met his ears. Not a word, yet all her meanings to him were clear.
    “Nothing to fear. Not from me, Katherine. I won’t leave you,” he promised, at once turning to wave Matthew closer with the pitcher of milk and the clean cloth with which to feed her.
    Geoff put a hand to her shoulder, sank his fingers into her matted hair at her nape. She was soaked through, her flesh thin, her bones frail, and at his touch, she flinched. Not dead. Not past saving, yet requiring all his delicacy to rescue her.
    “I know you do not wish my touch. That it is painful. But you must permit me, Katherine. I have milk. Matthew, douse the cloth as I taught you. Press out any excess so we lose not a drop. Hand it to me. Here, Katherine. Let me put this to your lips.”
    She growled, low and feral, turning her head away from him.
    Geoff had once administered the same aid to Richard’s men trapped by Saladin and his army along the shores of Joppa. He had used goats’ milk then from local shepherds, and fresh water that his men had brought from farther north in Caesaria where a palace once built by King Herod still yielded untainted water. For more than one hundred starving Angevins and English fighting for Richard, Geoff and his retinue had pressed wet linen to the mouths of weak knights for two days before many had revived enough to eat gruel and smile. But here with Katherine, Geoff had no such wealth as days to save her. He had to revive her enough to move her—and do it within hours.
    “Part your lips, Kat,” he urged her, as he pressed the milky cloth to her mouth and squeezed a few drops along the seam. “Let me nourish you, my dearest.”
    She turned strangely quiet. Though he could not see her face, shadowed as it was against his tunic, he felt her caution and her wonder as she scratched two fingers along his thigh. Her awareness he would take as a sign that she knew someone was here whom she might trust. If she could not fathom that it was he, her oldest friend and lover Geoffrey of Chepstow Castle who had returned to her, he could understand her disbelief. After the heartache of loving her and losing her over and over again, lo, these many years, he was himself astonished that they had come to this hideous pass.
    “We will do this many times,” he told her as he handed back the cloth and took another from Matthew. “You will lick this off your lips. Yes. Like that. Again. And more.”
    He tried to bring her more firmly into his embrace, attempting to give her more liquid with each ministration. But her mind and her actions were scattered, alternately clamping her teeth shut and opening her mouth to suck on the cloths. If she had been deprived days longer than her maid had told Will, then she most certainly would not have responded to Geoff at all. If, too, she had been slowly starved by her neighbour, Ferrer, she stood a better chance of surviving this more drastic incarceration and deprivation. Better a slow starvation than a quick one. So much of her imprisonment was unknown to him. So much was left to hope alone.
    Geoff cursed beneath his breath and traded milk-soaked cloths with his knight.
    “My lord,” inquired Matthew with a rasp of outrage, “how can this help her? ‘Tis not enough to feed an ant.”
    “Sufficient for now, Matthew. She cannot drink