Read Online Dauntless (Valiant Hearts Book #1) by Dina L. Sleiman - Free Book Online

I will retire to his lordship’s study to review it at once.” Wasting no time, he stood and yanked the message from the man’s hand. He strode across the great hall, down a dimly lit corridor, and up a stairway. Once to the study he tossed the sealed parchment upon the table.
    Desperate for a quiet moment, he leaned against the openwindow and gazed past the stinking, noisy town to the crisp, clean trees beyond the wall. So another day would pass without his return to the forest.
    But he could not rid himself of the niggling feeling that the child might provide a clue.
    The thought that things just didn’t add up had followed him everywhere for days. That the boy had not known his own village, but chattered intelligently for much of the ride, asking questions of the soldiers. The story of a mother who beat him, although the boy bore nary a mark upon his healthy skin. The distance of the child from Bryndenbury.
    No, the facts did not add up.
    Upon the morrow he would let nothing deter him. He would return, alone and on foot, to the spot where he had found the boy. Stealth and anonymity were of the utmost importance. His brothers had taught him as much during childhood.

    “’Tis just over here, Lady Merry.”
    Allen’s voice hurried her up the hilltop and toward the highway beyond.
    Merry’s men had gone to great lengths over the past days to pull her from her gloomy state. Allen claimed he had found the perfect spot for raiding passing travelers, as they had in Farthingale. Although she doubted they should take such chances so soon, she could not deny that her chest thrummed with excitement at the thought.
    Cedric looked like a little boy at play as they headed up the rise. He turned to grin at her. Comic Cedric, with his endearing crooked-tooth smile and over-large ears. She grinned in return.
    They reached the top, and Merry struggled to hide her disappointment. Setting her face into a mask of placidity, she surveyed the terrain. To begin with, before her lay not so much a highway as a rough trail. She doubted royal wagons passed this way. And beyond that fact, the forest had been cleared for yards away from the road.
    Indeed a long, nearly horizontal branch spread over the path, but it lacked the requisite cloak of oaks and maples surrounding it.
    “I do not know, Allen. It is quite stark.”
    Allen’s little-boy excitement had not dimmed—even though of all her “men,” he most looked the part of an adult male. “Don’t give up on me yet. Picture it first. Perhaps we shan’t encounter magnificent equipages as we did at our old spot. But we could use the tree to attack the king’s nobles on horseback.”
    He moved under the tree and gestured to the longest branch. “We swoop in out of the air—wearing masks to preserve our anonymity, of course—knock them to the ground, and before they know what we’re about, we’ve taken their supplies and disappeared into the woods.”
    Cedric twisted his head from side to side as if weighing the concept upon a scale. “Could work. ’Tis different. Certainly not what one would expect from the Ghosts of Farthingale Forest. That stands in its favor.”
    Merry took a breath to disguise her frustration. “Yes, but in all these years we have never injured a soul. Someone could break a bone tumbling from a horse. And what if they are quick to their feet and fight back.”
    “We shan’t be fools.” Allen tapped his head. “We would choose our targets wisely. Besides which, do we train hours a day for nothing?”
    As the one who demanded said training, Merry could hardly argue. “And what if they decide to give chase?”
    “Ah!” Allen pointed a finger to the sky. “I’ve given that thought. We’ll build a camouflaged lair just over the hilltop.”
    Thwarted again. Where was Robert when she needed him? Surely he would detect the flaws in this plan.
    “Cedric,” said Allen, “why don’t you run down the road a bit and then come by as if you are a