Read Online Immortal Champion by Lisa Hendrix - Free Book Online Page A

blackbird’s wings, her pale gray eyes—the only feature she seemed to have stolen from her mother—glowed from amid lashes so dark he suspected she might dust them with coal.
    And that hair: still as bone-straight and glossy as he remembered on that girl by the hearth, but now caught back in an intricate net of braids that hung well past her buttocks, thick as his wrist.
    Thank the gods her hair wasn’t hidden away beneath a crespin or one of those bizarre horned arrangements that were the mark of married women these days. The braids meant she was still unwed. Hope surged through him once more at the thought; he pushed it down, still unwilling to give himself over to it.
    And then the first courses were carried out, and he was saved, the lady all but forgotten as the aromas of onions, saffron, cloves, and freshly baked bread washed over him. His stomach rumbled like an oxcart on cobblestones, audible even over the music drifting down from the minstrels’ gallery at the end of the hall.
    Lady Eleanor averted her gaze, pretending not to hear, but Gunnar caught a snort of, what? Laughter? Disapproval? It used to be that a rumbling belly was the sign of a good appetite, just as a hearty belch after a meal was a sign that the food had satisfied, but now, and at a noble table . . . He supposed he needed to apologize.
    He leaned close so he could keep his words private. “Your pardon, my lady. I have yet to learn how to still an empty belly.”
    “You have not eaten today?”
    “I was traveling.” That wasn’t quite true; the bull had spent the day grazing, but that hardly counted.
    “And then you fought, unfed? You must be starved.” She motioned over the nearest serving man, who began spooning a savory soup of veal and onions over slices of toasted bread in a bowl. Gunnar picked up a spoon and dug in. He was nearly through the bowl when the meat was carried in.
    Not just any meat. Roasted pig, crisp skin dripping with fat. Aye, just what he’d longed for, that and the custard, yellow with eggs and glistening with cream. As a boy passed by with a huge bowl of the stuff, he felt like leaping in. It was all he could do not to groan.
    Lady Eleanor must have noted the food-lust in his eyes, for she saw to it that their trencher was piled with the richest dishes on the table, then held back as he ate his fill, pointing out choice morsels, buttering bread for him, and gently encouraging him to stuff himself. He obliged, and most happily.
    As they shared a piece of the honey cake that finished the meal, the lord to their left, whose name Gunnar had already forgotten, leaned over.
    “Your pardon, sir. Did I hear it said that you saved Lady Eleanor, here, from a fire?”
    It was as though the lady had been waiting all these years for someone to ask. Before Gunnar could gather his words, she raced into her version of the events at Richmond. She was a lively if inaccurate storyteller, and soon everyone within hearing was caught up in her tale as she painted him a hero, her hands fluttering and swooping with her words.
    Gunnar sat quietly, willing everyone to watch her and forget him. And it worked, too, until her tale ventured so far from the truth that it made him wince.
    “What is it, Sir Gunnar?” asked Lord Ralph—probably the only man within hearing not enthralled by his daughter and her tale. “Does Eleanor have it wrong?”
    “I would not dare call her wrong, my lord,” said Gunnar carefully. “But she does . . . beribbon things.”
    “Beribbon.” Chuckling with the others, Lord Ralph rose and came over to stand behind Eleanor, laying a hand on each shoulder. “A good name for her way. I have heard her ‘beribbon’ a story until it fell over from the weight of all the trimmings. Where did she go astray?”
    “I did not soar off the balcony like an eagle, my lord. I fell off it like a sack of stones, all but killing us both.”
    “You told me you leapt,” protested Lady Eleanor over the laughter. “That