Read Online My Lady Imposter by Sara Bennett - My Lady Imposter - Free Book Online Page B

She was no longer a peasant, it seemed. She would be Sir Ralf’s pawn in this confusing game of loyalties and politics, and when it was over she would, perhaps, find some niche for herself at de Brusac, or perhaps employment as a lady’s maid in some middling household. Already she knew how to dress hair to the best effect, and how to sew and read a little. She must use her newly learnt accomplishments as assets, and being quick witted she would soon learn more.
    The idea cheered her flagging spirits. Yes, she would do that. There was no need to fear poverty and destitution. No need to remember what it had been like with Grisel, and how Snuff had failed to recognize her.
    They rode west through woods, and her mind drifted back to the day of the blackberries, and what her greed had brought her to. But after a time weariness intruded, and her aching bones demanded she stop and rest them. She lost interest in the shifting terrain. The fields and hills and forests, the grey forbidding walls of manors and estates, the wooden, tumbledown cottages and smoky villages of the peasants, the smells of roasting meat from the hostelries along the way.
    There were travelers other than themselves. Men and women with produce to sell, laborers seeking employment, serfs with their subservient scrapings, pilgrims in rags with staffs and white faces. None of it mattered before the ache in her own body. She longed suddenly for Grisel. The memory of that scolding face was so sharp that the tears pricked her eyes, and she bowed her head and bit her lip to prevent them spilling over. She must not show weakness... how the nobility scorned weakness! Her chin rose again, sharply, and she saw that Lord Ralf had ridden down to speak with Wenna. Their heads were bent close together.
    She had been his mistress for years now, Kathryn knew. She had heard gossip enough, even secluded as she had been. Wenna had been the daughter of an impoverished nobleman, a Saxon. How they had met she did not know, but the fact that Wenna had won Lord Ralf and kept him so long must be a triumph. He seemed a man not content with anything or anyone for long at a time.
    “Why so solemn?” a deep voice mocked harshly at her side.
    She turned so sharply her neck hurt her, and found blue eyes close to hers. She looked away as swiftly, as his eyebrow quirked. But her fear, confused feelings of hatred and misery must have been plain to him. She had been trying so hard all day not to think of him or the hurtful things he had said to her on their last meeting that the strain had wearied her defenses.
    “What?” he murmured. “No reply?” There was a note in his voice she had not heard before. A hard, cutting note. “Well, ‘tis not such a bad thing to be silent. The less you say at de Brusac, the better.”
    “Is it far?” she demanded, as coldly as she dared.
    He turned to look at the road before them, across the moving backs of men and horses. “Some days yet,” he said at last. “We are to rest this night at a nunnery.”
    She wondered at the sarcasm in his voice. There was a pause while she considered whether she should make the request that hovered on her tongue... “Could I not ride in one of the carts for a time?”
    She saw at once, by his astonished look, that she should have left the words unsaid. “On a cart?” he breathed. And then, savagely, “Only a peasant would think of riding on a cart! What are you?”
    She swallowed, bowing her head. “I am the daughter of Lady Alys de Brusac.”
    “Remember it,” he said brusquely, and wheeled away.
    He despised her, she thought, as much as she hated him. But she gritted her teeth and took up the reins again, kicking her mare back into its jolting canter.
    The hospice was beyond a bustling town. However, the streets were quiet enough by the time they reached it, and the shadows stretched long, while candlelight flickered like phantoms through closed shutters.
    Their horses were stabled and fed, and attendants