Read Online Only For A Knight by Sue-Ellen Welfonder - Free Book Online

her voice a curdled whisper. “And mayhap I am . . . but with good reason,” she added with a tight little smile.
     
A contemptuous smile that remained in place as she stared into the gloom, her hands clenching and unclenching on her lap until, at last, the chill dampness from the window seat began creeping through her skirts, making her cough and shiver.
     
“Shrews can be clever,” she wheezed as she pushed to her feet, her breath labored with the effort.
     
Crossing the room, she sank onto her bed without even attempting to remove her clothes or even her finely-tooled kid leather shoes. She laced her fingers across her stomach and glared holes into the dark wood of the unadorned bed ceiling, hating her weakness and damning the need that sent her into sleep garbed so uncomfortably.
     
But undressing would expend too much energy, and along with her wits she needed her strength.
     
Only so could she wreak the worst revenge on Sir Robert MacKenzie.
     
“Bleed him white, I will,” she vowed through her teeth.
     
And to the last inch of his odious self-pleasing soul.
     
     
“I knew the maid would not prove pleasing.”
     
Sir Marmaduke Strongbow folded his hands on the high table and slid a pointed glance at the lady Linnet, one of the few other souls yet awake at this late hour. Most of the castle folk already slumbered where they could, their plaids and pallets providing their bed-places, their snores and various shuffling noises rising up to herald yet another tedious night’s passing in the smoke-hazed cavern of Eilean Creag’s once so joyous great hall.
     
Joyous until the arrival some days past of Euphemia MacLeod and all her aggrieved sighs and posturings.
     
Wishing fervently that she felt otherwise about a lass who aught stir one’s pity at the very least, Linnet refrained from commenting on her long-time friend’s remark and continued to sip her wine in carefully controlled silence.
     
“I know you knew it, too, my lady.”
     
Linnet’s brow knitted. She took a deeper sip of the blood-red Gascon wine.
     
“You do not fool me, lady, and never could.” Sir Marmaduke gently took the wine cup from Linnet’s hand and returned it to the table. “Will you not tell an old friend why you seem so . . . untroubled by her?”
     
Linnet sighed, began tracing circular designs on the high table’s pristine white linen covering. She also did her best to resist being captured by her friend’s penetrating, all-seeing gaze.
     
“She would banish the very birdsong simply by walking through a wood, wouldn’t she?” she finally said, making the words a statement.
     
“I am loath to speak ill of any woman, as you well know,” he said, clearly picking his words with care. “But the devil burn my bones if I do not at least voice my . . . concern.”
     
He looked at her, the expression on his face almost loosing her tongue. “I love Robbie as my own son, see you. I would know him pleased with his given bride.”
     
“Then do not suffer yourself to worry, for I promise you he shall be more than content with his chosen mate,” Linnet said, fixing her own gaze on the fat, red-glowing fire log still burning in the hearth. “The fullness of time will resolve any missteps the fates may visit upon the lad.”
     
“Think you?” Sir Marmaduke sounded skeptical. “Some would say the fullness of time seems to have run its course,” he groused, his brow lowering in a rare expression of ill humor. “I would not mention it did I not desire the lad’s best—and I warrant he has exhausted whatever largesse of time the good saints would allow him. He ought to have been here days ago and his betrothed frets and paces in her quarters nightly, eager and impatient for his return.”
     
“She is impatient, aye,” Linnet conceded, not adding that she suspected the maid’s irritability had little to do with a fierce yearning to welcome Robbie into her conjugal embrace.
     
“And none of this . . . disturbs you?”
     
“I have told you it does not.”