Read Online Shadowmoor (de Lohr Dynasty #6) by Kathryn Le Veque - Free Book Online Page B

the door, soon disappearing out into the rain. Etzel and Liselotte stood there long after Daniel had disappeared, both of them looking at the open entry door, both of them pondering the drastic course their future had taken. It was a lot to absorb.
    “Do you think he means what he says, Papa?” Liselotte asked with concern. She turned to her father. “It seems too good to be true. Do you really think he means to help us with Bramley?”
    Etzel shrugged in a gesture that suggested he really didn’t have an answer. “I would like to think so,” he said, turning back to the table where the ale was. “He has made a lot of promises. It would be good if he kept them, for your sake.”
    “What about yours?”
    Etzel shook his head. “I have lived my life, Leese,” he said. “But you are young and beautiful. You still have your life ahead of you. It would be good if Sir Daniel really was the answer to our prayers.”
    Liselotte sighed. “We have been so long without hope,” she said quietly. “Mayhap God has been testing us. Mayhap He has sent Daniel to finally give us hope.”
    “Do you recall the story of Daniel in the Bible, taught by the priests?”
    Liselotte nodded. “He was saved by God from the lions.”
    Etzel expression softened, his gaze turning distant. “Mayhap God has sent Daniel to save us .”
    “Do you think Daniel de Lohr is a messenger from God?”
    Etzel collected his half-empty cup. “I like to believe in divine assistance,” he said. “Whether or not de Lohr is divine, he has nonetheless been sent to help us. He is an answer to our prayers. That is what I choose to believe.”
    “Then we are to trust him?”
    “We have no alternative but to go on faith. What is left for us if we do not trust him?”
    He seemed rather firm about it. As Etzel finished what was left in his cup, Liselotte went to see to what was left over from the meal so she could prepare for tomorrow’s feeding. All the while, however, her thoughts lingered on Daniel de Lohr and his timely appearance. Was he really sent from God? Her father seemed to think so. But Liselotte was a bit more pragmatic.
    Time would tell the tale if Daniel de Lohr really meant what he said.
    She very much hoped that he did.

CHAPTER THREE
    The next morning
    G od… that cheap, horrible ale was the stuff of nightmares.
    It always gave him the most terrible headaches the next day following a binge, an ache that traveled all the way down his neck and into his chest. His stomach, ruined from years of drinking anything he could get his hands on, was shriveled with sharp pains this morning.
    Sharp pains like the ones that filled his very soul.
    Brynner l’Audacieux had managed to stumble out of bed well before dawn, just as the rains from the previous night were trickling off. With a throbbing head, he had staggered out of the vault where he slept, the sub-level room beneath the keep that he kept only for himself, and stumbled out into the ward. His first trip had been to the kitchens to see if there was any drink to be had, as his father tended to move it around, hiding it from a son who kept hunting for it, and the best he was able to come up with was half a jug from the night before. It had been enough. Taking it with him, he grabbed most of the bread left from the previous evening and ate it, using the cheap ale in the jug to wash it down.
    The guards at the gate, huddled around a fire for warmth, had seen him coming and knew the routine. It was usual with him. They already had the gate open enough to allow him to pass by the time he arrived and he slipped through the gate and out into the moors beyond before the sun even rose. It was dark and wet and near freezing, but Brynner didn’t care much. The cold seemed to be the only relief for his head on days such as this.
    The storm from the previous night had cleared out, leaving wet and soggy land in its wake. The ground was heavy with scrub, muddied down and mashed, and the cold wind that blew up