Read Online Sweet Enchantress by Parris Afton Bonds - Free Book Online

bagged, my lady?” asked Baldwyn.
    "I ’m not certain.” She passed Reinette to her cadger. "You saw how she had raked away.”
    "Uh-huh, she lost all interest in the pigeon and begun to wander after activity below her. Dinner tonight may not be all that I had anticipated.”
    Dominique was oblivious to the others until Paxton of Wychchester spoke in a drawl that was as smooth as spiced wine and carried as much potency. "Perhaps you will crawl into the underbrush, mistress, and display for us today's catch.”
    "My Lord Lieutenant,” John offered, "I'll retrieve the prey for—”
    "No.”
    Baldwyn spread his spade-sized palms. "But 'tis not seemly that—”
    "No!” Paxton folded his arms. “The hunter —huntress—will retrieve her own prey, as the common folk do.”
    Everyone stood paralyzed. She glanced at the copse and swallowed hard. She had done it again, aroused his antipathy by for getting her place as his vassal, and he was quite clearly reminding her. She had not crawled on her knees since childhood, but she could not give him reason to oust her from Montlimoux, not yet.
    Resolutely, she trussed her cotton smock at her waist, exposing the course, gray underskirt she used for hunting. There was a collective and not quite smothered gasp from her retinue as she went onto her knees and pushed forward into the brambles with the utmost caution. Falcons loved to prey upon snakes.
    Her eyes h ad to adjust to the diminished sunlight. The pungent odor of alluvial soil and decayed leaves, crushing under hand, rose to fill her nostrils. Just beyond, a salamander disturbed the leaves as it took flight from her. Further into the brush a thorn gouged her ungloved palm, and she yelped. She paused to extract the thorn and that was when she spotted the bloodied quarry. A ferret, a raccoon, she couldn’t tell which until she turned it over.
    Her outcry echoed in the forest.
     
     
    CHAPTER V
     
    "Please, leave me enter.”
    “’ Tis unwise, my lady,” John Bedford said low, closing the privy chamber door behind him. “I have never seen Paxton in such a mood. I only wish he would vent his wrath at me. I could handle it.”
    She smiled wanly. "You would have him kill y ou instead of me?”
    His mouth crimped in an attempt to return her smile. "Kill me, no. But vent his anger through fighting. We used to wrestle, and once I held my own with him.”
    She placed her hand on his doublet sleeve. "What happened today—I am responsible. I had no idea the cat was anywh—”
    "Ye don ’t understand, my lady. The cat was . . . well, Paxton was fond of Arthur.”
    "Obviously,” she said dryly.
    "It was more than that.” He half chuckled. "Paxton even carried that cat with him when he went to call upon a highborn lady with whom he was, shall I say, enamoured . ‘For courage,’ he told me.”
    "Courag e? Your lieutenant lacking courage? Compassion he may lack but not courage. Now leave me enter.”
    She maneuvered around him and opened and closed th e door before he could gainsay her. Only one candle lit the chamber, a room much like her own but smaller and used to quarter quests. Paxton sat before the fire. At his feet lay the dying cat. Blood pooled around the animal. It was obvious that death crouched only hours away at most.
    At her entrance, the man glanced at her, then back to the fire. "I am sorry,” she began.
    “ My Lord Lieutenant,” he corrected in a low voice.
    She sighe d. "I am sorry, my Lord Lieutenant. Truly sorry.”
    He raised a hand, and the fi relight glinted on what he held. A knife. He twisted the blade this way and that, reflecting the fire's sheen eerily across his face. Her heart stopped.
    He must have noted her stricken expression. He laughed nastily. "No, not for you. My revenge will be much more subtle, mistress. The knife blade is for my cat. You see, I am trying to summon courage to end its suffering. As I heard John tell you, courage does not come easily for me."
    She crimsoned. There was no