Read Online The Last Knight by Candice Proctor - Free Book Online

bright blaze of the June afternoon, the darkness of the hall almost blinded her. Her momentum had carried her halfway across the rush-strewn floor before she realized that the room was not empty.
She saw the long, thin back and bowed tonsured head of the infirmarer first. He stood beside a table at the far end of the hall and was grinding something in a wooden mortar and pestle. But what brought her skidding to a shocked halt, the breath leaving her lungs in a noisy rush, was the sight of Damion de Jarnac, stripped down to nothing buthis white linen braies and sprawled in arrogant negligence on a bench pushed up against the near wall.
He had a magnificent knight's body, she thought, his shoulders broad, the muscles of his chest hard and exquisitely defined by hours spent at practice in the tilting yard. Against her will, her gaze roved over him, over the strong arms that could wield a sword to such deadly effect. Over the taut, smooth line of his stomach. Over the lean hard thighs that could ride a horse all day and never get tired.
And then she saw the long, ugly cut that disfigured one powerful leg. She had forgotten that he, too, had been wounded in the fighting with the routiers .
She wrenched her gaze up to his face to find him regarding her quizzically. As well he might, she thought. For here, she realized with a numbing sense of shock, was one aspect of her disguise as a boy that had not yet occurred to her. Traveling with Walter had been comparatively simple, for the groom knew her for a lady and had treated her accordingly. But it would be a far different matter to travel with this man. For this man—this big, virile knight— thought her just another male. And as Attica stood, frozen with chagrin, her imagination conjured up for her a host of embarrassing and potentially disastrous possibilities.
She became aware of the silence between them lengthening, becoming awkward. Frantically, she cast about for some explanation for her seemingly odd behavior. “I … I was afraid you had left without me,” she finally said.
Which was true enough, as far as it went.
He gave her an easy, fierce smile. “Not without warning, lordling.” He jerked his head toward the corridor. “Your man is awake, if you care to see him before we leave.”
“Yes. Thank you,” she murmured, ducking her head as she hurried toward Walter's cell.
She found him looking drawn, but awake and surprisingly lucid. “Thanks be to God,” she said, sinking down onto the rush-seated stool beside his pallet. “You look far better than I ever hoped you might.”
Walter shifted awkwardly against the pillows that held him lifted up to one side to keep the weight off his wound. “It's not me I'm worried about, my lady—”
“ Sshhh .” She cast an anxious glance toward the partially curtained door. “No one here knows me for a woman. You must not give me away.”
Walter jerked. “But you can't still mean to continue to Laval? Not alone.”
“Lie still,” she said softly, resting a restraining hand on his shoulder. “You'll start your wound bleeding again. And you needn't worry. I won't be alone. I have found a knight to escort me.”
“A knight? What knight?” Walter demanded, trying to twist his head around so that he could see through the doorway.
“Stop moving. You can't see him. He was wounded slightly in the fighting and the infirmarer is binding his leg.”
Walter brought his gaze back to her face. She saw his eyes, sunk deep with pain in their blue-tinged sockets, narrow with suspicion. “What knight?” he said again.
In spite of herself, she almost smiled. Walter knew her too well. “The knight who saved us from the routiers and brought us here. Did you not see him? He helped the infirmarer tend you.”
“No. Only the monk was with me when I awoke. Who is this knight?”
Still Attica hesitated, although she could not have saidwhy she found herself so reluctant to utter his name. “Damion de Jarnac.”
She saw Walter's already pale face go a shade whiter. “ God the