Free The Protector by Madeline Hunter Page A

driving the man. She had shown him as weak and impotent in front of his father. She had marked his face with her blade. He might well want her dead, but would exact his revenge in other ways.
    Her fear of this other fate must have been bigger than that of death, for it demolished her defenses. She huddled closer. He held her tightly, swaddled in his cloak. The mood from the shelter, so open and close, surrounded them as surely as the wind and wool.
    He was aware of the slight curve of her hip under hisarm, and the warmth of her slender back, and her breath near his neck. His senses filled with her.
    He reined in his impulse to caress her. He was not well practiced in self-denial, but he would not betray her trust this night. Still, he wanted to kiss the face nestled close to his, and stroke the strong body curving naively against him. He wanted to take possession of her, and with her the right to defend her.
    Nay, he wanted more than that. Not all of his reactions to her were gentle like the one restraining him now. But tonight her weakness spoke only to his protective instincts, and not to the darker, more primitive ones evoked by her strength.
    “You must leave tomorrow,” he said. “Ascanio can take you back to the abbey.”
    “If I leave, the estate will be surrendered.”
    “I will stay and defend it for you.”
    She pulled away. “You are one man. The others will not fight for a lost cause. If the lord has run away, why should they risk their lives? I am not the lord, but I am the closest thing. You know that I cannot go. It would mean abandoning La Roche de Roald and its people to the Beaumanoirs and the French. Brittany might never regain it.”
    She regained her composure, and her strength. She set off for the stairs. He walked her back to her chamber. At the door she turned to him. “I did not think that we could have a friendship like I share with Ascanio, but I was wrong.”
    He looked down at her troubled face. And then, as he had done that first night, he placed his hands on her shoulders and lowered his lips to hers. He did it because he wanted to taste her. He did it to seal the friendshipshe spoke of. But he also kissed her to remind her that he, unlike the good Ascanio, was not a priest.
    In her distraction over the more immediate threat, she was oblivious to the message. “Maybe I worry for naught. Perhaps he does not come here.”

C HAPTER 8

    H E CAME .
    Anna watched the army move toward La Roche de Roald, banners flying.
    Her knights flanked her on the southern wall walk. Fouke and Haarold, the vassals of the adjoining fiefs, had both answered her summons, bringing a handful of men each. Haarold was a tall, bony man in his middle years with a permanent scowl carved on his face and a censorious set to his mouth. Fouke in comparison seemed placid and smiling, his squarish body going a little fat, his pale scalp gleaming through thinning pale hair.
    Haarold had also brought his son Paul, who had just earned his spurs. The black-haired, heavy-browed young man had spent the better part of the morning staring at her. She had spent most of that time in council with theknights, making it clear that their sparring for leadership was pointless because she would make the decisions.
    The front lines of Gurwant's army drew closer. She could see flashes of armor and weapons, and the black and crimson of his coat of arms on the banners.
    Over a hundred marched with him. She had but fifty, and that many only because Morvan's men, finally free of quarantine, had agreed to fight in exchange for silver. She had sent Carlos to Brest to beg aid from the English garrison there, but he had not yet returned.
    Three hours later, encased in armor from head to toe, she positioned her stallion in front of the gate between Fouke and Haarold on her left and Ascanio and Morvan on her right.
    The portcullis slowly rose. Two servants carrying her banners led the way across the drawbridge. On the field five mounted men