Free When Lightning Strikes by Cynthia Lucas Page B

have needed.”
    He spread another thick blanket out on the floor of the wagon and lay down leaving Sarah alone with her thoughts.
    After awhile, his breathing slowed and she could hear it settle into a steady rhythm as sleep over took his weary body. She yawned and turned over on her side, wondering what she was going to do.
    The ruse couldn't go on forever. He would send his men out and sooner or later they would discover that none of the local lords were seeking their lost wife. She didn't want to think of the consequences of that. Would they kill her? Would Dominic let them?
    She yawned as sleep began to overtake her and she reached under the blanket-roll beneath her head and desperately clutched the gold medallion she had hidden. She hoped that somehow it would hold the answers to getting her safely away from here and back where she belonged before it was too late.
    ‘Too late to save you from them…or from what you are starting to feel for this man?’ she wondered.
    She tried to picture David's face but instead, Dominic was soon there to invade her dreams.

Chapter Seven
     
    Marco sat before a nearby fire stirring the burning embers with a stick as they prepared to break their fast with bread and cheese. Dawn had come too quickly and Dominic had risen and headed to the lake to bathe. The cool water could wash away the previous days grime, but did nothing to ease the fire that was growing within him for the woman. He was still weary from a restless night's sleep and stretched his aching muscles as he sat beside his friend.
    Marco smiled a wolfish grin and sat in silence staring at Dominic as he settled himself before the blaze. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke,
    “Well?"
    “Well what?” Dominic replied blandly.
    Marco's smiled faded somewhat.
    “Well, you are supposed to share these 'interesting details' with me and perhaps you would allow me to experience them for myself, no?"
    Dominic stabbed his knife into the ground.
    “There will be no sharing of anything. I wasn't referring to the physical attributes of her, Marco. She is to be left alone.”
    Marco stopped smiling and pulled the knife from the dirt.
    “Well, then, Nico, what is to be done with her?”
    “I do not know,” he answered, quietly.
    Marco raised a brow and paused right in the middle of taking a generous bite of hard cheese.
    “You do not know? Ami, this woman is undoubtedly a noble. We can ransom her for a hefty gold purse. Has your lust driven you mad as she is?”
    “She is not mad, I assure you.”
    “Has she bewitched you in some way?”
    He sucked the crumbs from his fingers and took a large gulp of water from his cup.
    “No. Marco, the woman's memory was injured somehow by the strike of lightning. She can recall her name, but she cannot recall from whence she came and to whom she belongs.”
    Marco sighed. “I see. Well, this does not bode well. The others must not know of this.”
    “I agree. In the meantime, I think we should send word to one or two of the local gossipmongers from the village to find out if any of the local nobles have a runaway wife. We can spare nothing of our own as payment, but perhaps if you get under the alewife's skirts, she would give them a free flagon or two.”
    Marco broke into a wide toothy grin as he pictured the buxom alewife, Gilda, with her skirts hiked up around those ample hips of hers and his tongue buried in her dampness as she sighed her pleasure against his mustachioed lips.
    “Yes, I am quite gifted in that area.”
    Then his brow furrowed as the tempting picture faded and his train of thought returned to him.
    “A lost wife? So you think the woman is wed?”
    “She believes she has passed twenty and three winters. If she is noble there is little chance that she has escaped a dutiful marriage to some wealthy lord. And there would most certainly be children, as I explained to her yestereve. I was hoping to jar her memory.”
    “And did you?”
    “No, she could remember nothing