Free The Last Knight by Candice Proctor

but then, one never really knew what lay in another man's heart.
“I can't see anything,” said the lad, peering into the distance.
“It's a small party. Four, maybe five men. Riding hard and fast.”
And then the boy must have seen them, for he jerked suddenly, swinging the chestnut away abruptly before Damion could see his face.
Touching his heels to the Arab's sides, Damion followed the boy thoughtfully down the hill to where Sergei waited with the spare horses at the base of the slope. They had almost reached the squire when Atticus drew up sharply.
“Something wrong?” Damion asked, reining in beside him.
He found himself confronted with Atticus's courtly mask of a face. “It's Chantilly—my mount. He keeps favoring his right foreleg. I think he must have a stone caught in his shoe.”
Damion watched the lad swing his leg over the cantle and drop to the ground. He moved stiffly and awkwardly, Damion noticed, as if he were unaccustomed to such long hours in the saddle and was sore as a result. “Sergei can look, if you like,” offered Damion.
“I can do it,” said the lad, running his hand down the gelding's right leg. He lifted the forehoof up on his thigh and bent to scrape at the caked mud with the point of his dagger. His movements were careful and slow, as if he hadn't done this too many times before. From just over the top of the hill, a flock of swallows took flight, twittering loudly. Damion's head fell back, his gaze following the birds as they wheeled away to the south, the golden sunlight gleaming on their outstretched wings. The riders must be gaining on them.
Atticus let the hoof drop and carefully wiped his blade in the grass before straightening. “I don't see anything. But I've pushed him hard today.” He looked up at Damion with wide, overbright eyes. “Perhaps I could ride your roan for a while?”
There could be no disguising the mingling hope and fear that sharpened the boy's features and quickened his breath. Curious, Damion studied the big chestnut. It was an unusually fine animal, with a distinctive white blaze and four white socks. A horse such as this, he thought, a man would notice—and recognize if he came upon it again. But not more readily, surely, than this finely dressed, patrician-boned youth?
Damion's gaze shifted back to the boy, to those thickblack lashes and smooth, rose-touched cheeks. There was something ethereal, almost unnaturally beautiful about his face. Something that nagged at Damion, like an elusive thought or a memory half-forgotten.
As if uncomfortable with Damion's scrutiny, the boy swung his head away, showing Damion only his classic profile. Still watching him, Damion raised his voice. “Sergei. Bring up the roan for our lordling here. His chestnut seems to be favoring its right forefoot.”
“ Oui, messire ,” said the squire, slipping out of the saddle. “I didn't notice a limp,” he added, moving quickly to help Atticus transfer the saddle from the chestnut to the roan, “but that chestnut does have the look of a horse that's spent too many months doing little beyond eating its head off in the stables, I'd say.”
Damion stood in the stirrups to stretch his legs and glance around. “I can hear a stream running somewhere, probably at the base of that hill over there. Perhaps you should take the chestnut and bathe its legs in cool water for, say, an hour or so?”
Sergei glanced up from fastening the saddle girth. His black, knowing gaze met Damion's and held it. “I understand,” he said, and turned away to gather up the chestnut's lead.
“If you're quick,” Damion said to Atticus, who hauled himself up onto the big roan's back, “we should have time to catch that merchants’ caravan and blend ourselves in with them before your friends overtake us.”
The boy's wide brown eyes flew to Damion's face. “They're not my friends.”
Damion reached out to close his gloved hand over the small, fragile fingers holding the roan's reins. He exerted just enough pressure to make the boy