Free The Last Arrow RH3 by Marsha Canham Page A

to impart your name either, how was I to know you were not there to maim or murder me?"
    Brenna's mouth dropped open. He had managed to mock, insult, and reprimand her in the same breath he used to put himself forward as the poor, hapless victim!
    "Murder," she said, clenching her teeth again, "was a closer possibility than your arrogance lets you realize, Sir night."
    "I rather doubt that, my lady, although there were other temptations that might have proved interesting to pursue."
    Two hot red spots flared in her cheeks and she was thankful for the shielding darkness. Nothing hid the look in his eyes or the path they took downward to the front of her jerkin. She had laced the halves closed again to keep out the chill on the ride home, but she might as well have been naked for all the protection the linen and leather afforded.
    She could feel his eyes probing through the layers, mocking her femininity even as he challenged it.
    "Come now." Robin stepped between them. "It was a misunderstanding, nothing more. No one is murdered and you have, indeed, brought a most valuable prize home. I, for one, concede defeat. A brace of pheasants is naught compared to the resurrected Renaud de Verdelay." And to the vaunted Verdelay he added, "You will naturally do us the honor of accepting our hospitality."
    "If I can offer Centaur a day's rest, gladly." The ice-washed eyes rose again to Brenna's face. "But only if I can be assured it is no inconvenience."
    "It is no inconvenience whatsoever," Robin insisted, ignoring the glare on Brenna's face as he started leading the way back across the draw. "If anything, we welcome the news from ... ah ... where have you been all these years?"
    "Here and there. In the east, mostly. Burgundy, the Germanys."
    Brenna's skin prickled again, not pleasantly. She was no lover of coincidences, and there seemed to be a deal of them flying about this night. A knight alone, lost in the woods? A knight who was supposedly a champion, supposedly dead, suddenly come to life and prominence again, discovered on Amboise land, en route to a tournament at Chateau Gaillard. Was she the only one who saw something odd in all of this? Was the lump Robin had taken to his head that afternoon clouding his judgment, making him careless? Burgundy? Burgundy, for heaven's sake, was a land infested with assassins and mercenaries, men who wore no crests and carried no pennons, who would likely prefer the anonymity of the forest to recognition on the roads. Men went into the mountains of Burgundy when they were in disgrace or they had good reason to disappear for a time.
    And when they came out again, they brought the snow and ice with them, in their eyes and in their souls.
    Robin would not see it, however. Often to his greater fault, he held a rare and unassailable belief in the ideals of chivalry and was too virtuous, too trusting for his own good. He could no more believe a knight capable of treachery and deceit than he could himself spit on the Holy Grail.
    Brenna was not half so trusting, and neither, thankfully, was Will, who stopped Renaud at the guardhouse where Robin would have led him straight past.
    "I am afraid, my lord, you will have to submit to the normal castle procedures and surrender all of your weapons at the gate. They will be restored to you, cleaned and in good repair, when you depart."
    "I was already relieved of my sword, as you can see. You will find it with another strapped to Centaur's pack."
    "Merely a precaution," Robin explained with a shrug of apology. "My family is not well liked by the English king and his allies, and strangers tend to put the guards on their toes."
    Griffyn grunted by way of giving response, for he was on his toes now. The man who happened to be conducting a search of his person for hidden weapons was Jean de Brevant, the captain of the Wolf's personal guard and the one to whom the safety of Amboise's residents had been entrusted for the past decade. Called Littlejohn by those who