Free Thief by Linda Windsor Page B

falling for one of the oldest tricks in time, his instincts dulled by a pretty face. That weakness had led to his first fall, and, by all that was holy, it was not going to ruin his second chance.

    The wind off the German Sea swept in at dawn but gentled by midmorning. Inside their home, Sorcha and Gemma counted out their earnings from the night before while Ebyn targeted the hearth with a string slingshot and dried peas, courtesy of Gemma.
    “We have more than we need,” Sorcha declared, stopping her companion from taking another coin from the leather purse lifted from the Cymri stranger. She’d measured their gold and now the silver on her scale until it came to the exact amount due Athelstan. And half the Cymri’s purse remained.
    Gemma grinned, hefting the purse in her hand. “We can put this toward spring stock.”
    “My husband will purchase spring stock. My dowry will be the goodwill of my vendors and patrons.”
    And Athelstan would never be part of her life again.
    “You want to return it.” Gemma’s words held no question, just surprise.
    “What if we claimed we found it outside the tavern, as if it had fallen from his belt while he relieved himself?”
    “Half of it?” The skeptical arch of Gemma’s brow hit its mark.
    Sorcha heaved a sigh. “You’re right.”
    But what if the stranger spoke the truth about her mother’s wanting her? She’d spent the night tossing and turning, the part of her that missed Aelwyn urging her to find out more and the wounded child within telling her to forget about her birth mother. If she existed.
    Yet someplace in Sorcha’s soul, she believed it was true. But why hadn’t her birth parents tried to find her before now? Some of the children captured with her had been ransomed, but not her. Resentment sank in its teeth.
    “Your grief haunts you, child, as it still does me from time to time,” Gemma said, placing a gentle hand over Sorcha’s. “Aelwyn has only been gone a bit over a year now.” Her dark eyes glazed over. “At least—”
    A sharp knock on the door jolted them both. Ebyn scurried under the table as Sorcha rose to see who it was. If it was Wada, he was early. The clink of coin behind her told her Gemma gathered the moneylender’s due and, Sorcha was certain, hid the stranger’s purse, lest Wada help himself to that as well. His employer’s status as a relative of the sheriff made the thug a bold one.
    Sorcha unbolted the door and opened it. “I wasn’t expecting you till eve—”
    It wasn’t Wada, but this visitor wasn’t much better.
    “Hello, Tunwulf. Milady,” she added, upon noting her betrothed’s only son had brought along his female companion. Mistress, so it was said.
    “Good day, Mother, ” the young man mocked. He put his hand to his mouth. “But wait—I am premature, aren’t I?” Tunwulf, a few years Sorcha’s senior, made it no secret that he resented his father’s notion to marry her. Should she give Cynric a child, he would have to share his inheritance of Elford.
    His humor was made worse because Sorcha had refused Tunwulf first. She’d held off his clumsy advances with Wulfram’s sword.
    “Will you invite us in?” the lady demanded haughtily.
    “Of course.” Sorcha would wager what fortune she had that Tunwulf hadn’t shared that tidbit of information with his consort. For all his noble upbringing and education, the man was no more than a renegade with allegiance to none but himself, his purse, and his appetites.
    Sorcha backed away to let them enter. Beyond, a servant struggled with a trunk from a two-wheeled cart to which their riding horses were tied. “Are you in Din Guardi for the royal wedding?” she asked.
    The last she’d heard from Cynric, Tunwulf had been leading a band of miscreants to wherever they might find plunder beyond Bernicia’s border. It not only made relations with Mercia and their British neighbors more tenuous than they already were, but it was an embarrassment to Cynric that his