Free The Rose of Blacksword by Rexanne Becnel Page A

in the chair, the two of them were lifted high and paraded around the square. Several times they were nearly dropped. More than once she thought she would slide out of his steely grasp and be trampled in the drunken mob. By the time they were lowered to the ground, she was trembling with fear and faint with exhaustion. Terror, hunger, and two days of brutality were taking their toll, and she was sure she would not last until nightfall. When someone tossed an apple in her lap she stared at it in dull surprise.
    “If you don’t eat it, I will,” Blacksword said, reaching for the bruised fruit, which was clearly a leftover from the previous year’s harvests. But Rosalynde was too quick. Ina flash she snatched it up then proceeded to devour it like a starving woman. At such a desperate reaction, however, other festival-goers devised a new sport. Within moments they were being pelted with all sorts of foods. Raw carrots, onions, pears, beans, and even hard crusts of bread. Her arms, her legs, even her cheek caught the brunt of their new game, no matter how much she dodged. It was only when one man threw a particularly large turnip and nearly struck her in the head that Blacksword rose angrily from the chair they yet shared. Placing her abruptly aside, he glared furiously at the drunken lout who’d tossed the vegetable, sending him scurrying away. Rosalynde, meanwhile, lost no time in gathering up as much of the food as she could, stuffing it in her gown for Cleve.
    “We must leave,” she whispered to her new “husband” as he turned to watch her. “We must escape.”
    “Yes,” he answered, looking around them as he did so. Then he spied a group of musicians surrounded by dancers, and he grabbed her arm and pulled her up. “Forget that cast-off food.”
    The dancing was not the courtly movements she had been taught by her tutors. Men and women milled in wild abandon, stomping and swaying, drinking as they went and raising their voices in bawdy lyrics until the instruments were practically drowned out. Rosalynde was jostled and shoved, and nearly lost Blacksword in the confusion. Had she not grabbed determinedly onto the wide leather belt that circled his waist, he might have been gone, leaving her as stranded and alone as before.
    But she refused to let go, and when he paused between two carts and looked back at her she was glad she had.
    “I must leave you now,” he said as he firmly disentangled her hand from his belt. He glanced once at her then turned his face away. “Many thanks for sparing my life.”
    “You can’t just leave me!” she exclaimed, running after him as he turned to go. She grabbed once more at his belt, at his arm, at the torn edge of his tunic as he strode purposefully away. “You can’t leave me!” she cried in renewed desperation.
    He turned abruptly, grabbed her by the arms, and held her rigidly away from him. “I cannot help you! For whatever reason you chose to save me, I thank you. But I have my own affairs to tend. I cannot be any aid to you in yours,” he finished bitterly.
    “But you must help me!” Rosalynde pleaded, staring disbelievingly into his harshly set face. “I took a chance on you and you must repay me!”
    “I told you, I cannot help you,” he countered tersely. “Find someone else.”
    “But … but …” Tears welled in her eyes as her last hope for help began to disappear. She shuddered as she realized that everything she had endured this day had been for naught. Desperately she grasped his forearms. “You would be dead if not for me. Hanged like those other poor wretches.” Her anger dissolved into frightened pleading. “I beg you, please don’t abandon me here.”
    Through her tears his face was blurred; his expression was impossible to detect. She saw only his fierce gray stare, the stubbornly set jaw and brows lowered in a scowl. But she felt when his grasp changed. He thrust her away from him rudely, as if he were disgusted with his own