Free Fairest Of Them All by Teresa Medeiros Page A

air. At the knight’s cryptic signal, he scurried back to the fence to fetch his master’s mount.
    Gavenmore turned his back on Eugene and started for the gallery to claim his prize, his rolling swagger betraying more weariness than Holly would have suspected.
    Behind him she saw Eugene sit up on his elbows. Sunlight glinted off the lethal blade of his sword as he prepared to hurl it at Gavenmore’s defenseless back.
    Time slowed until it seemed Holly could count each sparkling mote of pollen drifting lazily in the air. The distant song of a lark was muffled by the dull roaring in her ears. She turned her head this way and that, horrified to realize that not a single soul was going to warn him. He had done nothing but fought valiantly and well, yet they were going to let him be slaughtered just for daring to be a foreigner in their midst.
    Suddenly ‘twas not his bearded face, but their own that seemed the cruel visages of strangers. Her father’s hand twitched, then went still. He was the most honorable man she knew, yet he, too, was willing to sacrifice the Welshman for his own gain.
    For a brief, tantalizing second, she allowed herself to entertain the notion. With one coldly calculated strike, she would be rid of both Eugene and the obstinate Welshman. Eugene’s disgrace would disqualify him from claiming victory. And the Welshman would be dead, his big body stretched out in the straw much as it had been in the garden. The vitality fading from his limbs. His blood seeping into the thirsty sand. His crooked grin frozen forever in a pale mask of death.
    Eugene drew back his arm.
    Holly sprang to her feet.
    Don’t speak above a murmur, Holly. You’ll strain your voice.
    Holly almost looked behind her to see if Brother Nathanael had escaped his wardrobe prison, but realized the rebuke was only in her head. Using the full volume of that magnificent voice, she leaned over the gallery rail and screamed, “Gavenmore! Behind you!”
    The knight whirled, throwing up his arm in instinctive reflex. Eugene’s blade glanced off his steel gauntlet and thudded harmlessly to the ground. Gavenmore stared at the sword for a long moment, his face unreadable, then scooped it up and strode back toward the fallen man. Holly cringed, wondering if she had unwittingly signed Eugene’s warrant of execution. If he so chose, Gavenmore would have every right to embed the blade in Montforf s treacherous heart
    Instead, he reversed the weapon and dropped it across Eugene’s lap, hilt extended in invitation, as if to say the man presented no more challenge with the sword than without it. It was an insult more damning than any blow. “You are a craven coward, sir, and a disgrace to the honor of this tourney.”
    Although Eugene made no move to touch the sword, his entire body quivered with impotent rage.
    “Enjoy your bride while you may, Gavenmore. Shell be a widow soon enough.”
    Shrugging off his enemy’s threat, the knight once again turned his steps toward the gallery.
    Holly stood mesmerized at his approach, no less captive to his will than she had been in that moment when the elm had snared her curls. Her stubborn knees refused to bend, refused to lower her to the chair where she at least might cower in comfort.
    She earned a brief reprieve when a carrot-curled little girl scrambled beneath the ropes and danced into his path, clutching a chaplet of woven bluebells in her chubby fist He paused to accept the offering, ducking his head in a shy bow that coaxed a trill of delight from the child. An unfamiliar hand squeezed Holly’s thundering heart.
    Then he was climbing the shallow steps to the gallery, each resolute footstep shuddering the wooden platform. Fortifying herself with a deep breath, Holly turned to face him, naked in the ugliness she had inflicted upon herself. A breathless silence reigned over the gallery, the lists, the spring day itself.
    She forced herself to meet his gaze, then wished she hadn’t. As he searched her