Free The Mistress Of Normandy by Susan Wiggs Page B

had ever said those words to her, had those feelings for her. Did he still feel affection for her, or was the emotion only a passing fancy? She feared to ask, but what she saw in the pure, liquid green of his eyes made her hear the words in her heart over and over again.
    He set down his harp and walked to her horse. “Let me guess,” he said, stroking the palfrey’s satiny neck. “You’ve stolen a horse and you’re running away.”
    “I am allowed certain liberties,” she said quickly, leaping up to join him. His eyes were so clear, so all-seeing. Did he know she lied? She felt guilty deceiving him. Quickly she justified it. This knight-errant would never befriend the Demoiselle de Bois-Long; no one ever had.
    He ran his hand over the palfrey’s withers and down her leg, pushing aside the grass to examine the iron curve of her shoe. “The horse is well tended.”
    “Of course.” Lianna’s chin lifted. She tolerated no sloth in her stables. Catching Rand’s curious look, she added, “The marshal is most exacting.” Only, she thought, because he knew she’d put him out to the rye fields if he shirked his duties. She tugged at Rand’s hand. “Let’s walk.”
    Gratified by her lightened mood, Rand followed. Her hair played in the breeze like threads of moonlight spun by fairies. As they fell in step together, the hem of her heather smock brushed against his leg, sending a sweet, forbidden thrill to the center of him. The browns and greens of the new season colored the landscape, and he forced his attention to the pollarded willows and stunted poplars that nodded in the wind.
    “I’m convinced this was a pirate path of the Vikings,” she said, leading him over the hill that sheltered the glade. “I used to play Helquin the Huntsman when I was a child.”
    He smiled. She spoke as if her childhood were long past, yet in his eyes she was a child still. “Who is Helquin?”
    “Ah, you do not know the legend in Gascony.” Her arm sketched the sweep of the landscape. “All the way from the cold white country of the north Helquin came, bearing the shrieking souls of the damned on his shoulders.” She shivered and looked as though she enjoyed the sensation. The thought crossed his mind that Justine would never have savored such a gruesome tale.
    “When the wild birds cry out over the marshes, the peasants say they echo Helquin’s long gallop through the centuries. I’d pretend to see him burst through the woods with all the battalions of hell at his heels.”
    Rand grinned. “Would you run in terror from Helquin?”
    “Certainly not. I would pretend to blow him all the way to the Zuyder Zee with a sixty-pound ball.”
    He stopped walking, took her by the shoulders, and rolled his eyes. “I do not approve of your penchant for gunnery.”
    Scowling, she struck him lightly on the chest. “Doubtless you would have me cloistered in a lady’s bower, carding wool.”
    I would have you folded in my arms, he thought. Next to my heart. He gave her shoulders a squeeze. “I cannot dictate what you should or shouldn’t do. That’s not how it is between friends. But I would prefer you didn’t work with guns. I’ve seen the destruction they can wreak.”
    “Very well, Rand the Gascon,” she said, her eyes glittering a challenge, “how would you defend a château?”
    “With the might of men-at-arms and archers.”
    “Knights.” She spat the word. “They indulge in looting and ransom.” Color rose to her cheeks, and Rand realized he’d discovered a topic she had often pondered, and not happily. She planted her hands on her hips. “Chivalry is but an empty spectacle, an excuse to plunder the weak.”
    “Unscrupulous men, not the laws of chivalry, are to blame.”
    “Chivalry is but a cloak to hide the excesses of their chevauchées .”
    A sudden hideous thought struck him. “Have you been hurt by knights, Lianna? Is that why you disdain chivalry?”
    She lowered her gaze. “Anyone who has smelled