Free Fallen in Love by Lauren Kate Page B

drop to his knees and bow before her, beg for forgiveness. He could and he would—
    Until this moment, he had not even realized he wanted her forgiveness.
    He was near the balcony now, trembling. Was he nervous or excited? He’d come this far, and still he didn’t know what he would say. A few lines of a poem formed in the habit’s corner of his heart …
    Let no face reside in mind
    But the face of Rosaline
.
    No—this was where he’d gotten into trouble with her before: She didn’t need bad poetry. She needed bodily, reciprocal love.
    Could Roland give that to her now?
    The red curtain rustled in the wind, then parted at the bold touch of his fingers. He concealed himself behind the stone wall but craned his neck until his gaze entered the bedroom where he used to sit with her.
    Rosaline.
    She was glorious, sitting in a wooden chair in the corner, singing under her breath. Her face was older, but the years had been kind: She had grown from Roland’s girl into a beautiful young woman.
    She was glowing.
    She was spectacular.
    Yes, Roland knew he had made a mistake. He’d been green at love and foolish, cynical and unsure that what they had could last. Too quick to heed Cam’s bitter pronouncements.
    But look at Luce and Daniel. They had shownRoland that love could survive even the harshest of punishments. And maybe everything up until this moment—accidentally coming back to this era, agreeing to help Shelby and Miles, riding past Rosaline’s old castle—had happened for a reason.
    He was being given a second chance at love.
    This time, he’d follow his heart. He was ready to bound in through the open window.…
    But wait—
    Rosaline was not singing to herself. Roland blinked, looking again. She had an audience: a small child, swaddled in a feather quilt. The child was nursing. Rosaline was a
mother
.
    Rosaline was some man’s wife.
    Roland’s body stiffened and a small gasp escaped his lips. He should have been relieved to see her looking so well—the happiest she’d ever looked—but all he felt was powerfully lonely.
    He rolled heavily away from the balcony door, slamming his back against the tower’s curved wall. What kind of man had taken the place Roland never should have left?
    He dared another look inside, watched as Rosaline got up from the chair and laid the baby in its wooden cradle. Roland closed his eyes and listened to her footsteps fading like a song as she padded out of the room and down the hallway.
    This couldn’t be the way it ended, his last sight of love.
    Fool. Fool to come back. Fool not to leave well enough alone.
    Instinctively, he followed her, crawling along the turret’s shallow ledge to the next window. He gripped the wall with his abraded fingers.
    This chamber, next to the room where he’d seen Rosaline, used to belong to her brother, Geoffrey. But when Roland leaned in to peek through the curved pane, there were women’s clothes hanging by the window.
    He heard a man’s low voice, and then—in reply—Rosaline’s.
    A young man sat with his back to Roland at the edge of a damask-covered bed. When he turned his head, his profile was handsome, but not devastatingly so. Smooth brown hair, freckled skin, an honest sloping nose.
    A woman lay sprawled across him on the bed, her blond head nestled in his lap in the casual way of two people who were as comfortable with each other’s limbs as they were with their own. She was weeping.
    She was Rosaline.
    “But why, Alexander?”
    When she raised her tear-streaked face to look at him, Roland’s heart caught in his throat.
    Alexander—her husband—stroked his wife’s tangled blond hair. “My love.” He kissed her nose, the last placeRoland would have gone had he had access to those lips. “My horse is saddled. The men await me at the barracks. You know that I must leave before nightfall to join them.”
    Rosaline gripped the white sleeve of his undershirt and sobbed. “My father has a thousand knights who can take your