Free Breath of Heaven by Cindy Holby

to perform such duties? It was all very puzzling, as was the reason for Edward’s summons.
    Mathias stumbled up from his pallet. He stretched, yawned, scratched, and hitched up his chausses over his bony backside. He then knelt before the fire and added a few sticks of wood to bring it roaring back to life. The addition of a log made the flames pop and crackle, and a warm glow soon filled the room. The squire leaned back on his heels and briskly rubbed his bare arms to warm them.
    Rhys looked at the pale white skin of Mathias’s thin back as the boy flexed his shoulders to relieve the stiffness that came from sleeping on the floor. How long would it be before a scar marred that youthful skin? Rhys had been thirteen when he’d received his first wound in battle. An arrow had grazed his left arm—he was lucky the shaft had not pierced the muscle and left the arm useless.
    He’d been lucky many more times in the innumerable small skirmishes he’d been involved with. None could really be called a war, although he’d been victorious in all. He had scars, across his back, on his side, and a particularly nasty one on his thigh where he’dbeen run through with a sword. Lucky he’d not been crippled or lost a limb. Lucky he’d survived his many battles.
    He considered himself extremely lucky that he had not died the day just past. There’d been no mistaking the threat in the woman’s emerald eyes just as there’d been no mistaking the fact that her ears were strangely pointed. The encounter seemed much more real to him now in the safety of the castle of Aubregate than it had when he’d come out of the forest. Very strange indeed. Should he mention it? Say that a woman with pointed ears had drawn a bow on him and threatened his very life while he lay with his arse freezing in a stream?
    Mathias pulled on his chainse, tunic, and boots and left to do Rhys’s bidding. Rhys lay back beneath the furs and lazily contemplated a ray of sunlight that filtered through the curtains of his bed. Curtains that kept our the cold that penetrated the stone walls of the castle.
    Aubregate’s riches were evident, but not ostentatious. The hangings on the bed frame were velvet and the rugs were thick and plush. The headboard was intricately carved, along with the posts that held the drapes around it. His mattress was well stuffed and without lumps, and his pillows smelled fresh and clean.
    Hanging on the wall across from him was a tapestry unlike anything he’d ever seen before. It featured a woman of incredible beauty with long golden hair standing next to a pure white unicorn in a forest glade. The sunlight that pierced his bed hangings danced upon the tapestry, and golden threads woven throughout the maiden’s and the unicorn’s mane and tail glittered in the morning air along with a few careless dust motes.He turned on his side and propped up his head with his arm to study it better.
    It was evident the tapestry was very old, yet it seemed well cared for. Something about it made him sad, almost melancholy, as if he should have known the woman. As if he had missed something truly wonderful. Rhys shook his head at his thoughts. Another flight of fancy, just like the strange woman in the forest.
    “Let us hope that I am indeed warm and dry in a bed and not freezing to death in some ditch,” he said as he threw back the blankets and furs and rose to meet the day. His shaft pointed ahead of him, aiming at the tapestry as if the woman there would relieve its need. He hoped there would be a solution to that problem with the arrival of his bath. After the lazy days at court and the abundance of willing partners, he was unaccustomed to going without.
    And you still have to decide between Jane and Marcella… That thought did nothing to banish his sudden bout of melancholy at all.
    He had no more than wrapped a fur about his naked hips than the door burst open and a line of servants came in with a tray of food, steaming buckets of water, and