Free Knights by Linda Lael Miller Page A

believe that Edwenna would come bustling around a corner, full of kindly purpose, and make everything all right.
    Gloriana sat down on the bottommost step and propped her chin in her hands. She had not been attempting to manipulate Kenbrook earlier, in the solar,when she’d told him she would live in her own house and manage her personal affairs herself. Nor had she been making an empty threat. Pride would not allow her to live under the same roof with Dane St. Gregory while he courted and wooed another woman.
    An angry tear streaked down Gloriana’s smudged cheek, and she struck it away with a quick dash of her hand. That was one decision made—all well and good. But the fact remained that she loved Kenbrook with the whole of her heart and the full range of her soul. Every instinct urged her to fight for him and for the children who would never be born if he threw her away.
    The front door opened, its huge iron hinges creaking, and Gloriana gazed, with some vexation and no little surprise, upon the very one she’d been thinking about, her husband.
    She quelled an urge to touch her hair and arrange her skirts. “What do you want?” she demanded, looking him up and down.
    He sighed and thrust a hand through his gilt hair. “You are an unholy mess,” he said, ignoring her question, which had been, in her opinion, a reasonable one. “What have you been doing?”
    Gloriana thought of the doll, the odd clothing, the shoes of which the thirteenth century knew no like. “I hardly think I need explain,” she said. “This is my house, after all, and what I do within these walls is my own concern.”
    Dane leaned against the heavy wooden door, which was quite tall and some four inches thick, and sighed again. His arms, as was his habit, were folded across his chest. “I will not debate that point with you,” he told her, not unkindly. “Not now, at least. You areplainly upset, and the fault is mine. I truly regret any sorrow I might have caused you.”
    Gloriana waited in silence. Whatever remorse Kenbrook might feel, he wasn’t going to say he’d changed his mind about annulling their marriage. She knew that by the expression on his face.
    “In time,” he said, “you will understand.”
    Gloriana suppressed an unseemly impulse to spit upon his boots, which were well within range. “I understand now,” she replied, without raising her voice or even blushing. “You are a scoundrel, a liar, and a cheat. I shall be glad to see the back of you.”
    Dane shook his head and pushed away from the door with a sleek, easy grace that did unreasonable things to Gloriana’s heart. “I am all those things,” he agreed, “and more.”
    It took the passion out of her rage, what Kenbrook said, and Gloriana was annoyed. “Please go away,” she said.
    He came closer, curving his long fingers around the top of the newel post, looking down at Gloriana through lashes too thick to belong to a man. “I saw the lady Elaina today,” he said, as if she had not just ordered him out of her house. “She wishes you to visit her, on the morrow.”
    As quickly as that, Gloriana’s mood was transformed. “Is she well?” she asked softly.
    Dane did not reply but there was no need of it anyway, for the answer showed plainly in his face.

Chapter 4
    V espers, conducted in the chapel by Friar Cradoc, made a formal end to the Sabbath day. Gloriana attended, wearing a fresh kirtle the color of lilacs and a white wimple that fitted tightly around her face. Her heart was not prayerful as she sat, barely able to keep from fidgeting, in the customary pew, for there were too many other matters on her mind.
    Dane was always a part of her thoughts, and of course Elaina, who wanted a visit from her on the morrow. Then, like a thorn in a festering wound, there was the Frenchwoman, Mariette de Troyes, who sat circumspectly in the back of the chapel with her maid and the red-haired man called Maxen. Mariette was beautiful, in a fragile, ethereal sort