Free Rexanne Becnel by The Mistress of Rosecliffe

here alone. No woman should.”
    “I am quite safe.”
    “Are you?” His midnight gaze fell back to her face.
    Isolde swallowed hard and her skin prickled with excruciating awareness. It was not alarm, though perhaps it should have been, for there was something in his words, and something in his eyes.
    “I am safe here,” she repeated. “The guards are near and there are fishermen also.”
    “They beached their boat some time ago and are already up the cliff.”
    “They are?” She craned to see. “I must have been too immersed in the music to notice,” she confessed, looking back at him.
    For some reason that made him smile, a true and heartfelt smile not meant for an audience, but solely for her. Isolde’s stomach did a flip-flop. Her heart lurched in her chest. Were she standing, she knew her knees would have buckled. As it was she found it hard to catch her breath. No wonder he was stingy with his smile. Were he to loose it indiscriminately, no woman would ever be safe again.
    “When I play,” he said, moving nearer, “time often fades away. There is something soothing in music.”
    He stopped before her, looking down as she gazed up the rangy length of him. What a truly fine specimen of a man he was, she thought. More manly than any of her father’s knights.
For though he was as powerfully built as any of them, he wielded not a sword, but his music.
    And that lethal smile.
    This was the sort of man who could capture her heart, she realized with sudden clarity. That’s why none of the men her father suggested had ever appealed to her. She wanted a passionate, yet gentle soul, not a coarse warrior. She wanted a sensitive poet, a minstrel, not a knight.
    She wanted Reevius.
    Aghast at such inappropriate thoughts, she thrust the gittern at him. “Would you play? Please?” she asked with lips suddenly gone dry. She licked them, then looked away from his keen stare. He could not possibly guess what she was thinking. Could he?
    Rhys stared down at the woman who held his gittern up to him, and had to remind himself forcefully who she was. Isolde FitzHugh. Daughter to the hated Lord of Rosecliffe. Niece of the man who’d killed his father. She was his enemy, one he could use in his revenge upon her family. She was the leverage that would gain him what he’d dreamed of his entire life.
    But at the moment, with the lowering sun glinting sparks off her rich hair, and her clear gray eyes gazing up at him, it was easy to forget those things. Her skin looked so soft and pale, save for the wash of color across her cheeks. Like pearls by firelight. And her mouth … When her tongue had swept across her full lower lip, he’d felt the unseemly rise of desire.
    But he could not desire her. He would not allow himself to.
    He took the gittern from her hand and she averted her eyes. Of course she did, he scoffed. She’d led such a protected life. Few men would have dared to stare so boldly at her. Nor should he, for it might alarm her and ruin the opportunity he’d been handed.
    But it was impossible for him to look away from her. Her lashes were long and thick, and cast crescent shadows upon her cheeks. Her fingers were slender and long. Her waist delicate. Her breasts full.
    “ Taran! ” he swore beneath his breath.
    Her eyes widened in alarm. “Have I damaged it?”
    “No. The instrument is fine.”

    “But you swore—” She broke off.
    He swore again, but silently this time. He must remember that she spoke Welsh. She might be an English lord’s daughter, and she appeared the epitome of English beauty, comparable to any of the ladies he’d known in the past ten years. But she carried Welsh blood in her veins. She knew the language and the customs, and if he were careless, she would guess his secret before he could spring his attack.
    Clenching his jaw, he took a respectful step back from her. “My pardon for such thoughtlessness. You will want to return to the castle.”
    She rose to her feet and looked up