Free Dark Destroyer by Kathryn Le Veque Page A

to kick their door in. In his gratitude, he tossed a few more coins onto their table and nodded his head in silent thanks before quitting the cottage and heading out into the snowy night.
    Fighting his way through blinding snow and armed with possessions that were as much an apology from him as they were a necessity, Gates was rather expecting Lady Kathalin to be quite grateful towards him. In fact, he was confident she would forget the past few days, the distress and fear, and become a pleasant traveling companion.
    After all, he’d plied a few women with gifts before and it always worked wonders to the feminine vanity. Even though Lady Kathalin had been living in a convent for the past fourteen years, surely there was a true lady buried underneath, waiting to be coaxed forth. And Gates was most willing to do the coaxing.
    He was usually correct, but in this case, only time would tell.
    He very much wanted to be correct.
     
     

     
     
    With chapped, bleeding skin around her wrists, exhausted, and ravenously hungry, Kathalin was trying to count her blessings at the moment. At least she was warm in this tiny, windowless room as a fire raged in the open-end hearth, and at least she had a roof over her head as the storm raged. Those were the things she was grateful for but they were sorely outnumbered by the things she was ungrateful for.
    After de Wolfe had left her, the first thing she had done was peer into the hearth to see if there was a way through the flames to escape, but the more she thought on the actual escape, the more she realized that it would be foolish to try. Stupid, de Wolfe had called it. With snow blowing sideways outside and impossible traveling conditions, she wouldn’t make it to the edge of the village before she froze to death. She was ill-equipped to do anything or go anywhere, much less run off. She didn’t even know what direction to travel in. In that instance, de Wolfe had her. There was nowhere for her to go.
    She was officially trapped.
    So she moved away from the hearth and tried to be thankful that she was at least warm and out of the elements. She was the least bit curious about her surroundings, much better than the accommodations from the previous night, but a close inspection of the bed showed it to be crawling with vermin. Disgusted, she sat on the floor near the hearth and inspected the red welts around her wrists.
    Hate.
    Somehow, she equated that word with de Wolfe but now that she was warm, and the situation was at least settling a bit, the hate she had built up for de Wolfe since leaving the priory was starting to ease somewhat. She knew the man was only doing as he’d been ordered, as he’d told her, but the fact remained that he was the catalyst for her upheaval. It was difficult to forgive him for that. As she sat and lifted her hands up to the fire, warming them, she began to notice movement in the room beyond the hearth.
    Through the flames, she could see de Wolfe’s men making themselves comfortable in the loft on the other side. They had their possessions and were finding a place to lie down and rest. Several of them were crowded up by the hearth, but because there was no light in her room other than firelight, they couldn’t see her on the other side. But she could certainly see them and she saw quite clearly when one soldier laid a wench on her back right in front of the hearth.
    Curious, Kathalin peered through the flames as the woman lay on her back and giggled at the man, who was just out of her view. But Kathalin’s curiosity turned to astonishment when the man suddenly threw himself down on top of the woman and fumbled with her skirts, lifting them, whilst also fussing with his breeches until they slid halfway down his buttocks. As his companions yelled encouragement to him, the man spread the woman’s legs and, to her giggles and moans, thrust himself into her waiting body.
    Shocked, Kathalin quickly turned away, averting her gaze as the soldier made love to