Free The King's Mistress by Sandy Blair Page A

Lady Armstrong yelped. A heartbeat later, the pair crashed through the undergrowth, his snorting destrier in the lead, the gray behind them.
    Lady Armstrong, tear-streaked and dirty, tangled braids falling about her shoulders, spying him, dropped the reins. He was nearly knocked off his feet as she slammed into him. Throwing her arms about his neck, she cried, “Thank God, you’re alive! He said that he’d killed you.”
    “ Shhh , m’lady.” He pulled her back into the protection of the ancient tree. “I told you to stay hidden. Do you ever mind?”
    “On occasion, but you were gone so long—”
    “Who said I was dead?”
    She stroked his cheek and studied him, as if not believing her eyes. “I’ve no idea. He’s large but not so tall as you. He came up behind me with sword in hand and said you were dead. He said I’d become a serious inconvenience to the queen and then tried to kill me!”
    Wondering how she managed to escape, he asked, “Where is he now?”
    She blanched and pointed behind her. “Back there. I shot him…in the eye. Heaven help me, I only meant…”
    “Is he dead?”
    “Nay, but badly wounded and—Merciful God, you’re bleeding!” She was staring at his blood-drenched side and the broken shaft protruding from it.
    “Aye, but we’ll tend to it after I deal with the blackguard.” Men like Montre could take an arrow to the heart and still keep fighting. Britt pushed off the tree and took her hand. “Come.”
    At the outcrop of rock where he’d left Lady Armstrong, he found Montre helmless and covered in blood, an arrow lying at his side. At the grisly sight, Lady Armstrong keened and staggered away, a hand over her mouth. Britt leaned over Montre and discovered the man still lived.
    Hmm. Should he put the bastard out of his misery now or haul him back to Edinburgh where he could answer to a furious Alexander? The first option held the most appeal, given the bastard’s arrow was still imbedded in his side. But His Majesty needed to know of what level of duplicity—of what lengths—his new queen was capable.
    Teeth grit, Britt reached up and pulled the rope from his saddle, then bound Montre hand and foot. Once satisfied Montre would be most uncomfortable but secured should he awake, he took his wound kit from his saddlebag. “M’lady, a moment of your time, please.”
    Lady Armstrong, her coronet and braids askew, dashed the tears from her bonnie blue but now red-rimmed eyes. Taking pains not to look at Montre, she asked, “Aye?”
    “I need your help removing this arrow.”
    Her brows tented as she looked at his bloodied side. “What would you have me do?”
    He held out his sgian duhb . “Hit the shaft firmly with the blade’s hilt so I might remove this damn arrow.”
    “Uhmm…of course.”
    Britt handed her the blade, then, wincing, pulled his right arm free of both chain mail and shirt.
    Nodding like a sandpiper, she wiped her palms on her skirts, bent and explored his side with tentative fingers. “Dear God above, MacKinnon. The tip has another two inches to travel.”
    “Aye, just give it a hard whack and drive the point through. I’d do it myself, but as you can see, the shaft is at an angle I can’t readily hit.” When she made no move to do his bidding, he glanced over his shoulder and found her gnawing her lower lip. Hoping to distract her from the task at hand, he murmured, “And I thought we agreed to call each other by our Christian names.”
    A single tear spilled over her thick lashes as she took a shuddering breath. “My name is Geneen. Greer is my twin.”
    Ah ha! As he suspected. “How do you do?”
    She dashed the wetness from her cheek. “Not at all well at the moment, if you must ken.”
    He grinned. “Nor I, but let’s be done with this, shall we?”
    Britt faced forward so as not to make her anymore anxious than she already appeared and grit his teeth. And a good thing he did. Geneen Armstrong held naught of her eight stones back when she