Free A True and Perfect Knight by Rue Allyn

Roger’s arms in a meaty hand.
    “Ask quickly, Haven. I have little time left.”
    “Who wants the king dead? Who talked you into trying to kill Edward?”
    The executioner pulled Roger forward. As the noose was placed ’round his throat, he twisted his head and called out. “I don’t know them all, but Gennie knows the man who convinced me that England is better off without Edward Plantagenet on the throne.”
    The snap of the rope going taut did not hide the crack of Roger’s neck breaking.
    Haven swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and watched his friend’s body dangle in the gentle breeze.
    “A clean death, sir.” The executioner’s face swam into Haven’s view, obscuring what was left of Roger Dreyford. “D’ye want to dispose of the body yerself?”
    “Aye. “Haven reached in his pouch for silver to pay the man. A clean death was not usually given to traitors such as Roger. “I have a cart for transporting him.”
    “Very good, sir. Bring it ’round, and I’ll load the body on fer ye.”
    “Indeed,” Haven murmured to himself. “I should certainly have a talk with the widow. For it is not my manner that leads my men to foolishness, but the widow’s serpentine charm. She needs to understand just what the bounds of her behavior are.”
    Determined to set the widow straight about her behavior with his men, Haven walked to where she sat with her son.
    The sun gleamed in her hair as her laughter rippled forth at the boy’s pranks. Still too slim, the gaunt, dry look of hunger had disappeared. The bruises had faded, no longer hiding the fine slant of her cheekbones. Contentment shimmered in her green eyes, and her full mouth smiled berry bright. Did those lips taste as ripe as they looked?
    Her creamy lavender scent struck him hard. Haven shook his head. She did not affect him. Now that she was clean and healing, she was an attractive woman. Any man would wonder about the feel of her in his arms. But he knew what lay beneath the pretty surface of Genvieve Dreyford. He would not fall victim to her seductive glamour and betray Roger with his wife, no matter how tempting she might be.
    So when he stopped before mother and son, he spoke more sternly than he intended to the boy. “Thomas, attend your aunt. I must speak with your mother.”
    Thomas looked up at him. The boy’s lower lip trembled, but he stood up straight. “Aye, Sir Haven.”
    “It’s all right, Thom. I will only be a little while. When Sir Haven and I are finished, I will join you and Rebecca, and we’ll have some of Rene’s good bread.”
    The boy looked at her.
    “Go on.”
    “All right.”
    He left, peering over his shoulder every three steps, as if he feared she would disappear.
     
    Gennie studied de Sessions as he watched her son run off. The sun gleamed on the man’s mail shirt, surrounding him in a golden haze, much like the angels shown in the windows of the chapels In France. The mail-covered shoulders and chest could have been forged by God’s own smithy. His golden-brown eyes looked on her with the kind of blazing light that bards gave to fairy kings.
    But this was no magical being, she reminded herself. Sir Haven de Sessions was solid and real. His broad forehead, straight nose and unsmiling mouth seemed chiseled in marble. She knew that beneath his hose, his rock-hewn thighs were supple enough to guide a horse without the aid of reins and hands. And those hands. She had come near to swooning the day he had tended her feet, running his strong fingers over her, smoothing lotion into her pain-ridden soles, then binding each foot with a gentleness belied by his strength.
    The man was a danger to any woman who did not know he owned a heart of stone. ’Tis a good thing I know how pigheaded he is, or I might be tempted by all that manliness.
    “What is it you would say to me, that my son may not hear?”
    “Walk with me.” He grasped her by the elbow, giving her no opportunity to protest. He marched toward the