Free Knight's Captive by Samantha Holt Page A

under his
protection. If he let her burrow any farther under his skin, she’d have him
releasing her into the wild and God knows what would happen to either of them.
He had to fulfil his duties and get back in the Queen’s favour. He had to erase
any notion of dishonour from his family.
    Damn, if he could only forget the feel of her
sweet lips beneath his. He’d do it all again if he could.
    Instead he was standing outside her door,
watching the sway of her hips beneath cotton that was too thin. He swallowed
hard. Antonia padded over to the washbowl and swiped a cloth over her arms and
neck. Her hair was loose and wavy. She must have just unbound it. Henry longed
to thrust his hands into it.
    She raised her shift to reveal one leg, propping
it on the end of the bed. He knew she had long legs. He knew they were slender.
His imagination hadn’t done them justice.
    Hell fire.
    Long. Endlessly long. The kind of legs a man
imagined wrapped around him. Antonia scrubbed her leg to the top of the inside
of her thighs and his mouth became drier than Torquay sand. Then she switched
legs, giving him a fine view as she rubbed the cloth all the way to the top of
her leg. Her fingers were so close to the apex of her thighs. All she need do
was lift her chemise just a—
    Someone coughed at the top of the stairs, and he
jumped back to see Kate with a fresh bundle of garments. He braced himself for
her to say something and reveal his dishonourable behaviour but instead she
gave him a knowing look and breezed past him into the bedchamber before firmly
shutting the door.
    Henry shook his head and pushed his fingers
through his beard. Damnation.
    When he entered the hall, he paused and held
back a groan. The priest, Reverend Reed, awaited him. The young man, two years
his junior, dabbed his sleeve to his forehead and dipped his head. Henry
concluded the man must have rushed up the hill to ensure he met with him first
thing.
    “Mr Reed, ‘tis a pleasure.”
    “Good morrow, sir.”
    “Will you take a drink with me? Is the day very
warm?”
    “Not yet, but it promises to be.”
    Henry cast his gaze over the balding man.
Reverend Reed had been raised in Torbay and they knew each other well—though
there was no love lost between them—but had only been in the Parish for a year
and was determined to be seen as a true shepherd to his flock. Yet he lacked
any leadership skills or the charisma that many successful clergymen had.
    “A drink then?” he prompted, leading him into
the dining room. Reed gratefully drank down an ale and
Henry turned his attention away from the man and his noisy way of drinking to
eye the table set for the morning meal. Would Antonia be joining him soon? Was
she still washing? Had she stripped down so Kate could help her wash her back?
    God’s blood, if he was there, he would scrub
every inch of her, all the way down to the curve of her bottom and then he’d
turn her around and—
    “You have a Spanish woman here, I believe?”
    He jerked his attention back to the priest. What
was he doing? Could his thoughts get any more depraved? And while speaking with
a man of the cloth... He gave himself a mental shake.
    “Aye, she’s the daughter of the commander of the
ship we captured.”
    Reed began to pace the room and he dabbed his
upper lip with his sleeve. “There are some...murmurs of discontent from the
villagers. These prisoners are using our food stores.” The priest met his gaze
before dropping his head to make a show of studying one of the books left lying
on the table. “Having a Catholic woman under your charge may not be wise, Sir
Henry.”
    “How so? Am I
meant to lock her up with three hundred men who have not laid hands on female
flesh for months while her father is abed with a broken leg?”
    Colour burst free on the priest’s cheeks. “I
understand that you are in a difficult predicament...”
    “There is no difficulty in my predicament,” he
barked. “I am charged with ensuring these