Enduringly Yours Read Free Page B

to.
    Peter.
    She could kill him. She could . . . She could . . . She wiped her eyes.
    Stop it. Stop your foolish tears.
    Zipporah slowed her gelding to a walk. She was not ready to go home yet, but she knew she couldn’t stay away too long either, lest Sir Gilburn realize she was missing and come looking for her.
    She hugged her gelding’s neck, getting horsehair all over her wet face. Memories crashed over her like waves on the pebbled lake shore. Some were so painful she had to turn away from them. Some were so sweet she never wanted to forget. Even if she had to marry another man, Peter would always be her first.
    Did that mean she still had feelings for him?
    Well, that was an understatement. When had she not had feelings for him? But she’d trusted him once, in her misguided innocence, and found him to be no more mature—
    No more mature than she was.
    Was it fair to blame him when she was the one who had willingly let him into her bed? It wasn’t as if he’d forced himself on her. Yet when she’d later decided she was uncomfortable, he had coaxed her on. He may have been an unschooled lad, but he’d made a girl feel like a woman.
    Her gelding turned his head and snorted. Zipporah looked over her shoulder. Down the way she’d come stood a single rider. His horse pawed the dirt, anxious to move on. Recognizing Peter’s stallion, she turned the rein to face him fully.
    Peter never listened. Never.
    With a sigh, she cantered toward him. Peter didn’t move, waiting for her to come to him. She pulled back on the reins, her horse sliding to a stop.
    “I could not just leave you like this,” he said.
    Well that was a change. He had left her so willingly before, his seed rooting within her. Not that he’d known about the baby. She had not even known yet.
    “I asked you not to follow,” she said. “I am trying to protect you.”
    His brows arched. “Protect me?”
    Zipporah looked him over, taking note of the way his sandy hair hung past his shoulders, longer than he used to wear it. Peter’s face was tanned to a deep gold. His green eyes reflected the experiences he’d gained at war.
    “Like it or not, you are vulnerable,” he said. “I do not trust Gilburn.”
    Neither did she, but she wasn’t going to say anything that might further encourage Peter. Zipporah rubbed the leather reins between her fingers. “My father trusts him.”
    “Your father, pardon me, is blinded by the boy he raised himself.” Peter’s stallion danced to one side and he reined the animal back in.
    Gilburn had come to her father as an orphan. Gilburn’s sire, a knight, had been killed in the line of duty, and his mother in the fire that destroyed his home.
    “I know how to deal with Gilburn,” she said, trying not to wince.
    A lock of hair fell over Peter’s forehead. A glint of sun dappling through branches of alder and yew, tinted it to gold. She had the insane urge to brush it back for him. Did his hair feel just like it had before? He shook it out of his face.
    “I have gained a good deal of common sense over the last three years,” she told him.
    “You have always had it.” The sudden husky tenor in his voice stirred her inside.
    She cleared her throat. “My life is not what it was before. It all falls on me now. My mother’s wellbeing. My future.” She spoke more quietly. “If anyone found out about us, I could lose everything.”
    Never mind the stretch marks on her stomach. Zipporah winced, hoping Peter didn’t notice.
    He urged his horse closer to hers. “No one will ever know. You had my word before, and you still have it now.”
    She nodded, twisting the reins in her fingers. “The land will go to Gilburn. My father told him so. Gilburn is loyal to Prince John, and now he has his approval as well.”
    “But not King Richard’s.”
    “What difference does it make? The king will not help me. No offense, but all he cares about is his holy war.”
    Peter hesitated before answering. “I wouldn’t give up