LADY UNDAUNTED: A Medieval Romance Read Free Page A

two years of age, Joslyn passed through the gate and walked to the front of the manor house.
    Shading her eyes, she scanned the village, but all she saw were her neighbors leaving their homes to witness the cause of the din—as did the manor servants coming behind Joslyn.
    Concluding the riders must be her father and his men bearing bad tidings, since others of such great number would have been turned away at the village gates, Joslyn lifted her skirts and stepped onto the green that well evidenced yesterday’s rainfall. She was a quarter of the way across when the riders appeared. Out of the village they came, turning onto the road leading to the manor.
    She faltered. They were distant, but she could see it was not her father at the fore. Instead, the sun shone on one who sat taller in the saddle than was possible for Humphrey Reynard, one whose head was crowned with hair of red.
    “Dear Lord, he has come!” She ran, desperate to reach Oliver and get him inside and the door bolted.
    How I wish this once he had disobeyed me and followed! she silently cried. There being no entrance into the manor from the garden, she would have to retrieve her son and retrace her steps.
    As she neared the great house, the servants called to her, but there was no time to attend to them.
    She lunged past the gate. “Oliver!”
    He was where she had left him, eyes wide. “Mama?”
    She gathered him up and hastened back to the gate. But when she stepped from the garden, she saw the red-headed rider had broken from the others and was headed across the green toward her. He had seen her, surely guessed who fled him.
    Joslyn measured the distance from the manor door to the one whose hair proclaimed he was Liam Fawke. She could not make it. What, then? She would not simply stand here and allow this man to do what he intended, but neither could she scale the high back wall.
    “Who’s that?” Oliver asked of the one thundering toward them.
    She pivoted back into the garden and ran to a portion of the wall in need of repair. If she and Oliver could squeeze through the hole, the wood beyond the village wall would provide refuge.
    She set her son on his feet, dropped to all fours, and shoved aside the fallen stones. But there was only time to clear enough to allow the little boy to pass through.
    “Listen to me, Oliver. There is a bad man coming. You must hide.”
    “Bad man?”
    “Do you remember—”
    “The red knight?”
    She pulled him near and lifted his chin. “Aye, the red knight. Do you remember the old oak by the stream, the one with the large hollow in its trunk?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I want you to crawl through here”—she nodded at the breach in the wall—“and run as fast as you can to the postern gate.” Unless someone had closed it this past hour, it would be open. “Go into the wood and hide in the oak.”
    “But there is bugs in it. You said I could not—”
    “This is different. You must hide there so the bad man cannot find you. Do you understand?”
    At his nod, she kissed his brow. “I will come for you shortly.” She pushed him toward the hole.
    Oliver dropped to his knees. “Will he hurt you, Mama?”
    She forced a smile. “He will not. Now make haste.”
    Once his bottom disappeared and she heard the beat of his feet over the ground, she straightened, retrieved the rake she had earlier discarded, and hurried back across the garden. Pressing herself against the wall alongside the gate, she raised her weapon.
    She expected Liam Fawke to propel his mount into the garden as recklessly as he had over the green, but he reined in before the open gate, his destrier’s heavy breathing and the shadow the animal and its rider threw the only proof of their presence.
    Here was no unseasoned knight. Certes, he suspected what he could not see. And that was good, for the longer he stayed without, the more time Oliver had to reach the wood.
    The horse bolted into the garden.
    Joslyn swung at the man’s back and landed a