Once Upon a Romance 02 - As The Last Petal Falls Read Free

seriously consider that she had gone mad in the woods, and was imagining this whole thing.
    The grey-tipped wolf turned his muzzle and yipped a greeting, and Vivi became aware of a dark, blurred shape headed in her direction. When she raised her eyes she saw a heavily bundled man astride a horse, bearing down on her from the direction of the keep. He reined up just inside the circle of wolves.
    “What have we here?” The deep voice was shocking after so long alone. At least, that’s what Vivi told herself. It was the only excuse she could think of when, after trudging across half a mountain on foot during a blizzard, and trying to outrace a pack of wolves on a wild madcap flight downhill, her brain finally surrendered to the inevitable and let the blackness of oblivion sweep her away.

Chapter Two
    Fain MacTíre stared at the lump on the bed with annoyance. When the first report had reached him that the wolves had cornered someone right outside the walls, he had been concerned, alarmed even. He’d wasted no time in riding out to retrieve the intruder, but he’d been shocked by what he found.
    It was a woman. An apparently wealthy, obviously young, exceedingly lost woman. In other words, a complete mystery. She wore riding attire, but there was no horse in evidence. She carried practically nothing on her, but her money pouch held coins minted in Albion, not Toldas. How had a wealthy woman from Albion ended up horseless in his mountain range?
    He’d told Marlplot to take her to a room and get her warm. Of course, like an idiot, he hadn’t specified which room, and Marlplot, who really
was
an idiot, had promptly left the lass in Fain’s very own chamber. In Fain’s very own bed. Underneath Fain’s very own covers. He wouldn’t normally have minded finding a lass left in his bed, especially a dark-haired beauty like this one, but the circumstances here were hardly normal.
    The longer he sat and glared at the lump keeping him from his own bed, the more suspicious he grew. What were the chances that anyone here would have a pouch full of Albian gold on their person? The majority of the inhabitants of this region wouldn’t have
any
type of gold on them, even the Toldan nobility wouldn’t generally carry this much. A noble of Albion might be in possession of a pouch like that, but the chances of an Albian noble straying across the border into the untamed wilderness alone were small indeed. When you added to that the fact that the person in question was a barely grown woman… no, it just wasn’t conceivable.
    On the other hand, a woman showing up alone outside a keep in winter would almost always be given shelter inside. And money from a foreign kingdom would make it far less likely that any would suspect her of being sent from Toldas.
    Which could mean that she was a spy.
    Fain scrubbed at his face with his hands. Gods above, he was getting to be a suspicious man. He was going to feel like the worst kind of rascal if the lass turned out to be just what she had appeared to be when he scooped her up from the snow: lost, frightened, and utterly alone. He couldn’t take the chance, though. This wasn’t just about him anymore; this was about all his men, and their families as well. So he stood up, wiped all sign of reluctance from his face, and strode over to the bed to yank the covers off and slap the woman awake.
    Her eyes-a vivid shade of violet-were open.
    He was startled for a moment, but covered it with a scowl. He waited for her to say something, some sad, pitiful thing that would wring his heart, the kind of thing that a lass lost and alone would say. The kind of thing a spy would say, to worm her way in.
    Instead she started giggling.
    “Point four!” the woman tittered, “You neglected to mention that, if rescued at all, it would be by scowling, terrifying men who stare at you in your sleep!”
    Maybe she wasn’t a spy. Maybe she was a deranged lunatic, instead. Clearly she was on the verge of hysteria. She