Rebellious Love Read Free

washed over her, each greater than the last. She floundered on the edge of awareness before her last strength dissolved. A deep well awaited her, plummeting her far from all but the promise of release.

CHAPTER 2
    V erony returned to consciousness reluctantly. Every inch of her body ached. A hammer pounded in her head, and her throat was painfully dry. She stirred fitfully, a soft whimper escaping from between her clenched lips.
    "There, there, dear, don't be trying to move," a gentle voice murmured. "Just lie still. You'll be better soon." Lifted, Verony felt the rim of a cup pressed to her mouth. She drank greedily, the cool water tasting like nectar. Only when she was lowered again to the soft pillow did she dare to open her eyes.
    She was lying in a small, sparsely furnished room whose contours were as familiar to her as those of her own face. Her old sleeping chamber. The room she had grown up in, but which she had never imagined seeing again.
    Against one wall, a trestle table still held the battered brass ewer she had kept filled with wild-flowers or dried herbs. A leather- and bronze-studded chest which had once held her clothes stood at the foot of the narrow bed. Glancing down, she recognized even the wool blanket covering her. It was one woven at the keep, dyed crimson with blossoms she herself had collected not two summers before. The bright color complemented those used in the tapestry done by her long-dead mother which hung opposite the bed. In the soft light filtering through the shuttered windows, the wall hanging had the gently muted aspect of an old friend.
    "H-how . . . ?" Verony began, struggling upright. The hand on her shoulder stopped her.
    "No, my lady, you must not try to move. Please. Rest is what you need." The voice grew coaxing. "Be a good girl now. Mayhap you'll be able to get up shortly."
    Verony's eyes widened as she stared from the withered hand on her shoulder to the kindly, well-remembered face just above her. "Hilda! What are you doing here? It can't be ... I must be dreaming. ..."
    The velvet-brown eyes of the woman who had cared for Verony since her birth filled with tears. "No, child," she murmured, "it's no dream. You're back where you belong, and mine to look after once again. So Lord Curran says, God bless him!"
    This last piece of information, uttered with remarkable sincerity, shocked Verony to full awareness. Despite Hilda's restraining hand, the young girl straightened abruptly. "What are you saying?" she demanded. "Lord Curran brought me here? That can't be."
    "And who else do you think could have carried you into this keep, right up to this very room," Hilda insisted tartly. Beneath the snow-white wimple framing her finely lined face, her expression regained much of its accustomed authority.
    "But-but... I stabbed him," Verony breathed, struggling against a growing sense of unreality. "In the forest. I remember. He caught me with . . . That is, he caught me poaching. He was going to ... I thought... his men ..." A dull flush stained her cheeks. "I couldn't get away, so I stabbed him. I thought ..."
    "What did you think, child?" Hilda asked gently. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she took both of Verony's hands in hers.
    The young girl looked at her dazedly. Surely this was a dream? She could not be lying in her own room, with her old nurse tending her. She must be unconscious and dying, perhaps even dead. Yet everything about her proclaimed that she was very much alive and even safe, if only temporarily.
    "I thought they were going to kill me for poaching," she explained in a low voice. "But I was afraid that before I died, they would rape me. So I tried to make them slay me right away. But it didn't work. I am here, and Lord Curran must be very angry." She broke off, struggling to hide her fear. If only she knew what punishment he intended for her, she would be better able to meet it courageously.
    Looking up, Verony was startled by the sheen of tears in her nurse's brown