Roses in the Tempest Read Free Page B

as bodices began to intrigue me. “Well, then,” I muttered indignantly, for indeed, what could I have said? Reaching into a pouch at my belt I tossed a coin that landed with a gentle thud at her feet.
    The impudent creature stared at the disk a long moment before glaring at me. “What is this?”
    “For your trouble,” I said, and thought that was that. I had only tilted some urchin into a ditch and no harm was done, except to that of my good humor. That was ruined. It forced me to consider how Father would have needed to save my neck if…but no matter. The creature was alive and well and now a groat richer.
    “Do you think you can buy your way out of your troubles?” she said, stepping before me again. Like some fishwife she shook a scolding finger at me. “You sir, are a poor young man indeed.”
    “I am no one’s ‘poor young man’! I am Thomas Giffard, son of Sir John Giffard.” I rose in the saddle, lengthened by my own nobility. “And I will thank you to treat your betters with more respect.”
    “Forgive me, my lord,” she said without one shred of regard, “but I expect my betters not to hurl me into the mud, nor insult me with coin as if I were a beggar. I am Isabella Launder and my father is Yeoman Rafe Launder, owner of this grange near which you ride so heedlessly. And I would thank you to offer the proper civility to the king’s subjects who must travel this road. You may take your coin back, sir. I have no use for it.”
    Tightening my gloved hand on the reins, I stared astonished at the coin still sitting in the mud and then at her lank frame. I should have lashed back. She looked as if she expected it, braced for it. But the amazing circumstance of her refusal aroused in me an unexpected awe, the same often aroused in me when I witnessed my father in poised confrontation with a room full of nobles. “I…I did not mean anything…”
    “I know,” she offered, softening. With more grace than her loose limbs could be credited, she stooped to retrieve the coin and placed it into my outstretched hand.
    “You are an unusual maid,” I said frowning. But I could not sustain that frown under her onslaught. I smiled.
    My confidence faltered her own short-lived courage, and abruptly she dropped those proud eyes. “So I have been told.”
    I expelled another relieved breath, slapped my thigh, and replaced the coin. “This is your father’s farm?” I asked conversationally, putting her off guard again.
    “Yes. It has been in our family for several generations.” She seemed chagrined suddenly as if she did not intend to speak out of turn. Her discomfort only assured me.
    “We live at Caverswall Castle,” I said. She stared at the gleaming silver of my stirrup. Surely it was finer than any plate she possessed at home. That knowledge reassured me further.
    “I know who you are, my lord.”
    As she said it, I saw all our servants and all the courtiers that have ever known me, saw them look and see the Thomas Giffard they expected, and I knew that not one of them truly did know me, know my thoughts on politics and faith, know my hopes and dreams for myself, understand how much I wanted to be my own man. “No,” I answered enigmatically. “I am afraid you do not.”
    It was that small utterance which caused her to study my face more closely. She was only the daughter of a yeoman farmer from a long generation of farmers and landowners. She said so herself. But her long nose and incomprehensible eyes nevertheless intrigued me. How they looked at me! Perhaps through me. They never should look at me with anything but deference, and there were many occasions when my glove struck a similar expression from the face of a liveried stable boy. Yet on her, such sincerity was disarming.
    “I must go,” I said. I leaned forward over the saddle bow, beckoning her closer by a softer manner. “Should I come this way again, I would be bound to see you, would I not?”
    An expression looking neither