The Love Knot Read Free

a random raid. It was destruction for destruction's sake, and someone had derived warped pleasure from the deed. Oliver shivered at the thought and wondered how men managed to live with themselves.
    Reaching the shelter, he stooped inside and crouched beside Amice. His dark cloak covered her from throat to feet, making her resemble a corpse on a bier. Her skin was waxen, her eye sockets the dark hollows of a skull. To one side there was a pile of bloodied rags made from a torn-up undershift.
    For a moment his inner eye exchanged these cramped surroundings for the well-appointed bedchamber of his brother's keep at Ashbury, the fire built high, the huge walnut-wood bed dwarfing Emma's pale, still form. Her cold hands were wrapped around the cross that the priest had given her to hold in her dying moments and had it not been for the drained complexion, the bluish tinge in socket and cheekbone, she might have been asleep. Five years had passed, but the memory was still unbearable.
    'Amice?' Kneeling, he held her hand.
    Turning her head, she forced her lids apart. Her fingers twitched and Oliver felt the cold strike through his own warm flesh.
    'You know that Richard is the old King's son,' she said in a thready whisper.
    'Yes, of course I do.' And what a scandal it had been at the time. A girl of sixteen and a man old enough to be her grandfather. People said that the troubles in
England
now were God's payback for Henry's fifty years of lechery.
    'It has been so long. I do not know the roads you travel these days, but I ask . . .' she swallowed. 'I ask you to take Richard to his kin at Bristol.'
    'I serve his uncle, Earl Robert, and I'm bound there of my own accord. You need not worry about the lad. I'll deliver him safe.'
    She gave him the ghost of a smile. 'I know you will. You were always steadfast, whatever the temptation.'
    He winced. She did not know how close he had come to yielding to that temptation.
    'Emma saw it in you. I was jealous of her.'
    He cleared his throat and looked away; he did not want to think about Emma. 'It is in the past.'
    'It is as fresh as yesterday,' she contradicted.
    Oliver fought the urge to leap to his feet and stalk away. What she said was true. Despite the passage of time, some memories remained as sharp as glass. If Amice had been jealous of Emma, how much more had he envied Amice her life and her healthy child. Both might have been his had he chosen differently. Now, in place of envy there was weariness and the all-too-familiar sensation of guilt.
    'There is one more boon I must ask of you while I yet have breath,' Amice whispered.
    Oliver clenched his jaw to withhold the snarl gathering within him. When he spoke, it was with great gentleness, his hand smoothing hers. 'Name it, and it is yours.'
    'Find a place at Bristol for Catrin too. She is a widow without family and she has been a loyal companion to me.'
    'As you wish.'
    'Nothing is as I wish.' Amice smiled bitterly. 'Yesterday was better.' She closed her eyes. 'In the garden, Emma and I . . .'
    Oliver set his hand against her throat. The pulse still beat there, but erratically. Her breath stirred the guard hairs on the wolfskin border of his cloak; then it didn't and her mouth fell open. Oliver released her hand and gently crossed it with the other one upon her breast. In the garden. Was that a reference to the past or where she was now?
    Taking his cloak, he returned slowly to the fire where the living were gathered.
    Catrin rose from her place beside the boy and hurried to meet him. Her eyes went from his face to the cloak draped over his arm and he saw the small shudder run through her body.
    'I will tell the lad,' he said quietly. 'Go and prepare her so that he can look at her if he wants.'
    Her gaze filled with hostility. 'It is not right. You are a complete stranger to him.'
    'Sometimes it is better that way. You will still be here to give him comfort, won't you?' He nodded towards the small shelter. 'I'm sorry.'
    'Don't be!' she