The Prince Kidnaps a Bride Read Free Page A

if it was still day.
    Nevertheless, he toiled willingly, ate heartily, and grinned good-naturedly while waiting either for the owner to claim the boat or for Mother Brigette to grant it to him.
    Sorcha wished Arnou would take the boat and row away. Yes, she needed the help in the garden, but somehow his presence contributed to her restlessness.
    And why? He was just a fisherman. He knew nothing of Beaumontagne, of the palace with its long curved stairways and its marble columns, of the riding paths that wound through the mountains, of the primal woods and the thundering waterfalls. Beaumontagne...
    Last night in her cell, she’d dreamed of home. She ran down endless palace corridors looking for her sisters, her father, her grandmother—and realized at last something hunted her . She had woken with her heart pounding and her senses humming. Sitting up, she’d stared at the high, small window in her door. She’d listened to the silence outside. She’d been convinced she had heard footsteps outside her cell. Slowly, timidly, she’d crept to the door.
    The convent’s buildings were arranged in an open square around the courtyard, with the chapel in the center of the complex and the meeting rooms and sleeping cells fanning out on the wings. Her cell was at the end of one wing, and when she peered out she saw the gardens wrapped in darkness, the starlit night, the setting moon. The wind moved the treetops, but on the ground, nothing stirred.
    She heard no more footsteps, but she would have sworn—
    “What do you think of him?” a composed, French-accented voice asked.
    Startled, Sorcha turned to see Mother Brigette standing on the stone walk. Mother Brigette always moved with grace and deliberation, but Sorcha must have been deep in thought not to notice her approach. Removing her large straw hat, Sorcha turned it in her hands. “He’s a good worker and we can always use help.”
    “Sister Theresa thinks he’s touched.” Seating herself beneath a twisted crab apple tree, Mother Brigette indicated the bench beside her. “Do you?”
    “No, not at all.” Touched? No! “He’s just... easily distracted. And he talks too much. He’s... ” Sorcha sat, also, and searched for the right word to describe Arnou. “Annoying.”
    “I see.” A brief smile lit the winter of Mother Brigette’s face. “He says he’s from
Normandy
, and although it’s been years since I visited there, I believe that could be the peasant accent.” She sounded like a French aristocrat, her face was richly lined with experience.
    “So you... do you think he’s who he says he is?” Sorcha had grown to respect Mother Brigette’s opinion in all things.
    “Why?” Her gray eyes scoured Sorcha. “Do you think he’s lying?”
    Sorcha shrugged uneasily. “If that boat isn’t his, whose is it?”
    “That’s a question I would like answered.” Mother Brigette was thin—all the nuns were thin, for this was a poor convent—and she sat with her spine straight, never allowing herself the comfort offered by the back of the bench. “I walked on the shore this morning. There were the fresh marks of a man’s boots.”
    “Boots.” Sorcha looked at Arnou’s feet. They were clad in leather clogs and he’d come with nothing except the clothes on his back. “Two men on the island?”
    “So it appears.”
    “But why? If there’s another man stranded, why wouldn’t he come to the convent?” But even before Mother Brigette could speak, Sorcha’s memory flew back to her dream, to the fear that something was chasing her.
    “Perhaps because of you?” Mother Brigette suggested gently.
    “Do you think I have to go back to... ” Sorcha hesitated.
    “To the throne of Beaumontagne?” In the face of Sorcha’s astonishment, Mother Brigette smiled austerely. “Did you think I didn’t know?”
    “You’ve never before mentioned my title. I’ve always wondered if you knew. If Godfrey had even told you.”
    “He did not. He gave me money, a