The Princess and the Rogue Read Free Page A

walked along.
    “It is the bandit, Rand LaFlors,” said Sister Bernice. “The road here does skirt the edge of Darkwood Forest.”
    “I don’t think we have anything to fear from Rand LaFlors,” said Scarlett. “He only robs people with money. We’d be a poor haul, I’m afraid. The pennies in my pocket are hardly worth his time, sisters. I’m more afraid of the men in the service of the red countess.”
    Both of the sisters crossed themselves at the mention of the name. “Don’t even use that name, Scarlett. It gives her power. The woman is evil, I can feel it in my bones,” said Sister Bernice. “Pray the good lord protects us from her ilk. We have fallen upon ill times since the earl died.”
    Scarlett shuddered. She was aware of the rumors. Several young girls from Kern and neighboring villages were reported to have disappeared. Some thought the girls had been abducted by the outlaw, Rand LaFlors, and secreted away to his hideout, deep in Darkwood Forest. Others thought that they were taken to serve Lady Morgaine at Bathen Castle. That was not so unusual in itself. Often young girls were sent by their families to enter service in the houses of the landed nobles. What was unusual was the rumor that some had been taken against their will, and had been cut off from their families. Just last week a council of villagers in Kern had dispatched a courier to King Robert asking for assistance. Either way, the villagers needed help.
     
    * * *
     
    Gwri tried to be inconspicuous. He pawed through the fruits and vegetables at the market stalls as if he were really interested in buying, but the proprietress, a beefy farmer’s wife, fixed him with a suspicious glare. Soon she might call for a constable, thinking he was about to steal something. That wouldn’t do. The last thing he wanted was to be noticed. But he rarely was. Gwri’s singular talent was that he was a spy, and a good one. Small and wiry, he moved with a furtive grace that made him almost invisible. That’s why he’d been picked for this task. So unlike Morgaine’s men-at-arms who made everyone run and hide whenever they were about, Gwri just blended in, observing, listening, and taking note.
    Red hair, his mistress had said. Long red hair. And young. And pretty . Well, that was a tall order, to find a maid of those qualities. He’d hit market days in four surrounding villages and, so far, nothing. But it was a mission at which he wanted to succeed. The red countess rewarded her servants who delivered.
    He’d gotten a taste of that a week before when she’d summoned him to her private punishment chamber. At first his blood had run cold. The infamous room, deep in the bowels of Castle Bathen, was a place to which no one went willingly. He’d heard the stories. So he had sweated nervously, which had caused his wool singlet to itch and chafe as he’d been escorted to see his mistress.
    But to his delight, it was not he who was destined for the post or the block. As he was shown inside, he could see a pair of maids, pretty ones, too, naked as the day they were born, bound to the whipping frames. A frame of this type consisted of an upright post with a short padded trestle joined to it at waist height by a brace. The post had manacles for securing the hands. The naked maids were bent over the trestle, their arms stretching forward to the manacles on the post. The posture accentuated the thrust of their succulent buttocks, much to Gwri’s delight.
    Morgaine noticed Gwri and motioned for him to stand back. She then grasped a rod made of stout switches from a bucket of brine and shook it. Gwri heard her scold the girls about something having to do with a broken glass and then she proceeded to give each one what must have been the flogging of her life.
    Gwri couldn’t keep his eyes off the flexing, bounding buttocks as the switches fell. The girls’ skin turned pink, then red, with repeated applications of the birch rod. There was much wailing and many