Until the Knight Comes by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

Author:Sue-Ellen Welfonder
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Adult
ISBN: 0446617296
Publisher: Forever Yours
Published: 2006-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Have a care, my lady, or you’ll spill everything.”

“As if I could.” Mariota’s breath caught at her friend’s slip of tongue. “Now—after what you’ve just told me.”

But Nessa simply gave her a long, hard stare and reached for the heavy creel of golden-smoked herrings, wresting the brimming basket from Mariota’s arms and plunking it onto the sturdy kitchen table.

“You wouldn’t know,” she added, wiping her hands, “but such creels are just like the back-creels used for carrying peats and sea-wrack. There’s a hinged bottom, see you? That allows the load to be dropped where’er it’s desired—and not there, where that one lies a-waiting such a savory treat!”

On the last word, Cuillin sat up and raised a paw, his rheumy gaze full of hope.

Glad for the distraction, Mariota shook her head. “Ach, nay, laddie, no herring for you,” she crooned, reaching down to grasp the proffered paw. “But a fine soup bone, you shall have,” she added, handing him a large, well-fleshed bone.

A prize he carried to a far corner of the kitchen, where he flopped down with a contented grunt, the temptation of the smoked herrings promptly forgotten.

Just as she’d surely slipped from Hugh the Bastard’s mind the moment he’d closed his hands on the riper, fleshier curves of the alewife of Assynt.

Mariota shuddered, a red-hot bolt of alarm piercing her fortitude, chills spilling down her spine.

But not because of Hugh Alesone.

Och, nay, a far greater concern plagued her, filled her with uncommon dread and… doubt.

The gnawing fear of just how swiftly he might wash his hands of her if she revealed her last remaining secret—a disclosure she’d hoped to share with him this very e’en, and would have, had not Nessa learned why he favored widows.

Or, better said, why he despised fallen women.

Tainted women, scorned by God and man.

Shadow souls, cast out by their own families, dead in the eyes of those who’d once loved them. Forgotten women, branded as senseless chits for having followed their hearts and trusted, succumbed to the worst glib-tongued, gentle-handed men.

She drew an uneven breath, her lungs filling with the comforting pungency of wood smoke, roasted meats and salt-dried fish. Fresh-baked bannocks and stout, frothy ale. Not that such homey smells made much difference.

Her heart still skittered out of beat, her blood still firing with fury at the past she couldn’t undo.

His past that threatened to withdraw every shred of hope she’d been clinging to.

If he discovered that she was just such a woman as he chose to avoid, her racing pulse taunted her. As did the hot lump in her throat, the stinging heat searing the backs of her eyes.

She bit back a strangled oath and looked around the smoke-hazed kitchen, her gaze going anywhere but to old Cuillin and his bone.

Or Nessa with her all-seeing stare.

A rough-hewn oaken bench stood against the far wall and it was there she turned her attention, aching to cross the room and just sit there, close her eyes and then be somewhere else when she opened them.

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