Read Only For A Knight for Free Online Page A

her.
     
Biting her lip rather than cry out again, she tugged the great plaid a wee bit higher up her breasts. Whate’er had brought her to this miserable pass, she would not sit on the grass and cower before him like a frightened rabbit.
     
“I asked your name,” he repeated, still quite naked and coming forward with a length of cloth he’d ripped from the hem of a clean, dry shirt.
     
Juliana swallowed, tried to keep her gaze on the improvised bandage in his hand.
     
With deft movements, he began securing the linen strip around the top of her head. “Who are you and whither were you bound? Before you decided to take a swim with yon grazing ewe?” He jerked his head toward the still-dripping animal. “Saving her life nigh cost you your own.”
     
“Then I offer you my profoundest gratitude, Sir Knight.” Her voice held just a bit of a quiver, as if she couldn’t quite wrap her tongue around the words.
     
Or didn’t want to—but that was ludicrous.
     
She had no cause to dislike him.
     
His nakedness forgotten, Robbie raked a hand through his damp hair, watched as a variety of emotions played across her lovely face. And the longer he studied her, the more he couldn’t quite shake the impression that she half expected him to sprout horns and a tail.
     
“Robbie will serve,” he minded her again, deliberately keeping his tone light. “Pray do not call me Sir Knight. For you, my lady, I am simply Ro—”
     
“I heard the name, good sir,” she blurted, inching the fool plaid nigh to her chin. A most fetching chin with just a flavor of defiance in its pert lift. “As to my name and where I was going . . . I . . .” She faltered, let the words tail away as her wee spark of oh-so-appealing boldness faded to dismay.
     
She glanced at the mounded heap of her ruined kirtle. A carefully stitched-on patch showed conspicuously amongst the soggy folds.
     
“My name—” she began again, then promptly bit her lower lip, stared at him. “Ach, I can tell you that I am not a lady. That much I know.” She poked her foot at the wet gown. “I vow you will agree that no gently born lass would suffer to wear mended skirts?”
     
Robbie’s jaw tightened. True lady or nay, he’d but meant to accord her the courtesy. And would. “Even so, fair maid, I would still learn your name.”
     
“Think you I would not tell you if—” she started again, only to break off once more, this time pressing her lips together in clear consternation.
     
Her lovely moss-green eyes clouded and she looked past him toward her ancient nag of a garron. But when her gaze left the shaggy beast to light briefly on the spilled coins and her raggedy money purse, Robbie could see her confusion mounting—just as he also would’ve sworn she was inwardly steeling herself before she looked back at him.
     
“You needn’t fear me,” he said, deciding she must indeed be afraid of him, for whatever misplaced reason. “I have ne’er harmed a woman in my life and would sooner cut off my sword arm than cause any female even the most fleeting moment of distress. Gentle-born, cot-reared, or otherwise. You have my word on it.”
     
“I am not affrighted of you, sir,” she declared, her voice a shade stronger. “’Tis only that I have dire need to be on my way.”
     
“Unclothed, my lady?” Robbie couldn’t resist teasing for she’d lurched to her feet so quickly she’d forgotten to hold fast to the plaid.
     
“Oh!” Frozen in shock, she flattened one hand across the lush triangle of red-gold curls at the top of her thighs and jammed the other, spread-fingered, against her well-rounded breasts.
     
Snatching up the two linen shirts he’d also thought to gather, Robbie thrust them at her, indicating the one he’d ripped to make a bandage for her head.
     
“You can use the torn shirt to dry yourself and the other . . . that one, you can wear to cover yourself unless your travel bags hold better?”
     
But a glance at the two leathern satchels assured him they did not.
     
As did the