Read Warped (Maurissa Guibord) for Free Online

his older brother, pounding up on his charger.
    "Where are you going?" Hugh de Chaucy demanded, panting as he reined in. Hugh always rode, Will had observed, as if he were doing the work, not the horse.
    Will quickly surveyed the meadow. He relaxed slightly--there was no sign of her. Hugh hadn't noticed anything. "Going?" he repeated distractedly, "Oh. Right. Just going for a ride. No need to follow me."
    "Alone? Why?" Hugh looked truly puzzled.
    He never understood. Hugh liked to be surrounded by friends and noise and laughter. An hour's worth of quiet contemplation entailed two things he particularly despised: quiet and contemplation. But sometimes these things were all Will desired.
    "I just wanted to ride," said Will, shrugging off his brother's watchful gaze and examining the distant line of trees. Yet he could feel the weight of Hugh's assessing look. Will wore a shirt of rough cambric, doeskin breeches and soft boots. A woolen cloak so old as to be of uncertain color was slung across his broad shoulders.
    "You're not dressed to hunt," Hugh observed. His voice held a faint but unmistakable air of disappointment.
    "No," Will said firmly. If Hugh thought there was the least chance of killing something, he would insist on coming along. "I just want to ride." He glanced to the meadow again, where jogging along awkwardly now was a portly youth who stopped and peered along the ground. He seemed to be searching for something. Will watched as the youth scratched his head and then his crotch.
    "I just want to think, " Will amended. Surely that would put Hugh off.
    "Hmm. It must be a girl," said Hugh. When Will shot a frown at him, Hugh gave a triumphant grin that broadened his ruddy face and made his blue eyes nearly disappear in sparkling crescents above his cheeks. "It is a girl." He slapped his meaty thigh.
    Will didn't reply but raked an impatient hand through his hair and silently cursed his brother. Would Hugh never leave? Will peered down the slope and frowned. Now the youth seemed to be entangled in a bush of some sort.
    "Is it that short one from the village, the one with the hair in yellow ringlets?" Hugh sighed. "I love ringlets."
    "Don't be an idiot," Will said, perhaps a little too quickly. He hoped his face didn't show anything. But he needn't have worried about revealing anything subtle to his brother. He had poked Hugh's temper, which was as quick as his smile.
    Hugh reached out and cuffed him. Despite the glancing blow and the gloved fist, Will's head snapped as if it hung on strings, and his teeth rattled together.
    "Watch your tongue, little brother," said Hugh pleasantly.
    Indeed, Will checked his tongue, as well as his teeth. All there. His brother spoke with his fists. Fighting was a second language to Hugh, really, in which he was fluent. Foul-mouthed, but fluent.
    "I forgot to say good morning," Hugh added, baring his teeth in a smile.
    Will rubbed his throbbing ear, all thoughts of the girl in the wood, for the moment, driven from his head. "You do know," he said to Hugh, "you can't go around doing that once you're at court."
    Hugh shrugged. "When we get to London, I'll let Father do the talking."
    Right. Will frowned at the thought. That would not be a vast improvement. "Perhaps I should come along," he suggested, knowing even as he did that it was a wasted effort.
    "Father's already told you no," said Hugh. He straightened in the saddle and announced, in a fair imitation of their father's deep, authoritarian boom: " 'There must always be a de Chaucy at Hartescross.' Besides," he added, nodding toward the huddle of wattle-and-daub cottages in the distance, "what if one of the villagers has a complaint? Suppose there're weevils in the barley? Suppose somebody steals a chicken? Who better to deal with it than the earl's younger son? A young Solomon."
    "You're very funny," Will told him. Then, more quietly, "You leave today, then?"
    Hugh's face sobered and he looked out to the right, where the fields and