For Love And Honor Read Online Free Page A

are cousins in various degrees. The mothers of
Alain and Piers were sisters; Alain’s grandfather and mine were
brothers. We are all but a few months apart in age, and as it
happened, we were fostered at the same castle. After being pages
and later squires together, after living together for so many
years, we are more like brothers, and I for one fully expect that
we will remain on the same good terms for the rest of our
lives.”
    “ I pray
it may be so,” Joanna said, silently vowing never to do anything to
damage that precious friendship. She forbade herself to think about
Alain with longing. She would think only of Crispin, her betrothed,
who seemed to her even on such short acquaintance to be an honest,
serious-minded young man. She could respect him, and she
owed him her allegiance.
    But during the feast she could not avoid
talking with Alain, for it would have looked strange if she had
tried to ignore him. When Rohaise excused herself from the table in
order to see to some domestic matter, leaving only an empty seat
separating Crispin from Radulf, and Radulf claimed Crispin’s
attention once again by extolling the benefits of a baron remaining
at home where he would be readily available to attend to any
emergencies on his lands, good manners forced Joanna to converse
with Alain.
    “Crispin’s a fine man,” Alain said, looking
hard at her. “He will treat you well. Be equally gracious to
him.”
    “ I intend
to be the wife he wants.” Her chin was up, her expression cool and
distant. “Nor will I interfere in his friendships.”
    “It’s odd that Crispin should be the first of
us to wed,” Alain mused, “when it’s Piers and I who have always
chased after the ladies, while Crispin never seemed to care about
them at all.”
    Wondering
if he was deliberately trying to ir ritate her to see if he could elicit a heated
response, she kept her voice crisp and cold.
    “I do not consider continence a defect in my
betrothed,” she said, “nor will I find it a fault in my
husband.”
    “ I did
not think you would.” Intensely aware of her pain and confusion,
which he sensed matched his own, Alain ached to touch her, or at
least to say something to commend her gallant attempt to hide the
distress of her spirit. Thanks to her self-control he did not think
anyone in the great hall had noticed the immediate and overwhelming
flare of attraction between them except Piers and, possibly, Father
Ambrose. And her watchful father, of course; but after the marriage
ceremonies she would no longer be under Radulf’s jurisdiction but
Crispin’s, and thus she would be safe from Radulf’s ire. Alain
wanted her to be safe. He wanted – ah, God in heaven, he wanted her! He had known
lovely women before and had enjoyed the favors of several,
including one very highly placed lady, and he had cared deeply for
at least two of those women, but never in all his twenty-one years
had he experienced the devastating certainty of knowing within
moments of meeting a woman that she was the other half of his soul.
And with the same pure and absolute certainty, as though she had
spoken the words aloud in her precise and beautifully modulated
voice, he knew Joanna had experienced the same blinding revelation
of enduring and passionate attachment.
    Bitterly
he reminded himself that on the day after next Joanna would
belong forever to Cris pin, his
kinsman, his friend. Hearing Radulf’s loud voice raised even higher
in dispute with Crispin, Alain felt a peculiar chill go down his
spine, a premonition of he knew not what unlucky occurrence. The
sensation made him take a risk he otherwise would not have chanced. As far as he
dared, before he and Joanna could be interrupted, he said what was
in his heart.
    “My sweet lady, I know not how it happened so
suddenly and completely that I should be irrevocably attached to
you, but I do swear that I am your servant until I die. If you ever
have need of me, if aught goes wrong in your life, you have