Gayle Callen Read Online Free Page A

possibly want from her? He could so easily take everything by force.
    Katherine scrambled up and away from him, her back against the moor cliff, the chasm closing in on her.
    The monk slowly raised himself up on one elbow. “A good morning to you, my lady,” he said.
    Clad in only a smock, Katherine crossed her arms over her chest and sank down against the uneven wall. The gritstone scraped her back, but she would do anything necessary to stay far fromthe monk. Yet he did not look like one of the brethren anymore.
    “Where is your habit?” she asked.
    He sat up and glanced down at the peasant’s short wool tunic he wore belted at the waist. “I borrowed these clothes from the almoner’s supply. Surely you and I are people in need.”
    She didn’t answer, but remained staring at his hairy legs.
    The monk shrugged. “I have stockings here somewhere.”
    Katherine looked away from those intense eyes. “You don’t look like a monk anymore.”
    “Is that bad? We do not wish to be noticed, after all.”
    “We” again, she thought, and shivered. She had once wished her life were not so boring; now she sat before a monk while wearing nothing but a smock. Her dirty feet were bare, and her long hair unbound and snarled.
    “My lady, what is your name?”
    She hesitated. Could he be her enemy, part of the plot to lull her into security? She could not risk her information for the king. “Katherine.”
    “Lady Katherine…”
    He drew out her name, waiting, but she remained silent.
    “Do you remember more, my lady?”
    She nodded.
    “Yet you will not tell me.”
    “I can’t,” she said, hugging her knees to her chest.
    “Why? Have I done something to lose your trust?”
    She bit her lip, trying to suppress a hysterical laugh. Her trust? No one had her trust anymore, least of all this dark monk who’d secreted her inside the earth. “Brother, please, understand that I can trust no one. A man kidnapped me.”
    “Someone might resort to kidnapping if he desired to wed you for your dowry, but why imprison you at St. Anthony’s?”
    “Since I am already betrothed, perhaps they feared a confrontation?”
    The monk watched her from beneath his low brows. There was nothing soft about his face; it was all hard angles and strong bones. She could not help but study him, fascinated despite her wariness. From the pale training scars etched across his hands, she guessed he had not always been a man of God. And when his unusual eyes pierced her, saw through her, she couldn’t look away.
    “You do not believe that,” he said. “You know exactly why they took you. But you will not tell me.”
    She blinked her eyes against the entrancement of his gaze, and turned her head away. “I can tell no one,” she whispered, rubbing her arms. “I trusted someone once, and was stolen from my home. I will not risk that again.”
    “Do you plan to return home?”
    “I can’t. They will be waiting for me.”
    “Where will you go?” he demanded, firing each question at her until her head spun.
    “Nottingham.”
    “Do you have relatives there?”
    “Yes!” she said, smiling weakly to give credence to her lie. Was this a search for information? Now that he was outside the monastery, could he indulge his own plans for her? Katherine sighed. She hated feeling that everyone was an enemy, but she had no choice.
    The monk stared at her in cold silence, obviously seeing through her deception. “Do you still plan to travel alone?”
    Katherine nodded. “I do not wish to endanger you.”
    “You will be vulnerable to any man who comes upon you,” he said quietly.
    She recognized the truth of those words. Her face burned and she refused to meet his gaze.
    “I could protect you.”
    Katherine looked up at him. His voice was hard and unyielding, his body massive. No gentle words of God’s love had yet passed his lips. “Then I would be vulnerable to you,” she finally said.
    He nodded, then fixed her with the brilliance of his gaze.