If You Dare Read Online Free Page A

a volley of Gallic hand gestures. “You’ve been too sheltered—can’t comprehend that there are bad people in the world that shouldn’t be saved! You’re too . . . soft!” He said the word with disgust.
    â€œI am not soft!”
    â€œWhen I saved you from that footpad, you were too stunned to give him your choker and you quaked like a little girl.”
    â€œI was a little girl and I wasn’t quaking.” Nor had she beentoo stunned. The choker had been her mother’s, and she’d already known how much she needed it.
    He eyed her. “The Scot will still be weak enough that we can throw him back like a bad catch.”
    â€œVitale!” Unconsciously, she drew her hand over her neck. Frowning, she glanced back at the house, puzzled at her uncanny feeling that she was being watched. There was no way he could have risen. No, not with those injuries.
    The sun was directly in her eyes, and she could see nothing. After a last squint, she said, “Vitale, he’ll be out of our lives soon enough. One day we probably will find him—and our silver—gone.” With that, she walked on.
    Once in the meadow, she sank into the carpet of narcissus cladding the entire shelf of land. She’d always been able to lose herself in the scents and daydream as she gazed out over the lake and farther beyond to the twining river.
    On the next plateau down, their champion horses played and jumped, their copper coats gleaming in the sun. On the lowest plateau skirting the river, rose of Canolich swathed the ground in yellow. But here, a cloud of white blooms. She plucked a flower, brought it to her nose, and inhaled, closing her eyes with pleasure. . . .
    He’d said she was a natural! Her eyes flashed open. What was it about her that made people continually come to this conclusion? She’d saved his life, and he made disparaging comments? When one is nursing a man, contact is made and . . . parts are seen.
    Especially when they were drawing attention to themselves. She shivered.
    She would simply forget the scene, banishing it from her thoughts. She might be one of those women, but she’d been trained to be a lady. Burying uncomfortable thoughts was one thing at which ladies excelled. She looked down to find the flower crushed in her hands.
    Soon he’d be gone, and life would return to normal. Unfortunately, even then her existence would be anxious and cheerless. She continued to await some news from her brother Aleixandre, the only family she had left. She had heard nothing for more than a week, and worry preyed on her.
    A strong breeze blew for the first time in days, it seemed, flattening the grass in waves and teasing a lock of hair loose from her tight braid. Out here, the compulsion to rake it back into place wasn’t so pressing, but still won over. She smoothed her hair and picked another flower.
    Even when her brother routed Pascal and returned, she still would be in a vulnerable position. This fight had only postponed Aleix’s desire that she wed. When their father died two years ago, she’d been brought home from school so that a marriage could be contracted for her. Just as Aleix had begun narrowing the choices, Pascal had arrived.
    Before he’d shown his true nature, Pascal had surprised them by asking Aleix for her hand, though they’d never met. Aleix had refused, incurring the general’s anger, but her brother had never trusted the man even before his vile army of mercenaries and deserters had taken over the area.
    Aleix repeatedly lamented the fact that he hadn’t forced her to marry earlier. At twenty-one, she was more than old enough, and she’d been born and raised for it, but she’d never met a man she wanted. She never could imagine doing the perplexing things the girls at school had whispered about, those painful, aggressive things done in the dark—no matter how much she longed.