Tempted By The Knight (Medieval MFM Menage Romance) Read Online Free

ye wed Lord Gerald.”
    Catherine shook her head.
    “It is my choice who I marry, and how I lead my life,” she insisted, hoisting her rounded chin for emphasis. “And although I do indeed love Gerald, I well love you as well. And, for that matter, I have an equitable love for the arts. I wish to continue my painting and embroidery, and for that matter to travel England. I wish to go to court and sit at the queen’s feet, to bask in her strength and endless wisdom, and—furthermore—to shamelessly copy her every word and deed. I desire to be a great woman of my time, in the likeness of her majesty Queen Elizabeth I—not just somebody’s wife.”
    “And I, milady, would not have ye in any other fashion.”
    Catherine and Gaston froze as one, stilling their mounts as a third commanding voice permeated their spirited conversation.
    Catherine knew immediately the smooth, lushly accented tone that resounded from just behind them; and although it was a voice she knew and loved, an ethereal tone that made her pulse thrum and her heart race with the fondest love, it was in fact the last sound that she wished to hear at this point.
    “Gerald,” she greeted him, turning her blissfully oblivious horse in her fiancé’s direction as she and her knight exchanged uneasy looks. “What are ye doing here?”
    Her fiancé, cutting a splendid figure dressed in a sleek scarlet tunic and tight ebony pantaloons, sat astride the lovely ivory steed she identified as Beausoleil; a magnificent beast that seemed to issue a haughty snort in her direction as his owner mirrored the sound.
    “Funny I should meet ye here,” he sniffed, pinning his intended with a sardonic grin, one that never failed to annoy her to no end. “As quickly as ye ran away from me, I thought ye would be home by now—or mayhap at the queen’s palace, trying to stage a coup of our land.”
    Catherine cleared her throat.
    “I was not running from ye,” she insisted, adding as she spread her sturdy arms in a broad, expressive gesture, “I was running toward myself, Gerald. I do not wish to surrender my interests, my passions, my very life as I have lived and enjoyed it to this point, to retire and become little more than the lady of your castle.”
    Gerald sighed.
    “Why, love, did ye not speak to me of this last night at the feast? I would have told ye that I do not expect ye to change one bit in the wake of our wedding ceremony. I wish for ye to continue painting, knitting, travelling, and doing whatever ye please—and, with your kind permission, I would love to do all these same things (yea, even the embroidery—I have sat long at my mother’s loom and often harbored a secret curiosity for the sewing arts. I am passing sure that my three brothers would beat me senseless in the castle battlements if they well knew),” he assured her, adding as the sarcasm inherent in his beam dissolved to something warmer. “I would have assured ye that it is your spirit, your intellect, your strength that make ye so beautiful in my eyes,” he paused here, adding in a softer tone, “so very, very irresistible.”
    Catherine thought a moment, and then nodded.
    “Well I do apologize, my love, for underestimating ye—and knowing your kind and respectful ways, I should not have,” she admitted on a sigh, adding as she inclined her head in the direction of her fiancé, “Yet I must question the assertion that you find me irresistible—not when ye have canoodled with virtually every lady at court, except for myself.”
    Gerald sighed.
    “I told ye, Catherine,” he reminded her, shifting tall in the saddle of his restless mount, “I wished only to preserve your innocence, chastity and maidenhead until the night of our marriage.”
    Catherine sighed.
    “I would have well exploded by then, Gerald,” she insisted.
    Gaston laughed in spite of himself at these words; drawing a hard and scornful look from their unexpected guest.
    “Aye, my lad,” Gerald spat out, blue