The Black Sheep's Return Read Online Free Page B

Orlando,’ he said at last, kneeling at her feet again and startling a gasp out of her as he bound the ice-cold wet rags about her flinching foot.
    ‘Oh, so we’re galloping through
As You Like It
now, are we?’ she ventured when the initial shock had passed and she felt every muscle and bone in her misused foot sigh in relief.
    ‘We are wherever we choose to be,’ he said quizzically, then got to his feet and looked down at her as if he could read her life history in her eyes.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, fervently hoping he couldn’t.
    ‘For giving you the liberty not to be yourself, or doing all I can to relieve the pain?’
    ‘Perhaps for both?’
    ‘You’re very welcome, lady,’ he told her with a courtly bow that seemed as sharply at odds with his humble circumstances as his educated accent.
    ‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said with a regal gesture and a wry smile in return.
    ‘Now there’s only the problem of where you can bed down for the night to deal with,’ Richsaid, turning away from the temptation of this suddenly enchanting lost lady.
    Left to his own wayward devices, he might linger half the night talking with her if he wasn’t careful. She intrigued him with the odd contrast of dowager queen and lonely hoyden she seemed to switch between as her moods changed, or he got a little too close to the truth of who she might be for her comfort. He’d seen such mischief in her extraordinary amber eyes just now that he knew she was far more complex a person than either role allowed. He wished now that he hadn’t plonked the candle so close to her that he could see the true glory of her unusual eyes when he rose from attending to her foot by its flaring light and felt as if he might fall headlong into them if he wasn’t very careful indeed.
    ‘If you can endure Atlas snoring all night long on the rug next to it, I think you’d best take the box-bed in the corner. My son and daughter will bounce out of their own beds on to mine before the sun is hardly risen tomorrow and I don’t think your ankle would like two wild animals stamping about on it if I lend you mine for the night and sleep here instead.’
    ‘After today it seems almost beyond wonderful to borrow such a cosy bed for the night.I defy any thief or rogue who found this place by an unlucky accident to get to me before he got to them, so I’m very happy that your dog will bear me company,’ his waif said cheerfully and clearly found his simple life an intriguing novelty.
    After a few days his mundane existence would pall on a princess in hiding and he hoped he would be rid of her long before then, before they recklessly explored the daring female under all those rigidly correct manners of hers and complicated this inconvenient business even further.
    ‘I’ll make you a posset to take away the worst of the pain and while it’s brewing I can make up the bed for you,’ he said, in what he hoped was the detached tone of a dutiful host.
    ‘Thank you, Orlando, you’re treating me like royalty,’ she said politely and he told himself it was a good thing the laughing rogue of a few moments ago was back in hiding.
    He preferred her withdrawn and coolly polite, he assured himself. He preferred any youthful and even remotely attractive young woman to stay at a distance nowadays. Indeed, he had felt no more than a soon-dismissed masculine reaction to any other woman since he first laid eyes on his darling Anna. It feltlike a betrayal of his own beloved that a feral part of him wanted to know far more about Perdita than the colour of her eyes. After the unmatchable joy of making love to his wife, the rest of her sex had faded into friends, or lusty females to be avoided. He told himself feeling even a hint of hunger for this intriguing female was an insult to Anna’s memory.
    ‘Are you a wise man?’ she asked curiously as he went about the task of adding a pinch of this herb and a dot of that spice with a sweetening of honey to the pot