The Forbidden Rose Read Online Free Page A

they?”
    “The stable. Far left end. You walk off slow and get out of the line of fire. Go busy yourself with our four-footed brothers.”
    “Your brothers, maybe. Not mine.” He gave a fluid shrug for anyone watching—that was a damned eloquent French shoulder he was developing—and sauntered off, whistling, without a backward glance. The boy was born for this work. He’d make a spy of him yet. If he didn’t have to kill him.
    He strolled out to the six-foot stone wall that edged the kitchen garden, adjusting his trousers like a man picking a good spot to piss. When he had a substantial boxwood between him and the stable, he boosted himself up and over the wall and dropped into an herb bed on the other side.
    Basil crushed underfoot when he landed. He was going to smell like basil. Going to yell his approach to all and sundry. Couldn’t be helped. He loped along the garden wall, keeping in its cover, staying on the dirt so it was quiet. Thirty feet, and he was coming up behind the stable. He went back over the wall again. Nobody on guard. All quiet. All deserted.
    The feeling that somebody waited inside got stronger and stronger.
    The back door to the tack room was open. He stalked forward, hunting whatever waited for him in there.

T hree

    SHE KNEW HOW TO STAY STILL. THAT WAS THE FIRST important thing Doyle learned about her. She had a controlled patience that made her just about invisible. Most people couldn’t pass two minutes without fidgeting.
    The woman stood in the shadow under the stable loft, outlined against the window, watching the courtyard. Breaths slipped in and out of her body like ghosts. Her face was turned away from him. She wore country clothes, like an upper servant or a farm wife. Dark blue skirt. White apron. A plain linen fichu tied around her shoulders. She had clogs on her feet. Her hair was pulled back from her face and braided in a thick tail that hung down her back, tied at the bottom with a scrap of bright red cloth. Her arms crossed her chest, one over the other, hugging tight and protective.
    The smear of mud on her skirt and the scratches on her arms said she’d been hiding in the woods, living rough. She’d be one of the household—a lady’s maid or seamstress or the wife of the steward.
    The stable window she’d picked had a wide, unobstructed view of the chateau and the avenue between the coach house and the back lane. By chance or planning, she’d picked a first-rate lookout post.
    Even as he thought that, her hand went to the back of her neck. She could feel when eyes were on her, a skill that wasn’t as common as mice in a closet.
    She turned. Saw him. The instant stretched tight.
    He’d put himself between her and the back door. She hadn’t thought of keeping two lines of retreat. One for your enemy to block off. One so you can run like hell.
    Skirt and apron whirled. She exploded into flight, down the stalls, long braid trailed out behind her. He caught her halfway to the door. Wrapped his arms around her and held on.
    She twisted and tried to rake her nails at his face. When he caught her wrists, she curled like an eel and bit the hand that held her, digging her teeth deep.
    Well, that hurt. “I’m not going to—” A sabot hit his shin. “God’s . . . tortoises. Will you hold still? I’m trying not to damage you.” He shifted his grip and she broke a hand free and pulled out a knife.
    Enough. He kicked her legs out from under her. The knife bounced away. He flopped her down on her back into the piled straw.
    That was the end of it, to all intents and purposes, except she was going to keep fighting for a while.
    She was light for her size and panicked and dead ignorant of fighting. He’d make short work of a man her size. This girl had no chance at all. She kneed him in the belly, missing the vital goods by a margin narrower than he liked. That seemed to be sheer luck. None of the men in her life had taught her how to do damage to the male of the species.