The Raven and the Rose Read Online Free

had twisted anyway at the truth of her words. She was dying, and it would be soon. When she’d asked that he renew his vows, of course he’d obeyed. He’d kept them, too, with teeth-gritted resolution and difficulty. His chaste behavior couldn’t go unnoticed in army camps, though no one believed the full extent of it. He was thought discriminating and probably with a secret mistress, but at times men amused themselves by pushing tempting wenches at him.
    Damn them, and damn . . .
    No, he couldn’t even form the thought of damning his mother, but she’d left him a hard road and the nagging puzzle of her words: “I’ve done what I could. . . .” His father knew nothing of the vows or their purpose, but once, Michael had asked whether there’d been anything special about his younger years.
    â€œApart from your mother’s obsession with sending you to a monastery?” William de Loury had asked. “Some family tradition. Nonsense, when it was clear in the cradle that you were made to fight.” But then he’d frowned in thought. “There was the matter of your twin.”
    Michael knew he’d been a twin, the other babe dead at birth. “What was special about that?”
    â€œThe other lad was born first, but died.” His father shrugged. “Nothing to that, but the midwife said something years later about your being the first. I suppose it’s easy to get twins mixed up, but it didn’t matter. One was dead, and with older brothers, neither of you was my heir.”
    Michael, too, hadn’t been able to see that such a detail mattered, and yet he often remembered his mother’s reaction to his leaving the monastery at Saint Edmundsbury when he was twelve. . . .
    â€œTurn over,” Rannulf said.
    Michael rolled onto his back.
    He’d expected wailing and recrimination, but when she’d wept it had seemed to be because he’d been so unhappy there. She’d said, “I truly believe this might be for the best.” He’d managed not to berate her for sending him to the cloister, and had put her gibberish down to emotion. Women allowed emotion to overturn their wits. Everyone knew that.
    He let Rannulf’s ministrations clear his mind, but that opened the door to memories. Memories from only hours ago.
    Wavy brown hair beneath a filmy veil, and a sweet, round face with full, soft lips, blue eyes fixed on him with concern. Her hair was strangely short, but no matter. Hair grew. Shame that her green gown hadn’t been laced to her curves, as the fashion went at the moment, but he’d still seen how lovely those curves were. The trimming at hem and sleeve spoke of wealth. But he didn’t care whether she was rich or poor.
    His father would cuff him if he said that. Marriage was for lands and power.
    But what had she been doing in the field of contest? He hadn’t understood it then, and didn’t now, but there she’d been, in danger of her life. Then, in a blink, she’d disappeared. He’d rushed to search, thinking she might have been knocked into the dirt, but there’d been no trace of her, and there was Willie Sea to deal with, to arrange ransom, even though Michael’s mind was a tangle.
    To love an illusion made no sense, but he didn’t know what else to call the obsession that had ridden him for months now. Having seen her so close, he could think of nothing else. He felt almost drunk with it, and he needed to see her again as a man in a desert needed water.
    He longed to kneel before her, to take her small hand, to lay his victories, his prowess and everything he possessed at her feet, just as the troubadours sang of love. In accord with their stories, life without her held no savor. He had to find her.
    When he found her, he didn’t want the stink of battle to linger on him.
    He surged up from the bed and swept his cloak around his naked body.