With Her Kiss (Swords of Passion) Read Online Free

a sword. “Could that be Ibrahim’s?”
    “Aye, the Arabic proclaims it so. It was his gift to you.”
    “And mine to Katherine. I gave it to her after I returned from Jerusalem many years ago.” He shot from his chair. “Let me see it.”
    With both hands, Will carefully surrendered the blade.
    Geoff traced his trembling fingertips over the inscriptions on the broad flat metal handle. They were each one as he remembered them. All were prayers that Allah would bless the holder of the blade and smite the owner’s enemies. Marvelling that he could see this once more here and with this appalling story, he found the voice to ask, “How does this maid say this came into her possession?”
    “She says she knew the importance of it to her lady and to you. Knew if she brought it to you, you would help her lady. Free her.”
    Is that not fantasy to think I have that power? He worried his lower lip.“Does this maid have a name?”
    “Old Bess.”
    Geoff’s head spun. Bess. Bess of the owl’s eyes. Bess of the wagging tongue. How could he forget the woman who had discovered Kat and him in bed together? How could he forget the person who had told Katherine’s father of how they had spent nights and days bound as one? Bess. Aye, Bess was the old maid’s name. Geoff’s blood boiled. “This is my scimitar. I gave it to Katherine when she ordered me to leave and I cursed her. I would have thought she had buried it soon after. Heaven knows, she wanted to bury it in my back.”
    “You could have done nothing for her then. She was already married.”
    “Aye. But she blamed me for forsaking her.”
    “She was young, untutored in the ways of power. What could she expect of you? You had no land or title then.”
    “True.” Geoff frowned, memories swirling, lost in yesterday’s failures.
    “Listen to me, for time is of the essence. The maid Bess says Katherine was at first imprisoned in her own castle. But days later, her Welsh friends along the border attacked it to set her free. To do John’s will and probably to protect himself from persecution, Ferrer’s men secreted her out from her own dungeon and spirited her away. They put out the rumour she was dead.”
    “I could believe that the Welsh came to save her. Their princes liked her. Kat purposely kept good relations with them and Ferrer is a new unwelcome neighbour planted there by John. But Will, no one in the Marches believes Kat is still alive.”
    Will pursed his lips. “This Bess does. She says her lady has been removed to a cloister of Benedictine nuns. There, they are ordered by Ferrer to starve her.”
    Geoff cursed the man Ferrer who bowed and scraped to John like a foolish boy. “If this be true that she is imprisoned, why am I not surprised that he takes the coward’s method of murder?”
    “More to the point, Geoff, if it is true Katherine is in the nuns’ hands and they follow orders to deny her sustenance, that means she will die within a week or two. Time is short. Unless, of course, you decide to do nothing to save her.”
    Geoff glared at his friend. He would not leave a woman to starve, least of all one he had loved. The only one he had ever loved. “She damns my name.”
    “For taking her son from her? That she knows was John’s doing. The King wished to set her blood to boil. What finer way than to make her older boy hostage in the home of the man she once adored?”
    “The man whom she curses for taking him.” Geoff recounted how he had argued with John, then realised there was no better place to protect the Harleigh heir than close at his own side.
    “Can that man ignore the possibility that she lives?”
    Geoffrey stared at the sparks flashing in the hearth. For what they had been together—fire and heat, sweet savage succour—he could not ignore the possibility that Katherine lived or that she might be saved from a hideous demise. “Where is this abbey?”
    “St Augustine’s. In Bristol.”
    “Northwest of Bath.” When Will