The Warrior's Wife Read Online Free

lower half of his narrow face was hidden beneath a rusty bush of a beard. It was his beard that wagged, not his chin, as he spoke to a portly middle-aged man. Intensity beamed from his gray eyes, the only feature he shared with his daughter.
    Of a sudden, Lord Bagot straightened to scan the room. When he located his daughter, he pointed rudely at her.
    She cringed. “Must he be so obvious?”
    “What’s he doing?” Amicia asked, looking toward Lord Humphrey.
    “He’s pointing at me,” Kate complained. “Lord, but I can hear him now. So , says he to each man he meets, I hear your grandsire, son, nephew, brother, is looking for a wife. Would he be interested in my daughter? ”
    “Why doesn’t he spare me the torment and simply call out wife for sale for all to hear?”
    Ami laughed. “Don’t say that too loudly. It may give him ideas.” Her amusement died into a smile filled with quiet mischief. “I vow, at least half the eligible men in England are here in this room. What say you? Why don’t we choose one of them to be your husband? Then you can tell your sire which man to approach. That way you’ll get a decent husband, he’ll get you married and there’ll be no more pointing.”
    “I hardly think he’d consider any man I suggest even though the decree grants the right to choose my next husband to me,” Kate said, without rancor. No sensible woman beneath the age of two score who yet had living male relatives expected to have a say over the choice of her mate, and Kate felt she was nothing if not sensible. Still, there was something tantalizing about this game. What could it hurt?
    She smiled at Ami. “As you will. Find me the perfect husband.”
    “First you must tell me the sort of man you want,” her new friend replied.
    With a happy sigh, Kate let her attention leap to the table where her father’s steward sat with other knights his equal. “He should be a man like Tristan or Lancelot, someone slender and strong, not bulky.” At three and thirty, Sir Warin de Dapifer was tall, his form long and lean. “He should own a sweet voice and be courteous to a fault.” Just as Warin was. “His hair and beard should be fair.” As was Warin’s hair and mustache. “His eyes should be gray.” Warin’s eyes were blue; it was his only flaw. In all other ways, her father’s steward was the perfect knight.
    He was a man Kate could never have and not just because he was her father’s employee. Warin was landless. Without income, no man could marry.
    The sheer hopelessness of their love made Kate’s heart fill and ache in the same glorious instant. She took the pain as proof that her love for Warin was true, as true and pure and chaste as love was meant to be. And Warin loved her in return, their affection unsullied by carnal desires. Kate couldn’t wait for the joust. Although doing so might well jeopardize his position in her father’s house, she hoped Warin would ask to be her champion and wear her token.
    “All that in one man?” Ami laughed and shook her head. “I’ll do my best.”
    The sheriff’s widow scanned the hall, her gaze flitting from man to man, then she caught her breath. “Oh my,” she said, her voice husky, her words barely audible over the thunder of conversation and hazy echoes of the shivaree from the solar. “I think I have just the man for you.”
    “You do?” Kate tore her gaze from Warin to look where Ami indicated, even though she knew it wasn’t possible there could be two such perfect knights in all the world.
    In the open space where the wedding party had done its dancing stood a clutch of six young men. Although Kate couldn’t hear them, she knew they were conversing, for their heads turned from one to another in a way that marked the flow of words. It was the nearest man Ami indicated. Flickering torchlight made his fair hair gleam like gold. Shadows clung beneath the sharp lift of his cheekbones and marked the gentle curve of his brow and his nose’s