“What a kindfriendyou are,” she replied, trying to extricate her hand from his grasp without grimacing with pain.
He saw her reaction and examined her palm. “Youarehurt. We must get you to the castle at once!”
He made it sound as if she was bleeding profusely.
“It’s not that serious,” she protested.
“Iinsist,” he declared.
He had no right to insist she do anything. “I shall have to walk. As you can see, I couldn’t possibly hold a horse’s reins, even if one of your men was so kind as to lend me his.”
“I’ll escort the lady,” Myghal said stiffly, and it was obvious he felt slighted by Kiernan—with good cause, too.
“I’m quite content to return with the sheriff,” Beatrice agreed. “Just tell the guards at the gate who you are.”
“I’m not about to let you walk to the castle in such a state and with this fellow,” Kiernan declared, retrieving his horse.
“I’m quite capable of walking,” she said firmly. “It’s my hands that are hurt, not my feet.”
“The sooner your wounds are tended to, the better,” Kiernan replied.
And then, without so much as a by-your-leave, he picked her up and hoisted her, protesting, onto his saddle. In the next moment, he’d mounted behind her.
Myghal drew his sword. “Sir, you’d best let the lady down.”
Kiernan’s men pulled their swords from their scabbards.
“It’s all right,” Beatrice quickly said before Kiernan’s men hurt Myghal. “Sir Kiernan’s going to let me down. Aren’t you, Kiernan?”
It wasn’t so much a request as a demand. She didn’t appreciate being hauled up as if she were a piece of baggage, nor did she appreciate the way he held her tight against him, his arm like a vise around her stomach.
Kiernan’s pursed lips told her that her request was falling on deaf ears and instead of answering her or letting her down, he addressed Myghal. “I assure you, I’m not going to harm her.” His tone grew even more haughty. “Whoever you are, it is not your place to orderme.”
With that, Kiernan kicked his horse into a bone-jarring trot. Beatrice twisted to look back over her shoulder at an obviously enraged Myghal, who had to jump out of the way of the clumps of mud and stones tossed up by the hooves of Kiernan’s horse.
Truly angry now, she said, “That was the sheriff, not some a beggar on the road.”
“And you are a lady, not a peasant.”
“Yet you can pick me up like a load of wood? You should have treated Myghal with more respect, as both the man and his office deserve.”
“He should have found a horse for you to ride.”
“What are you doing here anyway?” she demanded, quite certain Ranulf hadn’t invited him. Not only did Ranulf have no time for guests, considering what else he was dealing with, but she was fairly sure, judging by the way Ranulf looked at Kiernan sometimes, that he thought Sir Jowan’s son a rather pampered and spoiled young man—as, indeed, he was.
Kiernan looked down at her, his expression both grim and pompous. “I’ve come to take you back to Tregellas.”
She squirmed in Kiernan’s arms, trying to get a better look at his face. “Did Lord Merrick and Lady Constance ask you to fetch me?”
He flushed and stared into the space between his horse’s ears. “Not precisely.”
So they hadn’t. “Who do you think you are? You have no right to come here and—”
He spurred his horse to a faster pace, making her gasp and clutch the saddle lest she fall.
“What’s come over you?” she asked when she caught her breath. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I couldn’t sit idly by while your reputation is destroyed. Your visit to Penterwell is the talk of every hall and tavern in Cornwall.”
