Page 13 of A Knight in Tarnished Armor

She knelt and dipped a small cloth into the river, then turned and gently cleaned his cuts. Kneeling behind him, she braced one hand on his shoulder while she tended the cut on the back of his head. After a moment she said quietly, "I have never seen anyone do such as you did."

"Have you not seen a joust?"

"Only one, but that was not what I meant. I have never seen a man swing over the side of a horse as you did."

"A trick I learned from the Turks." He watched her come back around and kneel down next to him again, her interest captured. "They would attack on horses swifter than any warhorse, their swords swinging as they charged toward you. To survive one had to learn to ride like they did." He laughed at the way her eyes grew wide and wondered if he had looked so stunned the first time he'd seen those horsemen. "They rode like madmen. ’Twas as if they drank the wind."

She didn't respond, but seemed to be attempting to create the image in her mind. He liked that in her. She listened to him. She smiled, and he sat there, stunned by his reaction to something so simple as her smile. At that moment, had she asked, he'd have conquered the world for her.

She had busied herself by wringing out the cloth in the river. When she finished, she sat back in the grass and hugged her knees to her chest, then cocked her head. "Who was that knight?"

"I don't know." He stared at the grassy hillock where he'd first spotted the black knight. The man had taken great pains to make certain his identity was hidden. He had his suspicions that Arden had sent the knight, but he said nothing. Instead he turned back and watched the river flow.

"Why would he attack us like that?" Her voice was tentative. “Then leave?”

He glanced at her. Her face was pale, emotion and fear there for anyone to see. She was truly frightened. He hadn't thought of her reaction. He was used to violence and combat. But she was a young woman who had led a sheltered life, especially if Arden wished to keep her from marriage as he had said. He shrugged, hoping she would drop the subject.

He saw she was bravely trying to cover her fear and she rocked slightly, as if her thoughts were racing so that she was unaware of her body's motions. Finally she asked, "Do you think he meant to rob us?"

In a voice filled with feigned hope, he asked, "Did he take the cats?"

She stared at him blankly, then she must have caught the amusement on his face because she began to laugh. "No," she said, shaking her head. "He took nothing."

"I must not have had good fortune on my side today."

She laughed again. "I like it when you jest with me."

"Why is that?"

She twisted some grass, then looked up again. "Because you seem less frightening, more human, I suppose."

He didn't know how to respond to that. How to say he was human, as human as the next man, with the same fears and weaknesses. He just never let anyone see them. He wanted to admit that to her, but his pride stopped him and he changed the subject. "Why do you have twenty-five cats?"

"Twenty-six," she corrected.

"Twenty-six cats . . ." He looked at the pack animals grazing in the grass near the bridge, then added, "Five rabbits and two ducks."

She rocked back, her hands still clasping her knees and the toes of her soft leather slippers pointing daintily into the lush river grass. "Because there was no one to care for them but me. Some were starving, others, like Ignatius, Jerome, Kentigern, and Lambert were left to die. I was taught to believe that we are caretakers, put here to help care for all living things. Not to abandon them. Not to starve them, drown them, or worse. The rabbits I freed from traps. Only one of them still has four legs. A rabbit cannot live in the forest with only one back leg." She was silent.

"And the ducks?" he asked.

She smiled. "They followed me home."

His mind flashed with the image of her running back to the castle, her arms filled with wounded animals, ducks trailing behind her, and he saw himself, a knight watching her with a need that was stronger than anything he had ever felt before. Some part of him wanted to have been there when she had found the animals, instead of the day he actually had seen her, the day she danced and sang to them.

But still he felt a lightness inside, a sense too profound to name whenever he thought of that first moment he'd seen her. He must have frowned, because a moment later he felt the trickle of blood from the cut on his forehead.

She moved toward him, kneeling just inches away, and she wiped the cut.

He spent a pleasurable few moments judging the size and weight of her breasts, then eyed the tender white skin of her neck. She smelled of flowers and summer— exactly as he had imagined she would smell—clean and pure and intoxicating.

She slowly ran the cloth down his cheek and he was aware of more than just her scent and her shape. He was greatly aware of the gentleness of her touch. She still cleansed his face, then ran the cloth over his jaw which was becoming more tense the closer she shifted.

In a sudden motion, he grabbed her wrist and the cloth fell from her fingers. She blinked at him, startled. He realized his grip was too hard and slackened it, then gently stroked his thumb over the thin and fragile blue veins beneath her honey-colored skin. "Enough." he said gruffly.

"Did I hurt you?"

"No." He didn't release her hand.