Page 76 of A Knight’s Reward

“Dominic?”

He half-glanced at Gisela and tried very hard not to look at her mouth. Her lips were as much temptation as if she stood before him naked.

“What are you going to do?”

She spoke bravely, but he caught the anxiety threading through and around each word.

She fell back. A few paces ahead, he turned to look at her. A sudden memory of her on the day they’d said good-bye superimposed itself over her standing in the shadowed meadow.

Aware their voices might carry to the road, he crossed the trampled grasses back to her. In hushed tones, he said, “We will return to your shop, where you will show me the silk.”

Her stare did not waver. “What will you do then? Tell Lord de Lanceau?”

Dominic nodded. “I must.”

“Will I be”—she hesitated—“arrested? Will I be imprisoned in his dungeon?”

“I do not know.” An honest, if vague, answer. As much as Dominic could tell her right now.

He knew Geoffrey well enough to plead for Gisela, to insist her actions were those of a mother desperate to protect her son.

Dominic swallowed. His son.

Geoffrey also was the father of a young boy, his lady wife pregnant with their second child. Geoffrey would understand a parent’s protective instincts. Apart from that, Dominic couldn’t say what his lord would believe, or what might transpire.

“Will he take Ewan from me?” Gisela asked, her voice as thin and brittle as dried flowers. “I beg you, do not take him from me.”

Dominic fought the need to embrace her again. How he wanted to kiss her, to yield to the volatile emotions twisting up inside him. Yet, nightfall gathered across the sky. ’Twas not safe for them to delay.

“We will discuss this later,” he said. “We must get back before dark. Come.”

He started for the wall again, and her reluctant footfalls sounded behind him.

As they neared her shop, and she drew her key out of her cloak pocket, Dominic glanced about. Still no sign of Crenardieu’s watchers. The Frenchman must need them elsewhere this eve.

She unlocked the door, and they stepped inside. The panel to the main part of the house was closed, and light fingered through the cracked wood. Ewan and Ada’s voices, raised in lively conversation, came from beyond.

“Arr!” Ada roared. “I will eat ye bit by bit, Sir Smug. I will save yer toes fer last.”

“You will not eat my toes,” Ewan yelled back, “or any other part of me! Prepare to fight, dragon!”

A mighty battle cry echoed, at the same moment Gisela closed the door. She secured it before removing her cloak and crossing to her home’s entrance.

“Gisela,” Dominic said. She was not going to escape showing him the silk.

“I will let Ada and Ewan know we have returned,” she answered, “and fetch some light.”

She opened the door. For a moment, she stood surrounded by a golden aura.

“Mama!”

Ewan’s delighted tone touched deep within Dominic. One day, would the little boy greet him with such joy? Or, would Ewan hate him, for revealing his mother’s deceptions to de Lanceau?

“I missed you, Mama.”

“I missed you, too, Button,” she said, before the door shut, leaving Dominic in near-darkness. Voices carried, softer this time, before the panel again opened. Gisela stepped through holding a burning taper.

She nudged the door closed with her foot, headed to her worktable, and lit the candles. Dominic waited, aware of the stiffness of her movements. If she foolishly refused to show him the hiding place, he would go over the floor plank by plank, on his hands and knees, until he found it.