A Knight to Remember by Christina Dodd Page A

muddy.”
    “It rained last night.”
    “I know that!” Did men take instruction to be aggravating, or was it bred into them? “And it smells like a stew down here.”
    “Um.” He lay on his back and drew her over him. “The stew of love.”
    She couldn’t help it; she half laughed at his poor analogy. “You’ll never be a poet.”
    “I’ll never be a lot of things, but I will be your lover, my lady.” He pushed off her wimple. “And soon.”
    It was getting to be annoying, his habit of removing her hair covering, and she snatched at it. He tossed it away and went to work on her braid. She was still irate about the night before, but she had to work to maintain her animosity. He seemed different this morning, pleased with himself and frolicking in the sunshine.
    In the sunshine. “We have to go inside,” she said. “Someone may come by and see you.”
    “Um.” He buried his face in a handful of her hair.
    “Hugh, please.”
    He blew the strands away. “I like it when you beg me.”
    “Then I beg you. Let us go in. I’ll help you.”
    “I don’t need help. I’m almost well.”
    “Aye,” she said doubtfully. She didn’t know how that was possible, but she couldn’t send him on his way just yet. “The nursing nuns come first thing for their medications, you know that, and—”
    Catching her chin, he brought her face down to his and kissed her. It wasn’t the nice kiss of the night before, but a bruising kiss, oddly forceful and not in the spirit of playfulness he had previously displayed.
    When he let her raise her head, she touched her lips. “What did you do that for? It hurt!”
    He didn’t answer but stared at her. “Your mouth is swollen.”
    “I would suppose!” She didn’t like his expression; triumph mixed with a rather attentive regard.
    Then he rolled her onto her back, one way and then the other. First the straw on the path stuck through her clothing, then her shoulders and hips mashed the small thyme plants and sank into the damp earth. “Have you gone mad? What is wrong—” She heard voices outside the wall, and they were moving this way. “Listen!” He grabbed at her waving hands. “We’ve got to get you to your feet.”
    He held her when she would have scrambled up. Just held her.
    “Hugh.” She tried to extract her fists. “Hugh, you—”
    Wharton’s voice suddenly boomed out. “There they are!”
    And Lady Blanche said, “I told you, Lady Corliss!”
    Still held tight against Hugh, Edlyn twistedaround. A great mass of eyes stared at her in shock, horror, and ill-concealed glee from the garden gate. Half the nuns. Some of the monks. Lady Blanche and Wharton. Baron Sadynton. And the abbess, who stood fingering her beads.

7
    “ I did nothing wrong .” Edlyn sat on a bench in the middle of the square and repeated what she’d said many times since this mockery of an inquisition had begun. Every nun in the abbey, every monk in the monastery, every servant, every peasant, and every patient who could hobble stood assembled in a circle around Edlyn and her accusers, and Edlyn imagined the circle was closing.
    “Then why do you have mud and straw and green marks on your back?” Lady Blanche looked around, her mouth pinched in triumphant disapproval. “That looks like evidence of wrong to me.”
    “Because he”—Edlyn pointed at the decorous Hugh sitting across from her—“tried to make it look as if we’d been fornicating in the dirt, that’s why. But I tell you, we haven’t!”
    Lady Corliss sat in the high-backed, cushioned chair that the servants had brought from her room. The abbot stood at her shoulder, lending his authority to the proceedings and his advice should Lady Corliss ask for it. She didn’t. She said nothing. Not that she believed Edlyn, not that she didn’t; just nothing. She letLady Blanche and her wretched servant weave tales of Edlyn’s misbehavior without changing expression.
    Lady Blanche giggled, high and long. “Why would this