A Knight's Persuasion by Catherine Kean Page A

thoughts. Something about the voice . . . She tried to chase the intuition, to mentally catch hold of it.
    While she did so, she realized she was upon a horse and held in strong arms. She rested against the broad body of the man who’d spoken.
    Misgiving skittered through her, heightening her sense of disorientation. How had she come to be upon a horse? Who was this man? Should she trust him, or fear him?
    Her stomach clenched on a wave of agony. The ache within her skull threatened to obscure all else, to crush into nothingness the fragile hope blossoming inside her. But she couldn’t let it. These new sensations spoke to the loneliness inside her; they promised that at last, she’d been found.
    Fighting her pain, swallowing down the bile rising to the back of her mouth, she tilted her head to look up at him.
    Her gaze touched first his jaw dusted with stubble, then the taut plane of his cheek. Unable to resist the demand of his stare, she met his gaze. Concern shone in his thickly lashed blue eyes framed by dark, strong brows. Her heart lurched, a hard wallop against her breastbone, for this stranger had the most handsome countenance.
    He looked upon her, however, as if he . . . knew her.
    As though he cared for her.
    A startled cry parted her lips. Panic whipped through her like hot sparks, and she tried to struggle, but . . . She couldn’t move her arms; they seemed to be trapped at her sides. And the pain—
    “Juliana,” he said again, more urgently. “Please, do not be afraid. You are safe.”
    Juliana? Why did he call her such? Oh, God .
    “You remember me,” he urged. “’Tis Edouard. Edouard de Lanceau.”
    The smallest tingle of acknowledgment brushed the fear and agony clouding her mind. Yet as soon as the sensation surfaced, it was sucked back down into the blackness trying to envelop her. Another hint of insight submerged. Lost .
    “You remember me,” the man named Edouard went on, a plea now in his eyes. “We met for the first time last spring, at the feast at your sire’s castle. Sherstowe Keep.”
    Feast. Sherstowe.
    A rough sound of discomfort grated in Edouard’s throat. “I rescued you from the well.”
    His words tumbled into her mind, rousing her loneliness. She didn’t remember.
    His gaze shadowed with disappointment. “Surely you recall what happened . . . with Nara.”
    She knew no one by that name.
    Or did she? She didn’t remember. Not him. Not Juliana. Not the feast.
    Naught.
    A rasping noise broke into her racing thoughts. ’Twas the sound of her own breathing.
    Noises swooped in upon her: voices; dogs barking; the squeaked rattle of passing carts. The sounds crowded one atop another, tangled together, until the cacophony raging inside her head threatened to split her apart.
    The darkness coaxed.
    “Juliana,” Edouard yelled, even as the creeping shadows began to dim the color around her and stifle the noises. How soothing, to fall back into the numbing inkiness . . .
    I am here. In the dark. Find me! a voice inside her shrilled.
    And then, all went black.
    ***
    “Nay!” Edouard choked, bending his head close to Juliana’s. “Stay awake. Please, Juliana!”
    Her head lolled against his arm.
    “She is too weak,” Kaine murmured.
    Edouard’s eyes smarted as he studied her wan, expressionless features. A wisp of hair had slipped from the blanket to trail across her fine-boned cheek; it looked gut-wrenchingly stark against her pale skin, and he gently swept it away.
    How he wished she’d open her eyes again, look up at him, and prove she wanted to fight the injury that sapped her strength. In that moment before her consciousness slipped away, though, he’d seen doubt in her eyes, and a raw sense of hopelessness.
    “She did not tell us who wounded her,” he said quietly. “I should have asked her right away. Yet I wanted her to know she was among friends, for she seemed—”
    “Frightened,” Kaine said.
    Edouard nodded. Fear, however, didn’t quite encompass the