Read Online Claire Delacroix by My Ladys Desire - Free Book Online Page B

of their routine, after all.
    “All right then, we shall do it your way,” she conceded easily.
    Methuselah snorted again and laid claim to the fruit, chomping noisily as Gabrielle scratched his ears. He made short work of the token, then nuzzled her playfully when he was done.
    “So, he is your steed.”
    Gabrielle looked up to find the dark-haired squire who had attended Yves the night before watching her from the end of the stall. He looked as rumpled as if he had slept in his clothes, but his glance was keen.
    “Yes, that he is.” Her acknowledgment seemed all the encouragement the boy needed.
    “They told me that he was yours, and I must confess that I did not believe it.” The squire stepped into the stall and Methuselah granted him a thoroughly disdainful survey. “I have never met a woman who rode a stallion and could not believe that one would ever do so.”
    Gabrielle spared him a glance. “Well, I do.” The boy’s confusion was so obvious that she softened and gave him more explanation. “Methuselah was my husband’s horse,” she added gently. “When he died, I thought to keep the steed.”
    “Oh! Well, he is a fine beast, my lady, there is no disputing that.” The boy’s grin was genuine, and Gabrielle warmed tohim. It was refreshing to meet someone sincere enough to be taken at face value. “I would have saddled him for you this morn, for Chevalier Yves bade me make all ready, but as I said, I was not certain—”
    “It matters little,” Gabrielle interrupted, “as I prefer to saddle him myself.”
    The boy’s eyes were round. “But, my lady! Surely you cannot!”
    “Surely I can,” Gabrielle countered firmly. She was not a small or delicately wrought woman like Adelys, and her newfound self-reliance was becoming a welcome habit.
    Well aware of the boy’s amazed gaze, Gabrielle laid the blanket on Methuselah’s back. His nostrils quivered and she knew that this day, as most other days, he would make a show of fighting the saddle.
    Gabrielle lifted the weighty saddle, gritted her teeth and heaved it onto the stallion’s back. Methuselah took a few tempestuous steps, but she had had the foresight to make his tether short.
    He granted her a chiding glance, as though he thought she had taken some of the sport out of their little game, but defiantly snapped the reins all the same.
    “Careful, my lady! He looks to have a fearsome temper!”
    “It is all show, you will see.”
    As soon as Gabrielle passed the strap beneath Methuselah’s belly, she heard the stallion take a deep breath. Sure enough, by the time Gabrielle tried to fit buckle to strap, his belly was as round as a barrel, and the cinch could not be brought together.
    The sight of this noble steed holding his breath thus always tempted Gabrielle to laugh, but she did not. He would have been sorely insulted if she had deigned to laugh at him.
    Instead, she poked one finger hard between his ribs.
    Methuselah exhaled in noisy surprise and Gabrielle buckled the cinch with a speed born of practice. It was a good thing for her that Michel’s squire had confided in her the trick.
    Yves’ squire laughed aloud and clapped his hands. “Brava, my lady! That was a task well done!”
    But the steed gave Gabrielle a glance that spoke volumes about the next time they matched wits this way. Gabrielle suspected there would come a day when the stallion bested her at this contest of wills.
    “A task well done as yours was not,” a familiar masculine voice interjected sternly, and Gabrielle’s heart leaped to her throat.
    She spun to find Yves framed in the doorway of the stables, a hand propped on his hip as he glared at his squire.
    The glint of his mail hauberk could be spied beneath a tabard that she knew to be so deep an indigo as to be virtually black. The hauberk fell to his knees, a skirted tunic beneath of the same indigo hue extending to his ankles.
    A fur-lined cloak of the same dark shade was fastened to one shoulder, a sword