Read Online Gayle Callen by The Darkest Knight - Free Book Online Page B

one. She saw the surprise on his face as he lifted their clasped fingers. With wide eyes, they stared at one another, then broke apart and looked away. Her skin suddenly felt too hot for her body, and the crowds seemed to press too close.
    Katherine was grateful when the cart in front of them moved on. The guards who looked them over were not as tall as her monk, but big and broad, wearing plated brigandine instead of heavy armor. Each held a pike in one dirty hand. She had entered many gatehouses, but always in a litter, and the guards had bowed respectfully, afraid to look her in the face. Now they searched Brother Reynold and his sack, then actually patted her waist with their clumsy, rough hands. Katherine stiffened when the guard’s arm brushed her breast. She heard a low wheeze of laughter. When he touched her again, she drew back a hand to slap him, only to have Brother Reynold grab it and tuck it safely into his elbow.
    “Can my wife and I enter now?” he asked pointedly.
    Katherine barely felt the last pat, or heard the onion-laced laugh the guard sent in her direction. Wife?
    Brother Reynold led her beneath the portcullis, which was raised into the ceiling of the gatehouse.Menacing, iron-tipped points hung above her head like teeth in a gaping maw. The darkness beneath the tower would have been absolute but for the open doors at each end. She saw the vaguest shadow of closed holes in the ceiling and arrow loops in the walls. She didn’t need to be reminded to hurry. They passed two massive wooden doors propped open, and came into the outer ward, a bare yard between two sets of castle walls.
    Following the cart of laughing children, they passed through a smaller gatehouse to the inner ward, which seemed to crawl with people. In the far corner the immense towers of the great stone hall rose high over the wooden buildings lining all sides of the inner ward. A pack of dogs went barking past and Katherine jumped back. Reynold pointed to her and shrugged, making the children laugh.
    She gave him an ominous frown. Husband, was he? She longed to pull him aside and tell him what she really thought of his idea. But as it was, a man and woman traveling alone together would attract the least suspicion by being married. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.
    There had been no rain for days, and the dust hung heavy in the air, mixed with the smells of horses and overexerted men. She sighed her impatience when Brother Reynold insisted on waiting as all the children scrambled from the cart. She grimly hung on to him with her good arm and allowed herself to be swept along with the crowd and into the castle residence. Although she hadthought the day was hot, the interior of the great hall engulfed her with smoky heat and her breathing felt constricted. Rare windows had been cut high into two walls, but their cloudy glass did not let in much light at the end of the day. Instead fireplaces at opposite ends of the room blazed as high as a man, and candles and oil lamps hung in brackets along the walls.
    Trestle tables and benches cluttered the hall. A servant impatiently directed them to a table close to the main entrance, far from the raised dais. Katherine suffered a sudden wave of homesickness as the noble family came out of their private rooms and took their places for the chaplain’s prayer. The five children spanned the years from infancy to adulthood. The oldest, a young man, lounged in his chair as if bored. The women were as colorful as flowers, and glittered in the torchlight. Butterfly veils on wire frames hid their hair, leaving just the maidens bareheaded.
    Although Katherine had always been curious about her father’s people below the salt, she had never been allowed to sit with them. Now that she was crowded onto a bench, pressed hip to hip with Brother Reynold and a broad woman whose wimple hung askew, she would have given anything to be seated with the marquess’s family on comfortable chairs, waited on