Married to Her Enemy

She peered around him, past the grey destrier to an only slightly smaller brown palfrey, and her mouth turned dry. She’d never been much of a horsewoman and the animal was substantially bigger than the mounts she was used to.

‘Our horses are smaller.’

‘It doesn’t make much difference. The basics are the same. Here.’

He offered a hand but she ignored it, lifting her chin as she brushed past him and grasped hold of the reins. It was a long way up, but she wasn’t going to show fear—not to him or any other Norman. And she wasn’t going to accept help either. Not if she could help it.

She took a deep breath and heaved, hoisting herself up, and al

most into the saddle before she stopped abruptly, feeling the tug of her skirt trapped beneath her boot in the stirrup, holding her back. Desperately she tried to scramble upwards, but it was no use. The horse was shifting impatiently and she could feel herself sliding.

‘Aren’t you going to help me?’ She swallowed her pride, squealing in panic.

‘Aren’t you going to ask?’

‘Help me!’

‘Please...?’

‘Please!’

At once she felt his hands around her thighs, lifting her up and depositing her in the saddle with an inelegant, unladylike thud.

‘Thank you.’ She tossed her head, refusing to look at his face, vividly aware that her own was flaming red. This was mortifying. Even her thighs felt red-hot where he’d touched her, as if she were blushing all over.

‘My pleasure.’ He swung up onto his destrier, his voice brimming with wicked amusement. ‘I’ve never seen anyone mount a horse like that. Is it some kind of Saxon custom?’

She rounded on him fiercely. How dared he? After everything else that had happened over the past twenty-four hours, how dared he make fun of her too? Anger, hot and raw, coursed through her veins as her taut emotions finally snapped.

‘What do you know about Saxon customs? What do you care? All you want is to destroy them! Isn’t that what Normans do? Destroy anything, anyone, who gets in their way!’

There! She felt a surge of triumph. That had wiped the smile off his face. There wasn’t a single trace of humour left in it now.

‘It’s not what we all do.’

His voice was dangerously quiet but she kept going, unable to stop herself from venting her anger.

‘You only want us to lie down and surrender!’

‘It would be best if you did.’

‘Well, we won’t! We might have been beaten, but it doesn’t mean we’ve surrendered. We’ll rise up again and fight!’

‘Do you think that you’ll win?’

She inhaled sharply. His voice was expressionless, but the quiet certainty behind his words made them all the more chilling. He wasn’t really asking her a question, he was giving her an answer. For a moment she felt as though she were facing the whole Norman army—one that the Saxon rebels could never hope to defeat.

‘And as I’ve told you before...’ his voice held a note of warning ‘...I’m not Norman.’

‘You’re still with them. What’s the difference?’

‘We’re not all the same.’

‘If I had my way I’d plunge a dagger into your heart—into every single Norman heart!’

She gasped, surprised by her own vehemence as he regarded her sombrely.

‘That’s quite a threat. And not one to make lightly.’