Page 1 of A Knight’s Reward

CHAPTER 1

MOYDENSHIRE, ENGLAND, SUMMER 1194

Someone was watching her.

Someone close by in the market crowd.

The smells of freshly baked bread, smoke from the blacksmith’s fire, and dried lavender from the herbalist’s stall suddenly became cloying, like a hand closing around Gisela Anne Balewyne’s throat. Fear sluiced through her as she dug in her coin purse for a bit of silver to pay the baker for the loaf of coarse bread.

In her brief wander through the market, she’d almost resisted the inner cry for caution—the voice that had been her companion every day and night for the past four months. She’d nearly pushed back the hood of her drab woolen cloak, freed her hair from its leather thong, and raised her face to the warm sunshine. How she’d yearned to savor the sunlight. To pretend, for a moment, she was free to do so. That she didn’t have to stay hidden within the confines of her cloak, and it did not matter who saw her face.

It has been four months, a traitorous little whisper had coaxed. Ryle has not found you. He likely never will.

Yet, despite all her careful precautions, mayhap he had.

Cold, sickly sweat dampened her palms. Her heart lurched into a rhythm sharpened by months of simmering anxiety. She must pay for the bread, then leave the market as quickly as possible. If she were lucky, she could lose whoever watched her when she passed by the throng gathered around the trainer with the two dancing bears.

“Ye all right, love?” asked the baker, a tall, broadly built man whose wife had died last year. He bent to squint at her. Gisela jerked her face away, pretending to be looking into her coin purse.

“I… am fine. I do have the money,” she said with a shaky laugh. As her slick fingers closed on a coin, a sigh broke from her.

With a musical clink, the silver slipped back down into the bag.

“Mercy!” She fought the urge to toss the bread she’d tucked under her arm back onto the table, then bolt. The same voice that had lived with her for so long warned that to flee in such a way would be foolish. Whoever watched her would realize she knew she’d been found.

They might try to capture her here in the market.

They’d take her back to her husband, to answer for slipping away with little Ewan in the dark, silent hours of the night.

Ryle would make her pay for what she had done.

“Try to run away, and I will find you,” he had sneered that horrible evening months ago as blood, seeping through the slash above her right breast, stained her silk gown. Her blood glistened on his knife. “Go to your family, and I will cut them, too. You can trust no one, Gisela. This I promise you.”

A brutal shudder wrenched through her. Oh, God. Oh, God.

This time, he would not let her escape him.

This time, he would kill her.

She forced herself to swallow the fear threatening to suffocate her. Here, now, she had no choice. She must preserve the illusion of oblivion, so that in a few moments, she could elude her watcher.

Her hand shook when she dug in her purse again. She willed herself to be calm, even as she rationalized how much she needed the bread. The meager portion of vegetable pottage would not be enough to feed her and Ewan that day, without the dense bread to mop up the broth.

Gisela’s jaw tightened as her hand closed on the coin. Whatever had happened between her and her husband, her young son did not deserve to go hungry.

“Here,” she said, dropping the silver into the baker’s hand.

“I thank ye.” His voice held a kind note.

The wounded, shielded part of her heart constricted, and she blinked hard. She nodded and turned away.

His hand caught her sleeve. She jumped, even as she heard the baker say, “Take this for yer boy, Anne.” He handed her a small, round currant cake.

Her gaze flew up to meet his. Of course, the baker knew her name—at least, her middle name, which she used to identify herself here in this village. Not surprising, either, that he remembered Ewan. Sometimes her rambunctious three-and-a-half-year-old son accompanied her to the market. On the good weeks, when Gisela had managed to put away the set amount of silver she was saving, she bought Ewan a sweet cake.

Not very often, lately.

The baker smiled, revealing two missing top teeth. An affectionate smile, nonetheless.