The Knight's Return. Joanne Rock

Con Connacht stifled a gasp of surprise at the strange knight’s presence in her sister’s garden.

      So this was the Norman mercenary who had caused such an uproar in her father’s court? She urged her mount closer to the garden wall, determined to obtain a better view. Standing on her palfrey’s back, she could just see over the moss-covered enclosure where the kings of old used to install their mistresses or—occasionally—a widowed queen out of favor with the new ruler. Now Sorcha lived here, a prisoner in her own realm for daring to defy their father.

      “Be still,” she hissed at her horse, her balance unsteady as she stood on the mare’s back. “I’m almost there.”

      Gingerly, she reached past the thorny branches of a yew tree to the smooth trunk of a young pine. As the palfrey stilled beneath her, she bent her knees and leaped, keeping the pine in her grasp as she flung herself to the top of the garden wall.

      She must have disturbed a group of birds, because there was an outcry nearby and the flap of wings. Onora held herself steady, waiting to be discovered and hoping against hope she would not be.

      This wasn’t the first time she’d sneaked into Sorcha’s domain, though her older sister forbade the secret trips. Onora missed her sibling dearly and knew if their positions were reversed and Onora had been banished, she would want someone to visit her. As it was, Onora took great pains to escape her father’s watch, his vigilance far more formidable with his younger daughter than it had been for Sorcha. A fact that had proven a vast inconvenience, but she took pride in finding new ways to elude her protectors.

      Of course, she could never remain away from her father’s keep for long and she confined herself to bringing the occasional length of exotic silk or a wildflower cutting. Her presents were small and often attributed to one of Sorcha’s attendants. But it pleased Onora to know she’d touched her sister’s life anyhow.

      When the garden quieted again, Onora felt certain she had not been discovered. Carefully, she seated herself on the stone wall to watch amidst the cover of thick branches. In the distance, her sister conversed with the tall Norman, their talk too low for her ears.

      How could her father have permitted this stranger to visit Sorcha with no guard? The Normans would march on Ireland before long now that the exiled king of Leinster had asked the Normans for help regaining his kingdom. The Normans always rejoiced at trouble in Ireland since they lived for the chance to steal power in the greatest land on earth. So why trust a Norman with his own daughter?

      Or could the stranger bring an honest offer to Sorcha that might save her from the convent? Onora’s romantic nature rejoiced at the possibility.

      “Lady Onora?”

      From outside the wall, a man’s voice startled her.

      Her hand flew to her waist and the protection of her dagger as she turned. There, standing at the base of the wall, stood a frowning young groom she recognized as the caretaker for Sorcha’s horse.

      “Eamon,” she whispered, wishing she did not feel a pang of feminine pleasure at the sight of someone so wholly inappropriate to her station. Why couldn’t her heart beat with such speed at the sight of a noble who came to court her instead of a man destined to wed a village girl?

      He was broad shouldered in a way that made the female servants of the court sigh, his muscular form filling out his tunic admirably. His dark hair and blue eyes marked him as Irish, while the deeper shade of his complexion suggested a hint of the exotic, as if his mother had been wooed by a spice trader at the village fair.

      “Come down at once before you are injured.” Eamon glared at her with the displeasure one might cast upon a disobedient child. Then he began to scale the wall.

      Hand over hand, he climbed quickly, his nimble fingers finding purchase between the mossy rocks. Alarm tingled up her spine.

      “You cannot order me about.” It was difficult to infuse her voice with the proper authority while striving to whisper, but she did not wish anyone to hear them.

      “I am keeping you safe, Princess,” he retorted, closing the distance between them rapidly.

      “Shh!” she hushed him, fearful now for him as much as her. At least her rank would save her if she was discovered. “Have a care with your voice. My sister is within.”

      Eamon reached the top of the wall, his long, tanned fingers splaying along the rock so that the smallest of the digits rested a hairsbreadth from her bottom. She scooched back a bit, the pine tree impeding her movements.

      “All the more reason you must descend.” He pulled one leg over the wall so that he straddled it like a horse.

      He faced her, his thighs bracketing her without touching.

      “You, sir, are highly improper.” She glared at him to cover her nervousness.

      “Unfortunately, sneaking out to your sister’s cottage against your father’s orders is even more improper.” He winked, a wicked smile revealing straight, white teeth. “It’s not me who’ll have to worry if we get caught. If you’ll allow me, I’ll help you descend safely.”

      He extended his hand like a high king shuttling his queen about the great hall with much ceremony. Being the center of a handsome young groom’s attention would not have been a hardship, except that Onora had the impression that Eamon thought she was more of a bother than anything. And that wounded her feminine pride far more than a tumble off the wall would injure the rest of her.

      “I will allow no groom to command me.” She looked down her nose and ignored the girlish urge to accept his hand.

      Her heart fluttered oddly in her breast as she kept her eyes trained on the garden. Unfortunately, she had moved too far behind the pine tree to see Sorcha or her knight any longer. She could see only a pitch-covered trunk and, if she looked to her right, a small waterfall in the brook that trickled through the garden. Peering to the right was not an option, given Eamon sat so near.

      “You see naught but a groom then?” He lifted a hand to a leafy limb of an overgrown apple tree and followed Onora’s gaze. “Are you always so quick to believe what you see?”

      “What else would I believe?”

      He plucked a white flower tinged with pink and rolled the stem between his fingers.

      “We sit among branches that bear naught but decorative flowers today.” He stilled the bloom and offered it to her. “Yet the tree has not revealed its true purpose with the fruit that will follow, wouldn’t you agree?”

      “Do you mean to suggest you are working toward a higher purpose?” She knew some ambitious villagers lifted themselves out of drudgery to become clerks or even clerics.

      But as she cast a wary eye upon her strong and virile companion, she could not envision him taking priestly vows.

      “I mean you have not discovered my hidden task in dismissing me as a mere groom.”

      He turned his sea-blue gaze upon her, unsettling her with the frank assessment contained therein. The look he gave her bore none of the subservient ducking or downcast eyes she usually received as the king’s daughter. Eamon studied her the way a man might research a keep he wished to conquer. He seemed to seek out her weaknesses and strengths, as if he viewed her for the first time.

      Awareness swirled inside her, a warm, tingling sensation that danced through her veins like a sip of well-made wine.

      “You overreach to suggest otherwise,” she complained, although he certainly gave her pause. Why claim to be something he was not? “I have seen you tend my sister’s mare these last many moons.”

      As soon as she said it, she regretted the implication that she’d noticed him at all. Flirting with grooms—even grooms who aspired to a higher station—was out of the question. If her sister had been exiled for being with a knight, what would the king do to a daughter who dared dally with a servant?

      Turning on the wall, she lifted her legs over the other