Morganna (The Brocade Collection, Book 4) by Jackie Ivie Page A

She’d lived her entire life, it seemed, just to kill the FitzHugh laird, and then she was ready to die. There wasn’t a speck of room in that plan for anything feminine.
    She walked stiffly over to pull the knives from the tree. “When you’re ready to learn, I’ll teach you,” she replied.
    “Fair enough. I may even gift you with another of your precious, balanced dirks, too. You show the same concentration when you learned stoning?”
    “I taught myself stoning. I found out it was easier to tilt the sling to the side rather than arc it. It probably looks strange, but it’s more accurate.”
    “Do you never take time to play, Morgan? Never?”
    “I’m so deadly with an arrow, no one will challenge me. I can place it in an animal’s eye from almost any distance, any season.”
    “I suppose that’s my answer?” he asked.
    “You asked me once how I was with a hand-ax. I wasn’t truthful. Well, I was truthful, but I wasn’t accurate.”
    “P lay, Morgan?” he tried again.
    “I said I rarely held them. That is true. I haven’t much use for them. They’re a difficult tool for hunting. Makes a blood spill second only to a claymore.”
    “ Morgan,” he said, in what he probably thought was a threatening tone.
    “I’m deadly with a hand-ax. I’m capable of dueling the English way. They call it fencing, although my swordsmanship is geared more for ending a battle, rather than dancing about and prolonging it, as they seem to wish. Spectacle. That’s all they want. That, and blood.”
    He sighed, and this time it was loud. “I get the message, Morgan. You don’t know how to play. You’ve spent your entire life turning yourself into a killing machine, and that doesn’t leave much room for teasing, taunting or playing. I begin to see why I chose you to be my squire.”
    “You choose many to be your squire, it sounds. I was just the first on this journey. Martin the second. I assume we’ll have more before we return to your structureless home, too.”
    “Didn’t you figure it out, yet?” he asked.
    She snorted. “Of course I did. You earn, take or force the poor crofter’s children to come with you, serve you, become a part of your household and your life, and in so doing, you are gaining supporters throughout the countryside.”
    “Very good,” he replied.
    “Do you ever return them like you promise?”
    “ Most of the time, they won’t go. I swear.”
    “They won’t?” she asked.
    “Do n’t act so surprised, Morgan. I’m not an ogre. I’m a very lenient master. I’ve a large, warm house with no dearth of foodstuffs and other amenities, like tapestries and furniture. Most of those who serve me find it a comfortable lifestyle, unlike the one they had at their village. I can’t get them to leave. I send messages to their folk to retrieve them, and when they come, they stay too, giving me more servants.”
    “ No wonder your mother thinks you need structure. You do.”
    “I think I was needing someone like you, Morgan.”
    Her heart stopped. If the sun had been shedding any amount of light, everything she was forcing herself not to think about was probably written all over her face. She couldn’t even speak.
    “I mean, it just occurred to me. I don’t know why. You’re different, and I can’t fathom it. I know I want you near me, Morgan. I forced you to be with me because I somehow knew I needed you. I felt it the moment you touched me on that battlefield, and I feel it now. Stranger still, I’m not alone. You need me, too, if only to show you a little play.”
    The moisture in her mouth choked her when she tried to swallow. Then, she was coughing it out. He smacked her on the back and almost sent her to her knees with the force of his blows.
    All of which brought the rest of his entourage into the clearing. Morgan responded to Sheila’s barely-clad form with the most male reaction she could manage. She ran from it.

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Less than two weeks later, Zander’s