Hard Day's Knight

CHAPTER TWO-1

CHAPTER TWO

“WHAT THE b****y HELL were you thinking? You could have seriously hurt someone!”

How mortifying. My first half hour at the Faire, and I was being yelled at by a big, handsome knight. On a horse.

A really big horse.

“Argh!” I clutched the angry knight’s arms as it suddenly struck me that I was perched a good six feet off the ground. “Look, I’m sorry, but this cat I’m babysitting ran out, and I just wanted to grab him before he ate someone’s tent.”

The knight glared at me for a second. “I’m not talking to you.”

“You’re not? Oh.” It took me a minute to realize that he was narrowing his eyes at the man facing us on the murderous white horse, the one that had almost run me down. I turned to add my glare to his. “Yeah! I could have been seriously hurt, not to mention what would have happened to Moth, and if you think I want to explain to my aunt that her precious baby was murdered by a horse, you can just think again.”

The man on the white horse unhinged his metal helmet and took it off, pulling off a soft white cloth cap before shaking out a glorious mane of shoulder-length golden hair. Even red-faced from riding in full armor under the broiling August sun, he was handsome, handsome, handsome—tanned face, sun-streaked hair, vivid blue eyes, and one of those chiseled chins with a dimple in the middle. He didn’t even give me a glance as he fought to control his slobbering-all-over-the-bit, almost-bucking horse. “Walker, what a completely unexpected surprise. I had heard that the motley group of misfits you call a team had registered for the competition, but I never thought you’d actually have the balls to show up. That’s not really your forte, is it? Actual jousting, I mean, not just hulking around the fringes reliving the distant, vague images of your former glory.”

“Farrell, I might have known it was you,” Walker rumbled. A little shiver went down my back at the sound of his voice. He was English (my favorite accent!), and his vocal cords must have been wrapped in velvet, because the words that emerged—when he wasn’t bellowing them—had the same effect on me as if I were being stroked by the softest touch imaginable. “No one else would be so arrogant, so self-centered, so stupid as to gallop a green horse through the tents.”

“Green, but fully under my control,” the blond man named Farrell snapped. Evidently he didn’t like being called stupid by the rich velvet rumble that came deep out of Walker’s chest. I had the worst urge to lean back against him to listen to its source, but managed to keep myself from cuddling into his broad chest. This wasn’t the moment to investigate the interesting man behind me; this was the moment to request that he put me down—very slowly and carefully. Before I could ask, though, Farrell smirked and slapped Walker with a zinger. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a prime piece of flesh between your thighs, but I assure you that I am more than capable of controlling any ride.”

“Ooooh, that was a low blow,” I told Walker. “You’re not going to take that, are you?”

He turned his narrowed gaze to me, and I saw again just how pure his eyes were. They were like silver discs edged with black. “Do I know you?”

“I’m the damsel in distress you dashed in and rescued in the very best brave-knight manner,” I answered.

“In other words, I don’t know you.”

I offered him a perky smile. “No, but I am sitting on your lap. That’s gotta count for something, don’t you think?”

“No,” he said, and tried to swing me off the side of the horse. Evidently the black monster he was riding didn’t care for the act, for it tossed its massive head in the air and snorted that warning snort that horses always give before they start doing things like trampling little girls, or eating their hair, or knocking them down, or any of the gazillion other things that loomed up out of my nightmares as the torments I used to suffer with my mother’s horses.

“Don’t drop me!” I screamed, and twisted my body around so I could cling to Walker. I got one leg wrapped around his waist as I clutched at his head, struggling to free my other leg from where it was confined in the yards and yards of cotton that made up my Wench skirt. “Please, whatever you do, don’t drop me!”

“What is wrong with you, woman?” Walker asked. His voice was a bit muffled because, straddling him as I was, his face was smooshed into my overflowing breasts. Beneath us, his horse shifted sideways.

“There’s nothing wrong with me that can’t be cured by being off this horse!”

“I’m trying to get you off, blast it!”

“You’re going to drop me! I’ll fall and break something!”

“Having a bit of trouble with your Wench?” Farrell asked. He managed to get his hooves-of-death horse under control and rode over to my side.

“I’m not his Wench, and I’m—Argh!” The black horse evidently took exception to the white horse’s nearness, because he snorted again and did a little sideways dance that had me shrieking and clawing at Walker’s back when he tried to peel me off him.

“For God’s sake, woman, I can’t breathe.” He gasped as he strong-armed my overflowing chest off his face. His gaze dropped for a minute to my bosom (heaving, in the proper Wench fashion), and he added in a much softer voice, “Not that I don’t appreciate the wubby, but I’d prefer one that isn’t conducted on horseback.”

“What are you talking abo—oh, my god, he’s going to rear! Don’t let me fall!”

“Marley is too well bred to do any such thing, but he doesn’t like you squirming around,” Walker said as he pried me off his chest. “Sit still, will you? Marley, stand!”

“Clearly the lady wants away from you, a fact that illustrates her obvious good taste and intelligence. My lady, I am your humble servant. If you will allow me to remove you from the knave Walker’s slug of a horse . . .” Farrell reached for my arm as he maneuvered his horse even closer. He grabbed my wrist and tugged me to the side, nearly making me fall off.

“Augh!”

“Let go of her, you damned fool,” Walker snarled as he nudged the black horse in the opposite direction.

“Help!”

“You let go of her! It’s obvious she doesn’t want to be near you.” Farrell pulled me harder toward him until the top half of me was draped over his lap, while my lower half was held tight by Walker’s arm around my waist.

“Someone, please, help me!”

“It is not obvious; she just admitted that I saved her. And she shoved my face in her breasts. Which she certainly wouldn’t have done if she didn’t want to be near me. Now let go of her!”

Farrell jerked at my arm. “She said she wanted off—”

“I will put her down if you just let go of her,” Walker said stiffly.

Oh, lovely, they were fighting over me. Why couldn’t they do it when I wasn’t strung between two horses? I stared down at the ground that seemed a long, long way down, and swallowed hard. “Hey! Guys, I feel like a really big human wishbone here, and I don’t think either horse likes having me half-on, half-off him—”

“Let go of her before you hurt her,” Farrell demanded, the white horse doing a nasty little up-and-down move that made my teeth rattle. Farrell’s grip slipped a bit as the horse sidled, leaving me hanging by my wrist between the two men.

“I had her first,” Walker said, tightening his hold on my waist.

“You didn’t want her,” Farrell said. “You tried to throw her off that slug you call a horse.”

“Throw me off?” I screamed to the ground.

“Whether or not I want her is not the issue. I had her first, so she’s mine to put down. I realize that you don’t have a shred of chivalry in your sun-bleached soul, but if you did, you’d know that the finders-keepers rule applies here, and let go of her.”

“Okay, I’m starting to seriously panic now,” I felt it wise to inform them, trying to quell the note of increasing hysteria in my voice. Whitey turned his head to give me the evil eye, then tried to bite my arm. “He’s trying to eat me! Let me down, let me down, let me down!”

“Screaming like that isn’t going to help,” Walker lectured me. “Horses like calm, confident people. Screaming and yelling and whinging just upsets them.”

I lifted my head and glared back over my shoulder at him. “Do you think maybe we could save the horse etiquette until a time when I’m not doing an imitation of a badminton net?”

“I was just trying to point out—”

“I know what you were trying to point out, but dammit, look at me!”

Both men eyed me stretched out between them.

“She doesn’t look very comfortable. It’s ridiculous for you to keep her when she wants away from you. Release her, Walker,” Farrell ordered.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I muttered.

“She’s safer with me than with your ill-mannered stallion. Here, you, whatever your name is, let me have your arm.” The white horse snapped at my head again as I clung with one hand to Farrell’s leg, the other still behind held in his iron grip. “Christ, Farrell! Can’t you control that loose cannon you’re riding? Will you stop screeching, woman? You’re not going to fall. My horse is too well mannered to do anything to harm you.”

As the words left his mouth, a white-and-orange streak shot from the shadows of a tent to a stack of boxes about four feet high. The premonition of what the cat was going to do left my blood turned to ice, my jaw dropped open, and my heart in my momentarily speechless mouth. “Moth, no—” I screamed just as all twenty-four pounds of massive cat hit Marley’s rump, feline claws extended to give him a better grip on the glossy, well-groomed horse.

Marley, not unreasonably, I’m willing to admit, took exception to such treatment. He rose up on his back legs, let out a disgusted snort, and slammed back down to earth with a teeth-jarring buck.

“Oh, very well, have it your way,” Farrell said at the exact same moment, and released my arm as the white horse tossed up his head and jerked Farrell’s leg from my tenuous grip. I did a beautiful half gainer off Marley as Walker released me in order to grab at the reins.

“Too well mannered to do anything to harm me, huh?” I asked as I lay on the ground and did a silent inventory of my arms and legs. My wrist stung, and my hip hurt from where it had been crushed against Walker’s saddle before being pounded into the ground, but other than a few bruises, everything seemed to be in working order.

“Really, Walker, there are gentler ways of removing a woman from your lap,” Farrell said, a self-righteous, solicitous smile touching his lips. “But I forget, you have so little experience in dehorsing people that I suppose one must make allowances. Please, my dear, I will help you—”

“No!” I screamed as the white horse’s hooves danced toward me. I stopped checking my limbs and scrambled to my feet, absently brushing off my butt as I backed away from the white monster, now snorting and rolling its eyes at me. “You’ve done enough to help me, thank you.”

“What the hell?” Walker, who had been busy controlling a fussy Marley, realized the cause of the problem. He turned in the saddle and scooped Moth up from where he was clinging to the horse’s broad rump. Moth meowed a protest as Walker faced me with flared nostrils and a disgusted look that almost exactly matched the one on Marley’s black face. “I take it this cat is yours?”

“No, he’s not mine,” I said feeling trapped between the huge black horse and the high-strung white one. I edged my way out from between them. “But I’m cat-sitting him for the next two weeks. Moth, you are a very bad cat! No kitty num-nums for you tonight!”

“Moth?” Farrell asked.

“It’s short for Behemoth,” I told him. He rewarded me with a flashy smile, but I refused to be swayed by the smile of a man who’d drop me just when I needed him.

“How amusing.”