Medieval Romance Quotes

If you die fighting, I want to die fighting with you.

So, apart from casting runes, what other hobbies do you have? Forbidden rituals, human sacrifices, torturing? –

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.

Some people are destined to be a lighthouse for a lost comrade.

Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts for inspiration--and there are a lot of those texts. We have King Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish; Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage medieval romance for all we're worth.

Do I perceive a softening in your heart for me, damoiselle?" He laughed at her scowl. "Beware maid. I will tell you true. After you will come another and then another. There are no strings that can tether me to any woman. So guard your heart." "My lord, you greatly exaggerate your appeal," she replied indignantly. "If I fell anything for you, 'tis hatred. You are the enemy and you are to be despised as such." "Indeed?" He smiled slowly into her eyes. "Then tell me, damoiselle, do you always kiss the enemy so warmly?

Do not push me,” she warned in a shaky voice. “Och, but I will.” He shifted on his booted feet, pushed his hips harder against hers, until she felt a part of the wall. A part of him. “You lifted a blade to me, Katarina. I’m going to push you hard.

All medieval and classic cultures of the ancient world, including those on which Tolkien modeled his elves, routinely exposed their young and marriageable women to the fortunes of war, because bearing and raising the next generation of warriors is not needed for equality-loving elves. Equality-loving elves. Who are monarchists. With a class system. Of ranks. Battles are more fun when attractive young women are dismembered and desecrated by goblins! I believe that this is one point where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and all Christian fantasy writers from before World War Two were completely agreed upon, and it is a point necessary in order correctly to capture the mood and tone and nuance of the medieval romances or Norse sagas such writers were straining their every artistic nerve and sinew to create. So, wait, we have an ancient and ageless society of elves where the virgin maidens go off to war, but these same virgin maidens must abide by the decision of their father or liege lord for permission to marry? -- The Desolation of Tolkien

Honor is a balancing act and only the heart can strike that balance.

She was not only a female, but a damned beautiful one.A gentleman would have turned away the moment he realized what was happening." ~Alex Kerr

The sky was dark and cold as she longed for the one man who could chase away the demons of the night.

Tis said if you will but cast a desire under the crescent moon as stars cross its path, your wish will always come true.

I'm a piece of glass with a crack spreading across me, spidering off in all directions, waiting to shatter me completely.

Little son, I have longed a while to see you, and now I see you the fairest thing ever a woman bore. In sadness came I hither, in sadness did I bring forth, and in sadness has your first feast day gone. And as by sadness you came into the world, your name shall be called Tristan; that is the child of sadness.” After she had said these words she kissed him, and immediately when she had kissed him she died.

At least I’m the one leaving. It’s so much easier to leave than to be left.

Smart people are always learning something new. Stupid people just stay stupid. Remember that.

I love you enough to keep you from dying with me... ~ Dane de Falaise

She was so lovely, it hurt his chest to gaze at her, especially knowing she was courageous and clever too.

There were just four things a woman could be (five at most): daughter, wife, mother, widow, and slut. That was it. There were no other roles for them—no free and independent women, no feminism, no selfsufficiency. If you didn’t like it, you could be branded a witch and executed.

She is a religion practiced by few, Fading fast to the plastic urban promises, So vintage, her beauty sounds fiction, Can’t separate the maiden from the myth, A fragrance meant for folklore, She is the love long forgotten by the roads…

Close your mouth Lily, you look like a codfish." "I can't help it. This place looks like something out of medieval times. I'm surprised there aren't rushes on the floor or half-dressed serving wenches carrying trenchers of food." "Read Harlequin much?" "Shut up. There's nothing wrong with romance novels. You could learn something from them you know." Sean's mouth curved into a slow, seductive grin. He let his fingers drift casually along the side of her arm, deliberately grazing the edge of her breast. "Could I now?

Even bastards have pride, my lord.

This was raw. This was primal. This was real.

You will be the death of me, woman.

Knowing this was the same man from last night now clad again in his hunky knightly armor was a strange aphrodisiac. Yeah, a hot look, no denying.

She would not cry in front of this man who had torn her world apart. She would wait for an opportunity and kill him.

He opened his eyes to half-cast. With a low rumble he lifted her onto his hips. "Take me to heaven, lassie. For no one but ye can cool the fire thrumming in my blood.

. "There are many levels of hell Elizabeth. Rest assured I have visited them all. And I would damn well follow you back into its deepest pit to claim what is mine. You are mine.

People generally forget the things they are ashamed of, but no one ever forgets an insult.

I should like the woman I choose to be very honest, generous, and to have a sincere faith in God, rather than mindlessly following the rules.

Her life wasn’t some medieval romance novel. And even if it had been, she probably would’ve ended up dying of the plague. Now that was reality.

Men prefer to keep power to themselves. They make rules that dictate who gets to use it, and how, and why. I broke those rules when I saved you with my magic, and I’ll never regret it.

Will you be my conscience, hellcat?” He sounded amused. “I do not jest,” she said. He held back her hair and traced his forefinger along her temple. “Nor I. I am in dire need of one.

People seemed to live so differently in the past, with real purpose and romance—true romance—born of suffering and sacrifice and courage, not this modern-day idea of romance made up of cheap words, alcohol, and trivial gestures….yet she also knew this was a stupid desire, a product of her peaceful, privileged life that romanticized suffering as a way to feel something deep and meaningful.

Angela Carter...refused to join in rejecting or denouncing fairy tales, but instead embraced the whole stigmatized genre, its stock characters and well-known plots, and with wonderful verve and invention, perverse grace and wicked fun, soaked them in a new fiery liquor that brought them leaping back to life. From her childhood, through her English degree at the University of Bristol where she specialised in Medieval Literature, and her experiences as a young woman on the folk-music circuit in the West Country, Angela Carter was steeped in English and Celtic faerie, in romances of chivalry and the grail, Chaucerian storytelling and Spenserian allegory, and she was to become fairy tale’s rescuer, the form’s own knight errant, who seized hold of it in its moribund state and plunged it into the fontaine de jouvence itself. (from "Chamber of Secrets: The Sorcery of Angela Carter")

Straciliśmy świat i świat stracił nas, co myślisz o tym, Tristanie, mój miły. — Miła, kiedy ciebie mam z sobą, i czegóż mi trzeba? Gdyby i wszystkie światy były z nami, widziałbym tylko jedną ciebie.

I never was the type of noblewoman to stay by the hearth while the men rode into battle anyway. As my father always used to say with the shake of his head, the blood of the Old Tribes runs strong in me.

She loves this man and he loves her, and that is the only thing that matters. Let them have their love, Jasper. Now, shut your pie hole. I have come to witness a wedding and I will not hear your voice again.

Faintly he smiled, but his voice was hard. “Lass, you do not want what I have.” As if to prove it, he overturned his hand and dragged a calloused thumb roughly across her bottom lip. All the breath came out of her in a hot rush. “Oh.” ~From THE KING'S OUTLAW, part of the Captured by a Celtic Warrior anthology

She straightened and crossed her arms. “I can’t sleep with you,” she blurted. … “As you please.” “As you please?” She stepped back, the rough wood of the bench bumping her upper calf. She’d braced herself for a battle and now felt oddly deflated. “You aren’t going to try to talk me into it?” “I need not talk women into lying with me.

It took a long moment, but Gerard finally raised his head and looked Jon in the eye. “It meant that I have not been honest with you, Jon Calder, and if you are to understand the danger you are in now, I must tell you everything, no matter if you believe me or not.

I want ye,” Lachlan choked out, surprised at his words and the desperate sound of his own voice. He did not look at Bridgette as he spoke but kept his gaze down to the ground as a war between honor and desire raged within him. “I want ye more than I want air to breathe.

His heat, his erotic pull—she could feel it. A weird, pulsing, virtual pull tugging at her skin, her nerve endings. Made her want to…touch. Made her want. The more she resisted the urge, the stronger it became. It would be a relief, really. To just…touch. One little touch. Just one.

He dragged his lips up the soft skin of her neck and gently nipped her ear lobe, sipping on the soft flesh. Her hands splayed against his chest. Expecting a shove, his senses careened when her fingers fisted his surcoat. Their ragged breath overloud in the forest, he eased his face away, nose rubbing against her jaw on his retreat, and sought her eyes. Hers darkened and—Lord help him—held no censure, only interest. He stepped back.

She had thought Raymond handsome. But the Raven was something beyond handsome. Beyond gallant manners and teasing glances. He was like the old, old stories, like the unknown man who waited on a darkened hill, the mist around him, hand outstretched ... In the stories, if a woman went to him... she did not return. But she wanted to go ... She wanted.

She might be a girl, but when the time came, she would have the heart of a warrior, until her heart beat its last.

A good woman should neither take offense nor blame herself for someone else's faults, but simply strive all the harder to do what is right.

...she felt safe with Nicolo, and feared nothing.

Once again I felt light-headed, but this time it wasn't from the scent of lilacs; it was from the scent of my own death.

I see who you are. You see only who you fear you might become.” - Maggie to Tadhg

This is the last time we run, lass, I swear it,” he vowed hoarsely, grabbing her hand. “But this time, we have to run like hell.” - Tadhg to his Maggie

I’m not a saviour,” he said. She, of all people knew no one was and that she didn’t deserve one. “I’m not asking you to be.

Wake up! You’re a sacred soul and glory is yours for the taking.

Hot-blooded men make war. It’s up to cool-headed queens like us to make the peace.

The world is an ambitious business. It continuously expands and evolves. But people are lazy and God is far too lovely to do something about it.

Then you are no longer afraid of death, Your Majesty?” the lady asked, awed at the queen’s adventures. “No, I am no longer afraid of life.

Ah, cariad, finally I have you to myself, with a bed behind me, and what do I do?

You change the world, but the world changes you, too. There’s no getting around it. I have to survive here, no matter what it costs me.

A last, despairing thought shot through Aliya’s mind, Is this it? I don’t want to die! I want to live! Then everything went dark.

Eventually the old herbalist realized that Jaimie had knowledge to share, as well. Two intelligent people can always find common ground.

In this world, women held a position somewhere between horses and cows. Aristocratic women were slightly better off.

These people don’t even realize how tied down they are by thinking of themselves as either lords or peasants.

It is dangerous to become attached to a du Lac. He will break your heart, and you will not recover.

You were bringing me all those flowers when I was sick, like you were wooing me. How could my poor, weak heart resist?

You know better than me that there are people who serve God and those who serve only their own selves.

So that's how it was. Palaces, kings... and thugs like that, who, like locusts, move from one century to another.

They were interesting things, stars. Like clouds, you could see them and could not deny their existence. Yet you couldn’t touch them, hold them, or own them. You couldn’t feel them. Love was somewhat the opposite, he pondered. It can’t be seen but it can be felt. It was intangible, like the stars and the clouds, like the heavens and destiny. Yet it existed, he knew this to be true.

It was a kiss that slowed down as it went, a great, long adoring kiss, Tadhg slanting his mouth first to one side, then the other, drowning her in the unyielding, unstoppable claiming of his kiss.

Have you ever felt the thrum of the forest in your veins?” Issylte nodded, her eyes wide with discovery and delight. She held Maiwenn’s gaze, nearly breathless with anticipation. “That, Églantine, is power.

Why could he not have chosen some other woman? Why Avelina? But he knew why. It was because she had seemed good and kind and had expressed her thoughts without any false pride or pretense. He had admired her forthrightness and her compassion. And although he had never thought of a wife with strong opinions was a good thing, he actually found he liked her opinions-or at least admired her for having them. He wanted to get to know her, to know everything that was in her heart. He wanted to marry her and, surprising even himself, to love her.

Men love those creatures that need to be taken care of. To be with a strong and wise woman is obliging. If you want to tame a lioness you need to become a lion, not a goat. A doe is easier to keep. You give her a little grass, a little milk, and she is tamed. Who do you think a man would choose?

It looks as if the Romances and such Ballads were in the Middle Ages, as they have remained ever since, truancies, refreshments, things that can live only on the margin of the mind, things whose very charm depends on their not being ‘of the centre’ (a locality which Matthew Arnold possibly overvalued).

Naught is simple about the truth. There is the truth of what happened and the truth of what I believe happened and the truth of what I still remember to have happened. And that does not embrace the truths perceived and remembered by others, let alone whether any of us witnessed the fullness of the truth in the first place.

He grinned: he’d turned in time to witness her delicate white shoulders dip below the water’s surface. Thankfully, she quickly completed her morning’s ablutions and made a shooing motion with her hands. Back turned again, he waited for her to dress, all the while telling his privy counselor to cease its repeated suggestions.

Nothing to say. I used to be a ghostwriter for a publisher.’ ‘Medieval stuff?’ ‘Eighty-page love stories. You have this guy, untrustworthy but good in bed, and this girl, radiant but innocent. In the end they fall madly in love and it’s incredibly boring. The story doesn’t say when they split up.’ ‘Of course not,’ said Mathias

Werewolves had been so rationalized and medicalized by the year 1000 that they became subject to a medieval type of “heroin chic” romanticism in literature, in which they were frequently portrayed as attractive, lonely, suffering, victimized, self-sacrificing, chivalrous heroes in fictional and mythological tales emerging during the Grail romance era. The “chivalrous werewolf” narratives often feature a noble knight or prince who transforms into a werewolf to protect the subject of his romantic love, but while he is a werewolf she betrays him by stealing his transformative device—either a potion, a ring, a belt or his clothes—trapping him forever in his lovelorn werewolf state.25

You used to be so full of life, so happy, and then— men come back from war bent out of shape all the time, it is a given. But you, you came back to me like a phantom of your former self, you were not just bent out of shape, you were well and truly shattered. On the outside you are as hard as steel, you always have been, but you were a broken man.

The death of a loved one is a terrible thing. Even more terrible is the death of the only dear person; the one who shares your every breath. But the worst thing is when the loved one is slowly dying before your very eyes; when you see and understand everything but cannot help him; when you are prepared to give up your life for his, but they won't take it.

The way you philosophize life, With those beer tins in your hand, Lady, such a poetry you are when you are drunk, And those cigarettes in between your pretty fingers, You look so very graceful when you are smoking, So very beautiful in the haze, Like some medieval artwork, So worthy to be on canvas… I just love to watch you struggle in bed, Fighting the sunlight with your pillow, And in all the glory of your Sunday morning hangover, Innocence oozes out of your drunken face, And Oh my Godless lady it’s time for your, Lemonades, Novocain and hour long shower in silence. I know it’s crazy to believe in silly things, But you look so very pure when you suffer from your addictions… --- Her Cigarettes And Beers

The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic. This may appear a surprising claim, which would not have seemed even remotely conceivable at the start of the century and which is bound to encounter fierce resistance even now. However, when the time comes to look back at the century, it seems very likely that future literary historians, detached from the squabbles of our present, will see as its most representative and distinctive works books like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and also George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot-49 and Gravity’s Rainbow. The list could readily be extended, back to the late nineteenth century with H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau and The War of the Worlds, and up to writers currently active like Stephen R. Donaldson and George R.R. Martin. It could take in authors as different, not to say opposed, as Kingsley and Martin Amis, Anthony Burgess, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Don DeLillo, and Julian Barnes. By the end of the century, even authors deeply committed to the realist novel have often found themselves unable to resist the gravitational pull of the fantastic as a literary mode. This is not the same, one should note, as fantasy as a literary genre – of the authors listed above, only four besides Tolkien would find their works regularly placed on the ‘fantasy’ shelves of bookshops, and ‘the fantastic’ includes many genres besides fantasy: allegory and parable, fairy-tale, horror and science fiction, modern ghost-story and medieval romance. Nevertheless, the point remains. Those authors of the twentieth century who have spoken most powerfully to and for their contemporaries have for some reason found it necessary to use the metaphoric mode of fantasy, to write about worlds and creatures which we know do not exist, whether Tolkien’s ‘Middle-earth’, Orwell’s ‘Ingsoc’, the remote islands of Golding and Wells, or the Martians and Tralfa-madorians who burst into peaceful English or American suburbia in Wells and Vonnegut. A ready explanation for this phenomenon is of course that it represents a kind of literary disease, whose sufferers – the millions of readers of fantasy – should be scorned, pitied, or rehabilitated back to correct and proper taste. Commonly the disease is said to be ‘escapism’: readers and writers of fantasy are fleeing from reality. The problem with this is that so many of the originators of the later twentieth-century fantastic mode, including all four of those first mentioned above (Tolkien, Orwell, Golding, Vonnegut) are combat veterans, present at or at least deeply involved in the most traumatically significant events of the century, such as the Battle of the Somme (Tolkien), the bombing of Dresden (Vonnegut), the rise and early victory of fascism (Orwell). Nor can anyone say that they turned their backs on these events. Rather, they had to find some way of communicating and commenting on them. It is strange that this had, for some reason, in so many cases to involve fantasy as well as realism, but that is what has happened.

She held the ring in her palm, looking down at it. When she turned it in her hand, she saw for the first time that there were letters engraved on the inner curve as well as the outside. She tilted it to the light. A vila mon Coeur, it said in French. A vila mon Coeur. Gardi li mo. She closed her eyes, curling her fingers tight around the ring, and bowed her head with a whimper of despair. Here is my heart. Guard it well.

Yes, Lilian Earton was a large woman. She was fat. There was no other word for it. But at the same time, there was something indefinable about her. Was it an inner light? A sparkle in her eyes? The way she spoke and moved and made things move around her? The man couldn’t have said exactly. He didn’t know the word “charisma,” but that was exactly what she had. She had personality that no layers of fat could hide. She was impressive.

Tristan contrefit sa voix et répondit : « Aux noces de l'abbé du Mont, qui est de mes amis. Il a épousé une abbesse, une grosse dame voilée. De Besançon jusqu'au Mont tous les prêtres, abbés, moines et clercs ordonnés ont été mandés à ces épousailles : et tous sur la lande, portant bâtons et crosses, jouent et dansent à l'ombre des grands arbres. Mais je les ai quittés pour venir ici : car je dois aujourd'hui servir à la table du roi. »

And you dare to wear the golden spurs of a knight? You dare to call yourself a Marshal of France and carry the fleur-de-lis on your coat of arms? The meanest lackey in this hall knows more of honour and loyalty than you! Hang and burn my servants and kill me - kill too, now that you have handed your companion-in-arms Arnaud de Montsalvy, to your cousin. With my last breath, I shall call on Heaven to witness that Gilles de Rais is a traitor and a felon!

Will they not for their part have monkeys and marmosets to make them fine coats and doublets of leather and iron? Hands would not be a problem, for the monkeys could work with their hands, and so they would in no way be inferior to man; they could even be writers. They would never be so feeble as not to put their heads together to find ways of resisting these arms, and they would construct machines of their own with which they would inflict great harm on men.

“In the Victorian age, he would have been an opium addict. A portrait of Byronic tragedy and Gothic ruin. In the Medieval period, he would have glutted himself on the blood lust and the religious fervor of the Crusades, falling on the twin pyres of courtly love and the denial of self-abstention. In the 1950s, it was quaint Americana, chain-smoking, and drinking. Fast cars, rock music, and fucking,” he spat the word. “He was dying when I turned him. I think he knew.

Here, sleep with your back against me. I shall protect you better this way.” She nodded, shuffled closer, and leaned back against him. Her unique womanly scent washed over him, and he fortified his resolve, though having her so close on a bed of furs fired his blood. She dragged her fur up, and he draped his extra across, tucking it in around her shoulders and arms. “I do not fancy having one of them lying next to you. Besides, I wish not for your pinkie to wander.

He was gleamingly, smolderingly beautiful, like a pure medieval knight or a young King Arthur stepping off the pages of a painting. Though it was always Lancelot who was shown with fair hair like Linden's, those long strands of dark gold and amber softening the hard planes of his warrior-strong face. Did Lancelot have a mouth like Linden's? Full and strong and sensual? Suggesting unspeakable delights if one could only unlock the man who possessed it? Was it a mouth like this which undid Guinevere?

I am sure you know that a woman of good character, modesty, and prudence would not make her wish to marry you very obvious. She will not be hovering around you, trying to force your attention to her every moment." She spoke carefully, hoping he would see the contrast in her description between Lady Magdalen and Lady Fronicka. "She would not try to make you look unfavorably upon another woman to make herself look good. She might seem quiet and reserved, but that is only her Christian meekness and sobriety shining through.

A laconic and highly entertaining" novel. "The characters are strong, each showing major evidence of being a product of their respective cultures. Overall, the story is a strong one, with a couple of well-executed twists that succeed in surprising the reader." - Publishers Weekly judge for the 2014 ABNA Contest, Two Brides for Ewan de Buchan "I love historical romance novels and this one right off the bat based on the plot/hook made me want to read more. I devoured this...and re-read it twice. It seems like the author has a very good handle on the time period in which this novel is set." - 2014 ABNA Contest judge, Two Brides for Ewan de Buchan "I think this is really well crafted and interesting. The plot/hook caught me from the first paragraph. The characters are well done and I really loved the novelist's attention to historical detail...It's a really great romance novel, and is of publication quality. This novelist has a real future in writing romance (or even general fiction) books." - 2014 ABNA Contest judge, Two Brides for Ewan de Buchan

From here to Jerusalem no woman has a more beautiful neck; it was smooth and soft to the touch. She had a bosom as white has the snow upon a branch, when it has just fallen. Her body as well made and svelte; you would not have had to seek anywhere on earth to find a woman with a more beautiful body. She had a pretty chaplet of gold embroidery. There was never a girl more elegant or better arrayed; nor would I have described her right. Above the chaplet of gold embroidery was one of fresh roses, and in her hand she held a mirror, and she had arranged her hair with a rich head-band.

Ulric rushed forward to the pile as soon as the spikes were out of his way. The seneschal’s wider frame lumbered with the effort it took him to kneel and he grunted under the strain. Swiping the sleeve of his brown tunic across his forehead, Ulric placed his arm before his nose as he leaned closer to the pelts. Impatient, Vladamir watched Ulric pick through the skins. He followed silently behind, refusing to sheath his sword. The seneschal sat straight up in surprise. “M’lord, it would appear to be a maiden amongst these pelts. Methinks I see the entrails of a rabbit in her hair,” Ulric yelled through the sleeve of his tunic.

I had always been in love with someone. It was the only thing that made it feasible to live that way, getting up at six and remaining conscious until late at night. It was like religion for medieval people. It gave you energy to face injustice, powerlessness, and drudgery. The guys I was in love with always ignored me, but were never unkind. There was something abstract and gentle about the feeling of being ignored, a feeling of being spared, an impossibility of anything happening, which was consonant with my understanding of love. In theory, of course, I knew love could be reciprocated. It was something that happened, often, to other people. But I was unlike other people in so many ways.

The pulse visible in the pale column of her neck vibrated faster, her intoxicating scent washed over him, and he was dizzy with lust. Even through his mail and gambeson, he could feel her womanly curves crushed against his hard chest. He uncurled his fingers from her throat and ran the tough leather of his palm’s mitten along her neck and to the enticing curve of her shoulder. He nudged her mantle an inch, exposing skin. He cursed that his hand was covered in mail. How long had he wanted to taste, to touch her precious skin? Unable to resist, he bent and, with his tongue, touched, tasted the heat of the skin on her collarbone. Oh, Christ, she was lovely. She shivered, and satisfaction roared through him.

Her pinkie took matters into its own, er, pinkie, and moved oh-so-slightly, grazing his skin. His pinkie, judging by the shape and texture. Blood rushed and pounded through her veins, flushing her skin. This could not, in any way, be explained as an accidental touch. But he could feign sleep if he wasn’t interested. Did she want him to do that? What was she doing? She commanded her pinkie to drop, and thankfully, it obeyed. A jolt shot through her as his finger made a query, and the need clarified. The need represented her desire for some measure of control. Control over her general situation. Control over her attraction. She answered with a gentle finger stroke along his calloused, warm skin. A sharp breath pierced the dark air.

1150 AD, the north of England Melina avoided the eyes of her bodyguard. It was something she was becoming adept at, since her father had brought him into the household and given him the task of keeping watch over her all day, every day, and sleeping across the threshold to her chamber every night. But it was no use. Even with her head turned she could feel his dark eyes upon her. Deep dark pools that drew her into their depths, making her skin burn and her heart flutter. The one and only time she’d made the mistake of gazing into those eyes she’d paid the price, losing her wits entirely for several heartbeats. The man was handsome in a rugged way, his body hard and strong like a warrior’s should be, but it was more than that. There was something . . . Was it the look of him, the scent of him, the taste of him? Not that she’d touched his skin with her tongue yet, but she’d thought about it. At night, in her chamber, in her luxurious bed with its furs and curtains, all alone with him outside her door. Oh yes, Melina had the makings of a sensual woman and that was the trouble.

She felt hot tears soaking his shirt as she began to sob. “Forgive you? What king asks forgiveness of a slave?” “Avin…” he gently pushed her away. “I have wronged you. Terribly.” “Yes,” she said sadly. “But we both know it cannot be reversed. Not now. To do so will only throw Windbourne back in turmoil.” She wiped away tears with the back of her hand and looked towards the window. “I can no longer love these people after what they did, but I can acknowledge that they have suffered enough. The long winter was not their fault, but neither was the lie that made them angry. And now simple people have been promised a humbled queen, and you must deliver.” He sighed. “It is too much to ask,” he said. “Then don’t.” Avin gave him the smallest, and saddest of smiles. “You are the king,” she said. “So train me.” The tears came then, and she softened in his arms. “Save me, Xander, lest I never feel again.” “I am sorry,” he said into her hair. “I am sorry I didn’t come. I am sorry I was not the one to kill your father for the hurt he caused you. I am sorry that I caused you even more. I should have known better. I should have never believed the worst.” He put his forehead against hers. “Let me make it better, my love.

He put his mouth by her ear. “Easy, now, Senna.” His thumb stroked her jaw as if he were gentling a wild thing. His sculpted body was hot behind hers. “Be easy " “Stop touching me,” she pleaded in a whisper. His thumb stopped moving. “What?” “Kiss me.” The rest of him went completely still... “What did ye say?” he asked in a low, masculine rumble… Her heart started a strange thudding. Their voices were so quiet that the breeze blowing over them nearly drowned them out. Both were held paralyzed by the riders on the highway below. No one was going anywhere. In fact, it might all be over in a matter of minutes. And all she wanted was his touch. If I am going to die, she suddenly decided, it will not be absent the touch of this Irishman.She touched his hand and slid it across the mere inch back to her lips. Shutting her eyes, she trailed the tip of her tongue over his warm flesh.His body rippled slightly, like wind over waves. She felt every muscle in his body shift, very minutely, very definitely. He brushed his thumb once over her parted lips. Her breath shuddered out. “Did ye tell me to kiss ye, Senna?” “I did.” Her whisper trembled. “Why?” “Because,” she whispered, “if I’m going to die, it will not be lacking all the things I am lacking at present.” A pause. “Ye’re lacking a kiss, then?” She nodded.

Will she survive it? I told his lordship she would. I didn’t want to give him an excuse not to help her. Methinks that if he suspected she was near death, he would turn her out.” “I don’t know. Methinks it depends on her will to live. If she doesn’t want life, she’ll die.” Haldana sighed. “I’ll stay with her and watch over her. Please, direct the girls to take over my duties.” “Yea. ‘Tis already done.” Ulric narrowed his eyes in heavy contemplation, drawing back the coverlet at the girl’s bruised throat. His frown deepened. It looked as if she’d been strangled. “M’lord has put her in my charge until she awakens. He wishes to speak to her then.” “Methinks that m’lord is more frightened of her being here because she is a woman and a woman of his class.” “Yea, methought it also. He didn’t think much of me saying she was a beauty.” In truth, Ulric only saw the line of the lady’s slender body outlined by the coverlet and the fullness of her lips, but he’d mainly called her beautiful just to aggravate his lordship. He let go of the coverlet, letting the old material fall once more to cover the noblewoman’s neck. He moved his fingers to stroke the wiry hairs of his mustache. “Wouldn’t it be nice if she was sent here to melt the curse from his lordship’s heart?” Haldana sighed, wistful. “Yea, even the curse from this castle. Then the Monster of Lakeshire would leave us be once and fer all.” “You are a romantic dreamer, dear girl.” Ulric kissed Haldana briefly on her forehead and turned to leave. “Let me know at once when she awakens.” “Yea, Ulric, I will.” Haldana let her girlish giggle echo in the chamber as he shut the door. From outside the chamber, he heard her say, “Poor child. You don’t know what you have gotten yerself into coming here.

Here before you lies the memorial to St. Cefnogwr, though he is not buried here, of course.” At her words, an uncanny knowing flushed through Katy and, crazy-of-crazy, transfixed her. “Why? Where is he?” Traci stepped forward, hand on her hip. A you’re-right-on-cue look crossed the guide’s face. She pointed to the ceiling. Traci scoffed. “I meant, where’s the body?” Her American southern accent lent a strange contrast to her skepticism. Again, the tour guide’s arthritic finger pointed upward, and a smile tugged at her lips, the smokers’ wrinkles on her upper lip smoothing out. “That’s the miracle that made him a saint, you see. Throughout the twelve hundreds, the Welsh struggled to maintain our independence from the English. During Madog’s Rebellion in 1294, St. Cefnogwr, a noble Norman-English knight, turned against his liege lord and sided with the Welsh—” “Norman-English?” Katy frowned, her voice raspy in her dry throat. “Why would a Norman have a Welsh name and side with the Welsh?” She might be an American, but her years living in England had taught her that was unusual. “The English nicknamed him. It means ‘sympathizer’ in Welsh. The knight was captured and, for his crime, sentenced to hang. As he swung, the rope creaking in the crowd’s silence, an angel of mercy swooped down and—” She clapped her hands in one decisive smack, and everyone jumped. “The rope dangled empty, free of its burden. Proof, we say, of his noble cause. He’s been venerated ever since as a Welsh hero.” Another chill danced over Katy’s skin. A chill that flashed warm as the story seeped into her. Familiar. Achingly familiar. Unease followed—this existential stuff was so not her. “His rescue by an angel was enough to make him a saint?” ever-practical Traci asked. “Unofficially. The Welsh named him one, and eventually it became a fait accompli. Now, please follow me.” The tour guide stepped toward a side door. Katy let the others pass and approached the knight covered in chainmail and other medieval-looking doodads. Only his face peeked out from a tight-fitting, chainmail hoodie-thing. One hand gripped a shield, the other, a sword. She touched his straight nose, the marble a cool kiss against her finger. So. This person had lived about seven hundred years ago. His angular features were starkly masculine. Probably had women admiring them in the flesh. Had he loved? An odd…void bloomed within, tugging at her, as if it were the absence of a feeling seeking wholeness. Evidence of past lives frozen in time always made her feel…disconnected. Disconnected and disturbed. Unable to grasp some larger meaning. Especially since Isabelle was in the past now too, instead of here as her maid of honor. She traced along the knight’s torso, the bumps from the carved chainmail teasing her fingers. “The tour group is getting on the bus. Hurry.” Traci’s voice came from the door. “Coming.” One last glance at her knight. Katy ran a finger down his strong nose again. “Bye,” she whispered.