Just One Knight

by Bridget Essex

  Just One Knight

  by Bridget Essex

  Synopsis:

  A warrior woman (sort of), a baker, and a love story that's out of this world...

  Cinda has been baking cakes since she was old enough to measure sugar, and she’d tell you that she has a good life. A relationship with one of the sexier royal knights of Arktos City is high on the list of what’s good…but when the lady knight breaks up with her for a fairly stupid reason, Cinda needs a night out on the town to forget her pain…

  Talis has been working as a stablehand in the royal stables of Arktos since she arrived in the city three years ago. She wants to be a knight more than anything else in the world, but when she gets the bad news that because of her notorious family she might not ever even get the chance to become a squire—let alone a knight—she needs a night out on the town to forget her pain…

  But when her best friend, Lellie, convinces her to wear a suit of stolen armor (and “borrow” a warrior mare), it sets into motion a night of fantastical adventures, mistaken identity and a sweeping love story.

  Can two women fall in love in just one night?

  JUST ONE KNIGHT is a funny, sexy, romantic novel that is set in the same world as A KNIGHT TO REMEMBER, DATE KNIGHT, A DARK AND STORMY KNIGHT and FOREVER AND A KNIGHT but it is a stand-alone book. It is part of Bridget Essex's Knight Legends Series: women knights, real-world high jinks, and love stories that transcend space and time.

  "Just One Knight"

  © Bridget Essex 2017

  Rose and Star Press

  First Edition

  All rights reserved

  No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Rose and Star Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews. Please note that piracy of copyrighted materials is illegal and directly harms the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication:

  For my own lady knight. I cherish you.

  And this book is especially dedicated to James. In an alternate universe, you’re my brother, and we’re both knights, and we go on countless awesome adventures in our super clanky armor. We may not be knights in this universe, but thanks for the adventures you’ve shared with me here. I love you more than rainbows.

  Contents:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  More from Bridget Essex

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  CINDA

  “You’re breaking up with me because…I bake cakes?” I stare at Asla, and though I’m attempting to regard her with the appropriate amount of sadness and reproach, I’m up to my elbows in bread dough, so it's a difficult look to pull off.

  Asla leans indolently against the door frame and gives me her most knee-melting smile. She’s a Royal Knight, so her grin is pretty dazzling. She’s dressed in her best armor, shone to perfection, the silver chest plate practically twinkling at me in the hearth light of the kitchen.

  Like most of the Royal Knights, Asla’s tall. She told me once that it’s not a requirement that applicants for knighthood tower over us mere mortals, but excess height certainly isn't frowned upon. Her long, curly blonde locks gleam in the firelight, and her stunning blue eyes—so icy and piercing—pin me to the spot with a sincere expression of regret.

  “Beautiful, you’re twisting my words.” Her tone is patronizing, as if she’s speaking to a child.

  Regret, my ass.

  “No, I am not twisting your words.” I stand there glowering, trying to peel the dough off of my fingers, but it’s sticky today because of the gray clouds lingering in the distant sky. Whenever it’s about to rain, the dough clings to my hands. I give up attempting to free myself of it and just stand there, doughy fingers held in the air. I feel like an idiot. “Asla, you just told me that because I’m a baker and you’re a knight, we aren't truly compatible, so you want to end things with me. I can only conclude, therefore, that you dislike the fact that I’m a baker.”

  “It’s not…that, Cinda.” Asla cocks her head to the side, downturning those gorgeous, full lips of hers as she waves a gloved hand, searching for the right words.

  She doesn't find them.

  With a wince, she informs me, “My issue isn't with your profession. It’s with how much you enjoy your profession.” And then—honest to Goddess, I’m telling it truly—she shifts her blue gaze to my waistline with a starkly disapproving frown.

  Our relationship has been lukewarm of late, and we haven't been seeing one another as often as we used to, but I’d chalked that up to Asla's training, since she has been trying to master a new style of swordfighting. Asla is a faithful knight; she takes her job very seriously, always striving to better her skills.

  But I realize now, as I gape at her with gooey dough dripping from my hands, that she isn't leaving me because she’s deep in her work.

  Asla may be a faithful knight, but she is also as vain as a peacock and as shallow as a ditch. She's ending our relationship because I’m a bit more plump than I was when we first met.

  She observes my figure now with apparent scorn.

  “Get out,” I tell her, and I’m pointing a doughy finger toward the door.

  Asla’s mouth twists into a soft frown. She sighs, as if to suggest that I’m overreacting. “Cinda, please. I don't want to part on bad terms—”

  I shake my head. “You just told me I’ve been eating too many cakes.”

  “Well, you have—”

  “See yourself out, please and thank you.”

  Asla’s eyes glint with chilly anger, but she shrugs her armored shoulders elegantly, and then she turns and leaves, her cape flying behind her in a swirl of cobalt blue, revealing her silver-clad posterior.

  Damn her for having a gorgeous silver-clad posterior.

  I’m shaking as she aims for the stairs and the front door of the bakery, and I have to grip the table’s edge, dough-covered fingers be damned, when I hear the shop door close, the bell over the door tinkling out blithely, with an incongruous suggestion of happiness.

  “Damn it,” I mutter, and then—much to my dismay—I begin to cry.

  You must trust me when I tell you that I’m not the crying sort.

  But I liked Asla. Now, love is a word that I haven’t employed in ages, but I was beginning to wonder if something akin to that feeling stirred in my heart when I gazed upon her, lying back on the coverlet, her long lashes fluttering against her too-pale cheeks, her chest rising and falling with easy, measured breaths. She is very beautiful, and our lovemaking was topnotch.

  And she could be sweet…

  Well, sometimes.

  Mind you, her vanity was all consuming, and so was her pride. She had to be the best at everything, which—as a Royal Knight of Arktos—is nearly impossible to achieve. The knights in the royal legion are the best of the best, so Asla found herself striving harder and harder, obsessed with her desire to surpass them all. And when she stopped being as thoughtful to me as she once was, I assumed it was due to her tireless ambition.

>   And maybe that was the case, in part. But it hurts deeply, like a poisoned thorn, to realize that Asla ended our relationship over something so stupid and superficial as the fact that my curves have grown slightly over the past few moons. I’ve gotten a little fatter, and my vain knight has decided that I no longer look pleasing by her side.

  I dash away my tears with an angry swipe, and then I hug the bread bowl and stare down at the mass of dough in front of me without truly seeing it.

  I won't apologize for myself, not for any part of me, even though there’s a little extra Cinda to see these days. If the Goddess has blessed me with a few more curves, so be it. I’m healthy, and I’m content with who I am.

  But my heart aches—it can’t help but ache—at the loss of my lover, especially for a reason such as this. I stare down at my belly, pat the apron over my stomach.

  “Cinda? Was that Asla who just left?” I hear Jeene call from the bakery counter. She must have been in the supply room, must not have heard what transpired between Asla and me in the kitchen. I'd forgotten that Jeene had arrived early for the day.

  Drat, drat, double drat.

  I’m grabbing a towel and scrubbing at my eyes hurriedly, but I’m not fast enough, because Jeene comes skipping down the steps in time to catch me rubbing away my tears.

  Jeene and I have been best friends since we were old enough to toddle, and she’s helped me build Nela Bakery, named after my mother, into what it is today: a successful shop packed with mouthwatering cakes and breads and other delicious baked goods. She’s been my right-hand woman ever since my mother died, Goddess bless her, and sometimes? Well, sometimes I think Jeene loves the bakery more than I do. And that, my friends, is quite a lot.

  My best friend is a woman you’d remember, even if you'd just glimpsed her once in the city market. She’s tall, with the build of a softer variety of warrior—and she is a warrior of a sort, with her tempestuous personality, her quick wit, and eyes that could fell a lesser woman. Her face is beautiful: high cheekbones, a sapphire glow beneath her black skin...

  But if she ever frowned at you in the way that she’s frowning at me right now, you’d likely aim to remove yourself fairly quickly from her gaze.

  Oh, goodness… Here it comes.

  “Cinda, why—in the name of all the sugar in the land—are you crying?” Jeene crosses her arms, fiery eyes burning into me, but then, just as quickly, she's racing down the rest of the stairs, her wide-legged blue pants swirling about her ankles as she wraps me in a warm embrace, the silver bangles on her wrists jangling brightly.

  I sigh, and though her hug is a bit too tight, I’m glad of it, because it brings me out of myself and back to this world—and to the fact that, if I don’t put the bread in the oven, there’ll be no bread in the shop today. And how can you pay bills without bread?

  You can't. That’s the answer to the riddle.

  It’s…not a very good riddle.

  “Jeene, I’m fine. Something-or-other got in my eye and—” But even as I’m drumming up the halfhearted excuse, Jeene’s clucking her tongue, wagging a gem-bright fingernail just beneath my nose.

  “Don’t you lie to me, pet, or I’ll spank that bottom.” It’s a threat she’s been using for a decade or so, only because she knows I like it—and knows that I’d die of embarrassment if my best friend ever did such a thing.

  I sober up and sigh again. “Oh, well, there’s not much to tell. Only that…Asla’s left me.” I’m trying to keep my voice light, but dejection thickens my voice: I sound sorry and sad.

  For a moment, Jeene gapes at me, and then she snaps her jaw shut and shakes her head with vigor. “I told you! Didn’t I tell you?” she crows. “Oh, Goddess, that was one vain goose, all silly and prim, preening her own tail feathers all around town. It was enough to make one vomit.” Jeene draws in a deep breath, prepared to really lay into Asla, but then she notices that my chin is wibbling and wobbling. Tears begin to leak from the corners of my eyes, and I press my hand to my mouth, holding in a sob.

  “Oh, darling girl, my pet—I’m so, so sorry.” Jeene’s tone changes immediately, her voice like a lullaby as she squeezes my shoulders. I weep, then, with a fair amount of gusto, because she’s being entirely too soft with me.

  I need my Jeene mad, with fire in her belly, or I'm afraid I might dissolve into a puddle.

  “Can’t you be angry?”

  She regards me curiously. “Angry?”

  “It’d make me feel better, I think.” I sniffle around the words, and Jeene takes a step back, concern giving way in her expression, slowly but surely, to rage. Her eyes flash like twin lightning storms.

  “Oh, I’m angry at that tin peacock. Don’t get me wrong. But seeing you cry… Cinda, I can’t remember the last time I saw you cry.” She glances around for a handkerchief, and, finding none, she takes down one of my clean aprons from the peg by the garden door and holds it out to me. “Blow, dear one. It’ll do you good.”

  Obediently, I take the apron and blow my nose—hard—making an interesting bugling noise in the process. This inspires Jeene to laugh, and then I chuckle weakly. We lean side by side against the kneading table and stare at one another.

  “She was an ass,” Jeene states helpfully, her autumn-colored eyes glittering with a triumphant sharpness. “I knew she was an ass from the first time you introduced me to her. Remember how she asked me what I did for a living, and when I said that I ran the bakery with you, she said—” Jeene puffs out her chest and lowers her voice, in imitation of my ex-lover. “‘But why must two women run a bakery? One would do. After all, you simply make bread! How hard can such a task be?’”

  I exhale heavily and frown. “She didn't mean offense. She was merely ignorant—” I begin, but Jeene holds up a finger.

  “You made excuses for her, pet. You made far too many excuses for her. Now,” she says, clapping her hands together, “you must curse her up and down and then be done with that pompous bird once and for all.”

  “But—”

  Jeene’s expression is so stern that my protest dies unspoken on my lips. I lower my gaze and pause for a moment, corralling my thoughts. “This one… This one hurts, Jeene. I cared about her. I thought we might last. I truly thought…” Huffing in frustration, I stare through the grimy window of my basement kitchen.

  Right outside the garden door is a set of stone steps leading up to my bit of earth. I use it to grow herbs for seasoning the breads and pies. There's little room for gardens so deep in Arktos City, and the fact that I have one proves this bakery has been a part of my family for a good long time. It has history.

  It's my destiny.

  Still... Sometimes I wish—

  “Dear one, you’ve got that look in your eyes.” Jeene sighs, pushing off of the kneading table to gaze pointedly at me. “You’re daydreaming, aren't you?”

  “Well, can I help it? My lover just left me. It’s as good a license as any to daydream, I think.” I glance down at the snot-covered apron in my hands and grimace, rolling the cloth into a tight ball. Then, with a decision made quickly, I cross the kitchen, stand before the hearth fire, and toss the apron into the flames.

  Jeene arches a questioning brow.

  “It's no loss.” I watch as the fire licks at the cloth. “That apron was an old one, full of holes. I’m tired of mending it.”

  Jeene chuckles mirthlessly. “I think, pet, that you’re tired of mending a good many things. And Asla was one of them.” She crosses her arms loosely across her chest. “I'm sorry that you’re feeling low—truly I am. And if you want coddling, I’ll give it to you, and freely. But you must ask yourself whether you should regret this ending.” She scoffs. “More to the point, did that conceited chicken satisfy you in any way at all?”

  My eyes are fixed on the coneflowers waving their purple heads beyond the window as I consider Jeene’s question—but I already know the answer. “No,” I murmur then, and I glance at my best friend, my jaw flexed tight. “I don’t think she did. Sat
isfy me, I mean. Asla was...comfortable for me. Being with her was easy. Easier than the hard thing of breaking up.

  “And what she did—leaving me—was probably a blessing, I know, though it’ll sting for a while, as all fresh wounds do.” Abruptly, I wipe my hands on the cleansing towel that the magicmaker of Arktos so kindly spun for me, and then I’m plunging my fingers back into the warm, yeasty goodness of the bowl.

  “Now you’re taking this a little too well,” Jeene says skeptically, regarding me with genuine concern. “I didn't mean to minimize your pain. A small part of your heart was broken just now, and that’s bound to leave you aching.”

  Up to my elbows in dough, I nod thoughtfully. “You may be right. I…I think you are right,” I amend. “But there's nothing to be done for it. Wounds can’t heal quickly, not if they’re going to mend right. And this one…it’s got to mend right.”

  Jeene’s wearing a mischievous expression, an expression I know all too well. So I'm already shaking my head at her before she opens her mouth: “You know what you need?” Her eyes are starting to twinkle.

  “For this loaf to be in the hearth?” I ask, raising a brow. “So that we might sell some bread today? And earn enough coin to keep us both fed?”

  Jeene waves a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, of course. But beyond that... You, my pet,” she crows, “need a good tumble!”

  I start to laugh, a high laugh of surprise that merges with a harsh laugh of disbelief. Jeene looks every bit the warrior queen in this moment—as she always does just before the both of us get into various amounts of trouble.

  “No,” I tell her, sobering, and the word has the finality of a millstone. Of course, Jeene has never accepted my no before when it comes to her plans of mischief, and I don't expect her to start now.

  “Think of it,” she coos softly, singing the words, and then she’s stepping forward, wrapping an arm around my shoulders as she lifts her other hand to the air, as if she’s painting a picture. “Just think,” she breathes out in delight, “of all the lovely women out there who would leap at the chance to give you a tumble. Perhaps a tumble good enough to make you forget all about Asla.”