Once Upon a Knight

by Jackie Ivie

  Sybil’s lips quirked despite her effort.

  “So…you approve?” he asked.

  “You are verra handsome, toad prince,” she replied.

  He blinked once and then lifted his chin a fraction. His eyes weren’t black, after all. They had amber shading that, when struck perfectly by the light, glowed with a touch of gold. Sybil forced the most horrid belly tingle to subside even before it had a good start. She didn’t have time for brainless, brawny, beautiful men with large opinions of themselves. She knew who did, though: her stepmother. She narrowed her eyes before he spotted her instant knowledge.

  “And?” he prompted.

  “And what?”

  “I’m verra handsome and you have named me a toad prince. What else?”

  Sybil shrugged. “Naught.”

  She dipped her head and slanted her shoulder and made a move around him in a dismissive fashion. He took a sideways step and blocked her. Sybil looked at his feet and then tried again. This time, she moved to the other side of the hall, taking three steps and gaining a half step forward of progress. One of his sideways lunges, however, and she was blocked again. She blew the slightest sigh through her lower lip, making it puff out and a wisp of her hair flutter.

  “Vincent,” he said.

  Sybil ran her gaze up the mass of flesh he was displaying for her and met his eyes. The wretch was smiling. He was openly doing it now and showing full teeth. She tilted her head to one side and regarded him, forcefully ignoring every bit of how it felt. Every bit. Especially the itch of sensation at each breast tip, where she must have donned an underdress that hadn’t been rinsed thoroughly because it chaffed with what had to be lye residue. Especially there.

  “I ken your name already. You told me.”

  “So say it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m asking you to.”

  Sybil pulled in a breath and complied, giving her voice the most enticing, sensual, deep-throated undertone she knew how, as she drew the first syllable of his name out in a lengthy fashion before finishing it with a moan of sound.

  The reaction was immediate and visual. The mass of man jumped slightly as if an itch of sensation made it inevitable. Sybil was around him and almost down the hall before she heard his boots coming after her.

  She stopped, turned fully, and put both hands out, blocking his way for a change. She was watching his reaction as he slowed to a crawl of movement and then halted just shy of her and stood there, breathing deeply. Sybil was matching him but kept the beginnings of agitation to herself.

  “You’ve a reason for delaying me?” she asked finally.

  “I’m na’ delaying you,” he replied. And gave that little smirk-smile that came with one dimple. “At least…na’ this time.”

  She took a deep breath. “My stepmother is a verra gracious woman. Anymore. Especially to me. I dinna wish any of that changed,” she replied.

  His confusion was almost perfectly portrayed. Sybil had never met a better liar. Poser. Deviant. Her eyes narrowed even more.

  “’Tis obvious to me, my toad prince. You are one of my stepmother’s newest lovers. She has them. Ever since my father’s death in spring of last year, there has been a string of handsome young men about the castle. All dancing attendance on her. Without end. ’Tis her reward for the life she lived with him. I dinna’ begrudge it to her.”

  “Lover?” he questioned, putting a meaning behind the word that she didn’t recognize.

  That was odd. She didn’t like odd. She swallowed the excess spittle her mouth was cursing her with and continued, making certain he knew of her knowledge.

  “Dinna’ let it fash you.” She ran her eyes up and down his frame and ended up back at his belly, where a roping of muscle was still moving with his pounding heart. “You are by far the most handsome. Much. She sees well. It’s my guess she’ll na’ be dismissing you as quickly as she did the others. Unless you give her reason.”

  She finished on a whisper. He was choking. It sounded in his next words. He was a terrible choice for a lover. He wasn’t even loyal. Sybil was already thinking through the selection of herbs she could use. The Lady of Eschon didn’t deserve such a cheat and a wretch. Both of which he was proving himself to be the longer he bothered the only other young female in the castle: Lady Sybil.

  “You th-think…I’m one of your…st-stepmother’s…lovers?”

  He was stammering through it, and that started the most entertaining flush to his cheeks. Sybil watched it. The man was extremely handsome. She had to give him that. He was more than handsome. He was a stunning, beautiful specimen, and the flush was making the gold of his eyes glow. Her stepmother had let her eyes be her guide this time. She hadn’t looked beyond that.

  Sybil had it decided. She was going to use crushed and dried chicory on him. She pulled in her lower lip in thought, wondering at the exact portion that wouldn’t prostrate him with sickness but would have him visiting the castle latrine more oft than he could Lady Eschon’s bedchamber.

  “Oh, dear man.” Sybil clicked her tongue. “I dinna’ just think you are. I ken it. Perfectly.”

  He grunted. Then he moved a step toward her, standing above her and breathing hard on her and making her regret the outstretched arms and aggressive stance. Especially since she’d been the one assuming it. Oh! He was getting a double dose of chicory with bruised leaves. Enough to cause gastric distress for a sennight. That’s what was happening to him, she decided.

  “So certain.”

  He reached a hand to touch her chin and lift it. She had two choices. Give up her stance, wrap her cloak about herself, and try to escape him again, or wait. Bide her time. Create the events that would serve her intent and not his. She narrowed her eyes to make her choice less noticeable for him.

  “What if I were to tell you that the moment I set eyes on you this morn, nae other woman existed…anymore?” he murmured in such a soft, seductive tone that Sybil nearly believed it. Almost. He was good. Amazingly good. And he had a voice like warm butter. He was the best one Lady Eschon had enticed to her side. Easily.

  “Other than remarking that such a thing would definitely give her reason to replace you, I’d have only one thing to say,” she replied.

  “And…that would be?” He moved closer, but it wasn’t by moving his feet. Or if he was, she didn’t hear it. Since he had a forefinger beneath her chin and was still forcing her to look up at him, she wouldn’t have seen it anyway. She watched him lean a bit closer to her, roamed her eyes all about his face for something to look at other than the mesmerizing quality of those gold-enhanced dark eyes, and had to swallow the increased spittle in her mouth. She knew he felt it.

  “Sage,” she said finally.

  He blinked a dark fringe of lash, shadowing the honey color into opaque black before letting it back.

  “Aye. Brewed with a touch of honey. Such a thing would be wondrous for your condition.”

  “What condition might that be?” He was tilting his head and slanting forward even closer, pulling her to her tiptoes with the lifting of his hand at her chin. And with pursed lips he was a completely devastating sight. If she were a female that cared for such things.

  Like a first kiss.

  Sybil gulped. “Poor…eyesight.” She managed to whisper it, and then watched as he lowered his dark brush of eyelashes. That was tantamount to closing his eyes. She wondered at the man’s sanity. And bravery. And idiocy.

  The moment before he’d have touched his lips to hers, she moved. The hall could have him. She was finished with this nonsense. She swiveled, had her cloak wrapped about herself and was nearly to the steps before he caught up with her again. This time he wasn’t subtle. He wrapped a hand about her upper arm and used that to stop her. Then, before she knew it, he had her swiveled and pressed against a rough wall. It was obvious they hadn’t reached that spot yet in their renovations. The entire keep was undergoing massive renewal and work. They weren’t at Sybil’s tower yet. The walls here
still needed to be shaved smooth. Or at the very least filed to a smoothness that wouldn’t feel like tiny spikes were jutting into her spine when she least needed that effect. Sybil felt every bit of it as he just held her there and looked her over. He was breathing hard, too, and such a thing as chasing a lass down a hall shouldn’t be raising such an amount of breathlessness in such a muscular male, but she didn’t know what would.

  Oh! She was giving him worse than chicory sprinkled on his sup tonight! He was getting dried linden flower petals mixed with hops. Such a thing was going to dull his senses and make everything on his body soft and worthless. Everything. Even the parts she didn’t care to note. That’s what she was going to do to this man for daring to touch her, to prevent her from leaving…for starting a riot of oddity throughout her belly that would have shamed her earlier. Now, it was vaguely frightening…illicit….

  Naughty.

  He’d finished his perusal of her bosom or wherever he’d been looking and had her pierced with a dark, honeyed gaze from beneath his lush lashes. The man had been blessed with theatrical coloring, perfect features, and amazing presence. He knew how to use all of it. Probably had practiced it. Sybil felt the shuddering of her belly calm a bit, and her head cleared. She couldn’t do a thing about the agitated breaths she was taking, however.

  “I am na’ your mother’s lover,” he said finally.

  “Stepmother.”

  “Hers, either,” he answered.

  “Then…what are you doing here? Now? At Eschoncan Keep?”

  She watched the black of deviousness slip over him, although nothing looked to have changed. It was like he was being dipped in it, covered over in it, and then stewed in it. She knew the next thing from his mouth would be a lie. She’d been wrong earlier. There wasn’t lye soap enough to clean this man up.

  His eyes slid sideways, avoiding contact for the briefest moment, and then they were back, boring into hers, as if daring her to look elsewhere. “I’m putting myself in the running for a certain position,” he replied.

  “What?”

  He’d moved his chin, facing her and making it too close. The smell of him was too unsettling, and the visage of angered and intrigued male was one she was going to have difficulty ignoring every time she shut her eyes. How had all of that happened? she wondered.

  “A certain position. In your household.”

  “I heard that. I meant…which one?” It was a good thing the man she was avoiding was a dwarf and dark in coloring. Otherwise, she’d think the increase of her heartbeat when she connected glances with this Vincent was something really horrible. Something akin to arousal…sensual arousal.

  “What will you pay me to find out?” he asked.

  Sybil’s features fell. She couldn’t prevent it. Just as she couldn’t prevent the stiffening of her entire frame. All that happened was the increased annoyance of hard knots of castle stone against her spine and buttocks, a closer view of his face since he’d lowered it toward her, and the scratch of her underdress on her nipples becoming more distinct and noticeable. She watched him glance there—and for no reason that she could tell. She was still swathed with her cloak. It was if he was looking for such a thing as a woman’s arousal after putting it into being. It was exactly what he was expecting! Sybil knew it. She watched him put his lips into a perfect kissable position in order to get a certain reaction. Her knees quivered as her body betrayed her and actually gave it to him, too!

  Sybil was mortified. Completely and totally, and it put her off balance and made her feel weak and fragile. Inside. Which was where she was determined to keep it buried. Nobody was ever going to ever see it—or suspect it. She didn’t need to pay him to learn anything. He was telling her with every prolonged moment in his company. He wasn’t her stepmother’s lover. Yet. That was obviously the position he was seeking, however. And why not? It was known throughout the rocky fells that the widow of Laird Eschon possessed gold, and a powerful amount of it.

  Men had been flooding to the castle for over a year in order to get their hands on it. This man resembling a Norse god was one of them no doubt. A common thief. Worse. He was willing and able to use his physical assets on anyone he needed in order to get whatever he wanted.

  She’d known she was right. Again.

  Sybil huffed a breath and smiled wickedly up at him, surprising him from contemplation of her lips. Or maybe it was her bosom. Or somewhere else on her body that she didn’t want to name. Wherever he’d been looking and trying to wizard a response from, it was ceasing. And it was ceasing now. Her time with Lady Eschon’s would-be lover was over.

  “If you’ve finished, I’ve chores,” she said in what she hoped was a normal tone, though it sounded nothing like normal to her ears.

  “I dinna’ say you had to pay me in coin,” he replied.

  He could have blown her over with a sweep of a hearth broom with such a statement. Sybil’s eyes widened before she could help it and glance down. And worse. He took such a response as his due. She knew it by his chuckle, followed almost immediately by an increase of breath at her nose.

  “So…what say you? A kiss…for a bit of information?”

  Actually, he was in danger of receiving a great quantity of linden flowers. Enough to make his head pound with ache for days. No! Sennights of time! Sybil had never met a man more willing to tempt such a fate from her.

  Stupid man.

  “Dinna’ you hear me?” she asked. “I have chores.”

  “What are they?” he asked.

  “The ones no one else will do, of course.”

  “You’re a lady.”

  Sybil tipped her head to one side. “Of a sort,” she replied. “I bear the mark of bastardy and am a poor relation to boot.”

  “So what is it they make you do? Since you have these horrible things to bear?”

  “Why?”

  “Because a little wench walked into my life today, stole my senses, and entrapped them in the palm of her hand. And I’ve yet to even ken her name. Why else?”

  “Wenches walk into your life ever, toad prince. Your path is littered with them. You walk on them. What difference does one more make?”

  He drew back a fraction, giving her enough space to breathe, and looked at her strangely. “This one is verra odd, though. Verra.”

  “Why? This one does na’ fall at your feet and worship the ground you stand atop?”

  He grinned. The dimples came out in full force. Sybil fought the blush of reaction and cursed it at the same time. It was horrible.

  “Na’ yet, mayhap,” he replied.

  “Oooh.” The word came out before she could prevent it. She watched him glance to the bow shape her mouth made as she said it, and then he moved his gaze back to hers. There was nothing for it. Arrogance such as he was filled with was just asking for a set-down…begging for it: putting it right out there for her to do something about it.

  Sybil smiled slyly and lifted a shoulder. “Shall we make a challenge of it, my handsome toad prince?” she asked.

  She got one dark eyebrow quirked up again in a high arch. That particular ability was uncommon and of little use. Unless one were as overblessed with physical attributes as this man had been. Then it was obviously put to use, whenever he wished, and on any number of unsuspecting females. The unsettled feeling she’d been harboring since meeting him knotted into a ball in her belly and started pounding with the annoyance of it. He was obnoxious and completely unaware of what fate was about to deal him.

  “A challenge?”

  “Last one standing…wins,” she told him.

  “Nae,” he answered. “I have a better challenge.”

  “There is naught better,” she replied in disbelief.

  “Then I’ll use my words for it. First one on their back…loses.”

  The way he said the last words had an angry tremor traveling from the bottom of her spine, up over her head, across her nose, and flitting from there right to each nipple, making them hard and sensitive and h
orribly aroused right in front of him. And he knew it! She watched him look there and smile. A slow, seductive smile, so practiced he was probably known by it as well.

  Sybil had never felt an emotion so akin to hate, but suspected that what was happening to her was close to it. She’d never felt such anger and malice. She was very near to shaking with it.

  “Agreed,” she replied.

  “What?” He moved his gaze from contemplation of her breasts and met her eyes again.

  “I agree to this contest of yours.”

  “Contest?”

  Not only was he a wretch, but he couldn’t think, either? “Aye. Contest. Of wits. Now stand aside. I have chores. They will na’ get done if I stand in a hall being bothered by you.”

  “You admit to being bothered, do you?”

  She swallowed. “I admit nothing. Here.”

  He was watching as she pulled a ball of twine from an inner fold of her cloak. She always carried a small ball of it. Such a thing was of many uses when gathering, checking, and securing things. “Help me.”

  “What is it you’re about?” he asked.

  “Measuring.”

  “Measuring,” he replied in the same even tone she was using.

  “Work is being done on this tower. I have the chore of overseeing it and putting it into place. I need measurements for such a thing. If you waylay me, at least make yourself useful.”

  “How long am I to hold it?”

  “Dinna’ fash, toad prince. I’ll return when I’ve made the measure. Can you do this?”

  “Hold one end of a ball of string?” he asked in an incredulous tone. This time both of his eyebrows were lifted.

  “We’ll move to more difficult chores once I see how well you handle this one. So. Can you?”

  In answer, he plucked the ball from her hand, pulled the end free, and handed the twine back to her. Sybil held it loosely in her palm, allowing it to unwind as she went down the spiral of stairs, trying very hard not to skip. She didn’t look back. She was afraid she’d giggle.