�I heard that there were even marks all over his throat and chest and body�Love bites!� As the gossiping ladies rounded the corner and disappeared from sight their whispered conversation faded until once again all was silent outside the sitting room. Neither of them would have been nearly as gleeful with their conversation if they had only known that Janessa had been just inside the door, stooped over as she pulled on a tall, worn leather boot.
Rosy, expressive lips that ordinarily cast the sunniest of smiles were drawn into a thin, forbidding line, and the small queen of the Isles reached out one delicate hand to steady herself on the smooth castle wall. Granted, Janessa was tiny in size yet her rage could be monumental � just as it was at this very moment. While she trusted Corvarath, or had until recently, she also knew the kind of family and heritage he came from as well as the rough land of Alesia. Where women were nothing more than a pair of warm thighs and soft breasts - hadn't Corvarath's own father sired a multitude of bastard children? He'd had enough time in the past couple of days to approach her and tell her his side of the story. Obviously there wasn't one. So be it.
Maple-dark hair, brushed until it gleamed like burnished mahogany, was tucked beneath a nondescript boy's cap, and the decidedly masculine garb she was decked in had undoubtedly been donated by a sympathetic stable boy. Her hazel eyes usually shimmered with excitement and life, yet tonight they were twin pools of darkness, stormy and furious. Yanking a small black coat from a pile of discards on the floor, she stalked from the castle towards the stables.
As each determined stride brought her closer to her goal, Janessa knew she was being watched but it wasn't until she'd reached the stable doors that she spun around and hissed through clenched teeth, "Be gone with you! I'm going riding ALONE on my property and for once - I *will* be alone. This is my wish - and my demand." The Royal Elites looked at each other with concern, scuffling their feet. It was one thing to adhere to their ingrained conscientious duty, and quite another to disobey a direct order from their monarch.
For once Janessa didn't care. Had Fox been here, she would have asked him to join her for a good, long chat - but he wasn't, and none of the others could replace him. Turning her back pointedly on her guards, the little queen elegantly mounted her huge golden stallion, giving him free rein as he snorted and pawed the ground. It had been far too long since she'd ridden him hard and fast through the land, and even though night was falling she knew the trails as well as she did the back of her hand.
Bending low over Shadow's
neck, Janessa clicked her tongue once - and they thundered away from the
stables at breakneck speed. If that's the way things were going to be while
married, fine. Two could play that game.
