The King of Hearts - Jovee Winters Page 0,14

looking at me with avarice in their eyes. Making my nerves shoot sky high. I had no desire to be anywhere near them. I shook my head. “No, I am fine right here. Thank you. Go. Play.”

Rose, my middle sister squealed as one of the twins (I did not know which) picked her up and tossed her boldly into the sea. There would be a wedding, possibly two in the not too distant future, I was sure.

Adelia, not to be outdone by Rose, skipped away from the other twin’s grasp. I’d already been forgotten.

I looked back toward where the peddler had been and gasped when I noticed him strewn out on the ground. As though he’d tripped and fallen.

I didn’t think. I merely jumped to my feet and ran toward him.

I reached him what felt like half a second later.

“Sir,” I cried, hastily kneeling so that I might help him up. But he was already on his knees and dusting himself off.

“Gods, how mortifying,” he murmured, still staring down at his dirt stained robes. “I do apologi—” he turned to look at me and suddenly the words died on his tongue. His cheeks blazed scarlet and his breathing inched faster.

I cleared my throat, used to the gawking my sisters and I seemed to elicit in others, but I’d never been fully comfortable with it. Pressing my lips tight, I gave him a strained smile. “Do not be ashamed, sir. I fall all the time.”

And to prove to him that I wasn’t merely spouting off nonsense, I turned my arm over, revealing two very large and ugly yellow-purple bruises. I wasn’t sure why I was so accident prone, but I was. Maybe because I was cursed with an impossible curiosity. My head was always in the clouds.

Without warning, he suddenly reached out and traced my bruise with just the tip of his forefinger. “Gods, I thought at first you were merely saying that to spare my own bruised ego. What did you do, milady?”

Heat suffused my cheeks. This male was so… different. He spoke like someone from the past. Long, long in the past. The iron age, at least. And though he’d momentarily been stunned to silence when he’d looked at me, he was respectful. Not saying or doing anything untoward or inappropriate.

Shoving my sleeve down, I said, “I ran into my head cook’s butcher block.” I cringed, recalling how much that bloody thing had hurt and how I’d been laughed at by the staff for my penchant for daydreaming.

I’d been reading a very fine book, I’d completely lost track of my surroundings. Which, sad to say, I often did while reading. Probably why father had demanded I stop reading immediately, unless I was sitting still in his library. I’d snuck that one out and had paid the price. I couldn’t let my father see the bruise, so I’d been wearing long sleeves until it faded. It was the height of summer and a dip in the ocean would have been wonderful today. But my sisters could not be trusted, they would tell father that I’d ruined his most valuable merchandise and I’d be locked away indoors until it healed. I hated the darkness. Hated the dank confines of the castle dungeon.

“You have a head cook,” he said and I frowned. “It must mean you are of some value to someone. Have you no chaperone out here? The world is a dangerous place, milady.”

I cocked my head. He’d actually sounded sincere. Over my wellbeing. A perfect stranger. Someone he did not know.

I studied the man further. He had a soft chin. And a few pockmarks in his stubbled cheeks. A slightly crooked nose at the bridge. Heavy brows, and an angular face. His dark hair was thinning, I was sure I’d even caught a flash of a bald spot on the crown of his head as I’d knelt. But it was his eyes that drew me in most. They were dark blue, almost violet. The eyes of most men along the Mediterranean coast line were almost always brown, with the rare green exception. Blue was nearly unheard of. And it was my favorite color blue too. Like the deepest part of the ocean.

He also had very fine lips. Very fine.

I wet my mouth, feeling suddenly anxious and nervous by this strange man. I’d been around the most beautiful men in my region. I could have my pick of any of them, but none had ever caught my fancy the way this