Tempt Me With Kisses

M
ARGARET
M
OORE

Tempt Me
With Kisses

“I have heard you have fallen on hard times.”

“And I have heard the taxes are very high.”

Was
all
his business common knowledge? Probably, he grimly decided. People talked. “Yes, that is so.”

Her bright eyes brightened even more and a wry little smile played about her full lips. “I intend to provide a way for you to pay your debts.”

His hands gripped the arms of his chair as he examined her face. He steepled his fingers and regarded her. A vision of her in his bed burst into her head. Her bountiful hair … her soft, shapely body … her luscious lips… He tried to keep his mind on the task at hand. “What are you going to do? Give me a good price on this year’s wool?”

Taking a deep breath, she shook her head and looked as if she were preparing to do something astounding.

“By offering to marry you.”

Contents

Cover

Title Page

“I have heard you have fallen on hard times”

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

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

T
he lord of Llanstephan Fawr looked around the nearly empty hayloft and sighed. There was barely enough hay to last until harvest, and Caradoc had no money to buy more. Worse, he had no money to pay the king’s taxes, and hadn’t for months.

He glanced out the small window through which the June sunlight shone, over the stone curtain wall of his castle across the valley to the Welsh mountains beyond. Mist covered their crowns and seeped into the valleys, trailing down the slopes like an old woman’s unbound hair.

He might end his days living up there a hermit in a cave if things got much worse. That almost seemed a blessed future to be wished for, except that duty and honor tied him to Llanstephan as long as he lived—or until King Richard took it from him.

“Caradoc?”

He turned and saw his friend Dafydd-y-Trwyn peering at him as he climbed up the ladder.

“What is it?” Caradoc asked. “Something wrong with the
ffridd
?”

A damaged sheep pen would be all he needed now.

“No,” replied the bailiff of Llanstephan. “I was in the courtyard—”

“Having an ale and bothering the maidservants, I don’t doubt,” Caradoc growled, although in truth he was relieved that there was not more to trouble him.

Dafydd grinned as he joined Caradoc in the loft. “Aye, I was, I was. And that’s when it happened.”

Caradoc crossed his arms over his broad chest and leaned his weight on one long, strong leg. “What happened? One of them refuse to be charmed by your honeyed tongue? Had to happen eventually, that did.”

Dafydd put his hand over his heart as if mortally wounded. “If you’re going to insult me, I’ll let you find out for yourself and no warning.” He gestured toward the ladder dramatically. “Go you to the yard.”

“Just tell me, Dafydd,” Caradoc said dryly, quite used to his friend’s theatrics.

“It’s a woman.”

“I should have guessed. Another one after your favors?” Caradoc shook his head. “I don’t know how you do it.”

And he really didn’t, because although they were fast friends and had been since childhood, Dafydd-the-Nose was one of the ugliest men Caradoc had ever seen.

“I’m charming,” Dafydd replied cheerfully. “But she’s not here for me, odd as that may be, and now that I think of it, insulting, too.” He made an exaggerated frown. “I should be offended that she’s so persistent about talking to you.”

Caradoc uncrossed his arms. “A woman wants to talk to me?”

“Aye, and not taking no, or explaining, either. Just smiles and says she wants to speak to the lord of Llanstephan Fawr.” Dafydd ran a measuring gaze over his friend. “There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose. If she wants a man who looks like a sheep in serious need of shearing, who am I to judge?”

Caradoc gave him a sour look. “Who is she?”

“Not saying, her, despite my very best efforts.”

“She’s in the courtyard still, then?”

“Aye.” Dafydd pointed at the small window. “See for yourself.”

“I will.”

Caradoc turned toward the window and, resting his broad hand against the frame, searched the courtyard of his castle, which was a humble one by Norman standards. Beside three large covered wagons, looking about as if surveying the place for taxes, stood a lone woman. Slender and well dressed, she wore a light blue cloak against the morning chill, her face hidden by the hood trimmed with fox fur.

Caradoc had the sudden unsettling sensation that she seemed familiar—from the way she stood so straight and confident, perhaps. Or was it the way she studied the fortress that troubled him? Llanstephan Fawr was no great Norman monstrosity with inner and outer walls and towers to spare. True, the word
fawr
meant great, but it had been a simple motte and bailey fortress originally, an enclosure of wooden walls surrounding wooden buildings on a hill overlooking a Welsh valley. Caradoc’s father had rebuilt the castle with stone and slate, strengthening the walls and adding a second level to the hall for his solar and family quarters, but it was great only compared to the cottages in the village.

Yet it was more than enough for him, and he had sworn to protect it and hold it, and so he would, for as long as he possibly could.

His gaze returned to the unknown woman. If she had been here before, why wouldn’t she tell Dafydd who she was? And there was something else. “Where are her drivers, her escort?”

“She paid them and they’ve already gone.”

Brows raised in surprise, Caradoc faced his friend. “She means to stay, obviously. Is she under the impression I enjoy having guests?”

And having to feed and house them as well, when his purse was nearly empty?

“She paid them in
silver
,” Dafydd noted significantly.

“So what if she did?” he replied, trying not to be annoyed that a possibly crazed woman had so much money while he, the lord of a Welsh estate, had almost none. “Unless those carts are full of money and jewels and she intends to give it all to me, why should I care?”

“Nobody knows
what
she’s got in there.”

Caradoc snorted. “Maybe it’s nothing at all.” He studied her again. “She wants to talk to me, does she?”

Suddenly the woman turned and saw him. She smiled and gave him a merry wave.

Startled, he drew back so fast, a muscle in his back twinged in protest. Ignoring it, he wracked his brain for an explanation, because there was something even more familiar now—something that made him feel … happy. He should know that face and her pointed chin and delicate, elfin features. He should recognize the gesture she made, for it seemed to echo another long ago. Deep in his heart, a wee voice told him he should be pleased to see her.

Why should he be pleased to see a woman who arrived uninvited and unannounced, his rational mind argued. “She’s a brazen wench,” he said aloud.

“That’s the general opinion,” Dafydd agreed.

“Where is Cordelia?” Caradoc asked. “Maybe this woman is a friend of hers.”

“Riding still.”

Of course. If it wasn’t pouring rain or blowing snow, his sister would be riding, and losing her escort, as often as not. “What does Ganore make of her?”

“Touched in the head, or lost,” Dafydd replied. “The woman’s got red hair, too.”

Caradoc barked a laugh. “I’m surprised she didn’t drive her out of the gates.” The elderly Ganore hated red-haired women on principle, believing them all witches, or women who would be witches if they only had the nerve.

“Ganore won’t go near her. She’s watching from the hall, crossing herself every time she takes a breath.”

“Lucky for the red-haired woman, I suppose.” He glanced out of the window again. The madwoman was still standing in his courtyard, as calm as could be. “Is she Norman?”

“A Scot by the sound of her, which is another reason Ganore won’t go near her.”

“God help us.”

Ganore hated Scots even more than red-haired women.

Caradoc started for the ladder. “Maybe I had best see this woman before Ganore falls into a fit.”

Dafydd grinned and nodded and got out of his way. “Aye.”

Caradoc checked his step and pivoted toward his friend. “Ask the woman to go to the hall.”

Dafydd’s merry grin disappeared with his puzzlement. “Why not just meet her in the courtyard?”

Caradoc squared his shoulders and regarded Dafydd with haughty majesty.

“Because I am the lord of Llanstephan Fawr, baron of the march, knight of the realm,” he declared in the deep and powerful baritone he could summon when necessary. “I don’t introduce myself to unknown women in the courtyard.”

Such dignity was completely lost on Dafydd.

“You’re going to wash first,” he said with sudden understanding, as if this could be the only reason Caradoc wasn’t immediately rushing to the courtyard. “And maybe take the shears to that overgrown beard and hair of yours? You know, for a man who’s such a dab hand at shearing a sheep, you look—”

“Just go and tell her to wait for me in the hall,” Caradoc commanded.