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This was her betrothed! He was the man of her dreams! In truth, he was here!
She’d heard him laugh, a black-velvet ripple, sweet as the honey of the southlands, and felt something deep within her move, open. She’d looked wildly about, and her heart was like an arrow hurtling through space. Then eye met eye. A spark leaped in the meeting, and the newcomer had laughed no more. He gazed at her with…recognition, it might be, for she had felt it, too.
This is the one!
Brenna swallowed hard. There had never been any other like this man. She could not suppress a heated sensation welling deep inside. His hand, heavy on her shoulder, seemed to have the strength of iron. She wanted to tuck herself closer against that strength…and yet she did not know why…!
Ironheart
Harlequin Historical #580
Praise for Emily French’s previous works
Bogus Bride
“An exciting, realistic, steamy romantic adventure.”
—Rendezvous
The Wedding Bargain
“The story is packed with continuous excitement and such marvelous characters, you’ll be sorry to reach the end.”
—Rendezvous
Illusion
“…witty and fast paced…just enough mystery to keep you guessing.”
—Affaire de Coeur
#579 A WESTERN FAMILY CHRISTMAS
Millie Criswell, Mary McBride & Liz Ireland
#581 WHITEFEATHER’S WOMAN
Deborah Hale
#582 AUTUMN’S BRIDE
Catherine Archer
Ironheart
Emily French
Available from Harlequin Historicals and EMILY FRENCH
Capture #214
Illusion #306
The Wedding Bargain #336
Bogus Bride #361
Ironheart #580
To Emily Ninnis, travel agent par excellence.
“He, who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe.”
—William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
Contents
Prologue
Northern Marches, Wales, 1188
The night was dark and full of menace. Leon shivered, struggling to stay awake. It was the joining point of the night. The hour of beginnings and endings. It was an unholy hour to be out of bed; the black watch before cockcrow when men most often died, and demons walked.
“Are you a knight?”
A thin little reedy sound it was, echoing somewhere from the right. At first Leon thought he had imagined it, for there was something about old piles of stone like this that accumulated shadows and odd sounds, creaks and sighs of wind.
Then it came again, eerie, alien, disembodied, drifting across the battlement, a voice soft as reeds twisting in the wind.
“Are you a knight?”
The point of his sword lifted a little.
It was an intrigue. It must be. Soon it would be dawn—the hour for murder and mayhem. He exhaled softly. It was comforting that the gray of his cowl and cloak bled into the gray of the battlements, leaving no shape for the eye to catch. There was only the shine of captured light from his naked blade as he waited, listening.
Glancing over his shoulder, Leon saw no movement, suspicious or otherwise, but his back prickled as if several thousand insects crawled up and down it. He swallowed hard.
It took courage to ask calmly, “Who is this?”
Silence.
It was some rotten trick. None had played such since he was nine years old and he’d dared the raven in the hayloft that the other pages refused to face. It had known better than
