Champion of the Heart Read Online Free

away and stepped deeper into the room. In the corner was Abagail’s bed, a comfortable straw mattress. But the figure on it was far too small to be Abagail.
    Jordan hurried over to the mattress. Maggie was still and pale in the candlelight, her brown curls laying limply around her head. The edge of the thick wool blanket was folded beneath her small hands, as if she had not moved in a very long time.
    Jordan knelt beside the mattress, taking the girl’s tiny hand into her own. Maggie was only four years old. She had her whole life ahead of her. It wasn’t fair. Jordan brushed the hair back from Maggie’s forehead and was shocked at how warm the little girl felt. Heat emanated from the girl’s skin before Jordan even touched her.
    Tears rushed into Jordan’s eyes and she silently begged Evan to hurry.
    Maggie’s eyes fluttered and then opened to mere slits. “Lady Jordan,” she managed to whisper, although it seemed to take all her strength to do so.
    “Yes, Maggie,” Jordan whispered. “It’s me. Don’t talk. Save your strength.”
    “I’m so cold,” Maggie said.
    Fear shriveled any glimmer of hope in Jordan’s heart, and she climbed into bed with Maggie, pulling the child tightly against her, making sure the blanket was wrapped around every inch of the little girl’s body. She rubbed Maggie’s hot forehead.
    “I don’t feel well,” Maggie whispered.
    “I know, sweetheart,” Jordan soothed. She rubbed her cheek against Maggie’s hot one. “I know.”
    Maggie’s eyes slowly closed again.
    Jordan’s eyes again filled with tears. Maggie had been with her the longest. She had been abandoned at the castle as an infant, barely able to walk. She would have died if Jordan hadn’t found her and nursed her back to health. She was the reason Jordan had convinced her father to give her the old run-down Johnson cottage to shelter the children who had no families. She worked a small patch of garden in the castle so they would have food to survive on and mended their clothing so they wouldn’t be cold. They were the abandoned children. The children no one wanted except for her. Maggie had given Jordan’s life a true purpose.
    And now she was unable to help the poor girl. She could do nothing for her but hold her and hope Evan made it back in time. He had to get the herbs. The physician had said that only the herbs would save Maggie’s life.
    Maggie groaned softly.
    “Shh,” Jordan whispered. “It will be all right,” she said as much to Maggie as to herself. “Everything will be fine.”
     
     
    ***
     
     
    But it would not be all right. Everything would not be fine. For what happened that night in the dark moonlight on a desolate road would change Jordan Ruvane’s life forever.
     
     

Chapter Two
     

     
     
    T he road was dark and empty. A layer of wispy fog floated across the dirt, glowing a ghostly pale yellow as it absorbed what little moonlight reached its shifting surface. A light mist of rain fell from the night sky, its droplets beginning to break up the patch of fog. The rain was not enough to drench Fox, just enough to annoy him and obscure his view of the road. He swiped a few drops of the cool mist from his forehead with his fingertips and looked further down the dirt road, peering out from his hiding place behind the leaves of a bush.
    A form shifted at Fox’s right. “How long are we going to wait in this weather?” a large man with red hair and a beard asked.
    “As long as it takes,” Fox replied. Fox glanced at the big man beside him. Fox couldn’t even remember his real name, nor did he recall anyone ever telling him what it was. Everyone just knew him as Pick -- an obvious name for a master pickpocket and lock picker. But the name fit, so Pick he was and Pick he would always be. The odd thing about the big man was that no one outside Fox’s small band would ever believe that a man of such girth, with shoulders as wide as a horse and arms as thick as tree trunks, would have