His men hung back, exchanging a dubious glance. “I’d draw yer blade if I was you, sir,” one of them warned. “It might be a wood sprite.”
“Or a fairy,” suggested the other man, tracing a cross on his breast.
“Aye,” added the first. “Them fairy wenches like to carry mortal men off to their underground lairs and steal their seed.”
Hollis snorted. “They’d probably toss us back and send for our lord. Bannor could populate an entire fairy kingdom.”
Dropping to one knee, he parted the glistening bracken only to find himself overlooking a meadow draped in a patchwork of sunlight and cloudshadow. Its wee inhabitants raced and tumbled through the tall brown grass in gleeful abandon, both fair of hair and fleet of foot. At first glance, Hollis thought they might have actually stumbled upon a fairy kingdom—until one of the creatures tripped over a root and went sprawling, his outraged wail proving that he was indeed mortal.
Before Hollis could consider rescuing the lad, a shepherdess separated herself from the gamboling flock of children and rushed to the side of her fallen lamb. As she gathered the bawling child into her lap, Hollis’s curiosity sharpened. He squinted into the sunlight, but could make out nothing of her features. Although she moved with the grace and swiftness of youth, her garb gave no clue to her age. Her hair had been gathered into a russet wool cap and she wore a drab kirtle and apron of the sort any serf or castle maidservant might wear.
It wasn’t her appearance that intrigued him so much as the protective curve of her shoulders as she hugged the child to her breast. They were too far away to hear her voice, but he could well imagine the gentle words she must be crooning to soothe the lad’s sniffles.
Hollis sank back on his heels. Perhaps he’d been going about his quest in entirely the wrong way. After all, Bannor had never insisted his bride had to be of noble birth. Why not present him with a young Fiona—some shy, sturdy peasant girl who would welcome the care of his unruly brood and make few demands on her new lord and master?
A grin slowly spread over his face. The men-at-arms crept closer, gazing down at his dazed visage in alarm. One of them passed a hand in front of his face; Hollis didn’t even blink.
“What is it, sir? Have ye seen a vision?”
“Aye, I have at that. The answer to all my prayers.” As the men exchanged a perplexed glance, Hollis’s grin softened into a blissful smile. “A Madonna.”
He was tempted to drive his mount straight down the hillside into the meadow, but he feared startling both the girl and her young charges. ‘Twould be a simple enough task to seek out the nearest village or castle. Surely someone there could tell him who she was and where she lived.
He parted the bracken again, unable to resist stealing one last look at his find before he took his leave. As he watched, the lad wiggled out of her lap and went shimmying up the gnarled trunk of an apple tree. She scrambled to her feet and stood beneath the tree with arms outstretched, as if to catch him should his hands slip or his little feet falter. The broad expanse of her hips did indeed give her a distinctly bovine look.
Hollis sighed with anticipation as he rose and groped for the reins of his horse, already hearing in his head the sweet, coaxing music of her voice.
———
“If you don’t come down from that tree this instant, you wretched little troll, I’ll climb up and toss you down.”
“Will not.”
“Will, too.”
“Will not.” A half-rotted apple came sailing through the branches, striking Willow’s temple with a solid bonk. The other children erupted in scornful laughter.
Gritting her teeth, Willow tucked her foot into the crook of the trunk, fully prepared to make good on her threat.
Yowling like a treed cat, ten-year-old Harold came sliding down the trunk. He had almost reached the ground when his foot became tangled in Willow’s skirt and he went sprawling on his stomach for the second time in that day.
His high-pitched wail set Willow’s teeth on edge. While she was trying to decide whether she should pick him up and dust him off again or throttle him, he rolled to a sitting position.
“She t-t-twipped me!” He gulped for air, his plump cheeks turning redder than the apples she’d gathered in the pockets of her apron. “Willow twipped me! I’m going to tell my papa!”
Eight-year-old Gerta stomped to his defense, her flaxen braids bristling with indignation. “I saw her trip you. She’s an ugly, hateful girl and I shall tell Papa, too.”
“And Mama!” chirped the nine-year-old twins in near unison. “We shall tell Mama. Mayhaps she’ll send her to bed without supper again.”
Undaunted by the familiar chant, Willow simply leaned against the tree, folded her arms over her chest, and narrowed her eyes. As a wicked smile spread over her face, the children grew very still. Even Harold stopped his sniveling.
“I hope they send me to bed without supper,” she said softly. “For if they do, I shall soon grow fiercely hungry. Then I shall creep out of my bed in the black of night and go in search of something to eat.” She deliberately lowered her gaze to the white little belly protruding from beneath the hem of Harold’s tunic, then ran her tongue along the edge of her gleaming teeth. “Something plump and tender and succulent...”
As her voice deepened to a growl, Harold surged to his feet, bellowing in terror. His brother and sisters followed, squealing at the top of their lungs as they scattered across the meadow, fleeing toward the sanctuary of the castle.
Willow collapsed against the tree, weakened by laughter. When her mirth finally subsided, she slid to a sitting position and took an apple from her apron, savoring the rare bliss of solitude. There seemed to be little point in continuing to coax and cajole, reason and threaten, when her every effort to make her brothers and sisters behave was thwarted by her stepmother’s indulgence.
She sank her teeth through the apple’s crisp skin, remembering how eagerly she had anticipated Harold’s birth. After three years of serving as nursemaid to her pampered step-siblings, she was finally going to have a brother or sister of her own blood. But Blanche had used the occasion of his birth to pour more of her poison into Papa’s ear. As Willow had approached the bed to steal a peek at her new brother, Blanche had gently reminded her papa that it was Blanche, and not Willow’s mother, who had fulfilled the sacred duty of giving him a son.
Willow snapped another bite from the apple. Harold had been a sweet-natured babe, as had been the three babes born after him, but his natural affection for her was soon tainted by the disdain his older step-siblings showed her. The chasm between them was simply too great for his chubby little arms to bridge.
They were sturdy. She was slender. They were blond. She was dark. They had blue eyes. Hers were the tempestuous gray of a storm at sea. They had icy Saxon blood flowing through their veins, while hers surged with the warm, passionate blood of the French. They were loved. She was...
Willow tossed away the half-eaten apple, abruptly losing her taste for it. She had not been her papa’s little princess for a very long time. From the moment Blanche had arrived at Bedlington, she had deposed Willow with all the ruthless ambition of a conquering queen determined to set her own heirs on the throne.
In the beginning, Willow had been too bewildered to accept her defeat. She would try to crawl into her father’s lap only to find it already occupied by a clinging Reanna or a smirking Stefan. Hungry for a story, she would wiggle her way into the circle of children crowded around her papa’s knee. Just as Papa would reach out an arm to draw her nearer, Blanche’s hand would descend on her shoulder like a pale spider.
“You’re growing too old for such nonsense, dear,” Blanche would whisper, the honeyed venom of her voice paralyzing Willow more effectively than her biting grip, “Why don’t you run along upstairs and see if Beatrix needs her napkins changed?”
Willow would creep from the great hall, stealing a yearning glance at her papa over her shoulder. More than once, she would have sw
orn she glimpsed a reflection of her own trapped panic in his eyes. His mouth would open, but before he could call her back, Blanche’s children would swarm over him, clamoring for his undivided attention. Eventually, his unspoken words had swelled into a silence so deafening it could never again be fully broken.
Sometimes Willow wished she couldn’t even remember when Papa had loved her. Perhaps then she wouldn’t waste her time dreaming that someone might love her that way again. The yearning ran deep, deeper even than her craving for a single hour of freedom to call her own.
Seduced by that bittersweet dream, she leaned her head against the tree. As her eyes drifted shut, it was not her papa’s face she saw, but the face of another man.
Her prince, she had christened him when she’d still been young and foolish enough to believe in such fancies.
His hair was as dark and lustrous as samite, his jaw strong and his brow kind. It mattered not what color his eyes were so long as they brimmed with love for her and her alone. He would not love her for a brief, sweet season, but forever.
Willow could not have said how long she lingered in that meadow, hearing his whisper in the rustling of the grasses, feeling his touch in the caress of the breeze. She didn’t even realize she’d puckered her lips for an imaginary kiss until the first drop of rain spattered against them, vanquishing both her prince and her dreams.
She scrambled to her feet, her alarm rising with the wind. She might be getting too old to be sent to bed without supper, but she had no doubt Blanche could devise some more subtle punishment for her rebellion. She tucked a stray tendril of hair into her cap. The last time she’d dared to defy her stepmother, Blanche had threatened to shear her of her unruly curls.
Tying up her apron so as not to spill the apples from the pockets, Willow went dashing across the meadow toward the castle she had once called home.
———
Willow burst into the musty gloom of the kitchen only seconds before the fitful shower swelled into a genuine downpour. She ducked around the stream of rain pouring through a crack in the ceiling, shivering as she discovered the fire had been allowed to go out again. If the cold hearth and deserted spit were any indication, she might not be the only one going to bed without supper. Perhaps ‘twould be wise to hoard the apples in her apron.
Blanche’s spending was bleeding her papa dry. The overflowing coffers he’d dreamed of when he’d wed the wealthy widow had long ago dried to a meager trickle. As long as she was draped in jewels and fur and her little darlings garbed in samite and wool, Blanche cared not that the castle’s defenses were rotting or that her father’s villeins and men-at-arms had deserted him for fairer and more prosperous masters.
The king’s wrath would have descended on them long ago had Blanche not wed her two eldest daughters, Reanna and Edwina, to wealthy barons. Driven to distraction by the incessant whining of their wives, the barons had agreed to pay the castle taxes Blanche’s own threats and bullying had failed to raise.
Willow and her papa might have been poor before he’d married Blanche, but at least they’d had each other. Now they had nothing between them but regrets and strained silences.
Willow started up the winding stairs, hoping to creep around the balcony that overlooked the great hall and reach the bedchamber she shared with her sisters before her stepmother could waylay her. She fully expected to hear Harold lisping out a detailed recitation of her sins. She did not expect to hear the stern ringing of masculine voices.
Willow crept toward the balcony railing and peered through the smoke of the rushlights. Oddly enough, there wasn’t a child in sight in the great hall below. Three strangers stood before the raised dais where Blanche insisted that Papa receive all visitors to the castle. Papa hunched in a canopied chair, his red-gold hair faded to a lackluster gray, his once proud shoulders stooped beneath the burden of his wife’s debts and demands. Blanche reclined next to him on a gilded bench, presiding over the dusty squalor of the hall like some mythical Saxon queen.
The man who was speaking wore the golden spurs of a knight. “If a dowry cannot be arranged at this time, I’m sure my master would be willing to provide a generous bride-price.”
“ Tis barbaric! I’ll not hear of it!” Papa shouted, pounding on the arm of his chair.
“Just how generous?” Blanche asked, resting a pale hand on Papa’s sleeve.
The stranger shifted his scrutiny to Willow’s stepmother, his thick mustache twitching with amusement. “Generous enough. My lord has already secured the blessing of the king. He is very eager to make this match.”
“Ah, but she is very dear to us,” Blanche said before Papa could speak.
Willow clung to the railing. They could only be discussing the betrothal of Blanche’s youngest child from her first marriage. But Beatrix wasn’t yet fourteen! Blanche must be desperate indeed if she was considering bartering her off to the highest bidder. By rights, Willow knew she should be glad to see the girl go. After pissing in Willow’s shoes all those years ago, the brat had gone on to inflict a host of indignities upon her. Willow pressed a hand to her belly. Perhaps the pang she felt there was simply a twinge of envy for Beatrix’s good fortune. Surely she wouldn’t actually miss the spoiled little minx.
Shaking off Blanche’s grip, Papa glowered suspiciously at the knight. “Just why does your lord want her so badly?”
Willow was straining forward to hear the man’s answer when something wet slithered across the back of her neck.
“Eeeewww!” she groaned, recognizing it as an eager male tongue.
Spinning around, she backed her assailant into the shadows. “I’d suggest you keep that viper in your mouth before I yank it out by the roots.”
Her stepbrother chuckled and cocked a smug eyebrow. “Ah, but why should I keep it in my mouth when yours is so much sweeter?”
Stefan’s gleaming fall of thick, blond hair and bulging bands of muscle might make the castle maidservants swoon, but to Willow, he was the same smug little boy who had mocked her mercilessly since their very first meeting. Only now he wore a much larger sword.
“Even the sweetest of berries can poison you,” she retorted, hands on hips.
His pale blue eyes narrowed. “I do believe this particular berry has grown a bit saucy.” He nodded toward the balcony. “Before your opinion of yourself ripens any further, you might wish to remember that this mysterious lord is offering to buy you for his bed as if you were naught but a village whore.”
Willow was too stunned to take offense at his insult.
“Me?” She touched a tentative hand to her chest, betrayed by a treacherous surge of wonder. “This lord wants me for his bride?”
Stefan’s smirk darkened into a scowl. “You needn’t look so calf-eyed. Mama will never let you go.”
Willow’s wonder faded as she recognized the bitter truth in his words. “Of course, she won’t. If she did, she might have to find another nursemaid for her brats.”
Unable to bear hearing her papa send the earnest young knight away, Willow turned toward the bedchamber.
Stefan stepped in front of her, blocking her path.”Mama wouldn’t give you to another man because she knows I want you for myself.”
Willow recoiled. Her stepbrother had never before dared to be so brazen. She forced herself to meet his taunting gaze with equal boldness. “Well, you can’t have me. Blood may not bind us, but you’re still my brother. The king would never allow us to wed.”
Stefan caught her shoulders in a painful grip, his voice deepening to a husky growl. “Who said anything about wedding you?”
As he licked his plump lower lip, as if in anticipation of savoring some juicy morsel of meat, Willow almost regretted teasing Harold. She forced herself to wait until the glistening tip of his tongue was only an inch away from her parted lips before whispering, “I warned you to keep that viper away from me.”
Jerking herself out of his grip, she drove a knee into his padded codpiece. He doubled over, grunting an oath. r />
Before he could recover, Willow darted left, then right, driven by a primitive urge to flee. Her bedchamber no longer felt like a refuge, but a trap. Without conscious thought, she plunged down the stairs that wound into the great hall, stumbling to a halt in the shadows beneath the balcony.
“ Tis a tremendous sum, Rufus,” Blanche was saying, a dreamy sheen softening the avaricious glitter of her eyes. “Enough to pay the taxes for the next two years.”
“I won’t hear of it, woman! I’ll not sell my own daughter!”
Longing only to escape a future as ugly as her stepbrother’s sneer, Willow stepped out of the shadows, her voice ringing like a bell. “And why not, Papa? ‘Twouldn’t be the first time.”
———
Hollis’s jaw dropped as his meek Madonna came marching into the great hall, her shoulders squared for battle. He squinted at her through the gloom, the smoke from the poorly trimmed rushlights making his eyes water. The girl’s homely cap had slid down over one eye, casting a shadow over her features.
He still couldn’t quite believe his good fortune. His mysterious angel hadn’t turned out to be some common village wench, but the spinster daughter of an impoverished baron. She’d probably long ago resigned herself to living out the remainder of her life as a weighty burden to her family. She would no doubt be pliable and eager to please a mighty lord such as Bannor. Especially since Bannor would laud the very plainness that made her repugnant to other men.
Hollis stole a glance at the ceiling, where cobwebs drifted in place of the colorful banners that must have once adorned the rafters. She should also be most humbly grateful to be rescued from this place. Upon their approach, he and his men had been appalled by the disagreeable stench of the weed-choked moat. Rain seeped steadily through cracks in the ceiling, running in dank rivulets down the crumbling stone walls. The stale rushes beneath their feet were littered with oft-gnawed bones and the droppings of hounds, both dried and fresh.
As the girl marched toward the dais, Hollis gallantly made way for her, prompting his men to do the same.