“I was wondering when you were going to show up again,” Ruth said as William walked into the shop.
He smiled sheepishly, though his heart began to pound at the sight of her. She stood, sweaty and disheveled, with her hammer poised above a glowing sword. There was no pretense with her, no airs. She was completely natural and completely unaware of how beautiful she looked.
“You never know about me,” he joked lamely, not sure how else to answer her. He had desperately wanted to see her, to reassure himself that she was real. So much of his life was dream and illusion, and she seemed the one solid thing he could hold on to. Yet the way she made him feel was anything but ordinary.
In his heart he had also feared that her grandmother had told her everything she knew of him. From the way Ruth had greeted him, though, and the way she was looking at him, it would seem that his secret was still safe.
“You know, my father told me that if I ever saw you in here again I was to run straightaway and fetch him,” Ruth said, interrupting his thoughts.
Thinking she was teasing, he answered with a grin, “Well, I guess you’d better do that.”
She shrugged. “No need, he’s working here today.”
A moment later he heard a step behind him. “Is there anything I can do for you, stranger?” a voice boomed close behind him.
William dipped his head to her, almost imperceptibly. Well played.
He turned, assuming his best air of authority. “Good day, good sir.”
“Father, may I present Lord William. Lord William, this is my father, the owner of this shop”
“A pleasure to meet you,” William said.
“We are happy to help you, milord, in any way we can,” the blacksmith replied with a skeptical look and a respectful bow.
“I came by to once again thank your charming daughter for the wonderful job she did replacing my horse’s shoe.”
“I’m glad your lordship approves.”
William took in the other man’s red face and anxious eyes and realized that the blacksmith was afraid William would disapprove of Ruth’s occupation. How to set his mind at ease and get some time alone with her? he wondered. The solution came to him and he smiled.
“I would like to engage her services once again. You see, with winter all but upon us, I would like to have all of my horses’ hooves checked. I want to make sure they’re in excellent condition before the snows. I’m afraid this will be the last chance I have to check on several of them until the spring.”
“Of course, your lordship,” the blacksmith sputtered. “I always assumed you had your own blacksmith for such things.”
“I do, but he is busy with so many other things at the moment that horseshoes seem to be rather low on his list of priorities. Since Ruth did such a splendid job with Shadow, I thought she could take care of all of them.”
“How many horses?” Ruth asked.
He turned and smiled at her. “Around a hundred last time I counted.”
Her eyes grew large and round, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing at her expression.
“Well, in that case,” her father boomed, “she had better get started.”
An hour later Ruth was riding beside William in a cart, all her tools in the back and Shadow walking along behind. “That was terribly clever of you,” she noted once they were out of earshot of anyone in the village.
“I thought so,” he confessed.
“So, are there really a hundred horses in need of new shoes?”
“Yes, actually. I just hadn’t thought of having you take care of them until your father surprised me.”
She laughed, and he drank in the sound until he felt nearly giddy.
“He’s never been happy with my working in the shop, but until recently he hasn’t really had any choice.”
“What’s changed?”
She seemed to sober, and he regretted asking. “My cousin, Peter, returned from the crusade. He was trained as a blacksmith.”
“Then he can take your place in the shop.”
“He could, but his heart isn’t in it; he hasn’t been the same.”
“Jerusalem broke his spirit?”
“Something did,” she said softly.
“I am sorry.”
“Me too.” After a moment she glanced at him and asked, “Did you ever go to the war?”
For a moment he was back in his nightmare, blood dripping down his blade. He shook his head fiercely to clear it. “In a manner of speaking,” he said softly.
She looked at him with curiosity dancing in her eyes, but she didn’t push and for that he was grateful. He twitched the reins, and the pony pulling the cart slowed almost imperceptibly. He wanted to savor the time they had alone before they reached the castle and she went to work.
“How have you been?” he asked, glancing sideways at her.
She reached up and touched something around her neck. He looked closer and with a thrill saw that it was the necklace he had given her. “I assume you heard, else you would not have shown up so quickly,” she answered.
Her reply both puzzled and alarmed him. “I have been away the past couple of days. I’m afraid I’ve heard nothing.”
“The night before last a wolf killed Simon, the man I was fighting with that first day we met. I found his body in the woods and then a wolf attacked me.”
William cried out and pulled the pony to a halt. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m all right,” she reassured him. “The wolf tore my sleeve and scratched my arm. Then he ran off.”
I did that, and I couldn’t even remember it! he thought, dismayed. The sleeve I found was hers. Thank God I didn’t harm her.
William balled his hands into fists in an effort to control their shaking. “I could never live with myself if something happened to you,” he whispered.
Ruth sat staring at him, wondering why he was shaking so violently, “What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” he whispered. He turned, his green eyes boring into her soul “The last time we met you said that only the ignorant believe in witches. I disagreed with you.”
“I remember,” she answered, heart beginning to pound.
“I know that there are witches, because my family was cursed by one.”
It was her turn to start shaking. Something cold and hard like iron settled in the pit of her stomach, and she began to sweat.
“During the first crusade one of my ancestors killed a peasant farmer and his wife. Before she died, the woman put a curse on every male member of my family.”
He stopped speaking and looked at her as though gauging her reaction. She didn’t know how he wanted her to respond, or how she should respond, so she sat, quiet and waiting.
“I’ve never told anyone this,” he whispered.
She reached out and touched his hand encouragingly, not knowing what else to do.
“I don’t know how to say this,” he said, voice filled with anguish.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”
“Yes, yes I do.”
He shook his head, and she watched the struggle helplessly, her heart breaking for him.
Suddenly he reached a hand inside his vest and pulled out a wadded-up piece of fabric. He handed it to her without a word. Puzzled, she took it. When she unfolded it she recognized it as her sleeve.
“This is the sleeve the wolf took from me. How did you get it?”
“I was the wolf.”
“What?”
“I am the wolf who attacked you.”
Terror filled her in an instant. He is mad, completely insane! She wanted to leap from the cart and run back home to her father. He was right about William all along; he’s dangerous and he could hurt me. Another, more horrible thought occurred to her. What if he is telling the truth?
Out loud she stammered, “How … how is that possible?”
“The curse placed on all the men in my family is that we turn into wolves for the three nights surroun
ding the full moon as well as the two days between.”
She continued to stare at the bit of sleeve in her fist. With her other hand she rubbed her arm where she could still feel the scratch from the wolf’s tooth.
“You?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “Can you ever forgive me?”
And then it hit her, why his eyes looked so familiar. They were the eyes of the wolf that had attacked her the day before, the eyes of the wolf that had attacked her nine years before.
Fear and anger coursed through her, and her voice was shaking as she spoke. “Forgive you? For how much?”
In a flash she reached forward and ripped apart his shirt before he could stop her. There, upon his breast, was a jagged white scar. Her heart began to pound even harder, and she thought for a moment she might faint. “How did you get that?” she hissed.
He shook his head. “I don t know. When I was young, I woke up after I had been a wolf, and I had been stabbed with something, I don’t know what.”
“I know what,” she cried, snatching the dagger from her belt. “It was this—my brothers knife. He stabbed you to save my life.”
“Your life?” he asked, sounding dazed.
“Yes, when you tried to kill me,” she explained, yanking the legs of her trousers up above her knees to show him the scars crisscrossing her legs and the bits of flesh that had been torn out, never to fully heal.
He whimpered and reached to trace a long, jagged scar that ran the length of her calf.
“I didn’t know,” he sobbed. “I am so sorry.”
“For nine years I’ve carried these scars and fear has plagued my every step, and all because of you,” she spat.
He buried his head in his hands, and the cries that came from him sounded like those of an animal. Ruth sat there staring at him, hatred, anger, love, and pity running through her all at once. Everything but fear.
For once the fear was gone.
She didn’t know how long they sat that way She couldn’t even begin to sort out her own emotions, let alone care about his. For a month her world had been in chaos, and now, once again, everything had changed, but in a way for which she never could have prepared herself The one thing she kept coming back to, though, was the absence of her fear.
“Every day since then I’ve lived with fear,” she said finally. “Never knowing where the wolf was or when he might strike has haunted me. Now, strange as it is, I know where the wolf is and when he could strike. I feel free for the first time in nine years.”
He laughed, a strange, strangled sound. “When I was young, I would wake up and never remember anything about what had happened—what I’d done. As I grew older I learned to remember, and then, by the time I was twelve, I could control my actions while in wolf form. What scares me is that this morning I woke up with no memories, and apparently I did horrible things.”
“Maybe you didn’t kill the tanner,” she said, voice shaking, wishing she believed it herself.
“If not I, then who?” he asked, his voice suddenly fierce. She jerked back, frightened.
“I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “Maybe another wolf—”
“There are no other wolves,” he snarled. “The last natural wolves left several years ago. A different pack controls these lands,” he added bitterly, “though I’m more a lone wolf with my father so often gone to the Holy Land.”
She didn’t know what to do. She desperately wanted to comfort him and yet, to her shame, there was a part of her that cried out for his blood. It was this part of her that kept the dagger, its blade naked, in her hand.
She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. Her heart had begun to pound again as a war raged within her. She stared down at the knife and her white-knuckled fingers gripping it. I could plunge this dagger into his heart before he could stop me. I could kill the wolf that took so much from me. Tears began to stream from her eyes. I could kill him before he tries again to kill me.
She didn’t realize how hard she was shaking until he reached out and placed his hand on hers, wrapping his fingers around so that he, too, was holding the knife.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” he whispered, his lips brushing her ear. “I think part of me would thank you.”
She sat stunned, staring at their fingers intertwined around the blade. Has God or fate brought us to this? she wondered. Is this what was meant to happen? Our lives have been entwined for years, though we did not know it. He has been the shadow haunting my steps all along. As the noonday sun kills the shadow, am I the light to destroy his darkness?
She gripped the dagger even tighter, her nails digging into her palm until she could feel the blood begin to flow. Twice now I have been in the wolf’s jaws and I have escaped. A third time will surely kill me. Should I risk it all? And for what? This tortured man has not offered me anything in return, only a kiss stolen in the forest. Grandmother was right—a girl should not follow a man into the woods. Her tears fell onto their clasped hands. But I did not follow him; he followed me.
She turned to look at him and found that he was crying as well. He kissed her then, their tears mingling on their lips. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close and trapping the dagger between their bodies. She could feel the edge cutting her, but she didn’t care.
She kissed him with everything she had, every drop of love and anger and pain, and he kissed her back in kind.
“I need you,” he whispered against her lips. “You are the light to my shadow, the sun to my moon, the innocence to my guilt. Without you I am lost. If you will not stay with me, then use that knife, because I am dead already.”
“I have died a little every day since we met, but now we shall both live and learn what it is to love,” she answered.
She could feel the blade cutting yet deeper into her as he crushed her tighter, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he loved her and wanted her, and that his lips upon hers were proving it more with each moment that passed between them.
“All my life I have looked for you.” he said.
“And all my life I have run, certain that I would lose myself if ever you caught me.”
“Are you lost?”
“I am found.” She answered with what was in her heart, her soul.
“What if I devour you?” he asked at last.
She pulled back slightly and touched one of his eyeteeth with her fingertip. “I hope that you do,” she breathed.
He glanced down, “You’re bleeding.”
She looked down as well, noticing with a sense of detachment the slice in her bodice and the blood staining her clothes. She pulled her hand away and let the knife clatter to the floor of the cart. She reached forward to touch his shirt, which was also ripped. “You are as well.”
“So I am,” he answered, eyes intent on her. “Our blood flows together, Ruth. Even so, you and I are linked, our spirits running together, our hearts beating as one.”
“Wherever you go, I shall go.”
He gripped her hands, which were covered in their blood, in his and kissed them.
“What do we do now?” she asked next.
“I don’t know. I do know, though, that I need your help taming the wolf.”
“I’ll do what I can,” she vowed.
He kissed her again, his lips upon hers burning with hunger, demanding to be fed. In a moment she knew she would be lost, and she would give him everything. She forced herself to break away, though it hurt her more than anything she had ever done.
“William, I can’t—”
“I know,” he gasped. “I am sorry.”
“Don’t be, for I am not, but we must venture no further along this particular path.”
“Not till I’ve made you my wife.”
She sat, stunned by the sound of the word on his lips. Wife. He wishes to marry we. She gazed at him with her heart shining in her eyes.
“What will people say?” she whispered at last.
&nb
sp; “They’ll say that I’m the luckiest creature that ever walked this earth, on two feet or four.”
She laughed, tasting the salt on her lips as she did so. “Whatever shall I do with you?” she burst out, unable to contain her joy and bewilderment.
“You shall marry me, as soon as it can be arranged”
She nodded slowly. “You shall, of course, have to ask my father”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Do you think that he shall deny me as a suitor to his daughter?”
“Perhaps he should,” she said with a coy smile.
“Well, then I must strike fast before anyone can warn him. Perhaps while you are tending to the horses?”
She cuffed him lightly on the arm. “You would have your future wife shoeing your horses?”
“You and no other. When we are old and gray I still want to see you, in those ridiculous trousers, putting shoes on all our horses.”
“And what is wrong with my trousers?” she demanded.
“They are cut all wrong for your figure,” he said with a wicked smile.
She slammed her fist into his chest in mock fury. He caught her hand and pulled it up around his neck. His smile slowly faded. “I am sorry, my love; the humor keeps me from doing to you that which I most wish and which would break your trust.”
“I know,” she said, the blood burning within her veins. “I feel the same way.”
He picked up the reins and turned slowly in his seat. “In that case we had best be on our way, quickly.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence. Ruth’s mind raced almost as fast as her heart. It was madness to think that this could end happily, with her the wife of an earl. Her thoughts foretold some grave danger ahead of them, even as her heart sang within her breast.
When the castle loomed ahead of them, she held her breath, a thousand emotions colliding inside her. Her mouth gaped in wonder at the castles sheer size. Within its shadow, stone walls loomed high above her, and she tilted her head back to gaze up at them. Around her, servants scurried to take charge of the wagon and the horses.
William jumped down, and for a moment Ruth stared at him, surrounded by his subjects and the trappings of his title. She quaked inside. Who am I to aspire to this?
“Do you really have a hundred horses for me to look at?” she asked, nervously turning her focus to work.