Ch. 6 Excerpt
Something shifts, like summer’s green leaves transforming to autumnal gold. Speaking with Geoff about my marriage hurts like I’d never expected, a deep ache. The moon thrums, and an owl, perched in a nearby tree, shifts as she searches for prey. My temples throb.

“It seemed…” he begins again. “It seemed he didn’t want to marry you, after you…” I glare and cross my arms before lifting my face. He continues: “I thought perhaps you could get out of it because…”

“Because of what?”

“Because, ye’re…”

“What, Geoff, what am I?”

His mouth opens like a fish above water, and he doesn’t bother to shut it. In the tree, the owl flaps her wings and leaps into the air.

“Ye’re…” The tips of Geoff’s fingers flutter. “Well, I don’t know what you are, Dandy. Ye’re just…yerself. And I thought—”

“You thought he wouldn’t want me?”

His face falls. “He’s not like you, Dandy. That’s all. He’s not a good man. I heard him talking, when it was just the men…”

He drops his eyes and his cheekbones redden.

Neither of us seems to know what to say next. After a full minute of silence, he lurches forward and grasps my shoulders, crushing me to his chest. “Blanche, just consider.”

I gasp and have to steady myself. But within seconds, tears come to my eyes, along with a calming release of tension. I grip his forearms, inhale his familiar scent. He’s always smelled of horses, with a hint of bread dough and sugar from the manor kitchens he’s constantly raiding. There’s something different tonight. I sniff. It’s crisp, yet soft. Evergreens in winter, covered with fresh snow.

He buries his nose in my hair. “You could refuse,” he says, voice a gentle rumble against my face, “and stay with yer mother. She’d be angry, yes, but she wouldn’t throw you out. They can’t drag you to the church. For a marriage to be real, you must consent.”

Consent. The word ripples through me. It makes me see that I want more, from Maman, from my father, but most of all from Geoff. I need something I can’t identify, something I can’t express.

“If I marry Thomas…” My muffled voice breaks. “It will make the duke happy. He’ll…” I tense, regretting my words.

“He’ll what?”

I can’t answer, can’t tell him that by marrying Sir Thomas, I hope to earn my father’s love. To replace…something.

The moon moves behind a cloud and the trees shift, branches releasing a shower of rain. Geoff drops one hand to the small of my back and lifts the other to my cheek. His palms are warm, and I slide my own to clench his upper arms. When my fingertips brush hardened muscles, I almost snatch my hands back. Before tonight, I still thought of Geoff as a child, the lanky villein who could ride any horse, no matter how fierce. Now…my mouth goes dry, but I can’t resist running my hands up the length of his arms, letting them rest on his shoulders. The skin beneath his tunic is damp with sweat.

Corded muscles tense and stretch beneath my fingers, sending little jolts through me. He stoops, chin brushing my temple.

I touch the notch of his throat with my fingertips. He freezes. Tiny curls of dark hair peek above his collar, tickling my fingers. He lets his face linger on mine, and I feel him inhale.

A pleasant warmth spreads through my belly, then down. Something’s happening, something I don’t understand. I should run, should leave. But I don’t. Another breeze drifts through the tree branches, and he pulls me closer, pressing me to him.

I feel him, all of him, from feet to chin, in a way I never have. A tingling, heavy warmth settles on me, and I feel Geoff’s own need pressing against my belly.

It should make me uncomfortable, but I find myself pressing back, wanting more. Wanting it all.

I’m not well-versed in what happens between a woman and a man—that’s one area of my education Maman neglected—but I’m not completely ignorant. I know Geoff and I stand on a cliff, gazing into a deep ravine. One more step, and we’ll both be lost.

I’m still touching his throat, suspended in our odd dance beneath the shuddering tree branches, when he bends further. I close my eyes and focus on the sensation of his stubbly chin against my face. He exhales, and a shiver runs down my spine.

“Dandy…” he murmurs.

The owl swoops to snatch a mouse from the forest floor in sharp talons. Her screech is like a battle horn, ricocheting with painful deliberation in my skull, joined by the mouse’s squeal. My eyelids snap open and I step out of his embrace.

 

Ch. 16 Excerpt
My hair hangs loose, and I close my eyes, letting the breeze pull and twist it around my shoulders. The air feels like a living thing this morning, a persistent presence that refuses to be ignored. It blows from the west, but the sounds, the thrum of voices and marching feet, come from England’s opposite coast, from Essex and Kent.

The Tower sits on the easternmost point of London, by the city’s Postern Gate. I breathe in, letting the fresh air move into my lungs. I envision it moving to my brain.

Turn toward the east, Blanche. The voice whispering in my ears is Eldridge’s.

I obey, holding the breath within the cavities of my head. I exhale.

The wind picks up, and shifts, carrying the sounds to me.

They ride the wind’s back, soaring atop a flock of wild geese. The birds take me as the wind whips cold in my eyes, my ears. I spread my arms like wings; I’m one of them.

The voices and marching come from two places. I look to the northeast and listen to the first group. With my eyes still closed, I see their feet, tired and caked with mud, yet strong. They trample the earth. They’ve come so far, united by a determined purpose. They have some horses, but not many. They don’t need them.

“Three miles,” I whisper.

How many people? Eldridge asks.

I close my eyes and cock my head.

“Twenty thousand, maybe five and twenty,” I tell her, eyes still closed. I turn to the southeast. It’s harder to hear. “This group is farther away.”

I breathe in, as before, and out. The wind shifts so that it blows directly from the noise, carrying the thrum of human beings.

Entranced, I walk to the Salt Tower at the southeastern corner of the wall. The wind builds and my cloak flies behind me, hair whipped in a mad tangle.

“Eight miles,” I say.

The sky lightens to violet at the horizon, trimmed with deep blue. At the very edge of my vision, stars still wink and sparkle. I look out over the river, my river, as it rolls in the wind, toward the sound.

“They’re over the river.”

Yes, Blanche, yes. Eldridge’s voice, old and cracked, echoes in the wind. How many?

I close my eyes to listen, but then—

“Blanche!”

The wind drops to nothing more than a breeze, and I turn.

Henry’s boots ring atop the stone wall. A second figure runs a step behind, a taller, older man dressed in royal livery. He overtakes Henry.

“Geoff!”

“Blanche!” He grips my forearms. “What’s wrong?”

He pulls me to his chest. My heart jolts as his warm body presses against mine. Henry skids to a halt beside us and stares, eyes wide with shock. Geoff releases me and steps back with an embarrassed cough.

I look down at my cloak, gaping open to expose my thin shift. I gasp and draw it closed before tugging the hood over my hair. I must look like a madwoman.

“Lady Prescott,” Henry cries, “are you all right?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Why did you summon me? What’s wrong?”

“Do you hear it?” I ask him.

“Hear what?”

“The marching.”

They shake their heads.

“They’re coming, Henry, the rebels. I’m sure of it. They’re right outside the city.”