by Cynthia Hand
“I’ve never heard anyone call you G. Besides Billingsly, but he is a servant. He would call you Josephina if you ordered. Anyway, you haven’t given me an answer as to why I spent my wedding night attending an ale-stinking sot, and the morning after sharing a bedchamber with a horse.”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
“I’m sorry, but how would you put it?” She refused to grin, even though his discomfort was delicious. After the utter mortification of earlier, both with Lord Dudley and the guards, she reveled in this feeling of power over him. It was about time something went her way.
“I would say you spent our wedding night with a charmingly tipsy gentleman who was hesitant to pressure an obviously virtuous lady to rush into . . .”
Oh. That.
Jane blushed and glanced out the window toward the busy street. She chose a passing cart full of apples to find fascinating, but it was quickly gone.
“And as for the equestrian awakening, I fail to see a downside.”
“You mean the thing no one warned me about? It seems like a subject that might come up. For example, ‘Oh by the way, your future husband changes into a horse as soon as the sun rises every morning.’”
He shrugged.
“Do you even try to control it?”
“It’s a curse, my lady. Controlling it would defeat the purpose.”
“And what is the purpose?” Perhaps if she knew the nature of it, she could better help him solve this pesky problem.
“I don’t know.”
“Gifford, you never get to see the light of day.” Yet he failed to see a downside. “I fail to see an upside, except for the possibility that I will one day need a quick escape, in which case it will be useful to have a fast horse.”
Gifford grunted. “There will be no riding the horse! In fact, I believe this is an opportune time to set some ground rules for this marriage.”
“Like what? Hay preferences?”
“Number one.” He went to tick off the number on his forefinger and subsequently dropped the trousers. She took a moment to admire the ceiling. Then Gifford retrieved his trousers and continued without the visual aid. “Number one: there will be no riding the horse. Number two: there will be no bridling the horse. Number three: there will be no saddling the horse.”
“Well, then what is the point of owning a horse?”
“You do not own me!” He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “My lady, would you mind exiting the bedchamber while I dress?”
She tilted her head. “No, I don’t think I will, because I have a few rules of my own.”
He slumped a little. “All right.”
“Number one: no touching my books. Number two: no chewing on my books.”
He snorted indignantly. “I would never chew on your books.”
“You ate my bridal bouquet.”
He looked surprised, as though he’d forgotten. Then he nodded. “So I did. Continue.”
“Number three: I will never find hay in my books.”
“Do all of your rules pertain to books? I suppose I understand why, since your social shortcomings mean books are your closest friends.” He momentarily seemed taken aback at his own rudeness.
Jane narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure your true E∂ian form isn’t a jackass?”
“Very funny, my lady. And that reminds me”—he pointed a finger at her—“no horse jokes.”
He was making it too easy. “Ah, my lord, why the long face?”
“That’s it!” After a frantic look around the room, he grabbed a book from the nightstand. The trousers hung dangerously to one side as he let the book flop open. “I don’t recall you mentioning anything about bending the spine of a book.”
Alarm filled her. “Put down the book.” She wanted to look away, as he seemed distracted from holding the trousers in place, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the book. What if he hurt it? What if he followed through with his threat?
“No horse jokes,” he said.
“My lord, I apologize for the horse joke. If you put down the book—unharmed!—I will give you a carrot.”
He brandished the book at her. “Was that a horse joke?”
“Neigh.”
“Was that a horse joke?”
Before she could respond, a maid barged into the room to turn down the bedcovers, only to find Gifford with his trousers pressed against his waist, Jane with her face flushed, and a pile of shredded clothes (from this morning’s transformation) on the floor. The maid gasped and held her hands to her mouth, then fled the room with an embarrassed cry.
A slow smile pulled at Gifford’s mouth. “She thinks we consummated.”
Jane’s face burned as she snatched the book to the safety of her arms. “My lord, I will leave you to properly attire yourself. A carriage is waiting to take us to our honeymoon.” (The word honeymoon was quite new at this point in history, and actually involved a month’s supply of mead for the newlyweds rather than a romantic getaway, but for the sake of delicate sensibilities, we’ll pretend honeymoon meant then what it does now.)
Gifford held the trousers over his hips once more. “I anticipate your books are waiting for us as well.”
“Don’t worry. I left space for you.” She took her book and fled.
Jane wasn’t sure when Gifford had packed, or if Billingsly had done it for him, but her new husband’s trunks were in the stowage area on top of the carriage. There hadn’t been room for her books up there, so she’d been forced to construct a small wall of religious, scientific, and philosophical texts between herself and Gifford.
“Is all this really necessary?” he asked when he arrived and spotted her fortress of books.
“Considering that this country house they’re sending us to belongs to the Dudleys, and I’ve seen the way your family treats books, I couldn’t be sure there would be enough to keep myself occupied during the day.” She stroked the spine of the nearest book: An Analysis of E∂ians’ Paintings and Their Impact on Society: Volume Three.
“How many of these will you finish by the time we arrive?” He eyed them warily, as though the books were some sort of army of knowledge. Some of the corners were rather sharp, she supposed.
“None.” She sniffed and indicated the lantern, which cast only a dim glow over her side of the carriage. “It’s not bright enough to read by and I don’t care to ruin my vision. Instead I’m going to knit until I’m too tired to care that I’m trapped in a carriage. I didn’t have the luxury of sleeping all day. If you were truly a charmingly tipsy gentleman, you’d have insisted we rest tonight and make the journey in the morning.”
“But I’d be a horse.”
“And infinitely more useful for pulling the carriage.”
“That would violate rule number two: no bridling the horse.”
“Carriage horses use halters.”
“Did you learn that from a book?”
The carriage jolted and they were carried down the long drive. “I learned it,” she said, “from being observant.” That wasn’t half as cutting as she’d have preferred, but he wasn’t paying attention anyway. (Thus making her point.) He’d tied his hair into a tail and had his head leaned back on the high seat. As they drove past a street lantern, his profile was silhouetted: it was the perfect blend of soft around his mouth and sharp over his (curse-free) nose. The fan of his unfairly long eyelashes flashed as he opened his eyes and glanced at her.
She lowered her gaze to the knitting on her lap, hiding her flush behind a veil of hair. He was attractive. She was married to him. She could look. She should look.
As long as he didn’t know about it. The last thing she needed was for his ego to get any bigger.
They rode in silence while she knitted, but when at last she held up her work, the scarf was far from scarf-like. The tragedy of wool was short, and skinny in the wrong places. It almost resembled some sort of fat rodent.
“What is it, may I ask?” Gifford asked, squinting at her handiwork.
“None of your business.” She lowered her work and began unknitting an entire row of stitches one at a time, erasing their tangled existence with much more finesse than she’d created them. (She had a lot of practice unknitting things. She could unknit entire wardrobes. You’d imagine that lots of practice unknitting would mean lots of practice—and improvement—knitting, but your imagination forgot to account for Jane.)
Jane tried again, this time making sure to count the knits and purls, and pull every ply through the stitch. By the end of the row, the scarf had grown fat and twelve stray plies stuck out in little loops. “I think you’re getting better.” Gifford leaned one elbow on her books. “I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to be, but it looks more like something than it did a few minutes ago.”
She scowled and jabbed his elbow with the point of her free needle. “No touching my books, remember?”
Gifford withdrew, and Jane put aside her knitting.
“So there is something you aren’t good at,” Gifford mused. “You don’t seem like the kind of person to continue something she’s not immediately perfect at, so why knitting?”
“Practice makes perfect,” she answered primly. “And I wanted to make something for Edward. He gets cold sometimes now. . . .”
Gifford was frowning. “I take it you and the king are close,” he said quietly.
“Yes. Quite.”
“But how close are we talking, here? Old-childhood-chums close, or former-paramours close, or still-can’t-live-without-each-other . . .”
Jane had no idea what he was going on about. Fortunately, the sound of screaming ahead saved her from having to figure it out.
“What is that?” Jane thudded the heel of her palm on the side of the carriage. “Driver, halt!”
“Screams mean danger, my lady.” Gifford reached for her, but the book wall prevented him from getting very far, and then the carriage had stopped moving and Jane was out the door, into the night.
She picked up the hem of her dress and ran toward the sound, stumbling over the rutted dirt road, which ran on a hill above a long stretch of farmland.
“My lady!” called the driver, echoed shortly by Gifford.
But Jane didn’t stop running until she was well ahead of the carriage, and standing on a prominence overlooking a wide field where, on the far side, a single cow lowed in bovine terror.
The moon was high and full enough to illuminate the events unfolding on the outskirts of the field below: a handful of people brandished sticks and pitchforks and various other farming tools, attempting to block the path of a pack of wolves.
“Jane, what are you doing?” Gifford caught up with her, and he saw what she saw. “God’s teeth.”
“Gifford, you must do something.”
“Do what?” His face was drawn and pale in the moonlight. His eyes hadn’t shifted from the wolves below.
“Save those people. The wolves are trying to attack their cow!” Most of the people below were adults, both men and women, but a few couldn’t be older than eleven or twelve. “The wolves will go through the people to get to the cow.”
“And how do you propose I make this daring rescue? Shall I hurl books at the wolves? Throw myself in front of the cow to save it?” He looked at her askance as one of the children screamed and began to flee from the wolves. The pack leader yipped, and two of its pack mates leapt toward the child, who crumpled into a ball to protect his head and neck as the wolves nipped at his arms. A man broke the blockade and ran to help the child, and the wolves took advantage of the chaos. A couple of wolves lunged toward the whole group, forcing them to defend themselves while the rest of the pack moved around and began a steady lope toward the mooing cow.
“If you won’t help them, I will!” Jane scrambled back toward the road and scanned for a place with a shallow enough incline to descend, but there was nothing easy, aside from a series of protruding rocks she could climb down.
Gifford was running after her, and the driver looked uncertain whether to leave behind the carriage.
Jane reached the outcroppings of rocks and stretched to find footing on the first one. Below, the wolves had reached the cow on the far side of the field. The cow’s scream rang across the night. A man shouted, “This is what you get, if you mess with the likes of us!” Jane realized then that this man was not one of the farmers, but a better-dressed fellow who was running alongside the wolves. And there were three more men with him, armed with swords and bows.
Why were there people with the wolves? It made no sense.
Tears blurred Jane’s vision as her foot finally touched the first rock, and she crab-crawled downward. But before she made it very far, two strong hands plucked her up by her underarms, and lifted her away from her mission.
The villagers were still screaming, though the wolves had abandoned the child and the other farmers. The cow was dead. The four men with the wolves were dragging it away.
“It’s over, Jane.” Gifford didn’t release her; his hands were hot on her ribs.
She stared beyond him, where the peasants were regrouping, consoling one another. Their voices drifted up from the field. “Third cow this week,” someone said.
“The Pack will take everything unless we hunt them down,” a man replied. “The children will starve.”
A small meep came from Jane. The poor children.
“Is he going to be all right?” someone called, looking toward the people surrounding the child who’d been attacked. Jane held her breath. Even Gifford turned to listen.
“The bites aren’t deep. As long as they don’t fester . . .” Their conversation grew too quiet for Jane to hear.
Gifford stepped back, releasing his grip on her. “This way, my lady. Let’s go back to the carriage.”
“But we have to help them—”
“It’s over now. What would you do for them? They’ll take care of one another.” He gestured toward the carriage, where the driver shifted from foot to foot. “Don’t you have an ugly scarf to finish?”
How could he joke at a time like this? Clearly Gifford Dudley had no sense of responsibility or honor.
Jane hugged herself and gazed toward the farmers once more. Some were taking the injured child away, while others stayed to discuss ways to make the fields more secure. Gifford’s question had been fair: what would she do for them? The attack had happened. The wolves and strange men were slinking out of view, the cow carcass loaded onto a cart.
“Very well.”
“Thank you.” Gifford offered his arm as though he actually thought he was a gentleman. Jane jerked away and walked on her own, though her whole body trembled with adrenaline and panic at how close that child had come to dying, and how the peasants might go hungry now.
When she sat in the warm carriage, surrounded by her books and her pathetic knitting, the only thing she felt was cold.
Those people were in trouble. In need of help. And Gifford had done nothing.
NINE
Gifford
There was nothing he could’ve done. If he hadn’t stopped Jane, she would’ve been hurt. G was a strong man, at least he thought he was, but under no circumstances did he have the ability to dispatch an entire wolf pack.
And those had been no ordinary wolves. They were part of the E∂ian Pack, G was sure of it.
He would not have stood a chance against them. The Pack was well known all over England. For E∂ians, they represented a kind of Robin Hood figure—taking back what for so long had been denied to them. For the rest of the country, they were terrifying bandits. Ruthless. Cunning. And even if G had managed to stop the attack while remaining alive, saving one small village would’ve done nothing to abate the numbers of the desperate and starving.
He sighed and scratched at the gold-leaf windowsill of the carriage, and a few flecks of gold flaked off into his palm. What those peasants wouldn’t do for a handful of the shiny metal. But for G’s father and the other nobles like him, gold was a mere decoration. G had never
known hunger, not really, but he had seen it. He’d been all over the countryside as a horse, and it seemed to him that the entire kingdom was going hungry. But what could one person do?
Nothing, he thought. One person could do nothing. So there was no point being noble about it.
The driver hit a bump, causing one of Jane’s books to topple. G cut a glance toward Jane, expecting her to stage a dramatic rescue of the fallen tome, but her face remained a blank mask. Her chest heaved, perhaps still out of breath from the tumult of the attack. Just below her collarbone, her skin was red and splotchy.
G grabbed his flask of water, splashed a bit on a handkerchief, and handed it to her.
She looked at it warily for a moment, and then took it and pressed it against her delicate neck, along her collarbone, and just under her hairline in the back. She did it so gracefully that G decided he would include a description of the motion in his poem about her pout and the curve of her neck.
Oh that I were the handkerchief in that hand, that I might touch that neck. . . .
“Thank you,” she said, handing him back the kerchief.
Her silhouette against the moonlit window was lovely. This creature was his wife, he thought again with a kind of disbelief, and no matter what her (incorrect) perspective was, he’d saved her back there. At this instant, he could feel a pull toward her, a desire to protect her always. For the briefest of moments, G considered the romantic notion of secretly shoving the handkerchief inside his shirt, against his heart. He caught himself leaning ever so slightly toward her.
Jane turned to him, a blush on her cheeks. “My lord, if you’d be so kind as to remain on your own half of the seat. My books are crushed as is.”
Ah. There she is. The aloof and disappointed lady. G mentally slapped his own cheek, over and over until it burned red under his imaginary hand and he was sure he’d slapped out every romantic notion. He wanted to tell her she’d have more room if she’d just get rid of her books, but he supposed that in her case, it would be like telling a mother she’d have more room if she threw out her children.