I tore the small loaf in half and eagerly bit into it. “Grazie,” I mumbled again, mouth half-full of the delicious, yeasty bread. It felt odd having the girl wait on me. She was nearly my age. Lia’s age anyway. Lia. Maybe we’d find her today, and I wouldn’t be alone in this madness. I grabbed the other half of the bread, stuffed the wedge of cheese into it and strode out the door.
“M’lady, it isn’t safe, what you are doing,” cautioned Giacinta, behind me. But I ignored her. I wasn’t about to miss this. The chance to find my sister. Or even find my way out of this nightmare.
The men were filing out of the Great Hall, led by the senior Lord Forelli, whose frown said he clearly disapproved of my presence, even though he had given me permission to join them.
I caught sight of Lady Rossi then, trailing after Marcello, a lady-in-waiting at her side. Apparently she wanted her man to be thinking of her as he left the castle.
She paused when she saw me, then hurried over to me. “Surely you don’t truly intend to ride with the men. You shall slow them down.”
“And then, so I shall,” I said brusquely. It was too early in the morning to think about what the perfect response would be.
“It is not good for a lady’s reputation,” she said lowly, turning to face me and keeping her voice down. She touched my arm. “To travel alone, with a company of men. I beg of you to take care.”
I looked down at her at an angle and tried to don an expression that said I cared, at least a little bit. “Come with us, then, m’lady, if you care to guard my reputation.”
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise, and she actually took a partial step away from me, as if I were suddenly hot like a stove burner. “No,” the girl sniffed. “I think not. I enjoy a ride now and then. But anything that smells of danger—nay, I shall leave that to my intended.”
I smiled and couldn’t resist waggling my eyebrows. “Then, that is where you and I are different. I enjoy a bit of adventure. Good day, Lady Rossi.”
I strode away from her, barely able to control my grin. If only I had been in jeans, I would’ve seriously strutted away. I tried to do my best, considering I had the gown on and all. It was so much easier for guys. Then and now.
I moved across the courtyard, and Marcello caught sight of me, hesitated, then said, “Lady Betarrini, I ask you again…please, remain here today.”
I took several steps past him and then looked back over my shoulder. “Where’s my mount?”
He shook his head and strode ahead, clearly irritated. But after a few steps, he waved to the groomsmen, and the gelding I had ridden yesterday—could a girl say yesterday when it was almost seven centuries in the past?—was brought forward.
Marcello was ready for me; he just had hoped I wouldn’t show up. Yeah, well, you can give up on that idea, I thought, looking down at him as he lifted me to the cursed sidesaddle. You haven’t ever met a girl like me. In fact, you’re never going to meet a girl like me again.
He stared up at me then, his eyes searching mine as if reading my thoughts, and my heart skipped a beat. I took a deep breath, trying to steady it. Of all the cursed luck. I finally meet a potential man of my dreams, and he’s almost seven hundred years old. Literally. I lifted my head and gestured forward. “Shall we?”
“Indeed,” he said, tucking his chin, ever the gallant one. I glanced over at Lady Rossi, and she looked away, as if she wasn’t watching it all play out.
I took the reins more firmly in hand and tried to find the proper seating in the saddle. I felt like I was going to slide out of it at any moment. The gates opened. The six men circled their mounts and headed out, three ahead of me, three behind.
Lia, I thought. We’re coming. Please be okay. Please, please be okay. Please be here. I can’t do this alone.…
Two hours later, I pulled off the trail in a small clearing, beside a boulder, and allowed the three men behind me to thunder past. I slid down off the horrible saddle and turned back to the horse. I heard the men shout, come to a halt, and then turn back.
“M’lady,” Marcello said, “we mustn’t tarry here. This hill is Paratore territory. At the moment.”
“Yeah, well, I only need a moment,” I muttered. I grabbed hold of the leather strap, unhooked the first buckle, then the second, and slid the saddle from the horse.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to show you,” I said, heaving the saddle behind the boulder and covering it with a huge, fallen branch, “how we ride in Normandy.”
“You can’t do that—”
“I’m holding you back, right?” I said, moving toward his horse, my mount’s reins still in hand. “Admit it. I’m holding you back.”
He returned my glance, and a coil of his gorgeous brown, curly hair flipped down over one brow. His horse danced beneath him. “Yes, you are holding us back. As I told you you would.”
“Well, I can fix that,” I said, turning away from him. “You’d best look away,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to be totally freaked out by what I’m about to do next,” I muttered, slipping back into English.
He didn’t turn away. Instead he stared at me intently as if he understood neither my words nor my intentions. Which made sense. Both were from another time, another place.
I tore two strips of cloth from my under skirt and bent to tie my gown into a form of pants, lashing each segment of the gown around my knees. Now, at least, I could ride. Bareback was better than that stupid sidesaddle. As soon as I stood up, I could see the blush on his cheeks. He looked to the side, as if he had come across me naked, or something. I supposed that, given the era, it had about the same effect.
I ignored him and climbed onto the rock and then flung myself across the broad back of my gelding, settling the reins again. I trotted forward and looked at Marcello until he met my gaze. “Now, we can ride,” I said, unable to hide my smile. Was that a tiny smile on his face? I squeezed the horse’s flanks with my heels, and we leaped forward.
I allowed my grin to spread as I passed the other men, their mouths agape. This was how my father had taught me and Lia to ride—without a saddle at all—as he had been taught on a farm in Italia. It felt familiar, comfortable. Like a hug from him.
My hair was already half-unpinned. I reached up and flung the three remaining pins in my hair to the side of the path, holding back a shout of pleasure. Yeah, you boys have never seen anyone like me. You know it. I know it. Wait until you get a load of my sis.
After a few minutes I heard the churning sounds of galloping hooves, the squeak of leather, the mechanical breath of a lathered horse, behind me. I bent lower in the saddle and urged my horse faster, along the winding path, ducking to avoid branches, bracing to jump small obstacles.
“M’lady, stop!” Marcello called.
But I wasn’t stopping. I was on my way to find Lia. My sister, possibly lost in the woods overnight—
“Please, m’lady,” he said, panting. “I beg of you.”
I hesitated. Surely a word like beg hardly ever left a man’s lips in this day and age. Couldn’t I give him a sec? Maybe one of his men had spotted something. A clue. I pulled up on the reins, suddenly realizing I was as winded as my panting horse.
My move apparently surprised Marcello. He passed me and then turned around, pulling to a halt in front of me. His arms crossed casually in front of him, regarding me with new, curious eyes. “So that is how Norman ladies ride?”
“Better than that silly saddle,” I said, jutting out my chin.
The other men arrived then, surrounding us, averting their eyes from the edge of my thin bloomer-like thingies and bare calves. “M’lord, we must make haste, back to the border,” Luca said, gesturing over his shoulder.
Oh no. I had led them onto the wrong path! I glanced around. If we were on
Paratore land, it looked just like the Forellis’. Silly borders and battles. All I wanted was my sister!
“Are we near the tombs?” I pressed. “The Etruscan tombs? Where you found me?”
“They are over there,” Marcello said, nodding to his left.
I realized that I was turned around. I would’ve expected him to gesture behind him and to the right. We’d gone past the tombs and deeper into Paratore land.
“You truly think we shall find Lady Evangelia among the tombs, as we found you?” he asked.
I shrugged. “It’s as good a guess as any, right?”
He remained where he was, still staring at me. Oh my gosh, could he be a little less hot? He belonged in some teen-girl magazine. Movies. Book covers. Ads for Abercrombie & Fitch.
“Well, come along then,” he said, wheeling his horse around. He moved off down the path, rejoined by two men. I took my original place, in front of the other three. We surged ahead at a far faster pace than the morning’s, then abruptly swerved right on another narrow road.
We hadn’t gone a quarter mile when all of a sudden he pulled up. The three men behind him divided and surged past, then turned around and headed toward me. I frowned in confusion. What were they doing? Now wasn’t the time to turn back—
It was then that I saw them. Eight knights, in partial armor like Marcello and his men, swords raised. Crimson lined the cloths beneath their saddles, as well as the shirts beneath their chainmail. Paratore men. They shrieked a war cry and bent lower, seemingly moving in slow motion. Marcello paused beside me as his men took off, in flight. Dimly, I understood the men behind me had already turned.
“Gabriella, you must ride hard,” he said urgently, dark eyebrows lowered in urgency. “Faster than ever before.”
I nodded and wheeled my horse around, to his other side. “Throw me a sword!” I cried.
He glanced over at me as if he was confused about what I’d said.
“Toss me your extra sword! I’m unarmed!”
“I will shield you,” he ground out, facing the road again. “Go!”
He allowed me to head out before him when the road narrowed, keeping himself between me and our pursuers. Where had the others gone? Where were Marcello’s men?
Just as I finished that thought, we raced past a line of four men, two pulling bowstrings tight, two behind them, swords raised, shields at the ready.
I glanced over my shoulder at Marcello and glimpsed a trace of a smile on his lips.
Thirty paces farther, when we met the final two men, he pulled ahead of me, then reached over to grab my reins. He handed them to one of the men, then raced back.
The man quickly pulled me off the horse and hid me behind a massive limestone boulder, then returned to his mount. I heard the throb of hoofbeats approaching, the thrum of two bowstrings, arrows launched. The cry of one man, the guttural groan of another.
One of the men near me said, “Now it’s at least even.”
“Do you have an extra sword?” I said.
He gaped at me. “Nay, m’lady. Only my own.”
“Do you?” I cried, rushing toward the other, hearing the clash of swords, the roaring grunts of men in heated battle.
The thinner, younger man studied me for a moment, then, spying a couple men edge closer, turned to his saddle and pulled a spare sword from its sheath. He handed it to me absently, staring beyond me, to the road. I took hold of it and groaned at its weight.
Not that Soldier Boy noticed. He shared a low word with his companion, and they took up their positions on either side of the narrow road.
“M’lady,” hissed the other one. “Get back! Back past those boulders. We’ll protect you.”
I turned and hurried over to the rocks, playing with the broadsword in my hands, shifting it in an idle figure eight.
My father had trained me to fence. But this thing, this crude piece of forged steel, weighed a ton. It was at least thirty pounds heavier than any blade I’d ever carried before. This was why they were all so dang strong—they worked out every day with these.
I was used to the light, springy steel, the hospital whites of proper fencing uniforms. Blades tipped in baubles that kept them from drawing blood.
What was coming toward us was anything but that.
I raised the sword before me and focused on the road beyond it, catching sight of the first two Paratore soldiers. They were chasing after Marcello and Luca, with two other soldiers in crimson behind them.
Whether I liked my weapon or not, I was glad to have it. I flipped my hair over my shoulder and settled my slippered feet in the dirt at an angle, my sword set like a baseball bat, high, as I waved it slightly in a circle, waiting for just the right ball. All sound seemed to cease as the surging horses raced toward us like animals in a silent horror film.
But curiously, I felt no fear. Only an eagerness to see it done. If I died here, would I awaken in my own time? Or would I be dead, regardless of the year?
In slow motion the men before me took the first man down. But the second escaped between them, his eyes widening in surprise at the sight of a woman, then narrowing upon me like a hunter with his prey suddenly in view.
He was coming for me.
Stand your ground, I told myself. Gabi, you stand your ground!
CHAPTER 5
I studied his approach, his speed, bracing myself for the impact, thinking through how I might parry his strike.
And that was when someone tackled me from the side.
It so surprised me that when I hit the ground, him atop me, it knocked the wind out of me.
A moment later a horse thundered past. Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen a man—Marcello?—deflect a swooping sword aimed right at where I had once stood.
I wanted to rise, to turn, to do anything, but all I could do was focus on making my body take a breath. Contract, lungs! Fill! I tried not to panic, but I was losing the fight. Tears streamed from my eyes.
I heard the sounds of battle, not five feet from me, and I rolled over to see. Something about that action allowed me my first breath, and I rapidly took several. Marcello was fighting a man—the man I’d seen yesterday at the tombs. It had to be the Paratore lord. Marcello’s counterpart. Had Marcello taken me out just so he could fight the man himself? Of all the stupid, pig-headed—
Marcello glanced back at me, alarm again in his eyes. But he wasn’t staring at the man he battled, but at something down the path. “M’lady, take cover!”
Cover? Cover! I’d show him.… I rose, half-crouched, and took another breath, trying to steady my suddenly shaking hands. A huge man on a massive horse was thundering toward me, a sneer on his lips, his eyes on me.
There was no way I could take on Goliath. I mean, a girl’s gotta know her limits. I turned and ran to the rock just as he swept by, his fingertips brushing past my shoulder. My two guardians closed ranks in front of me.
“Bringing women to fight your battles now, Forelli?” the Paratore knight taunted, swinging his sword at Marcello, narrowly missing his chest.
“And you, as always, are low enough to attack one,” Marcello said, through gritted teeth.
“Missed her yesterday,” Paratore said. He tossed a leering glance in my direction. “She appears eager to lift her skirts. It’d please me to take her from you this day.”
I clamped my lips together, chagrined. So that’s what they thought of me banding my skirt to my legs? That I was into sleeping around or something? Oh, brother. I was glad I lived in my own era. There was enough to deal with, then. The massive soldier finally brought his horse to a stop and turned to come back toward us. But his eyes were now on his master. Paratore glanced at him, and in that moment, Marcello’s blade tipped his forearm.
He gasped and took a halting step back. “That’s the second time you�
�ve dared to strike me in two days, Forelli!”
The Incredible Hulk jumped to the ground and came lumbering over to Marcello. He did not attack him, nor did Marcello raise his sword. Instead, his weapon was at his side. What was this?
“What do you expect? We cannot continue our swordplay and not sustain damage to our persons!” Marcello returned.
Paratore clamped his lips shut, seething. Then, “What are you doing on our land? Are you begging for an all-out war?”
Wasn’t that what we were in?
“We were out for a ride when Lady Betarrini became disoriented and took the wrong trail. We will be off of your land within the hour.”
“See that you are. And try and keep your womenfolk where they belong.”
Marcello strode forward and past his men, staring at me as if I’d done a thousand wrongs. What? Was I the reason for all of this? No, this was a war long fought, a family feud like the Montagues and Capulets, or the Hatfields and McCoys. He wasn’t pinning this on me.
He took my arm and gruffly pulled me along to my horse.
I wrenched my arm from his grip. “I’m perfectly capable of walking on my own. I get it. You’re ticked off. But this cannot all be my fault.”
He frowned down at me, trying to make sense of my words. They came out in a mishmash of Italian and English.
I sighed, looked down at the ground, then back up at Marcello. “Why’d he stop? Why’d he let us go? You guys took down at least two of their men.”
“It is understood,” he said in a hiss.
“What is understood?”
“When an heir is wounded, the battle comes to an end. Anything further and our cities might be drawn into a far greater war.”
Cities. Siena and Florence. These two castles were not just vying for a portion of property; they represented much greater forces.
“But you fight as if you’d like to kill him.”
“As he would like to kill me. We’ve traded wounds on any number of occasions,” he said, cocking his head, a hint of a smile on his lips. So he was enjoying this. At least a little bit.
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