The King’s Forest

The Home of the Headsman

I

replaced the kettle beside the fire and stood. “There now, here we go,” I started. A warm hand from behind cupped my face and trailed down my neck. My words turned to almost forgotten thoughts. A gasp escaped my lips as Jean’s long fingers circled about my throat.

His breath warmed my ear. Jean’s other hand snaked about my waist, erasing the space between us. “Bridget,” he breathed as though he were punctuating a prayer with my name.

I sucked in a shuddering breath, lost in the feel of his hands on my body. Exploring. Soothing. Perhaps a bit teasing. My eyes closed on their own as I looped my arm up and around the neck of the executioner who stole my heart. His long, ebony locks tickled my arm and turned my insides to mush.

I turned into his strong, waiting arms. Our lips met at once. Jean’s mouth worked against mine, letting loose a lifetime of unspent passion.

Never having experienced anything of the sort, my pulse raced through my body like a great steed through the hunter’s green. My lips parted against Jean’s hungry kiss as his fingers traced my face before winding into my hair. Jean wrested his fingers deep into my hair and pulled my head back slowly until my throat was fully exposed to his ravenous passions.

His name wisped from my lips as my fingers dug into his muscled back. “Jean.” Wanting ached within me, tightening unrealized muscles and sending a seductive pulse through my secret places. The thick, sweet scent of Jean’s earthen home combined with his woodsy musk left my head spinning, as though we’d been drinking sweet brandy instead of black tea.

Damp, dark locks laced his strong jaw and curled down, tickling my throat. His lightly stubbled face scratched me as he guided my lips back to his with gentle hands. My quivering fingers cupped his face. Tracing and memorizing every curve. Every crevasse. I brushed a dark curl from the thick fringe of lashes that ringed those icy azure eyes that seemed to see straight through me, straight into my very soul.

“Bridget, be mine tonight.” His high-boned cheeks colored and his voice fell to a near imperceptible level. “Tonight and every night thereafter. Always.”

The whinny of a horse outside made us jump in unison. I kicked over both teacups. “Do you always have visitors this time of night?”

“No.”

A sharp knock rapped on the door.

“Go, hide yourself in my bedchamber.” Jean brushed my lips with a warm kiss, but all the love and light were gone from his eyes, puffed out, like a candle. “Do hurry.”

I did as I was told. No sooner had I pushed the door shut to Jean’s bedroom did I hear the familiar, heavy scrape across the floor. Terrified and cloaked in complete darkness, I felt blindly for the bed.

Jean’s voice, thick with a feigned yawn, found my ears. “Good evening, Dudley. What brings you out of the dungeon at such a terrible hour?”

The dungeon?

My pounding heart stopped cold and took my breath with it.

Dear heavens, it is His Majesty’s torturer.

Grabbing up what I hoped was a sheet, I flung it about my shoulders and searched for a corner. A deep, dark corner.

“Did me ole ears deceive me, or did I hear a lady’s voice? I hopes I’m not interruptin’.” The silence that followed was deafening. “Tell me true Jean, did Rhiannon come back from the Welsh Marches?”

I imagined Dudley to be a short, hunched troll of a man with one large eye and a face covered in growths. He would be looking over his shoulder, eyes crazy, his snaggled teeth yellow in the moonlight.

“Yes, she did. Just tonight actually.”

The torturer’s voice bubbled out, excited. “What did ole Dudley tell you? I knowed she’d come back. Only took a few months to tie up her affairs in Wales, see?”

“It was a year.”

“Never mind that. I won’t keep you. I just come ’cause the King sent me here himself. To fetch you, I mean.”

“Oh?”

In my mind’s eye, I could see Jean cock an eyebrow and cross his arms.

“His Majesty has chosen a queen from the Ladies-of-Choice. Lady Bridget Denny.”

Fear knotted my stomach and danced its chilled dance down my spine. I pressed a fist to my lips to keep from crying.

Jean’s voice was steady. “That’s wonderful news. But it doesn’t answer the question as to why His Majesty sent you here.”

Dudley’s voice was a coarse whisper. “When he returned from his hunt, The King went to visit her bedchamber as a husband visits that of his wife, only to find it empty. This was a great displeasure to His Majesty.”

“I imagine so.”

“He learnt through other Ladies-of-Choice that Bridget wished not to be married to the King.”

Jean feigned a gasp. “No.”

“Aye, it be so. And in fact, disappeared under the cover of night from the very castle walls that were to be hers.”

My pulse pounded in my head.

Elizabeth, my own flesh and blood, betrayed me.

“Men have been sent to find her. I was sent here, to recall you to the castle. For when she’s brought in—” I heard his voice turn up in a grin.

Jean was silent, but must have made a discontented face.

The torturer stammered over his words. “The King was very put out. He will not stand to be humiliated. We are to have the girl brought in and handled appropriately by first light.”

Terror shook my bones. Here under this very roof were the two most powerful, death-dealing men in the kingdom. The first, capable of doling out such pains and misery that one would wish for nothing but death. The second, capable of granting that wish with one striking blow. Two wolves on the hunt for blood. My blood.

Wrapped in a sheet and cloaked in dreadful darkness, I found myself, again, to be the lowly hare.

Jean’s voice cut through the silence like a knife through warm bread. “I will report to the castle straight away. Tell me, will you be combing the King’s Forest in search of this Bridget?”

“Yes, of course. The King’s men have probably set the bloodhounds after her by now.” He snorted. “I don’t have to tell you that His Majesty has prepared a handsome reward for the man, or men, who brings her in. His Majesty also promises I will have time with her first, in the dungeon, before she comes to you. Unless of course, locking her in the Tower after torture be His Majesty’s pleasure—”

Jean cut him off. “Perhaps we can split this handsome reward you speak of. I’ll go south. You take the north trail. I’ll meet you outside the castle gates just before sun up.”

“Aye. We can do that. But ole Dudley has an advantage.”

A pause echoed in the silence.

Jean spoke. “Does that blue slipper there belong to Lady Bridget?”