“No,” I told him, gripping him tighter. “We can’t. But God knows I weren’t meant for him, Rob, and we’ll get this annulment somehow.”
I nudged his face with my nose until he brought his mouth down to mine for another kiss like magic potion. I needed some unholy kind of strength and courage to walk away from him.
He broke it off with a heavy sighing. “I love you, Scarlet. Go on, now, before you steal my sanity too,” he said.
“Too?” I questioned.
His grin by the moon were wicked and handsome. “Thief of my heart.”
I tugged him close and kissed him once more. “Thinking better of walking me back?” I asked him soft, a little sad.
He sighed ’gainst my mouth. “You’ll be faster on the horse, and honestly, I don’t think I can watch you walk back into that castle.”
“They just let me come and go. It’s mad,” I said, smiling.
His thumb ran over my cheek. “You’re a noblewoman. They can’t keep you out. Or in.”
I shrugged. “I were a noblewoman before, they kept me out just fine.”
He laughed. “Yes, you were very clear about that fact before.”
Rob kissed me once more and helped me on the horse—it weren’t half as easy in skirts—and stood back ’gainst the tree as he spurred on the horse. I watched Rob as the horse trotted on, his white shirt bright in the moon and standing like a light in the trees.
Soon the forest covered him up, and I went back to Nottingham, alone.
Chapter Eleven
The morning were bright and cold, fierce and harsh. The castle’s deer park to the west had been cleared and made into tourney grounds. The field were clear of snow and tree bits, and horses were all round the grounds, stamping the hard earth and pluming white breath like smoke from their nostrils, their backs steaming with heat in the cold like they were ghost horses.
I were tucked in a great big chair plush with cushions, fur wrapped about me and servants with hot wine at the ready. And yet just across the grounds in fair shaky stands that weren’t never cleared of snow there were the people of Nottinghamshire, shivering in their boots and bare coats.
How had I gotten to this side of the ground?
The knights went to their places, and I watched. Their phantom horses wheeled in the back part before the run. The flag dropped and the riders spurred forward. The horses stretched, their legs massive and corded round with muscle and power, and the knight rode it, a chipmunk on the back of a dragon. But the knights did have their own kind of grace. It weren’t much in the way of valor to play at fighting like it weren’t something that the people at their sides had to do every day for their food and life, but the knights were a grand vision. Their armor were fitted in a way that made steel mock the way the body could move, but still, the shining plates twisted and moved together and made the knight a faceless thing, a warrior.
And when they crossed, their heavy lances looked not for each other, like a sword might, but for the blank open space in front of a man’s chest. That were the spot the lance longed to fill, a hard strike dead center. It were a strange game. In a knife fight, I worried first about what my opponent might do with their weapon, but it weren’t so in a joust. It were as if you had to forget that the other might strike you; he became nothing more than a place to land your lance, and you had to trust that you would either strike first or your stance would hold you through a blow.
I liked that. You weren’t never fighting an opponent. You were made to hit a target, and forget all else.
Sitting back, I thought I’d do fair well in a joust.
The crier, a silly little man that kept yelling titles and such, rapped his stick on the ground twice but didn’t shout. I looked up and noble ladies ushered the queen mother to sit between myself and Isabel.
I stood double-quick and curtsied, though Isabel just gave a nod to the queen. The queen sat and her ladies tucked furs about her, and then with a wave of her white hand they left and found other seats.
Feeling foolish, I got back into my chair, pulling my legs up beneath me and my fur over me.
“How are the fights?” the queen mother asked.
“Dreadful,” Isabel said. “I so wish during these times of war that England’s noble sons would not so mock the practice of it. Why, it is as if they spit upon Richard’s Holy Crusade.” I saw her cast her eyes slight to the queen.
“Hm,” the queen said. “My lady Leaford, what do you think of the practices of tournaments?”
“I think it’s foolish and lovely,” I said overquick. There were probably a better answer, but it weren’t in my head.
“Oh?” she said. “Please explain.”
“Fighting like this is beautiful, in a fashion,” I said, slow now. “No one is hurt for true, and there is grace and power in it. The horses, the riders, I even like the armor.”
“But you said foolish too.”
I swallowed. Fool tongue. “Yes, my lady queen. These ain’t—” I coughed hard, blood rushing my cheeks. “These aren’t the men that would ever be called upon to fight. There is a war and they are not part of it. And the men that watch them, shivering from the far side, will fight and die as soon as King Richard has need of them. And yet they do not have the money to practice, and not the money to protect themselves from such fates.”
She pulled her fur closer to her neck, and its hairs stood tall like the animal had its hackles up. “Such a difference is not just in the poor and wealthy, Lady Marian. It is strange as a mother to see one son play at war while the other wipes blood from his face each night. But I can see the beauty in a joust as well, and as a mother I wonder if this is what young men see when they dream of war. We women often don’t see what the appeal is, but they crave it.”
“You know yourself in a fight,” I told her. “There’s no lying about your skills. About what you can do. It’s a good feeling.”
“You can’t feel if you’re dead,” Isabel said. “There’s nothing good about fighting.”
“Then you utterly mistake the role of women, Isabel. We fight for different things, but women are the most natural of fighters.” The queen inclined her head to the princess. “Something I have liked about you from the first, Isabel, is that you have defiance and pride within you. That is a form of fight.”
Isabel’s cheeks went to blush but I weren’t so sure she liked the compliment. “In my experience women don’t get to fight for what they want,” she said, her voice low and careful. “We don’t understand war because we are not allowed to.”