Free A Midsummer's Day by Heather Montford

smile of relief could spread across her face, he cupped her face in his hands and placed her lips on hers.
    “You don’t know how much I needed that,” she said after when Johnny pulled himself away.  “Something weird is going on, Johnny.  What happened while I was in the pond?”
    “I know not thy meaning, my love,” Johnny said.  “‘Tis only strange that the Lord High Sheriff of this Shire had need to dunke his betrothed.  But I shalt forgive me thy indiscretions, provided they art not repeated anon.”
    His eyes were steady and serious.  They lacked the glimmer of humor that always appeared when he had to be serious with her.  His lips didn’t twitch under the strain of trying to keep a straight face. 
    He never kept this up when they were alone.
    She narrowed her eyes.  “Cut the act, Johnny.  There’s no one here to notice.”
    “What act shouldst I be cutting, my Lady?”  He was every bit as serious as the Lord High Sheriff.  “By what manner of name be this Johnny?  ‘Tis not my name, nor the name thou art to address me by.”
    He reached for her.  Sammie took a step back.  This wasn’t the man she loved.  This wasn’t the man she was going to marry in two short months.  Something had happened while she was in the water.
    Tears stung her eyes.  “Do you not know me, my love?”  Her voice cracked.
    Johnny cupped her face once again.  His touch only brought her dread.  “My dearest Anne, methinks the mixture of the heat and the shame of suffering the trial and dunke hath created an ill humour about thee.  Take thee some rest.  I must make me my leave of thee.”
    Without another word, he turned and marched away.
    What in the bleeding hell was happening?
     
     

 
    Chapter 9
     
     
    The days had grown long since the public executions at festival included any real deaths, especially when the Queen was in session.
    Mary Tudor had reveled in the executions.  She sent several criminals to the pyre herself.
    But things were different in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.  The public display became just that, a display.  The deaths disappeared, and violent and heinous criminals were replaced with petty criminals whose crimes warranted little more punishment than a trip to the pond or a stay in the stocks.
    Still, the executions were Jameson’s favorite event.  It was a daily reminder to the visitors to Nottingham that this was his Shire.  This was his Shire, and in his Shire, his law was absolute.  He relished each and every punishment that he meted out on the biggest stage in all of Sherwood.
    But today…  His mind was far from the executions and the crimes he presented to his audience.  Anne consumed his mind, setting his thoughts aflame.  He knew that she was a wild spirit who would not be broken.  He knew that before they became betrothed.  And, because of that, he knew he would be forced to put Anne in the dunke chair day after day.
    And he’d known that she’d be just as stubborn and wild when she came out of the water.
    But she had not been herself this time.  She had left the pond with the look of bewitchment about her.  At first it appeared that the dunke had at last taken its proper effect.  It appeared, for once, that she was shamed and repentant.
    But she should have easily recovered by the time they met behind the Tavern Aragon. 
    Instead, the bewitchment had only grown.  Anne spoke of strange things, in a strange manner of speech.  She called him a strange name…  Johnny.  It was the name of a child.  A peasant.  It was not his name, nor what she should have addressed him as in any case.  He was to be Jameson in private, and my Lord High Sheriff in public.
    It must have been the heat.  It was unbearably hot , this midsummer’s day, and Anne was of a most delicate humour.  The heat often sent her into a spell of the vapours, which could alter her mind.  It happened once a festival, it seemed.
    Jameson prayed that she would heed his words, and