Free Valentine by Heather Grothaus

you.”
    “You have, have you? By whom? Your priest?”
    “My nurse,” she snipped.
    “Oh yes, your nurse . ” He rolled his eyes and stalked to his mount, then swung himself up. “But no a child at all, are you?” He wheeled his horse around and kicked at its sides.
    Maria followed. “Where are we to go now if we cannot follow them to Vienna?”
    “I suppose we are going to Prague!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Is that no where you wanted to go in the first place?”
    “Yes! It is!” she shouted back. “Good!”
    He pulled his horse to a stop. “No, Maria, no good. We were to outfit ourselves in Vienna. Now we have only what we carry and can piece together along the road. I wished for a proper bed, a proper drink, and proper provisions before we set out on this mad journey. I have been locked up in one prison or another for nigh a year and today is my birthday !”
    “Well, many happy returns,” she snipped. When he kicked at his horse and started up the slope once more, he heard the vile name she added under her breath, and the vulgarity of it nearly caused him to laugh despite his anger.
    “Did you learn that from your nurse as well?” he tossed over his shoulder.
    “No,” she called out. “I learned that from my priest.”
     
    Mary glared at the back of Valentine Alesander’s head for the next hour as he set their pace just beyond a trot. She was still embarrassed by the things he’d said to her, but she was also feeling guilty now, as she looked back and realized the faux pas actually had been hers.
    She would do better next time.
    Valentine abruptly left the much narrower road to navigate around a bramble patch into a thin stand of trees. She followed him.
    “Have you another set of clothes?” he asked as he swung down from his horse and undid one of his many satchels.
    “I do,” she said, not wanting to admit to him that she’d saved the gown she wore now to meet her long-lost husband. “The kirtle I wore when first we met.”
    “That is all?” he asked, pausing in his search of the bag to turn a surprised face to her. “Two gowns?”
    “I was in a bit of a hurry when I left,” she defended. “I only had time enough to pack one bag.”
    “Oh, for the treasures of Vienna!” He sighed. But then he shrugged and began digging in his satchel again. “We must remedy that as soon as we are able. In the meantime, it can no be helped. So if you would, change, please. And cover your hair.”
    “All right,” she said warily, and dismounted on her own. “May I ask why?”
    “If the men we encountered retrace their steps and ask after us to anyone they pass, we do no want to be wearing the same costumes,” he explained, pulling lengths of brown cloth and rough leather strips from his sack. “And should we seek to beg shelter from some simple farmer, he will extort us shamelessly should he think we have any means at all. Travelers are of great profit to those who live along the roads.”
    “I see,” she said, reassured by his foresight, and by the fact that he no longer seemed put out with her. She dug the drab brown traveling gown and a long white linen scarf from her only satchel and then struggled through the tangly grass for the privacy of the trees some distance away. She most definitely did not think Valentine Alesander was above peeking at a lady while she was dressing.
    It took her several minutes to change, having no maid to assist her. When she finally came forth from her spindly cover, she froze with a gasp—they were already being robbed!
    A peasant dressed in brown with tall laces over his leggings was attending to emptying a saddlebag, the lappets of his head cap covering the sides of his face. But wait—those weren’t even their horses. Had Valentine left her?
    The peasant turned around then and spotted her, and Mary’s heart rose into her throat at the thought that she might soon be attacked.
    “What is it, Maria? Why do you no