Free Twelve Kisses by Lindsay Townsend

Chapter
One
     
    She had loved him since she was a girl of fourteen years old,
and he was an apprentice farrier of seventeen. Once there had been
talk of marriage between her and David, a wedding that would have
made her blissful with joy.
    But times had changed and alliances, too. David's family
supported the house of Lancaster and her kindred the royal house of
York. Henry Tudor had wrested the crown from King Richard on a
distant battlefield, and she was now eighteen and David's wife.
David had insisted on the match, and her parents dared not refuse
him, as he was a man now and rumored to have the ear of the new
king. He had lost a brother to the battle between King Richard and
Henry Tudor, as she had, and Alis feared he had chosen her for
reasons of revenge.
    Alis prayed she was mistaken in her dread, but her husband of
a few days was so very forbidding and stern. Riding on a small gray
palfrey behind his glossy chestnut horse, she remembered the
blond-haired, laughing lad she had loved and compared that David to
the powerful, laconic, shorn-haired stranger ahead. Only a month
earlier, they had met after a gap of four years, a single meeting,
and then he had demanded her hand.
    Why did I not refuse him? Because my family would have
suffered. Henry Tudor hates all Yorkists, even simple
saddlers.
    “ Hold.” David held up a gloved hand, and the small,
tightly-ordered column of horses and men stopped. He twisted round
in the saddle, and as always, the sight of his squarely-handsome
face made Alis's heart quicken. He was fair-skinned but tanned,
even now in mid-winter, and all supple, strong lines, with a firm
chin, long nose and large mouth that should have been made for
smiling. His clear blue eyes, however, were as cold as the winter
sky above them, and his mouth was a slash, like a rent in
cloth.
    “ You know your orders?” he demanded his men.
    “ Aye, s-sir,” stammered his second, or apprentice, Alis was not
sure which.
    “ Go to it.”
    The men cantered off, leaving Alis alone with her new husband.
They were on a sunken road in England, in a county she had never
visited before. Fear churned within her as David spurred his mount
closer.
    He can do anything he likes with me. He has the
right.
    “ You are warm, madam?”
    Alis touched her new, lush furs, a gift from this unsmiling
husband of hers, and answered roundly, “Perfectly, thank
you.”
    Had his full mouth tweaked then? She was unsure but heard his
reply, “We shall be at the place soon,” clearly enough.
    She bowed her head, so he could not see her face, her limbs
suddenly clammy within the soft furs. Soon she would be alone with
him in a strange house. There were no servants with them, and he
had bluntly commanded her to bring no maid. What “place” was this
that they were headed to?
    Not a home, not for me at least.
    David had no living kindred, and at this moment, even a sour
mother-in-law might have been preferable. She cleared her throat,
which felt full of feathers, and asked, “Are we to be alone,
sir?”
    “ Quite alone, for the rest of these twelve days. Even farriers
stop then, for no man works at Christmas-time.” He tossed her a
keen, cold glance. “Your mother assured me you know how to manage a
full household...”
    You know this already, David! You saw me learning at
fourteen!
    “ We shall be in the old forge and cottage.”
    Alis scraped her memory, but no recollection of any old forge
came to her. It must be an ancient place, she reflected glumly, as
David leaned down from his horse and took the reins of her
palfrey.
    “ I shall lead from here,” he said.
    Gripping her horse's reins, he turned their horses off the
sunken road, and they passed through a small wood. The bare trees
seemed to close in around them, muffling the horses' hooves, and
Alis became more uneasy. Memories of a younger David, when he had
chased her round the apple orchard for kisses, only served to
sharpen her disquiet. Her brother, Jerome, had been alive