The High Sheriff of Huntingdon (48 page)

“Why
not?” He
seemed
no
more than casually interested
in her argument.

“You’ve
forgotten
the rest of the prophecy. ‘In
thun
der, rain, brought right again.’ It’s still
raining isn’t it?
Keeping
the
fire
from spreading?”

“And?” he prodded.

“‘And all
shall
be as God’s design.’”

He closed his e
y
e
s wearily, and cursed. “Elspeth,” he said with great patience, “I have
no
interest
in God’s will. I
have
no
interest in anyone’s will but
my own. I’m
a very bad man. Perhaps
not
quite so
bad
as Gilles, but I
expect
I’ve come cl
o
s
e i
n
my
time. I’m
not a fit
husband
for
a
child
like
you.
I
release you
from
your
wedding vows.”

“I
never made my wedding
vows!”
she
cried
in frustration. “So
how can you
r
el
e
as
e
me? I’m your
bride, Alistair Darcourt, and you can’t
dismiss
me so easily. I’m
your prophecy, your destiny,
your
fate. I’m God’s
will,
and
not
even
you
can
deny it.”

He caught her shoulders
in
his hands, pulling
her
up to him.
He was
trying his best
to glare at her, and he
was failing.
“Damn you,”
he
muttered under
his
breath,
and kissed her hard.

She
didn’t
hesitate. She kissed him back, twining
her
arms
around
him
,
pulling
him off balance,
d
ow
n
onto the bed beside her.
She
tore
at his
c
l
o
t
h
e
s, he tore
at hers, both
of them desperate with
need.

When
he finally rolled off
her, he
was
panting, b
reathless,
and
still fighting it.

“I’ll
never be a good
man,”
he warned her, his
voice
severe, at
odds with
the
gentleness of his hand
as
it
trailed
down her
arm.

“You’re
probably right,” she agreed
cheerfully
enough, snuggling
up against his chest.
He
put h
i
s arm
around
her,
pulling
her
closer, probably
without even realizing it.
“I
suppose
I’ll just
have
to
be
a
good example
for
everyone,
to
make up
for
your unparalleled wicked
ness.”

“They’ll
t
el
l
you
y
o
u
married a
monster.”

“They’ll
be
right,”
she said sweetly.

“I won’t
be tamed.”

“Alistair,
my love,”
she
said, raising herself
on
her
elbow
and
smiling down
at
him, “you already
are.”

Lady
Elspeth
of Gaveland
never made it
to sainthood,
or even
an
early
martyrdom.
She
lived an unheard of
eighty-nine years,
all
of them
at the side
of
recalcitrant husband,
the high sheriff
of
Huntingdon.

People still
c
r
o
s
s
e
d
themselves when
he
looked at
them
askance.
And
they t
h
a
n
k
e
d
providence
that
all
but
one
of
the
twelve
children
Lady Elspeth brought
forth and raised to
adulthood took
after
their
mother
and not their father,
nor
his mother
the witch,
who
was
pur
ported
to still live deep in
the haunted
depths
of
Dunstan Woods,
singing
her wicked songs
and planning her evil deeds.

And
in
the end,
the
lord
h
i
g
h
sheriff and his bride were buried in
the fine
new chapel at
Huntingdon Keep, Alistair’s
reluctant
gift to Lady Elspeth
on
the
occasion of the birth of their first
child, a son. And if
Morgan,
that first
son,
had golden
eyes,
and if
wicked things tended
to
befall anyone who happened
to cross his will, neither of his parents made mention of it.

After all, who really
believed in
witches?

Anne Stuart

When Avon
Books asked me to w
rite a short story for this bridal
collection,
I
wasn’t
sure about it. I’ve
never
found brides and weddings
that
romantic.
After all, the
chase
is
over, the couple
is in
harmony, and the best thing
about
it is the
bride gets
to
wear a nice
dress.

However, in
the
past,
brides weren’t quite
so
pre
dictable
or
weddings so ordinary. There were marriages of convenience, stolen brides, proxy
arranged marriages, marriages
where
the principals were strangers,
and
all that luscious stuff.
In
the past, the
excitement of
discovering
love came after the
wedding,
not
before.

So
I took
one
of
history’s most
colorful
villains,
the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham, changed him into the High
Sheriff of Huntingdon, matche
d
him with a
stu
bborn
ex-nun and then watched
the
sparks fly.
I
had a great deal of fun with the
two
o
f them, and I
hope
you
did
too. And needless
to
say, they both lived happily ever after.