Scarlet Moon (Once Upon a Time) (5 page)

Simon dug into a pouch at his belt and placed three coins on a table before turning and stumbling out of the shop. Ruth snatched up the coins and contemplated throwing them at his retreating back, but she took a deep breath and clutched them tightly in her fist instead.

“Did he hurt you?” the earl asked after a moment.

“No,” she spat. “And if you hadn’t interfered I might have knocked some sense into him. Now I’m just going to have to deal with him later.”

He laughed out loud, his eyes dancing. “My apologies, milady. Next time I will just stand back and watch.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking a deep breath. They stood still for a few moments as Ruth tried to force her body to relax and her heart to slow. She found it hard to do under his watchful eye.

At last she turned and looked at him closely. He was tall; her chin only came up to his chest. His wavy brown hair just brushed his shoulders. His skin was bronzed, with the look of one who spent much time outdoors. Then she looked into his eyes and her heart skipped a beat. He had the most mesmerizing green eyes she had ever seen. There was something magnetic and exotic about them, and she
felt as though she were drowning in their depths.

She forced herself to break the contact as she realized that her heart was still racing but for an entirely different reason. Perhaps it was that realization that startled her into remembering her manners. She began to curtsy, but then remembered she was not wearing a skirt. She blushed for one awkward moment before finally bowing deeply. When she stood back up, Ruth thought she caught him smiling. “I’m sorry, milord, you caught me at an inopportune moment. I did not mean to offend you.”

“Don’t do that,” he said softly.

“What?” she asked, startled.

“Don’t remember that you are a blacksmith and I am an earl. I liked you better when you didn’t care a whit who I was.”

She found herself smiling despite herself. “You’ll have to forgive me; I often have a different view of life than others.”

“Of course you do; you’re a woman in a man’s clothes and with a man’s work. You’re a lady and a blacksmith. I praise your father for his courage in raising you as both.”

She shook her head, bemused. “I’d give you these coins to hear you tell him that.”

“I shall tell him, and you can keep the coins.”

“What is it you came for, William?” she asked, daring to use his name and knowing how many would be shocked to hear her do so.

He smiled his approval. “My horse threw a shoe not twenty paces from your door.”

“Well then, that is fortunate for both of us.” she answered.

“Yes, it would seem so.”

“Fetch your horse and put him in that stall,” she said, pointing.

He bowed low before disappearing outside« She didn’t have even a moment to collect herself before he reappeared, leading a magnificent black stallion.

“Beautiful,” she murmured almost involuntarily.

“Are you referring to me or the horse?” William asked with a wink.

She laughed and fought down the urge to throw something at him. “My, aren't we arrogant. I was, of course, referring to the animal.”

“Then, you were talking about me,” he said, his smile gone in an instant and his eyes glinting with a hard light.

Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at him. In that moment it was easy to see him as an animal—a wild, dangerous creature that would consume her if she only let him.

Then the steely look was gone and the smile again in its place. He led the horse into the stall and secured it. Ruth brushed past him and entered the stall.

“Which shoe?”

“Left foreleg.”

“Easy, boy,” she crooned as she slid her hand down the horses silken leg.

When she reached his hoof he lifted it for her without a fuss. “You have lovely manners,” she told him.

“He learned them from me,” William offered.

“You sure it wasn’t the other way around?”

He guffawed, sounding for a moment like a horse, and she laughed quietly to herself. She studied the horse’s hoof for a moment.

“You treat all your customers this way?” William asked.

“No, you’re special.”

“And here I asked for no special treatment,” he teased.

“Well, that will teach you.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

She let go of the hoof and straightened. “Hand me one of those files on that table. His hoof needs to be shaved a little before I can put on a new shoe.”

William hurried to do as she asked. She slid her hand down the horses leg again, and this time he picked his hoof up before she asked. Holding it steady between her knees, she filed the edge down. As she leaned slightly into the great beasts shoulder, he nickered softly.

“He likes you,” William said, his tone sincere.

“The feeling is quite mutual. He’s a wonderful animal.”

She returned the file to William. “Can you get me one of the shoes hanging from the first nail on the
wall, closest to me. I also need a hammer and some nails from the table below it.”

He grabbed the things she needed and handed her the hammer, the shoe, and one of the nails. He stood close at hand with the rest.

She fitted the shoe onto the stallion and drove the first nail into the hoof easily. William placed the next one into her outstretched hand, brushing her fingers with his own. Her skin warmed at the contact, but she tried not to think about it.

Ruth finished quickly and patted the horse on the shoulder. “Thank you for your assistance,” she told William as she let herself out of the stall.

“The pleasure was mine,” William said with a smile. “What do I owe you?”

She shrugged. “Let’s call it even. After all, you did save me from having to kill the tanner.”

The smile disappeared, and the steel returned to his gaze. “Dear lady, I would have killed him myself before I would have let you stain your hands with his miserable blood.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she just stood, staring mutely into his eyes. Suddenly he bent closer, and for one heart-stopping moment she thought he was going to kiss her. Instead he whispered low and fierce, “Thank you.”

“For what?” she breathed.

He smiled grimly and shook his head before moving to the stall and leading his horse out. He left
the shop without a word or a backward glance. Ruth walked to the door and watched as he mounted his horse and rode off. Puzzled and feeling slightly dazed, she turned back inside and saw a small pouch sitting on the table next to the file she had used on his horse’s hoof.

She picked it up and gasped when she saw that it was filled with coins. “Thank you,” she whispered.

William’s head was spinning as he galloped his horse toward the castle. The girl had seemed so familiar to him; something about her had called to him, but he didn’t know what it was. He hadn’t even found out her name, though her face would forever haunt his dreams. For a moment he had been able to forget all the darkness in his life and he had felt truly free.

Freedom was not his, though, no matter how much he yearned for it.
Mine is a life already destined, the course of my future plotted, thanks to the actions of my ancestors and this legacy they left me.
He cursed his fate as he spurred his mount on.

Minutes later the hooves of his steed clattered on the stones in the castle courtyard. He slid from the stallion’s back and tossed the reins to a waiting servant.

He strode into the main hall of the castle, his boots causing hollow echoes to sound throughout, until he reached the great wall, where a portrait of each marquis of Lauton hung. His father’s was at the end, and next to it was a space where William’s would
one day hang when his father was dead and he, himself, was marquis.

He glared at the wall. Four centuries of Lautons all stared back at him, their eyes accusing him as they always did. “I have done nothing to deserve this,” he hissed.

He looked at each portrait in turn, beginning with the first—William, his namesake. All of them had the same strong jaw, the same high cheekbones, the same wavy hair. There was one thing that not all of them shared, however. The first six Lautons did not have it, but all the rest did. All the rest had a darkness to them, a hungry, predatory look in their eyes. William knew that look; he had seen it in his own eyes when staring into pools of water.

The eyes mocked him, and he hated them for that. He turned back to the first portrait with those eyes and stood before it for a long time, unmoving. Finally, in a voice hoarse with rage, he asked, “Why?”

The portrait, as always, refused to answer.

As Ruth sat down to dinner with her father and Peter she placed the coins from her day’s work upon the table. Her father took one look at the large amount and raised an eyebrow.

“Something happen today at the shop?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, helping herself to a chicken leg. “Simon the tanner didn’t want to pay for his skinning knives. He claimed the work was shoddy.”

Her father turned three shades of red before he
finally spit out, “That was some of the best work we’ve ever done!”

“I know,” she answered around a mouthful of chicken.

“What did you do?”

“I hit him a couple of times before he got his guard up.”

“Ruth, what have I told you about fighting?”

“I know, Father, but I was safe. He didn’t touch me. It turned out he didn’t even have a chance to try. Lord William came by and ended the fight. Simon paid and left as fast as he could.”

Her father’s face went from red to white faster than she would have dreamed possible. “The marquis’s son caught you fighting?”

“Yes, father,” she said, dropping her eyes to her plate.

“Did he say anything?”

Ruth was in trouble and she knew it. Her father had always warned her about how to behave in front of nobility, when and if she ever met any. He had also told her repeatedly that if any strangers dropped by the forge while she was alone she was to tell them she was only there bringing something to her father, and that she should leave immediately and run home to get him. She took a drink of water, debating what next to say.

“He had heard Simon and me arguing, so it was no use pretending I didn’t work there. He had come by to have one of the shoes replaced on his stallion. I did the job and told him there would be no charge
since he had helped me with Simon. He left this bag of coins anyway.”

She sat silent, watching her father as he stared off into space. “Lord William has a bad reputation, but it’s for being a fighter and a dangerous man. If he were going to make any trouble for us regarding a woman working in the shop as a blacksmith, it would have come already.”

“I met men in Acre who knew him. They had no kind words,” Peter said quietly. “He’s dangerous. You should try to stay away from him, Ruth. You may not be so lucky next time.”

“Yes, if you see him again, be polite but try to stay away from him, and tell me as quickly as you can,” her father instructed.

Ruth nodded but didn’t say a word. They ate the rest of the meal in silence, and Ruth was relieved when it was time to retire for the night.

She lay down, but sleep was a long time coming. When the darkness finally did claim her, she dreamt of William and the way his eyes shone when he laughed.

William couldn’t sleep. He prowled the castle, thinking. He stopped again in front of the great wall and stared at the portrait of his father. At last he turned from it, weary.

His father was off again, fighting in Jerusalem. He had come and gone often throughout the last nine years, and he had always left William home to
watch the castle and guard the lands and titles. It had been a great burden his father had placed upon him, but it was nothing compared to the burden that they all shared. It was the dark secret carried by the men of the family that drove his father to return again and again to Jerusalem.
Does he seek revenge or redemption?
William wondered.

He didn’t know; he and his father barely spoke even when they were both in the same room.
We keep to ourselves, even when among our own kind.

He turned and continued pacing, his stride long and loose, his hands swinging easily at his sides. His eyes probed the darkness, seeing everything, even though he didn’t need to see in the dark to move around this castle. He knew the layout so well he could walk it with his eyes closed.

At last he moved outside, the walls of the castle no longer able to cage him. Under the stars he breathed in deeply, sucking the night air into his lungs. He threw back his head and stared up at the sky. The moon was a crescent in the darkness and he stared at it, hating it and yet unable to ignore its beauty.

He paced slowly toward the stables, approaching them from downwind. The horses began to move restlessly, and he could smell their fear. Unable to smell him and know that it was William who approached, they were anxious, sensing only that a predator was near.

By the time he walked inside, they were whinnying
in fear and kicking the walls. He stood for a moment, watching them, before he called out gently. The horses instantly quieted upon hearing their master’s voice. He walked down the center aisle, meeting each of their eyes in turn.

He exited the stables and continued on to a pasture beyond. The stallion the girl had shod trotted up to the fence and thrust his nose into William’s hand.

“You don’t belong inside, penned up like the others, do you?” William asked quietly, rubbing the velvety nose. “Neither do I. That’s why we get along so well, you and I.”

William sighed and leaned against the fence. “So, what did you think of her?”

The horse bobbed his head up and down, making William smile. “I liked her too. I’ve never met a woman quite like her. You know, I believe she could have killed that tanner.” His smile faded as a shadow crossed his mind. “I am happy that she did not have to, though. No one should have to live with that kind of pain.”

The stallion lipped at William’s collar, and he twisted his hand in the horse’s mane. “So, Shadow, what am I going to do about her?”

Shadow had nothing to say about the matter, and William sighed. “If I am anything of a gentleman, I will leave her alone.”