Prologue
Winchester, England
1072
Lady Tanon Risandegathered all her breath for a scream she hoped would alert her father to her peril. But a rock struck her in the shoulder, and she yelped instead. For a moment, she teetered on the thick branch in the tree she was sitting in, her huge green eyes opened wide with terror. She flailed her arms to grab hold of something and plummeted to the ground.
If it weren’t for the lights swimming around her head, Tanon would have thrown up. Oh, and wouldn’t it have been wonderful to do the like all over Roger deCourtenay. She thought about it while she spat a few blades of summer grass and a small pebble from her mouth.
Tanon heard Roger laughing before she lifted her face to glare at him. That is, she wanted to glare at him.Oui, just the way her father glowered down at Cook when he almost broke his tooth on a stone in the bread. She tried to flare her nostrils and squint her eyes all mean and dark as William had taught her, but her bottom lip began to tremble against her chin. Her eyes filled with huge tears instead.
Roger laughed harder. In fact, he laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe. Bending at the middle, he held his belly with one hand and covered his mouth with the other. He must have feared some passerby wouldn’t know what he was laughing at, so he released his gaping mouth to point at her and squeal afresh. It would have been mortifying enough if he didn’t have an audience, but to his good fortune, he did. Most of the children living at Winchester Castle were there. Tanon could forgive Hilary and Janie Pendleton for laughing at her, as they were a bit younger than she was and didn’t realize how rude they were. Henry and Thomas Drake had made nervous faces while Roger hurled his rocks at her. But like all the other children, they said nothing. Better Tanon than them. They were all afraid of Roger. Tanon was afraid of him, too. But that wasn’t why she didn’t pick up a rock and hurl it right back at him. She didn’t want him to tell his father, the Earl of Blackburn, because his father would tell the king. And Tanon didn’t ever want to make William angry with her. She wasn’t afraid of William. Oh,non, she loved the king almost as much as she loved her own papa. He made the best faces of all. Even better than the mean scowls her mama’s lady maid, Alysia, made.
Tanon knew Roger didn’t like her. She not only refused to go along with his cruel pranks, like putting ants in the goat’s milk and rubbing tree sap on Chloe the cat’s paws, but she had the audacity to admonish him for being such a bully. It didn’t stop him from being mean, though. When she cried at seeing poor Chloe’s failed attempts to walk, Roger and the others teased her for a full se’nnight.
Right now, though, Tanon didn’t care why he disliked her. Fueled by his coaxing, the other children laughed at her, called her Twiggy Tanon, and snorted like pigs when she crossed their paths, because her best friend was Petunia the pig. There was one small consolation; none of the children had ever struck her, until today. Tanon was Lord Brand the Passionate’s daughter, after all. And when it came to Tanon, her papa could be even meaner than Roger.
“Twiggy Tanon dropped outta that tree like a scrawny chicken!” Roger howled with glee. When he saw Tanon ball her hands into little fists, he sobered quickly and stomped toward her. When he was satisfied that his looming presence over her was frightening enough to make her wet her skirts, he clenched his teeth and shook his fist in her face. His blond hair fell into his eyes and over the spray of freckles across his nose. “If you tell your father, I’ll skin your pig and then eat her for supper.”
Tanon gasped; two tears spilled over the rims of her long black lashes. Roger took one look at her and doubled over again, pointing to her mouth.
“Toothless Tanon!” he shouted and did a little dance in the grass, still holding his belly.
Tanon snapped her mouth shut, but inside she flicked her tongue across her teeth. She looked around the tall summer-green blades, spotted her tooth, and then took off running before Roger could see her sobbing.
She ran straight into the arms of her beloved William.
“Here, now, where are you running off to, my sunshine?” William put his enormous hands on her shoulders and stopped her in her tracks. When Tanon wiped her eyes, keeping her head bent, he squatted in front of her to get a look at her face. He was scowling when Tanon peeked up at him. She wished she could look that mean. “Would you like to tell me who made you cry?” he asked.
Tanon shook her head no but caught his suspicious frown aimed at Roger and the others down the hill. An instant later, William plucked her gently from the ground. Tanon was sure her William was taller than the tree from which she just fell, but he would never drop her, and she settled into his brawny chest, safe at last. He was, after all, the king.
“Ma précieuse,” he cooed after she offered him her most grateful dimple-inducing smile. “Did you know you’re missing a tooth?” he asked, and then he stroked her long raven curls when she buried her face in his neck and cried for all she was worth.
Her papa was even less pleased by her appearance than she was after she peered in her mother’s tiny looking glass. Tanon didn’t like it, but she had to lie to her papa. She had no choice. She was sure God would forgive her. Petunia’s life was at stake, after all.
“I tell you I fell out of a tree, Papa,” she insisted after a long time of being questioned in William’s private solar.
“And no one caused you to fall from this tree, Tanon?” Lord Brand Risande paced before his daughter with his hands folded behind his back.
Though his gaze was wonderfully warm when he looked at her, Tanon swallowed, praying he couldn’t tell she was lying. She shook her head, afraid to speak lest he had some secret fatherly way of knowing her deceit by the quavering pitch of her voice.
“William told me he saw Roger deCourtenay and the Drake boys. They had naught to do with your lost tooth, or falling from the tree?”
Tanon kept a clear vision of Petunia’s big brown eyes and her chubby little body in her mind to strengthen her. She would never put someone she loved, even if that someonewas a something, in jeopardy. Still, she couldn’t look her papa in the eyes when she spoke. She fingered the colorful stitching in her gown instead. “Non, Papa. They had naught to do with it.”
Her papa glanced at the king, who sat casually in a huge chair beside the hearth. Thankfully William didn’t say anything.
“Tanon” Her papa’s voice was so soft and soothing it somehow, magically, made her look at him, and he smiled. “You’re the oldest, daughter. You must remember to always set a good example for your brothers and tell the truth. I should like to know if anyone is making you unhappy. King William invited us to his home for the summer in the hopes that you would enjoy yourself and mayhap make some friends.”
“Oh, but I have made a friend, Papa.” Tanon grinned at him, exposing the little gaping hole where her front tooth used to be. “Petunia is my friend.”
“Petunia is a pig,” her father gently reminded her. William smiled at her.
Tanon chose to ignore her father’s low opinion of her closest friend. She loved Petunia, and she was certain Petunia loved her in return.
“Your mother is quite upset that you fell out of a tree,” her papa told her, making her feel terrible all over again. “You could have broken your neck instead of just your tooth. Now tell me what happened.” He folded his arms across his chest and stared at her, waiting.
Tanon fidgeted in her seat. She looked at William and he winked at her. “Papa?”