August 10, 1501 Lancaut, England
Fat drops of rain fall in the clearing. Beatrix reaches out to catch them, inhales the metallic scent.
It has always given her hope, that scent.
It is a promise of a world washed clean, a whisper of something new in the air.
But there is no hope today, only the miserable truth.
It is the last time she will sit on this log, smell this air, call somewhere home.
It has been nearly four months since William carried her from this place.
Four months without setting foot in the forest, without giving in to its pull.
Four months of holding her tongue as dutifully as Alice, of doing as she is told, like Isabella.
Four months of pretending not to see William staring at her every Sunday as she stands between her parents at St. James’s, bowing her head.
None of it mattered. Her father told her over breakfast: She will be leaving for the abbey at dawn.
The underbrush behind her rustles, but this time Beatrix knows better than to expect a wolf. William steps out from the trees. He walks slowly toward her, his hands jammed deep into his trouser pockets.
“You look well,” he says, sitting next to her, as if they are merely continuing a conversation they began four months ago. As if it is perfectly reasonable for him to be wandering the forest in his Sunday best.
“Thanks to you.” She should have thanked him months ago, but it has never occurred to her to speak to him beyond this place. Whatever it is they share, it belongs to the woods.
“Why aren’t you at the church?” she asks. All of Lancaut is there to celebrate Isabella’s marriage to the miller’s boy. Someone is bound to notice his absence.
He raises an eyebrow at her. “I think the more obvious question is why aren’t you?”
She smooths down the skirt of her beige wool dress and avoids his questioning gaze. “I thought it best if I didn’t attend,” she says, though it wasn’t her thought at all.
Isabella didn’t say it outright. She didn’t have to.
Beatrix saw it, in the way her sister bit her lip whenever she mentioned the church, in the way her mother stiffened when she spoke of dresses, in the way her father brushed her questions aside when she asked him to show her the proper way to follow in a dance.
She saw it, but she pretended she didn’t.
In the end, Alice was the only one brave enough to tell her.
Alice, who acts older than Beatrix, even though she isn’t. Alice, who never minces words.
Your absence is the best wedding gift you can give Isabella.
Alice would know. Beatrix hadn’t been allowed to attend her wedding, either.
William looks into her mismatched eyes. His gaze doesn’t falter, doesn’t flick away, doesn’t flinch. Her heart skips a beat. No one has ever looked at her that way.
“Is that why you’re wearing a crown of flowers in your hair?”
Beatrix reaches for the braid of papery white flowers and lavender, now resting on top of her head instead of Isabella’s.
She had spent the morning collecting the herbs from their garden and the flowers from the edge of the woods, had woven the stems together with all the love and joy she could hope for her sister.
Isabella told her it was beautiful, and she had meant it.
Her little sister couldn’t lie to save her life.
But she wouldn’t accept the gift. When Beatrix asked her why, she wouldn’t look at her as she admitted the truth.
Mama had told her not to wear flowers in her hair, had called them wild and improper. Probably because Beatrix loved to wear flowers in her hair, and Mama thought she was wild and improper, too. Sweet Isabella always did as she was told.
“Why don’t you wear it?” she offered, trying to keep the peace. “It suits you best, anyway.”
So Beatrix perched the crown of flowers on her head, her chest tight, her throat aching, and swore only the trees would see her cry today.
William waits for her to answer. He must know. They all know. Is he trying to make her say it? That they don’t want her there, that they think she’ll ruin it? Is he mocking her?
The thought slices through her. Is he like all the others?
She stands abruptly. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.” He stands next to her and reaches into his trouser pocket.
“I’ve been meaning to give you this.” He holds out his fist and waits for Beatrix to offer him her hand.
She hesitates, sure it must be some cruel trick—a spider or a dead frog or horse dung.
But her curiosity gets the better of her. She holds out her hand.
With a brush of his rough fingertips against her skin, William places a small wooden figurine in her open palm. A wolf no larger than her thumb stalks across the flat of her hand.
“Did you make this?” Beatrix breathes, lifting it closer. A foolish question. No one else could have captured the likeness—the spirit—of the wolf, fierce and proud and mysterious, so perfectly in wood.
“I was waiting for you to come back, so I picked up a branch and started whittling. I finished it weeks ago, but you were…”
Trying to be someone she isn’t.
He rubs the back of his neck. “Do you like it?”
“I do,” she assures him. More than he will ever know. “It’s wonderful. Thank you.”
She slips it into the pocket of her skirt for safekeeping.
She’ll wrap it inside her clean handkerchiefs, hide it away in the bottom of her sack, and bring it to Tintern.
She will keep it under her pillow and take it out at night, when the abbey is too quiet to stand.
Balance it on her window ledge so it can see the moonlight.
She will fall asleep watching it, thinking of her clearing in the wood. Of him.
William reaches for her, wipes the tear from her cheek with a calloused thumb before she knows it’s falling. “What’s wrong?”
Beatrix swallows the lump rising in her throat. She’s broken her promise, crying in front of him as well as the trees. She may as well tell them both the truth now. “I’m off to Tintern in the morning.”
William looks her in the eye, but she can’t read what she sees there. Thunder rumbles in the distance.
“Don’t go,” he says, more plea than suggestion.
“It’s for the best,” she says, even though what she really means is, I don’t have a choice.
“That doesn’t sound like you,” he says softly.
He’s right. It sounds like her mother and her father and Alice. Even Isabella, in the end. It sounds like all of Lancaut, sighing with relief as they watch her disappear beyond the horizon, never to be heard from again.
Isabella had tried to cheer her spirits. “They’ll teach you to read,” she said as Alice helped her into her wedding gown. “Then you can write to us.”
But even that gift has lost its appeal when she knows she’ll never get a letter back.
“They’ll keep you safe,” Alice had added as she pinned Isabella’s hair.
But Beatrix is sure she meant, They’ll keep you out of trouble.
The wind shifts. A lilting melody drifts through the branches, and Beatrix’s thoughts drift to the wedding. Is Isabella dancing with Alice? Maybe she is staring stupidly into her new husband’s eyes. Does she regret Beatrix’s absence or cherish the gift of it?
Will they miss her?
Her heart sinks, certain it knows the answer.
The sprinkle of rain grows into a steady downpour. Beatrix retreats under the protection of the branching oaks. Thunder booms overhead.
William is next to her again, closer now. She could count every freckle scattered across his cheek if she wanted to. The corner of his mouth lifts. “Dance with me.”
“What?”
He steps into the clearing, a sparkle in his hazel eyes. He grins as the rain soaks him through, turns his sandy hair dark. “Dance with me.”
Beatrix stares at him, wide-eyed. “You’re mad.”
He offers her his hand. “Haven’t you always wanted to dance with a madman in the rain?”
It hits her then, like the lightning racing across the sky. The glint in his eyes isn’t mischief. At least, not entirely. It’s joy. Joy and life and something wild that lights his face when he looks at her. If madness makes you feel like that, she wants to be mad, too.
She lays her hand in his, and he pulls her into the storm.
She squeals as the cold rain pelts her, and he laughs.
Not at her. With her. Her dress clings to her skin, and she shivers against the sudden chill.
William pulls her closer. His hands tell her body where to go, move them together, in time to the music in his mind.
She forgets all about Isabella’s wedding.
Forgets Alice’s sharp words, her mother’s nagging, her father’s disapproval.
Forgets the suffocating stone of abbey walls.
She looks into William’s eyes, loses herself in the dance, and forgets the whispers.
This is a bad idea. Reckless, even. She should be keeping her head down, like Isabella.
Behaving herself, like Alice. But she is going to Tintern in the morning.
What does any of it matter now? Taking William’s hand is easy, and dancing with him is an escape.
She is light in his arms, free in this clearing, and she wishes it would last forever.
William leans in, closing the distance between them.
Her heart leaps. A terrible idea. Maybe that’s why she likes it so much.
His lips brush against hers, soft and tentative. Warmth surges through her, despite the chill rain dripping down her neck. But then he steps away. “I’m sorry, I—”
Beatrix lays a hand against his flushing cheek.
He looks down at her, looks into her mismatched eyes, and words fail him.
She lets her hand drop, trail down to his chest. His heart thuds under the wet shirt clinging to his skin, pounds along with her own.
She leans into him and tips her face toward his. “I’m not.”
Their lips meet, and this time his kiss is sure. Dizzying. His arm slips around her back and he pulls her close, until even the rain can’t come between them.
He breaks away and tips his forehead against hers. “You are trouble, Beatrix Atwood.”
“And what does that make you?” she whispers.
“Doomed.”