Chapter 2 #2
The duration of her travels was impossible to know, but her legs screamed at her to stop and take a break.
Instead, she climbed over a fallen log and splashed in a mud puddle on the other side.
Tired, hungry, and anxious as she was, she giggled as an unbidden memory popped into mind.
During their first breakfast together, Crispin had asked her a personal question.
When do you prefer to perambulate? He feasted on egg whites and a foul-smelling green juice. The chill fall air is good for the humors. Me? In addition to my training, I walk several times per day to keep my waist trim.
He then pointedly sketched his glance between her waist and her breakfast of simple toast, butter, and blackberry jam. Message received, Prince. She’d certainly perambulated her ass away from Brambleton Castle, hadn’t she?
Saints, he was so different from her true love.
She rubbed at the ache Bram’s memory conjured in her chest. Long ago she’d felt lucky to have found him at such a young age.
He’d fallen for her when she was awkward and less self-assured. At the time, it had seemed a blessing, because she could trust
he’d loved her. Not the beauty she’d grown into or the title that had increased in importance. But now she wondered if it wasn’t a curse.
In comparison to Bram, all men were lacking.
A hooting owl flew overhead.
Her knees wobbled as she started, and she sprawled across the path. A bramble scratched her cheek. With a hiss, she pressed
her palm to the spot to ease the sting. From the inner pocket of her dowdy cloak, her cat, Fuzzle yowled.
“Sorry, Fuzz.” She reached inside to scratch behind his tiny ear.
During her second week in Harvest Hollow, she was still willing to try to find common ground with Crispin. Pets seemed a safe
topic. In addition to his stables and the farm animals, the prince kept at least a dozen hounds and as many falcons.
“Animals make such lovely companions, don’t you think?” she’d asked.
They’d paused to enjoy the late-blooming roses, which was where she’d noted the servant’s gate that would eventually lead to her freedom.
“I do.” Crispin had nodded. “My gyrfalcons are the envy of Harvest Hollow. Second only to my stag hounds. No one can believe
the quality of their pedigree.”
Saints, this man turned every conversation back to rank.
“Do they keep you company, though?” She plucked a rose to dry and steep in her morning tisanes.
“Only when I’m hosting nobles. They make an excellent backdrop.”
Vile to use creatures for scenery.
“Don’t you find them to be comforting? If it weren’t for my cat, Fuzzle, after . . .”
She’d stopped herself before confiding that Fuzzle’s warm cuddles kept her sane while she grieved for Bram. Instinct told
her she couldn’t trust Crispin with that level of intimacy. Not yet. Maybe if he—
“About the cat. You’ll need to quarter it in the barn. They make me sneeze.”
That was it. That was the moment she’d hatched her plan to leave Harvest Hollow. She’d spent the last week dodging Bess in the markets to assemble
her escape kit.
Her first plan, the forthright one, was to have a discreet—but honest—conversation with Crispin. She would admit she held
no affection for him and allow him to confess the same. Though the marriage contracts were signed, they could agree to lead
married but separate lives. This discussion could not go through third parties, however, and it would be best to surprise
him with it. As she entered the servants’ hallway she’d learned to navigate since she arrived, she approached the hidden entrance
to Crispin’s privy chamber.
The conversation she overheard shocked her to her core.
With her fingers pressed to her mouth to stifle a gasp, she learned the awful truth. As he clinked glasses with Kevin, his man-at-arms, Crispin celebrated the wedding banns to be announced during tomorrow’s services at Briarveil Cathedral.
“Years of planning, Kevin, and it’s all tumbling into place,” Crispin said triumphantly. “After the wedding, the mountain
sprites will rend Rowan and Beckett Ashford limb from limb, leaving Marigold the undisputed heir to the Thornwick throne.
Her grief will consume her, and I’ll put her away at Scarlet Spire to take the sea air, leaving me, per the marriage negotiations,
to rule both Harvest Hollow and Thornwick as one sovereign. What says the spy?”
“The House of Ashford is all crest and no coin.” Sir Kevin’s voice reminded her of the dank and dark catacombs of Thornwick.
“The wars have stripped their coffers to the bone. This marriage and your support pull them from the fire.”
“Excellent. The deeper in debt they are, the less likely her parents will be to contest Marigold’s placement by the sea. I’ll
finally have unfettered access to Thornwick’s minerals and boot the peasants who live atop that fortune.”
Marigold backed away from the door and forced herself to hurry back to her rooms on quiet feet. Thankfully, Bess was sleeping,
leaving Marigold to devise her escape. With Fuzzle in her lap, she lifted her quill to draft a warning letter to her parents.
No—Crispin said he had a spy.
Surely any correspondence betwixt she and her family at Thornwick would be read by his operative, if delivered at all. Instead,
she drafted a coded letter to her twin, Rowan, who was stationed at the Gildfall Mountains, to the north. Spies might surround
him as well, but a benefit of twinhood was the indecipherable secret language they shared.
She tapped her chin as she worked through the logistics.
The letter might not reach him for ages since he currently served on the northern borders. Even if he sailed the Sea of Red
Tides on the Orvale, the navy’s fastest ship, she couldn’t expect a speedy escort home. The marriage contracts were in place, it was true, but
she and Crispin were not yet married. Once they spoke their vows, she would have no leverage.
Marigold shivered. No, she’d need to hide elsewhere. Aha! She knew just the place.
With hasty strokes of her quill, she explained to Rowan in code that he and Beckett were in danger at Crispin’s hand. Then,
she outlined her plan—she’d slip the castle and seek sanctuary at their distant cousin’s hermitage in Mareval. The smallest
of the Lunara Peninsula’s five kingdoms, Mareval shared Harvest Hollow’s southern border. It served as the region’s religious
seat, and through the Lunaran Treaty, none of the other kingdoms could invade it. She’d need to cross the Shivering Dales
to get there, but once through, Rowan could escort her home.
Yes, this was a good strategy.
Her—blech—betrothed would think her likely to bolt directly to Thornwick. She’d avoid main roads and ports, as Crispin would have eyes
there. Working most in her favor was how she famously hated the out-of-doors. He’d never anticipate she’d choose a path through
heavily wooded landscapes.
Her plan must succeed. For her brothers, herself, and the whole of Thornwick.
Three generations ago, overzealous mining had turned the Marches into a noxious, barren landscape. The frontier dividing Harvest
Hollow and Thornwick still had not recovered from the devastation. Her grandfather enacted laws preventing such looting, but
Crispin clearly did not care about laws, her people, or the earth itself.
After a sleepless night, she escaped Bess’s company long enough to hire a private messenger to spirit the letter to Rowan. After that, all she could do was bide her time at Brambleton Castle, waiting for an escape.
Luck presented an opportunity three days later. While the attendants Crispin assigned to Marigold smoothed ointments into
her skin and brushed her hair until it shone like copper before her slumber, they revealed Crispin had summoned the exchequer
for an urgent meeting about the cost of his extensive renovation efforts.
He’d be in counsel for hours.
After the attendants left, she and Bess drank their usual bedtime blackberry-and-mint tisane as they discussed the next day’s
itinerary. While her companion ticked things on the list, Marigold feigned interest and might have slipped five drops of her precious poppy sap into Bess’s cup. She regretted drugging her, but with her brothers’ lives
on the line, she couldn’t risk tipping her hand to anyone.
Marigold inspected her companion’s features. Was she Crispin’s spy? Either way, the less she knew, the better. A solo escape
was Marigold’s only choice.
With an apologetic yawn, Bess disappeared through their adjoining door. Marigold turned the skeleton key, then hurried to
her armoire.
First, packing.
Five chaotic minutes later, Fuzzle climbed into her half-filled trunk. Beneath the marmalade cat’s tummy lay three kirtles,
her herbal-remedy kit, a brush, a looking glass, ribbons, a week’s worth of undergarments, linen shifts, hose, and a few meals
she’d scavenged from the dinner buffets.
“Don’t you fall asleep in there,” she warned the cat.
Next, her disguise.
From their hiding place in the armoire, Marigold shook out a doll-sized homespun dress and cloak.
With a snap of her fingers, blue sparks fell toward the garments.
As the clothing grew to full size, she shed her fine sleeping gown and slipped into the homespun.
Hmm. The apothecary’s wife, with whom she traded a volume of romantic poetry for these clothes, must’ve been a few inches shorter
than she was. A scandalous amount of her ankle peeped from under the hem.
Nothing to do about it now.
Her minimancy magic only shrank things or restored them to their natural size. No enlarging. Vera, Thornwick’s cunning woman,
taught her how to wield this gift when it first emerged five years ago. She hadn’t dared write of it to Bram, knowing his
suspicions of magic.
After securing her sheathed pruning knife and leather bourse to her belt, she circled her gaze around this room for the last
time. Her heart skipped a beat when she landed on the book of fairy tales. Had she really almost left it behind?
She traced its embossed leather cover with her fingers.