He tried to back away at the last moment, but Alys took him by surprise when her arm shot out and shoved back his hood. He cried out indignantly.
The moonlight hit his face and Alys gasped. He looked like he had been very recently run over with a cart. His skin was pale around fading bruises ringing bloodshot eyes, a cut over one eyebrow healing, but still scabbed and red. His lips had been split by a heavy blow, their scars visible even within the tangle of uneven beard. His hair was of a darker shade, although in the night it was hard to tell the exact hue, but the cut of it was in no recognizable fashion: long in spots, hanging down to his shoulders, and missing in other patches, as if hacked off in great chunks.
He looked quite mad, Alys had to admit, and more than a little unkempt. Perhaps he was even a bandit, wearing monk’s clothing as his disguise. But she quickly dismissed these trivialities. After all, a mad, disheveledoutlaw was better than Clement Cobb. And now Sybilla would be forced to keep her word.
“What happened to you?” Alys asked, trying to pull her mouth out of the grimace she knew had to be apparent.
“Whatever do you mean?” the man replied with a snide lift of his mouth.
To her own surprise, Alys giggled. And the man’s sneer faded into something akin to a grin. Still perched on Alys’s shoulder, Layla clapped her hands. The Foxe Ring at last felt like the magical place it was rumored to be.
“You didn’t tell me your name,” Alys pointed out.
“Didn’t I?” the man taunted. Then he paused, looking at her contemplatively for a moment. “Piers, and that’s all you need know. I was going to shelter here for the night, but as it is obviously already occupied …” He shrugged, bent to pick up the pack at his feet and then nodded his head toward her courteously. “I would not risk us being found together. ‘Twould ruin you and possibly put me in great danger.”
Alys was intrigued. “Danger? Are you fleeing from someone?”
“More like fleeingtosomeone.” He shrugged into the pack. “Good luck with your sister, Lady Alys.” He only glared at Layla and then turned as if to leave.
“Wait!” Alys called, reaching out her hand and taking a step toward him. “Uh … Piers! Where are you going?”
“Not your concern,” he said over his shoulder.
“It is my concern. You can’t go without me.”
Now he turned toward her once more. “I can’t go without you?”
“Of course not,” Alys scoffed. “It’s fate!”
“Fate,” he repeated flatly.
Alys rolled her eyes and sighed. “We’re in the Foxe Ring. At a full moon …?”
“And …?”
She growled in frustration. ‘Twas as if he didn’t know the legend of the ruin! Or he was being deliberately obtuse. Perhaps he thought she was the one who was unlearned of the old tales.“And,you can’t just leave me here now!”
“Why the bloody hell not?”
Alys beamed at him, happy to speak the miracle aloud. “Because, silly—we’remarried.”
Chapter 3
Piers shook his head as if perhaps the motion might clear it, for surely the girl had not just said that they were married.
Had she?
He squinted and leaned toward her slightly, pointing to his ear. “My apologies, but could you say again? I’ve just recently taken a sharp blow to the head. Several blows, actually.”
The little golden-haired thing leaned in, giggling, her monkey sitting surely on her shoulder.“We’re married.You know”—she spread her arms and looked around the circle of stones briefly—“here in the Foxe Ring.”
Piers stood upright once more, completely perplexed. “As I understood the situation, you were cross with me for trespassing on your family’s lands and nearly getting my fingers bitten off by your ridiculous animal.”
“I was waiting for you, Piers,” Alys said, her face softening in a manner that caused an uncomfortable sensation in Piers’s gut. “Only I didn’t know ‘twas you, of course. It could have been anyone, any man in the whole of theland, but”—she took a deep breath and let it out happily around her bright smile—“it’syou.”
Then Piers felt his eyes narrow. Surely this could not be a trap laid by Bevan and Judith Angwedd. Regardless, he would not take any chances.
“You obviously have me confused with someone else,” he said to the still-smiling girl. “Good … er, night, Lady Alys.”
