Page 6 of An Earl for the Archeress

She absorbed the rules. All contests were similar, but this tournament had attracted a large gathering and twenty contestants, so there would be three rounds instead of two. As the barker cleared himself from the pitch, the call was made to present an arrow. A flag was raised. Mariel withdrew an arrow from her quiver at her hip, nocked it, and drew back her arm and shoulder blade.

When the flag dropped, twenty arrows soared down the pitch. One arrow bounced off target and flopped in the grass. The contestant, angered, stormed off the field with laughter and jeers at his back. Three more arrows were off-center. Mariel’s arrow had struck the middle, as she had expected. So had Huntington’s, she noted. And Huntington had seen hers. She could tell by the way he glanced over his shoulder in her direction before returning his eyes to the field as the judges walked down the row of targets and examined each shot.

Boys scrambled onto the champ de tir to collect each arrow and then cleared off. The flag was raised, the nineteen remaining contestants nocked another arrow from their hips and again, a shower of projectiles was released. She hit center again. So did Huntington. As the contest progressed and twelve arrows were released, Mariel was among the top four scorers to succeed to the second round. And to her chagrin, Huntington was also one of the four.

As the extra targets were removed from the pitch, the earl turned to her and gave her a respectful nod before once again returning his attention to the task at hand. Will he turn me in for being a woman? She supposed he would have done so already, if he were planning on it, but still, the thought nagged her. If she won, he might turn out to be a sore loser.

The second round continued as the first: two ends consisting of six arrows apiece. And quite suddenly, Mariel realized that the contest had boiled down to just her and Huntington for the final round. The number patches of one through five were arranged on various locations on the target, with the bull’s eye unobstructed for the sixth and final arrow. She took a deep breath, her palms sweaty and her fingers beginning to tremor. She shouldn’t feel nervous, but she did. Normally, she could focus her energy until she was almost entranced, but with Huntington beside her, both strikingly handsome and uncommonly perfect at archery, not to mention that kiss…

Lord! Her focus had just vanished again.

“Not good,” she whispered to herself so softly it was probable no one could hear her.

Except the blasted earl had. He turned to glance at her, and she was fearful that her nerves showed clearly on her brow.

“May the best man win, Elmer,” he said, with a smile both sincere and cocky, depending on how one looked at it.

She chose to think of it as cocky and scowled in return. Her food, her very livelihood, depended on this final round. She couldn’t lose.

With all eyes on them, they took up their positions once again. The extra targets had been removed so that only two remained—hers and his. With the numbers clearly marked, the stands hushed and the barker called for the commencement of the final end. The flag was raised, Mariel and Huntington withdrew their arrows and nocked them, dragging back their shoulder blades and elbows, and the arrows soared as the flag dropped. Both lodged in their respective number ones.

Mariel continued to sweat, beads gathering at her temples, eyebrows, and upper lip. Her palms had gone from sweaty to clammy, and she took a deep breath to steady her fingers. Yet the trembling only intensified. Another arrow nocked, another released, and both hit number two dead on. The crowd of onlookers gasped, murmured, and then grew silent again as the next arrow was nocked, then released. Number three was hit, as was number four, and number five. They were tied evenly, and only one more arrow could be slung.

Mariel summoned all of her energy and focus, and aimed into the middle of the bull’s eye. Her gauntlet creaked and sadly, she felt another stitch pop from the leather. The flag was held high for an agonizing moment longer than the others, surely driving the throngs of onlookers mad with suspense, and as it was dropped, Mariel and Huntington released their bow strings. Their arrows whirled forward on an identical path and lodged in the center of each bull’s eye.

The stands erupted, cheered, chattered, the same question on their minds as was on Mariel’s and Robert’s. Who had won? Was it a tie? Huntington turned and looked at her squarely, and she could sense his relief that it was over. Odd, because he had done a superb job of acting cool and stoic the entire time.

“Such competition, I have never had.” He shook his head in disbelief. “You truly are as good as you claim. My respect, Elmer.” And that damn twinkle was back in his eye. Mariel nodded in return.

“Likewise, sir,” she bit out.

He turned to the officials—Wesley, the fellow who preferred stallions, being one of them—and cupped his hand around his mouth. “What of the prize?” he shouted. “Do we split it fifty-fifty?”

The officials hastened to the targets with a measuring tape. Mariel felt her breath catch in her throat again. If one of theirs was off by even a hair’s breadth, there would be a winner. She needed those coins. With them, she could spend the night in a tavern bed instead of a hayloft or on the hard forest floor. With them, she could buy a roasted pheasant, a giant loaf of bread, and a whole sack of apples and eat every ounce of them in one sitting. With those coins, she could purchase needle and thread to fix her gauntlet, and even after a month, she would have money saved toward her eventual flight to the mainland of Europe.

Genoa or Rhineland. Aye, both sounded good.

Nay, Genoa. Rhineland was a nice thought, but it would be cold in the winter. Genoa would always have the sultry Mediterranean keeping its shores thawed.

“’Twas a valiant effort!” called the barker. She snapped back to attention. Lord, but she had been so busy salivating at the thought of the meal she hoped to get, she hadn’t noticed that the officials were finished measuring the arrows. “But not valiant enough for one poor soul! The winner of the forty shillings is…” The drummer rolled his drum. “His Lord! The Earl of Huntington!”

The crowd erupted again. The ladies cheered. Mariel felt like she had been punched in the gut.

Her lip trembled. Ladies tossed their favors at the earl, who smiled congenially and nodded his thanks to his well-wishers, though his eyes kept glancing at her. A petite woman, young and pretty with bobbing auburn hair, shoved her way through the others, throwing herself at Robert, and Mariel’s breath left her completely. It was not real, not possible, that she had lost, and indeed he did have a lady in his life. It shouldn’t matter, but it did. A most non-masculine sob tried to spill from her mouth, but she swallowed it, feeling her face go ashen.

Robert finally managed to pull himself away from the swarms, extracting himself from the young woman she heard him call Lady Anna, and extended his hand to her.

“Indeed there was no difference between our projectiles to the naked eye,” he said, and there was no mistaking his genuine admiration this time. “You’re a gifted archer. Tell me, would you be willing to consider a particular arrangement of employment? If you might consider it, I have a proposition and would like to meet with you privately…”

Mariel hardly heard a word as he shook her wrist, her arm whipping up and down like a limp rope. Normally, she would be elated at the compliment Robert paid, offering her a position reserved for a man, but she was still fighting to regain her breath. Her mind was an eddy. She had just lost, and she had never lost. And with that loss went everything.

She might very well starve to death. Her stomach growled again so intensely it actually hurt, but she backed away from Huntington, who was doing a spectacular job resisting the many men, and women, of course, surrounding him once more. Work for him? She was a woman, and when rumors spread that the Earl of Huntington had a female archer in his employ, Scottish at that, it would only be a matter of time before Harold Crawford, Sheriff of Ayrshire, heard the tales and came to reclaim her. And that man Wesley, who clearly adored her, would probably roll out the royal carpet in welcome.

“Will you consider it?” she heard him ask, but she was already turning away, moving across the champ de tir, then striding, then running.

Away from the targets. Away from the crowds. She gathered her precious arrows and didn’t bother to look back at the earl now drowning in a sea of ladies’ laughter and compliments as she headed toward the forest, to lick her wounds, to disappear.

…