Charming the Prince by Teresa Medeiros Page B

broad stone steps that cascaded down into the great hall. For one moment, he believed he truly might choke. His labored swallow was audible in the stunned silence, as the eye of every knight, squire, and page who had chosen to break their fast in the great hall turned toward the stairs.
      It seemed the mystery of the missing honey had been solved.
    Golden gobbets of it dripped from Willow's hair and clung to her throat and shoulders, draping her alabaster skin in a glistening amber veil. Bannor fought an absurd temptation to race up the stairs and lick her.
      As she descended, her slippers adhering to the floor with each painstaking step, Fiona emerged from the kitchen. The old woman threw up her hands to cup her horrified face. The earthenware platter she'd been carrying shattered on the floor. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, lass! Ye look like a banshee!"
      Desmond exchanged a sidelong glance with Kell and Edward, his triumphant smirk leaving no doubt as to who had propped the missing pot of honey over Willow's doorway. Bannor had to grip the edge of the table to keep from dunking his son's head in his bowl of porridge.
      The stunned silence swelled as Willow picked her way to the foot of the table and simply stood there.
      Acutely aware that everyone in the hall, from the burliest knight to the smallest page, was holding his breath in anticipation of his reaction, Bannor simply popped another chunk of bread into his mouth. "Good morning, Willow. I trust you had a pleasant night's sleep."
      She did not reply. She simply gazed at him down the length of the table, the bitter reproach in her stormy gray eyes informing him that he had finally won. He had finally succeeded in making his bride despise him. Oddly enough, as she turned her back on him and trudged back up the stairs, her head held painfully high, Bannor felt no flush of triumph, only an overwhelming sense of defeat.
    ******
      Willow paced the length of her bedchamber as she sawed through another sticky curl, waving it like a battle flag when it finally came off in her hand. Honey would have washed out of her hair easily enough, but her tormentors had been diabolical enough to lace the viscous syrup with tree sap. "Lord Bannor the Bold indeed! Why, I've never met such a dastardly, craven, cowardly, lily-livered..."
    "Pusillanimous," Beatrix provided cheerfully
    "Pusillanimous, fainthearted..."
    As Willow lapsed once again into sputtering, Beatrix wrested the dagger from her hand and gently propelled her toward a stool. "Why don't you let me finish this? If you persist as you have been, Lord Bannor the Bold will be wed to Lady Willow the Bald."
      Willow threw herself down on the stool, clenching the sticky folds of her skirt in her fists. "You won't have to worry about that. I wouldn't stay married to the wretch if he was the last man on earth and the survival of mankind depended on my bearing one of his horrid little brats."
      "I can understand that," Beatrix said, divesting her of another honey-and-sap-laden curl. "I just don't understand why you let it go on so long. I would have insisted that he throw the nasty little trolls in the dungeon the first time they emptied a bucket of soot down my bedchamber chimney."
      "And give the little monsters the satisfaction of knowing I went running to their father to tattle on them? I think not! Besides, I've endured much worse at the hands of Stefan and Reanna. Remember the time they nailed my shoes to the floor? While I was wearing them?" Willow sighed woefully as another gooey strand of hair plopped into the growing pool on her bedchamber floor. I suppose I thought that perhaps in time, Bannor would come charging to my rescue to slay the naughty dragons, like a knight or a... a..."
      Beatrix leaned over her shoulder, an impish smile playing around her lips. "A prince?"
    Willow swiveled around to gape at her stepsister.
      "I used to hear you talking to your imaginary lover when you thought I was asleep,"