Wonderful by Jill Barnett Page B

with her. She never came down, even when he had made a point of saying he would see her there. He scowled down at her, unable to stop himself.
    She quickly made some excuse about leaving her lord earl to his well problem, and before Merrick could stop her, she hurried off toward the keep.
    Roger looked at him. “So what is happening with your well?”
    “Nothing I cannot handle easily.”
    “Are you certain? I can help. I don’t mind being a part of this.”
    “I don’t doubt it,” Merrick groused. “Since you think you’re a part of everything.”
    Roger laughed. “Not everything, my friend. Just that which you are too hardheaded to take advantage of.”
    But Merrick only heard him with half an ear, for he was intently watching her weave a path through the bustling outer bailey, around horses that were twice her size, past honking geese that had nipped at his ankles, and dogs that yapped at the rolling carts.
    He was well aware that Roger watched her as he did, and he felt his friend’s puzzled look. But Merrick could no more look away than he could act as if he did not see the sun. He stood there silently, feeling unsettled and restless, the way he felt just before a battle.
    She moved past an oxcart that carried huge stone grinding wheels for the mill and some iron gears for the new portcullis. Their size made her look even smaller, farther away, like something he sought that was just beyond reach.
    After the cart passed, Merrick lost sight of her. But his mind had not lost her image, nor had he lost the powerful effect one small woman could have on him. He could still see her small straight back, the proud lift of her head, and the long blond braid that hung down her back so thickly and brushed over her body, back and forth, back and forth, whenever she walked.
    The image took him on a moment’s journey back to that first night at Camrose, when he and Roger had come upon her in the chamber off the solar. The night she had been dancing out that sprightly charade by the golden light of a burning candle.
    His first sight of Lady Clio had hit him like a war hammer. Fate had given him a lady so fair, so full of life, that he had only stood there, dumbfounded, watching her performance.
    He had told Roger the truth when he’d said he’d never pondered her looks. But the moment he saw her, he changed how he thought.
    She was small. The top of her head did not even reach his shoulder. Yet her presence in a room affected him more than he could fathom. ’Twas as if some giant had entered the room and the walls had suddenly begun to close in. A tight feeling he could not explain.
    The first thing he had noticed when he stood in the arched doorway was her hair. It hung clear to the backs of her knees and was a light silver color he’d only seen once before—when he’d been lying under a purple night sky in the desert, waiting for a battle that would begin at dawn.
    That night had been filled with shooting stars, hundreds of them. None of the men there had ever seen the like. Some fell on their knees, confessing all, for they feared the world was ending.
    Others drank too much wine and later did not remember the spectacle. But Merrick had lain there most of that starry night, on a pallet outside of his tent, and he’d watched the brilliant twisted star-trails above him.
    Like now, when he watched the lost image of one small woman.
     

Chapter 13
    At the high table in the great hall that eve, Clio sat between Merrick and Sir Roger, and fought the urge to fall asleep facedown in her trencher.
    The spiced rabbit and wild truffles had been served with flaming quail on swords. But the two men did not notice. Instead, they debated how many rocks would have to be heaved from a standard mangonel to smash a hole in the four-foot-strong curtain wall.
    Along with dishes of golden leeks and braised greens came the trumpeting of the castle heralds, while Lord Merrick and Sir Roger discussed the perfect dimensions of the new arrow