Excerpt of Matilda's Song by JoAnn Smith Ainsworth

Enjoy the excerpt:

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1120 A.D., Britain

Matilda’s heart threatened to escape it was beating so hard.
Panic invaded every corner. If Sir Loric discovered her
deception, it could be the end of her life. And that of her
cousin.

“Hurry!”

She urged her mother and younger sister Nellopa to store the
last bundles of clothing and household goods into the wooden
cart so she could lash everything down. Her older brother
Hylltun and Cousin William were hitching the ox. They kept
their voices low and made as little noise as possible to
avoid waking neighbors.

“You must be well away from here before Sir Loric knows
you’re gone,” her mother said.

It was nearly midnight in early spring. Matilda and her
middle-aged cousin were journeying to his home village of
Caelfield where they would live the lie of a newly married
couple. They must live this deception until the vindictive
knight who demanded her hand to secure his loyalty to the
earl saw fit to marry someone else. At eighteen, she was
sacrificing all that was familiar to her—family, friends and
home village—to evade this knight’s attentions.

“You're a saint, William,” her mother whispered, “to agree
to this sham marriage.”

“I could never let the family down,” he replied matter-of-
factly.

When her blacksmith father died last year, the earl invoked
his right to choose a husband for her. While the law forbade
a lord from marrying a woman to a man beneath her station,
it didn’t require the husband to be loving, generous or even
to her liking. Her skin crawled when Sir Loric just looked
at her. He won honors on the battlefield, but off the field
he was a lout and a brute.

To escape, she was sacrificing a dream of a love so
breathtaking her heart would sing. The lie protected her
from a politically motivated betrothal, but it destroyed any
prospects of finding and marrying the “man of her dreams”—a
reality as bitter and chilling as the night air.

She gave one last tug and tied off the rope securing all her
worldly belongings. Her brother—the village blacksmith upon
their father’s death—finished the harnessing and fed the ox
a handful of grain while Nellopa strapped Matilda’s most
prized possession—a Simple Chest filled with healing herbs—
under the cart’s seat.

“I’ll miss you, Daughter.”

Her mother’s love reached out and awareness of that loss
almost broke Matilda’s resolve. She compressed her lips to
keep a sob from escaping.

“The earl may never forgive you for this,” her older sister
said. “It will embarrass him. He may even withdraw my dowry
so I can’t marry.”

Tension built across Matilda’s back. She couldn’t sacrifice
Ingunde’s happiness for her own.

“I won’t have you hurt. I’ll come back if he withdraws your
dowry.”

“If you return, the earl would have no choice but to give
you to Sir Loric,” her brother said.

“Surely, he wouldn’t harm Ingunde,” their mother assured
them. “If for nothing else, to honor his late wife, my dear
cousin.”

“But he might not let Matilda return to us,” Hylltun said,
“even if that bastard marries.”

Matilda shuddered. She missed her family already and she was
not yet gone.

She pulled her cloak closer around her neck.

“The sooner we leave here, the safer I’ll feel,” William
said pragmatically as he took the lead rope and angled the
ox toward the moonlit roadway.

Her older sister spoke urgently.

“Go!”

Matilda quickly hugged each one. Her mother’s comforting
scent of herbs and potions lingered when she tore herself
away and caught up with her cousin who was already leading
the ox down the rutted lane. Lashed to the cart, her wedding
dowry—all her worldly belongings—teetered and wobbled.

As the ox-cart lurched over a large stone uprooted by the
spring thaw, she clung with one hand to its wooden side. She
looked back, searing her family’s shadowed outlines into her
memory until the darkness swallowed them.

Chapter Two
Thundering hooves chewed chunks of the packed earth out of
the manor house courtyard as the baron brought his enormous,
black warhorse to a lurching halt. Lord Geoffrey de la
Werreiur of Greystone, Norman baron, knight to the king and
ruler of three former Saxon villages, leapt from his
lathered stallion, handed off the leather reins to a patient
groom stationed nearby and strode briskly toward the
entrance of his residence. His white linen tunic stuck to
the sweat on his muscular chest.

“Keep riding that hard and you’ll break your neck,” his
elegant sister, Lady Rosamund, admonished from the expansive
steps of the manor house. “Then we’ll have no heir to
continue the de Werreiur line.”

Her delicate, beaded, red silk slippers took a beating on
the stone pavement, but she insisted on walking outdoors in
them.

The baron’s brown leather breeches scraped as he rapidly
advanced toward the stairs. Knee-high leather riding boots
carried the dust of his exploits. His loose tunic flapped
wetly in a breeze caused by his rapid strides.

Rosamund thrust her hands onto her narrow hips, a determined
expression on her face.

“When are you going to do your family duty and marry? You’re
almost five and twenty.”

Geoff looked at his sister—who probably sought refuge from
her domineering husband more than holding a desire to visit
her brother.

“You cannot expect me to marry one of those mealy mouthed
females you brought with you.”

He cringed at the thought of those insipid females, then
turned stormy.

“They look at me and calculate the value of my lands. I want
a wife who loves me for myself.”

Rosamund haughtily defended her friends, her chin rising as
she spoke.

“It’s their family duty to marry well.”

The baron angrily advanced toward the entrance.

“Their eyes glaze over when I discuss the welfare of my
tenants. They have no interests except money and fashion.”

“You wrong them,” Rosamund cried out as he brushed past her
to enter the manor through the massive wooden door being
held open by a retainer in green and brown livery. “Any one
of them can run a manor house.”

“I already have an excellent housekeeper,” Geoff flung over
his shoulder. “I’m looking for a wife. Find me a spirited
woman of good birth. Then I’ll consider doing my family
duty.”

“Unrealistic,” Rosamund called out as the door slammed shut.