The Troll and The White Hanky of Anti-doom, Chapter 1 part 1

Sorry about the late post. I have been dealing with sever book hangover and totally forgot that it was Wednesday, and that I had some post I needed to do, and that I really needed to stop moping. So seriously, yeah. That new Green Rider book my Kristen Britain is awesome in a slightly tradgec way. Anyway, the story.

Anyway, here's the first part of chapter one. It's too long to post all of chapter 1 in one blog post. With luck, I'll have a cover for it next week. In the mean time, I have included a picture of a typical medieval man-at-arms to give you an idea of what Watt 's armor looked like. Not exactly, but more or less. Enjoy!


***********

Chapter 1, Part 1

This was the first day of his life as a hero, Watt thought as he made his way through the city market. He had his father's helm and mail, a very nice coat of plate to wear over it that he'd claimed from the body of a horse thief, a halberd he'd made himself, and a writ of recommendation from his father's overlord to get him through the door. In a matter of minutes, he'd present it to the captain of the Kampton City Guard, and then he wouldn't be the third son of a village blacksmith any longer. He'd be a real man-at-arms, serving in a real militia, living in a real city. Why, it wouldn't surprise him if he found himself knighted by the end of the year. Yes, his future was looking bright indeed.

The market was bustling with people, all of them noisy and moving like they had important places to go, so it took Watt several minutes to realize that he wasn't seeing anyone actually buying or selling anything. How odd, he thought. What kind of market didn't have merchants? Maybe this square wasn't the market, he rationalized. He'd never been to a city, after all. Maybe city markets were someplace other that the central square like they were in small hamlets. He shrugged off the thought and turned into the building marked "guard barracks".

"Name and business," the disinterested guard at the watch desk said in a nasal voice.

"Ah, my name is Watt, from South Umptonshire Village," he replied, turning the last bit into a question. The older man just stared at him, probably because he could care less where Watt hailed from. He flushed and hurried on, "My father's overlord sent me here with a writ of recommendation so I could joint the city guard."

"Captain!" the board guardsman bellowed over his shoulder, causing Watt jump at the unexpectedness of it. "We got us another bumpkin wanting a job!"

"Bumpkin?" Watt repeated, aghast. Granted, he didn't have any real military experience, just what he'd gained from helping out at his father's overlord's keep, but he was pretty sure bellowing at one's commanding officer wasn't very professional. Or appropriate. The lout hadn't even glanced at the writ that was being offered for his inspection.

"What of it?" a belligerent voice replied from a room behind the watch desk. "Send 'im away. I got no rations to feed another useless mouth and no patience to train up another bumpkin into something I do have a use for!"

"I wasn't aware that simply being from a smaller hamlet marked me an inexperienced bumpkin," Watt said darkly. "In fact, I have brought a recommendation from my previous lord to prove my worth, if only you'd look at it."

The sound of a wood chair protesting at being dragged over flagstone floors had both him and the insulant guard cringing. A moment later, the biggest, meanest, dirtiest man Watt had ever laid eyes on squeezed through the door of the back office. Watt eyed the man apprehensively for a moment before realizing the filthy state of the guard captain's clothes was not due to sloth but rather battle grime. He also realized that the big man didn't look hungover, but rather very tired, as if he'd not found his bed since the day before at least.

"Well then," the captain said once he'd gotten his considerable bulk into the front room. "Let's see these papers you're going on about."

Watt gulped as he handed the writ he'd been so very proud of a moment ago over. As the grizzled old warrior looked them over, Watt looked the captain over. That was one seriously huge man, bigger than even his father, who'd been blacksmithing since he was old enough to hold the tongs. Watt himself was a fairly large man, too, since he'd also been wielding the tongs since he was old enough to hold them.

The captain dwarfed them both in hight alone, but the man was also fat. Not the blubbery kind of fat lazy people managed to accumulate, either. He was swathed in the kind of hard fat that old warriors developed after decades of harsh living. His father always said that old warriors got that way because they'd learned to eat whenever they could, which translated into extra girth in peace times and extra armor during war. Judging by the state of him, the captain wasn't experiencing a period of peace right now.

“Any reason you just handed me yer mum’s shopping list, boy?” the captain growled after a moment. Watt just looked at him stunned for a moment, before narrowing his eyes. The captain wasn’t looking at him, only starring at the writ like he found it quite unusual.

“I take it you cannot read?” Watt said cautiously. Most people couldn’t, he knew, and those who managed to attain a high rank in life without learning tended to be very touchy about it.

“I can read,” the captain said, finally raising his appraising gaze to Watt. “And now I know you can, too. The captain slapped the papers back into Watt's chest. "You're not completely inexperienced and you have yer letters, but I still don't have the extra rations to feed you and you still need training in how to be a guard rather than a part time sheep chaser. I’m sorry lad, but I cannot use you."

"You do look as though you are in need of some men-at-arms, if you don't mind me saying so," Watt said defensively. He really didn't want to have to go back home and admit defeat. He'd made a bit of an ass of himself about making his own way in the world when his father had tried to marry him off to the daughter of a son-less smith a few villages over. If he couldn't find work here, he was doomed to marry Bertha, who was a good fifteen years older than him, and he knew it.

"You are not a man-at-arms, though, boy," the captain sneered. "You are a semi-educated bumpkin who chased a few petty criminals and now thinks to pass that off as something greater."

There were a dozen things Watt thought to say to that, but he voiced none of them. It wouldn't matter one way or another how witty his reply might be, the captain wasn't going to listen. He pursed his lips and nodded, saying nothing. It was something he'd seen his father do when confronted with irrationally hostile people, and it seemed to him that Father always came off looking better for simply pursing his lips, nodding, and walking away.

"And another thing, whelp," the giant said as Watt turned his back. He paused and simply waited, not turning back for fear the old warrior would realize he was bluffing. "Good luck finding work on this side of the river," the man continued. "There's not enough food to be had since the spring squalls swelled the rivers and washed out all the bridges except Troll's Gate."

"And woke the troll," muttered the desk guard mulishly. Watt frowned and turned his head to look at the two men. They were completely serious, he realized.

"I realize that a simple bumpkin like me has no where near your vast experience," he said slowly, realizing his snarky reply was a mistake but unable to stop himself. "Only, it seems to me that rolling in the mud with a troll isn't likely to vanquish it. But what do I know of such things. I'm nothing more than a part time sheep chaser trying to pass myself off as something greater." He faced forward and walked as calmly as he could out of the guardhouse and back out to the street beyond.

"If you're so bloody talented, why don't you go do something about the troll!" the captain roared at Watt's retreating back. Watt tossed a smirk back over his shoulder though he didn't feel the least bit superior at the moment.

"It seems I'll have to since there's no work on this side of the river no way to the other side without passing your friend."

Look, shinies!




http://pages.simonandschuster.com/nsfwaudio/

 

Look, Shinies! Who wants a chance to win a mini iPad loaded up with lots of great audio books?

Anyone Up For A Blog Serial?

I promised it a month ago. And then I said by the end of April. We are now a week into May and "The Troll and The Which Hanky of Anti-doom" is still not self-pub'd. I do have a reason, even if it's not a good excuse: I couldn't decide if I should release the mere 15,000 word shorty that I started out with, or if I should release all of it. Because Lisa and Watt were not done whispering in my ear about their adventures!

After several weeks of dithering, I have decided to release it one chapter at a time as a blog serial. I have a good ten chapters spanning one whole story line about the troll and another storyline I'm tentatively calling "The Legend of The Oakman." Once I have all of the Troll and the white Hanky of Anti-doom up on the blog, I'll release it in one volume and work my way on through whatever adventures Lisa and Watt decide to have from there. This will also give me time to figure out what to do about a cover.

Here's how I'll do it. I'll post each new chapter on Wednesdays, starting today, as a regular blog post and label it both as a Lisa and Watt adventure and I'll also mark each story bit as belonging to what story. I'm also going to make a page that will link directly to the chapters so you can read them in chronological order. How does that sound? Good? Excellent. Here's the prolog:

* * * * * * * * * *

The White Hankie of Anti-Doom

A word or two from the author:

I will solemnly admit to playing loosy-goosey with my Norman-Britton history in this story. For those who are bothered by such things, I am sorry. It’s my story and if I want the Welsh and Scotts beat Longshanks, I can do that. This, by the way, is set in Cornwall towards the end of the 13^th century. Some of the names and places are not accurate because I changed them to suit my own needs. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Prologue

Sir Cuthbert de Grey was sitting in for Baron Amesbury during the regularly scheduled Wednesday public audience, which would be how he found himself listening to a great, fat, red-faced merchant babble about unpassable bridges and spoiled food stuffs. His lord was currently in the capitol, answering an equally insistent summons from Robert Plantagenet, Prince of Cornwall, who happened to be the baron’s overlord and also half-great nephew once removed to the late Edward Longshanks.

The last five years had not been overly comfortable for the remaining Normans after William Wallace beat Longshanks at Falkirk and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd successfully ambushed and killed the hated king during his hasty retreat from the Scotland.  Whereas most Normans had been killed or run off their lands, Robert of Cornwall had hung on to most of his through sheer tenacity and meanness. Baron Amesbury and his men were in Cornwall by invitation of Robert to replace one of the nobles killed defending his territory. Thanks to Robert, they still had a place to belong rather than being driven into the sea like most of their brethren had been. So when Robert of Cornwall summoned his lords, they responded with haste.

This of course left Sir Cuthbert listening to merchants’ demands that he rebuild flooded out roads and bridges at once so they could get their goods to market before they all rotted.

“Correct me if I am wrong,” Sir Cuthbert said, interrupting a particularly vivid description of the smell of rotting rutabagas, “but Troll’s Gate Bridge is still passable, yes?”

“It’s still standing, yes,” the merchant muttered begrudgingly. “But it’s not passable. The trolls’ woke up and no one can get across it. All the other bridges are flooded out or completely washed away, and so are most of the river roads.”

“Then it would seem to me that the way to remedy this situation would be to take care of the troll, yes? That would open at least one route into the Lower Peninsula and allow trade to resume whilst we wait for the spring run off to abate.”

“Aye, that would work, Sir Cuthbert. But the Kampton City Guard has been trying to do something about the troll this past fortnight. We seen them running attacks against the beast from the safety of the northern bank, but every sally failed.”

“I shall see what I can do about this monster, then,” Cuthbert said, dismissing the merchant with a wave of his hand. At last, something to do other than listen to idle men whine about their idle problems, he thought to himself as the merchant waddled off. Trolls were by far more palatable, if somewhat more difficult.

Fool for Love Bloghop

Welcome to the "Fool For Love" spring blog hop! If you get lost, just click on the banner and it'll bring you back on to the hop. Remember to follow all the way through for your chance to win all kinds of goodies, including our grand prize, a Kindle Paperwhite!

For my stop on the hop, I have for you a little bit of a scene from a short story. Last hop, I had a free story you could down load, and I was trying to do that again for this hop, but I didn't get it all the way edited in time. If you keep an eye on my Face Book author page, I'll let you know when the full story will be available for download. In addition to the gift certificate I'm offering for the whole hop, I'm going to be giving away one copy of my latest novel, "Catching the Hunter" in trade paperback to one random person who leaves a comment.

Special thanks on this story to Ken Rolt, who so graciously let me have custody of his polt device, the white hanky of anti-doom. He suggested it as a story idea on a sci-fi writer's group I belong to and my imagineation ran with it. I hope you enjoy this sneak peek of it!

So, without further ado, I present a story of a young soldier with dreams of grandeur and an apprentice mage with little talent but enough moxie to see the job done anyway:

"The Troll and the White Hanky of Anti-doom, Chapter 2"

The troll sneezed and a wave of noise echoed through the valley like a peal of thunder, made more ominous by the fact the sky was a lovely cloudless blue. Watt quickly ducked behind a large boulder and waited for the debris to clear—he had already learned the hard way not to stand in the open when the troll sneezed, lest he find himself covered in things best left unmentioned. Once he felt it was safe, he peered cautiously out from behind his shelter. The troll hadn’t moved. It was still sitting on a tree stump next to the only bridge across the River Tam that the spring rains hadn’t flooded out. Its presence effectively barred safe travel along Trader’s Road and cut off all commerce to Kernow.

“Tell me again,” he said with quiet dread, “Why, exactly are we doing this?”

“Because we want to eat,” came the reply form the Lisa, an apprentice mage who had volunteered to accompany him on this damn fool mission. “Kampton hasn’t received any supplies in a fortnight, so there’s nothing to eat if you didn’t grow it yourself.”

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “But why are we doing it?”

“Really, Watt,” she said with a huff. “You know why. The captain of the city guard said he had no need of another untrained soldier, but you were welcome to go try your hand at killing trolls.”

“And you volunteered to accompany me because your master kicked you out of his house after saying that he didn’t want to feed an apprentice that wasn’t any good,” Watt said, picking up the thread of her statement. “But why are we doing it, and not some gallant knight in shining armor or a fully trained wizard or something?”

“I’m a very good mage,” Lisa shot back hotly, ignoring the last few words and focusing on the easily debated portion. “I’m just not flashy, is all. I prefer to use one well-thought-out small magic rather than a huge spell that makes a lot of noise. It’s more efficient,” she added with a sniff.

“And about the small magic you promised,” Watt said. “What have you come up with? Or do you need me to get you even closer than this to figure out how to defeat that smelly lump of snot?”

“This is close enough,” she muttered. He turned and looked at her, just now realizing that she had been up to something while he kept an eye on their query.

“What are you doing?” he asked when he saw her grinding what looked like twigs and dirt into a handkerchief. He carefully peaked out to make sure the troll hadn’t moved since the last Earth-shattering sneeze—it hadn’t—before slipped back far enough to look over her shoulder.

“Spelling this cloth to ease his allergies,” she mumbled as she gathered the corners together into a pouch and shook the bundle vigorously.

“You’re making… a what? A white hankie of anti-doom? And I’m supposed to just walk up and offer it to the troll?” Watt asked incredulously.

“More or less,” she agreed cheerfully. Watt stared at the short blonde haired girl, flabbergasted, as she muttered a few magical phrases of gibberish before flinging the herbs out of the handkerchief with a dramatic flick of her wrist.

“There!” she said, handing the now dirty white hankie of anti-doom to him as if offering him the sword Excalibre.

He didn’t take it.

“Watt,” she said sternly.

“What?” he asked back, belatedly realizing how silly he sounded. Really, it wasn’t his fault that his name rhymed with ‘what.’

“Go give this cloth to the troll,” she said slowly, as if talking to a backwards child.

“Say I manage to get him to take your magic hankie,” he hedged, still not accepting the scrap of linen, “then what? The troll will still be blocking off access to the only passable bridge in the county. And it’ll probably still be sneezing since it’s a troll. Trolls don’t blow their noses, Lisa! It won’t even begin to understand what it’s supposed to do with the bloody thing!”

“Well, do you have a better idea?” she asked with a sneer.

“Yeah!” he huffed back at her. “Make me a potion of something that will turn him into stone when I dump it on him or something!”

“I’m sorry,” she snapped back. “I can’t do that kind of high magic. It would take a real wizard to do something like that and you haven’t got a wizard to help you. Just me, a level two apprentice mage.”

They sat there, crouched behind a boulder, glaring at each other while the troll sneezed and then sneezed again. As one, they realized that the second sneeze had sounded much closer than the first. Watt gulped nervously and peeked around the top of the boulder. The troll must have heard them bickering, because it had gotten up from its tree stump and was shambling their way, swinging its brutish head from side to side as it looked for them.

“Right then,” Watt said, reaching blindly behind him for the white hanky of anti-doom. “I need to find some way to get the troll to blow its nose.”

“Just get it onto the troll’s face so it covers his mouth and nose,” Lisa whispered as she shoved the hanky into his groping hand. “His breathing should be enough to get the spell into his sinus cavity, where it’ll go to work and end this bout of hay fever.”

“And then what?” he hissed. She shrugged once, looking terrified.

“I assume the troll will go on about his business once he’s not feeling so poorly. He doesn’t usually sit next to the bridge, after all.”

“Right,” Watt muttered. “Right, I’ll just slap the hanky over his nose and then somehow get him to retreat back under his bridge, where he belongs.”

“You might try tripping him when his face is covered with the hanky,” Lisa pointed out. “He looks pretty clumsy.”

Watt looked at her, realizing belatedly that she had moved up and was peering at the troll over the top of the boulder. She looked back at him and shrugged again.

“It can’t be that easy,” he said in awe. “If it were that easy, someone would have tried it by now.”

“Most people think big problems need bid solutions,” Lisa replied. “The fact is, that troll’s always been here, sleeping under that bridge and bothering nobody. We don’t need to get him to go away, just go back to sleep.”

“And since he’s sneezing, it’s probably just hay fever that woke him up,” Watt said back, finally realizing the brilliance of her plan. “White hanky of anti-doom, indeed!”

They grinned at each other and then ducked behind their impromptu shelter when the troll sneezed again.

“Here goes nothing,” Watt muttered before darting out from behind the boulder. “Oy! You, there!” he yelled at the troll.

Witches, Werewolves, Elves, and Lent

Did you hear that one about the Catholic who writes romance? No? That's probably because there isn't a joke about it.

Anyway. So here I sit, proof reading a manuscript filled with very steamy sex scenes and I have a smear of burnt plant matter on my forehead. Like most random thoughts, it eventually dawned on me that most non-Catholics would consider this a contradiction. "She writes steamy stories about dreams, elves, witches and shape shifters?" you might think.

Blasphemy!

No, not really. Faith is what you make of it, after all. I choose to base my beliefs on something other than self-righteous anger, which means I am not only content with my way of life, but I also don't much care what other people do with theirs. It's not about the trappings of church for me. It's about hope, faith, and... medieval traditions.

Yep. I'm still a practicing Catholic because I love history. Tell me, what other Western faith still burns crap and smears it on your head once a year? That's a throw-back to times when people only gave lip service to Christ while still following the old ways if ever I saw one. Find me one western story about demons that doesn't revolve around a priest trying to exorcize it. Go ahead; I dare you!

See, the Catholic faith, in an attempt to convert the masses, didn't eradicate to old ways. It usurped them. Today is not only Ash Wednesday, it's also Woden's Day. We eat hot cross buns for Easter, the same as the Anglo-Saxons did, using recipes that are pretty much exactly the same as they made them fifteen hundred years ago, when the buns were made in honor of Esther every spring.

Be honest, that's kind of cool.

Now, people are running around trying to recreate the lost traditions of our ancestors. They try to guess what Druids were like, and they often get it wrong. They say, "We are doing the best we can! The Church wiped out all traces of the Druids!"

Not so. Why else do we decorate our homes with the Druidic holy symbol of peace and fellowship (holly) every Yule Tide if not because of the Druids? You want a peek at how our ancestors worshiped and lived? Take a long look at Catholicism. It's still pretty much the same now as it was back when the Romans were conquering and assimilating everyone. Heck, they didn't even start killing witches until that butt-head, King James, started on a rampage in the late 1500s out of self-righteous boredom.

And I love it. All the medieval pageantry, the incense, the knowledge that the mass I went to this afternoon was the same one St. Patric conducted. Knowing that the guy who saved Ireland once smeared burnt crap on the foreheads of my forefathers. It feeds my soul. What else is faith, after all, but a renewal of the soul?

All of this comes full circle in my writing. Witches, werewolves, elves, lent; it all gets blended in that messy thing I call my mind. It stews and bubbles until stories start forming and then I write them down, mostly to get the stories out of my head so I can sleep at night.

And that is why it's not heresy when if sit down to a good paranormal romance after going to church. The end.

~ Rebecca

Happy Marti Gras!



Amazon Purchase Link




Happy Marti Gras, everyone! In honor of this day of wild parties and gastric torture, I am going to share a chapter out on one of my back list books, Equal Partners. This book takes place about this time of your, and the chapter in question takes place on Marti Gras. Alas, no special discount to buy the book, if you haven't already read it. That's up to my publisher, not me. But it's still a fun read and does sport a small discount on Amazon.com right now!

~ Rebecca

Chapter 6

Cissy found Lleu staring intently out the window, growling under his breath. She’d just come from the back porch, with the chicken in hand, to find her mate acting like a territorial dog. Apparently, he didn’t like seeing the drunken Courir de Mardi Gras working its way down the rural road she lived on to beg permission to chase the chicken. She laughed out loud, trying to figure out who looked sillier, the elf lord growling like a dog at passing cars or the mob of drunks dressed in psychedelic medieval costumes stuffed in horse trailers.

“Calm down, cher!” she admonished. “The Courir de Mardi Gras has been trying to catch this old chicken of mine for years. And every year, they leave covered in mud with nothing to show for their efforts but a pound of sausage out of my freezer.” He flashed her an annoyed glare then returned to his staring, though he did stop growling. Cissy moved to the window and watched beside him for the Capitaine on his horse to ride up to the front porch to beg entry for his troupe of revelers.

“Now, remember, you don’t get to chase the Mardi Gras,” Cissy said. “The Capitaine will come up and ask permission for his troupe to come onto the property. When we agree, he will raise his flag, and the mob will spill out of the trailers. They will run around acting like fools. You don’t beat on them if they try to steal me away, okay? They won’t take me far. They are just going to try to get me to drop the chicken. It’s all in good fun.

“Once they have a good run about the place, I will toss the bird into the air, and they will try to catch her. They never do, though. They manage to catch everyone else’s bird, but never mine. You will then tease them about being bested by a brainless chicken—nicely—then offer them the sausage as a consolation prize. Okay?” Cissy waited for his agreement then elbowed him. “Okay?” she repeated sternly. Lleu rolled his eyes at her.

“Fine,” he relented. “I won’t chase the stupid apes.” Cissy elbowed him with a frown. He glanced down at her, a slight smirk dancing at the corners of his mouth. “We had similar traditions in my first life, only at the winter solstice. I wandered drunkenly from house to house begging for vegetables as a lad myself. I’ll keep my wolf in check while they are here,” he reassured.

“You know,” Lleu said casually a moment later, “they might actually have had a chance at catching that stringy old bird if you hadn’t had me hose down the pasture.”

Cissy giggled. Mardi Gras was her favorite time of year. They didn’t celebrate Fat Tuesday the same way in the rural parishes as they did in New Orleans. In the Big Easy, revelers would beg the Mardi Gras, usually a dignitary riding a float in the parade, for favors. Here in the country, the Mardi Gras were the drunken revelers, and they went from farm to farm begging contributions for the communal gumbo. The prize of all prizes was a live chicken. The more chickens the Courir de Mardi Gras, or the Mardi Gras runners, brought back, the more successful the coming year was said to be.

In the four days since she’d accidentally life-mated herself to the fierce shifter lord, Cissy had managed to come to terms with it. But she was Creole, not just Southern. They didn’t let bygones be bygones. She wanted Donnella’s head on a platter for duping her. Lleu—her mate—was the best person for the job. She had to find a way to convince him she accepted that they were bound so he would continue his hunt for the murderess.

“Here they come,” she said, shunting aside her internal deliberations. “Wait for the Capitaine to hail us. Then we will go out to meet him.” Just as she finished speaking, a giant of a man dressed in a violently orange set of coveralls with fuchsia and purple fringe sewn along every hem turned into her driveway riding an equally huge roan horse.

“What is that song they are butchering?” Lleu asked, disgust warring with amusement in his tone.

“They are singing the Mardi Gras chant. It translates roughly as ‘Capitaine, Capitaine, raise your flag, we want to run, to catch the chicken.’ Every town has its own chant, though all of them say about the same thing.” Cissy chuckled at Lleu’s fake annoyance. She had discovered that the stoic warlord actually had a well-developed sense of humor, which he tried very hard to hide. She could tell through their deepening mate bond, though, that he was secretly enjoying the spectacle. He’d been growling earlier to tease her.

“Hail, the homestead!” shouted the drunken rider. He managed to startle his horse and nearly fell off when it jumped. Hysterical giggles filled the air from the small army of spectators who’d been following the Mardi Gras as it snaked its way up and down country roads. Shaking his head, an actual grin on his face, Lleu pushed the old, wooden screen door open and stepped onto the porch.

“Well met, Capitaine. Peace be to you and your troupe,” he answered the rider in a formal tone that reminded Cissy that he’d lived in a time when hailing a home had been more than a quaint custom. His kind had once done it to assure those within that they meant no harm. The horse startled again, and this time the rider dropped the flag. The intoxicated man stared down at it for a moment.

“Merde,” he spat, and a new round of giggles filled the air. He stopped glaring at the hapless flag and shot a disgruntled glare at the followers in their horse-drawn buggies and hay-stacked flatbed trailers pulled by trucks. He turned and started to glare at Lleu. “And who are you?” he asked belligerently.

“Remy Giroux, be nice!” Cissy cut in, pushing past Lleu. “This is my new husband, Lleu.”

Her announcement was met with startled silence for a moment. Slowly, a happy grin spread over Remy’s face.

“Is that right, baby girl?” he asked gleefully. Remy dismounted his horse like a sack of potatoes falling. He managed not to get trampled by his dancing mount, scooped up the dropped flag, then unsteadily got to his feet. “I am Remy Giroux,” he introduced himself to her mate as formally as his drunken state allowed. Lleu bowed respectfully, visibly struggling to tamp down his amusement.

“I am Lleu Llaw Gaffys,” he responded, his deep voice resonating through the unnaturally still morning air.

“Clay—Clayton Jeffries?” Remy repeated, making the same pronunciation error Cissy had when she first met the shifter lord. The old man turned and addressed the expectant crowd waiting at the road. “Cissy Trahan has taken a husband!” he bellowed. “Join me in welcoming into our community Clayton Jeffries!” He stopped suddenly then turned back, confusion on his face. “When did you all meet, anyway? I ain’t seen you around town with a beau.”

Cissy laughed. How typical of the retired parish pastor to skip right past the obvious question and go for the gossip. And it was a good thing, too—Louisiana didn’t recognize common-law marriages, and marriage license requirements sometimes caused problems for people who wanted quiet, secret weddings. Nor had she been out of town long enough to have slipped off for a secret wedding.

“Lleu is a bounty hunter. He works with my friend, Aubry, from time to time,” she said casually, hoping her mate would go along with the story. “We met when he was hunting a serial killer who’d gone there to try and hide.” That wasn’t really a lie, she mused, merely a misrepresentation of facts.

“Cissy Trahan married to a law man?” Remy bellowed in disbelief. “If I didn’t see him standing right here in front of me I’d never believe it! Ha-ha-ha!”

“Remy Giroux, you take that back!” Cissy demanded, genuinely offended. Her grandpapa’s younger brother had been a bank robber. But other than him, the entire Trahan clan had been squeaky clean.

“Ah, baby girl,” Remy said, looking sheepish and casting furtive glances toward Lleu. “I was jess funning. You not going to hold that against an old man, are you?” Cissy followed the old man’s worried half glances and found Lleu had lost all signs of being amiable. She had a feeling she was seeing the warlord side of her teasing, attentive mate. It wasn’t hard to figure out why Remy had changed his tune so quickly.

“Perhaps it is time to let those poor fools out to have their fun, yeah?” Lleu commented quietly, his displeasure with the unintended insult mostly hidden. Remy grasped the escape gladly.

“Right, right, the Courir de Mardi Gras! Right!” he stammered then cleared his throat. “I beg permission for my troupe to come onto your land and beg a prize for the communal meal!” Lleu nodded his head in an odd sideways gesture that looked like it belonged to the Dark Age warlord he’d once been.

Remy tried in vain to calm his horse down and failed. Lleu, seeming to have forgiven the old man somewhat, shook his head in bemusement and stepped off the porch to hold the skittish beast’s halter while its rider mounted. By the time Remy was remounted, Lleu was actually chuckling a bit, the runners, still stuffed in their horse trailers, were howling with laughter and drunken impatience, and Cissy was out of breath and giggling. She was sure she’d seen a few flashes from cameras, too.

Finally, after a fresh swig on the bottle of bourbon he’d tucked into a saddle bag, Remy turned and theatrically waved the ceremonial flag in the air. With a loud roar of approval, dozens of drunken, garishly dressed people spilled out of the trailers. Old men, young men, and even a few bold women came mad-dashing across the yard. Within seconds, every corner of the property was crawling with gigging folks acting like fools.

Lleu apparently forgot his promise not to chase any of the Mardi Gras, because she saw him a few minutes later running down one young man. She started to hiss at him to stop when she noticed that they were both laughing too hard to run properly—and the runner was wearing one of her sexiest bras on his head!

“Give that back!” Lleu yelled with a sloppy lunge. “You can’t expect a man to spend his honeymoon with nothing to strip off his wife, can you?”

Cissy forgot everything in a blinding flash of embarrassment. She didn’t realize at first why everyone, including Lleu and the kid he’d been chasing, stopped running around aimlessly. They turned to her almost at once.

“Get the chicken!” a nameless voice shouted, closely followed by a drunken cheer. Cissy looked down to see her prize chicken pecking the ground in front of her.

“Run! Fly away!” Cissy squealed, trying to flush off the bird she’d accidentally dropped. I can’t believe I dropped the bird! she thought hysterically, blocking a rather determined runner from getting around her. In the mêlée, the bird finally decided to escape, though it didn’t go very far. As Cissy stood looking on in embarrassed horror, her mate joined the mad scramble and actually managed to catch the bird.

“I got the bird!” he shouted triumphantly.

“Ah, that’s no fair!”

“It’s our bird!”

“You want the bird. I want my wife’s lingerie back. Who’s willing to trade?” he shouted over the catcalls.

“Lleu! Don’t you be trading my chicken for that muddy scrap of lace! I’d never wear it again, not after it’s been on Jacques’s nappy head!” Cissy yelled. He looked over at her, pretending to be hurt.

“It’s the principle of the thing, m’bandraoi. What kind of a protector would I be if I let them carry off a trophy like that?”

“You’d be the kind who gets to sleep in his wife’s bed, not on the couch!” she retorted, much to the amusement of the onlookers. “They are supposed to catch the chicken, not haggle my underwear for it. All they’ve earned is some sausage.”

“I’ll trade you your underthings for that sausage,” said Jacques, “but I also want a kiss.”

“I’m not rewarding you with a kiss!” Cissy spat, giggling too much for her retort to have any real venom.

“Ah! But I am bribing you with your underwear!” he replied. “I get the sausage and a kiss on the cheek, or I wear my fancy new bonnet all day!”

“Fine,” she laughed. “Come get your kiss, then.”

“What about my kiss?” Lleu asked after the trade was done and the Capitaine was herding his now muddy, tired drunks back toward the road.

“You don’t deserve a reward. You tried to give away my chicken!”

“True,” he said, acting like he was thinking it over. Cissy could see a bit of mischief in his eyes, though, and started backing slowly toward the door. He grinned evilly. “I guess I should be giving you the kiss, then, to atone.” With that, he jumped the porch rail and snagged her up before she could make good her escape.

Cissy found herself being swept back into a Hollywood-style kiss, the kind women always dreamed about. She vaguely realized they were being cheered as he picked her up, still kissing her, and carried her into the house.