Coulter, Catherine. Rosehaven / Catherine Coulter.

At last the bitch was dead. Joan of Rotham was gone. He was free. He shouted for his men as he walked quickly through the hall of his castle. Such a small number of knights in his employ. But soon he would have more than he could count. He had to hurry. That damned Severin of ^angthorne had to be close now, very close to Oxborough.

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He was away from Sedgewick Castle within the hour, his war-horse fresh, ready to gallop the seventeen miles to Oxborough Castle on the coast of the North Sea.

She was to marry the devil who wore that gray cloak. In two hours. She had to return to the castle, bathe, and let her women dress her in the lovely saffron silk gown with its beautiful embroidery that Dame Agnes had been sewing since Hastings had reached her twelfth birthday.

No, not just yet. She was riding Marella, her palfrey with the white star on her forehead. Her mare was gray. She wondered if he would take her horse, this man who seemed to wear no other color. She wasn’t using a saddle, only the bridle she’d slipped over Marella’s bobbing head before she led her from the stables that were built against the thick curtain wall of the outer bailey. Once mounted, she passed by Beamis, her father’s master-at-arms. Three knights and their squires were all responsible to him, and fifty soldiers. They lived in barracks that lined the outer bailey. It was immense, the only grass and trees in the huge open space in the east corner where an apple orchard stood.

Beamis raised his hand to her. He was going to call her back. Then Squibes the armorer caught his attention. Hastings let her mare pick her way through the crowd of men, women, and children as well as animals in the outer bailey. She lightly kicked her sides as they went through the portcullis of the eight-foot-thick curtain walls onto the drawbridge that spanned a chasm dug by her great-grandfather in the last century. There was another wall beyond, this one not as thick as the curtain walls of the outer bailey.

Two miles beyond lay the village of Oxborough, nestled about the mouth of the narrow River Marksby that flowed into the North Sea. It was a small trading town, walled, protected by Oxborough for well over two hundred years, most of it owned by her father. In less than two hours it would become the property of Severin of Langthorne.

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The walls weren’t as thick here, but they surrounded the entire enclosure and the village of Oxborough below. Just beyond was a small line of trees, then the decline worn smooth over the years that led down into the village. Here the air was fresh and sweet. She didn’t want to greet any of her friends in the village, but she didn’t see a way out of it when Ellen, Thomas the baker’s daughter, waved madly at her from near the archery range.

“It is chilly today,” Ellen said, patting Marella’s nose. “My pa says there will be a storm off the sea this evening.”

“I didn’t know your father ever brought his nose out of his ovens to see if there would be a storm outside,” Hastings said, and Ellen obligingly laughed.

She was a comely girl, sixteen, with nice teeth and a pale complexion. “He comes out when he’s swept all the ashes from inside the ovens

so he can sneeze. You will marry this day, Hastings?”

“Aye,” Hastings said, and that was all. Not an hour before no one had known. But now Ellen knew and that meant that all the village of Oxborough knew as well.

“I heard he was impressive, this man who wears naught but gray. Mayhap handsome and well fashioned in the way of strong men who are warriors.”

Hastings just smiled, watched the wife of the goldsmith throw a pail of slops out of an upper window, heard a man curse, then said, “I must go back. There is no more time.”

“God speed, Hastings,” Ellen said, and backed away from the mare.

Hastings rode beside the long curtained wall, waving to her father’s men on the ramparts above, and let Marella make her way down to the beach. The water was turbulent and dark; waves hurled against the mass of black rocks at the base of Oxborough Castle.

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