Finding Kate Read online

  Finding Kate

  Maryanne Fantalis

  FINDING KATE

  By

  Maryanne Fantalis

  Copyright © 2017 Maryanne Fantalis

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  Edited by Amanda Roberts.

  Cover Design by Mibl Art.

  All stock photos licensed appropriately.

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  Published in the United States by City Owl Press.

  www.cityowlpress.com

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  For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.

  For Jeff

  Praise for Maryanne Fantalis

  “Full of familiar characters and new insights, Finding Kate is a smart and subtle retelling, rich in Shakespearean references and vivid historical details.”

  - YA Historical Fiction Author, Katherine Longshore

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  “An amazing book about partnership and knowing someone better than they know themselves and sacrificing something in yourself to help someone else find themselves. Beautifully written!”

  - Bookworm100

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  “I love the idea of taking Shakespeare's plays and rewriting them from the heroine's point of view. Brilliant.”

  - Contemporary Author, Jessie Gussman

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  “The period elements are well done and the writing is beautiful. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon read.”

  – Examiner’s Women in Horror Recommended Author, Danielle DeVor

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  “A new perspective on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew…Ms. Fantalis’s period detail shines.”

  - Historical Fiction Author, Brodie Curtis

  Contents

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Keep Reading Shakespeare’s Women Speak

  I. Whitelock Town

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  II. Bitterbrook Keep

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  III. Whitelock Town, Again

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Sneak Peek of Loving Beatrice

  Keep Reading Shakespeare’s Women Speak

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Additional Titles

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Click here to sign up for the City Owl Press newsletter and be the first to find out about special offers, including FREE book days, contents, giveaways, cover reveals, and more!

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  Sign up now and become a City Owl Reader today! And join our City Owl Reader-Author group here for even more deals and a whole lot of community and fun!

  Don’t miss more of Shakespeare’s Women Speak with book two, LOVING BEATRICE, and discover more from Maryanne Fantalis at mfantaliswrites.wordpress.com

  Spurned by her first love Beatrice swears off men and marriage, until Benedict walks back into her life. Will she risk her heart a second time?

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  When her rich and titled family try to force the witty Beatrice to accept a betrothed, she holds vast to her vow. But when her heart strings are tugged once more, two years after her initial heartbreak, she has trouble resisting the man who started it all.

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  Benedict may have been poor before, but now he’s gained wealth and renown for prowess both on the battlefield and in the bedroom. He arrives as one of the men serving as escort to the king and his betrothed.

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  Beatrice is delighted at the possibility of being chosen as a lady-in-waiting, but the princess makes it clear that if she remains unmarried, there will be no admittance into the glittering royal circle. Given such a choice, how will Beatrice resist and to whom will she surrender?

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  Not just any man.

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  As the duo two reunite in a series of hot skirmishes, wielding words like fencing foils, can they drop their defenses long enough to realize their love burns as bright as ever or will their desires be doomed to the past?

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  Part I

  Whitelock Town

  Chapter 1

  Sunday

  If you asked my father, he’d tell you I got my husband thanks to his clever plans. If you asked my husband, he’d say he won me over with his wit and his charm. But really, it all started with a horse, a horse that stopped me in my tracks and changed my life.

  A flash of bright color in the corner of my vision made me turn my head. Two men were leading an enormous blood-red horse out through the door of the inn’s stable and onto the pounded dirt of the adjacent yard. I halted, my breath rushing out in astonishment. The beast was the approximate size and color of St. George’s dragon, or so it seemed to me, and it moved with the same sinuous, menacing grace. When it snorted, I jumped, half expecting gouts of flame to burst forth. The tread of each massive hoof raised a cloud of dust in the yard and seemed enough to shake the world, or at least the whole of England. I had some experience of the world, of course. I had seen large horses before, plowing the serfs’ fields outside of town or drawing Father’s heavy wagons full of merchandise, but this creature with flames in its eyes and cinders in its lungs was a thing apart.

  The horse came to a stop, gleaming in the sun, and the men stepped away. One of them I recognized: Tom Smith, the town’s farrier and blacksmith. He moved toward the horse’s flank as the other, a stranger, grasped the stallion’s headstall, reaching under his chin. He looked the beast in the eye, seeming to engage him in a silent conversation, and then nodded to Tom. The smith crouched beside the giant animal, running his hand down a foreleg like a tree trunk and lifting one of the massive hooves. He rested it in his lap, cradling it firmly between his thighs while he inspected the shoe and the underside of the hoof. The stranger stood over him, throwing one arm across the horse’s neck and leaning into its bulk. The horse barely flinched at the man’s weight, even on three legs, as though he were no more burden than a fly. Though I quivered at the fire I sensed barely restrained within the animal, neither man seemed concerned.

  Even from this distance, I was arrested by the newcomer. His face was carved in pure angles: a straight nose, strong cheekbones, a level brow, a lean mouth that curved, even at rest, toward a smile. His hair, of a color somewhere between gold and brown, was short—a warrior’s cut—and standing up a little over his forehead. My fingers twitched, longing to smooth it down.

  I wondered what color his eyes were.

  He looked up at just that moment and spied me staring. He smiled, a wise smile, a knowing smile.

  My skin flushed hot from my scalp to my toes. I drew in a breath that was thick with horse stench and, choking, hurried to catch up with my father and sister, neither of whom, of course, had noticed a thing. Falling in step behind them, I kept my eyes cast down at the cobbles, another lifelong habit, to avoid the glance
s of the other townsfolk also on their way to church on a Sunday morning. Instead of nodding to neighbors, I watched my shadow where it stretched out thin before me, tripping on the heels of my father and younger sister. The two of them walked arm in arm, their golden heads close together, whispering—about what, I could not tell, which suited me well enough. In a few strides, we were past the inn and in the village square, and from there the church was only a few steps across the lush green.

  “In nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti….”

  Ordinarily, I would entertain myself during Mass by picking apart the priest’s errors in Latin. He fumbled his words at least a dozen times every Sunday, and I endured the tedium of Mass by placing bets with myself as to which of the sacred words he would destroy this week. Would he say “terror” instead of “terram” as he did last week? Or would he have corrected for that, only to make a disaster out of the “Confiteor”? Meager entertainment, but better than nothing.

  Yet this Sunday, my thoughts wandered out of the church like errant children, back to the sunny morning and the stable yard of the Brewer’s inn. Questions arose and floated through my mind, elusive as soap bubbles. Who was he? Where was he from? Was he just passing through, asking the smith to check his horse before he rode away again? Or would he stay? And if he did stay, would I see him again?

  With a start, I came back to the present and realized I was alone in the church. Everyone had left. They should not have…. They should have…. Gripping the edges of the bench I sat upon, I drove my nails into the wood. No. In Whitelock it did not matter what should or should not have happened. Father behaved as he liked and everyone followed his lead. It had always been so, sure as the sun shined or the rain fell.

  Drawing a deep breath, I released my fingers one by one and stood. I took my time getting to the rear of the church and paused in the doorway, looking out at the folk of the town in the square. About a hundred souls, more or less, gathered in little groups around the thick grass of the green, formed where the roads out of town knotted together. The packed turf of Church Street ran north and south and cobbled High Street ran east to west. Directly across from the church, a clutch of sturdy little wattle-and-daub buildings squatted like chickens at roost, their little shops quiet on a Sunday. The sooty planks of the shed around the forge leaned against the Smiths’ house and buckets of sand assembled like soldiers just outside the wide door. I looked for, but did not see, the giant red horse being fitted for new shoes there.

  I stepped down from the church’s stone lintel and crossed the rutted dirt onto the green. None of the groups opened to invite me, which disturbed me not at all as I did not seek to join any of them. Instead, I stopped and shaded my eyes, looking along the two roads. When the man with the blood-red horse left town, which way would he go? Up Church Street, past the fancier shops—the dressmaker and the chandler, the glover and the mercer—to take the great King’s Road to Leicester or Nottingham? Or would he head south, toward Coventry? Would he travel west past the church, toward Shrewsbury and Wales? Or continue east, past Father’s house, going all the way to London?

  Or, I thought with a chill despite the warmth of the summer morning, had he already gone?

  I frowned, lowering my hand. If only I had a horse of my own… nay, more: had I a man’s rights, his freedoms….

  Were I a man, I would mount up and never look back.

  Two farmers ambled past, relishing their morning off, their stained and wrinkled shirts exuding an odor of earth and sweat that simply would not wash out. One of them removed his cap and scratched at his tanned brow. Squinting up at the sky, he said, “Rain tomorrow, you think?”

  The man beside him peered upward. “Nah. Not for a day or more.”

  A sigh escaped me. This same conversation, about the chances of rain or snow or the return of fair weather, was repeated outside the church every single Sunday. Did they never grow weary of it?

  A clutch of matrons had gathered in the shade of a crabapple tree to one side of the church, cackling and gabbing in their Sunday finery. “Did you hear?” said one. “Elizabeth Darrow is with child again.”

  “Are those new sleeves, Eleanor?” another said, ignoring the first.

  “Again?” said the next. “My goodness, what is that, their eighth? Bless them, they are as abundant as rabbits.”

  “Did you like it? It’s the rosemary that makes all the difference.”

  To my ears, their voices were like wind over empty jars: all cacophony, no music. I tried to shut out the sound, wishing again that I could leave like the knight on his horse or at the least sneak away home, like the children I spied slinking around corners to play at games forbidden on the Sabbath. But Father was on the far side of the green, holding conference with the other elders of the town, and my sister Blanche stood like a queen surrounded by her courtiers under an ancient oak, and neither of them would even begin to entertain the thought of leaving yet. Even now, Blanche’s laughter rang out, a beacon no less imperative than the church bell had been, pulling all eyes to her, even mine, though for me to look at her was tantamount to staring into the sun. The other young folk of Whitelock surrounded her, hanging on her every word, pale shadows around her dazzling crimson silks and expensive lace. No, Blanche was happy to stay and would complain at being made to go home.

  It was I, forgotten at best and scorned at worst, who suffered from Father’s dictates. Aye, if I had a man’s freedom, I’d be long gone from here. There had to be a place where wit was valued over beauty. Where I, and not Blanche, would be favored. And maybe even loved.

  I glanced at Father and his circle of somber men. Would he notice if I walked away? What would he do if I did?

  By now, the matrons had noticed me. They swept me up and down with sharp eyes like needles on my skin. I shuddered and clenched my hands into fists, enjoying the feeling of my nails driving into the skin of my palms. I began to walk with determination toward no particular destination. All I knew was that I had to get away from the women and their scathing eyes, their piercing judgments, their unspoken condemnation: There she goes, the shrew, the old maid.

  I made it as far as the lustrous clutch of holly bushes just west of the Brewer’s inn before I was brought up short by a man saying, quite loudly, “But have you ever seen a woman so perfect?”

  I froze, looking around for the speaker. He sounded so close, as if he were right at my elbow. But there was no man in sight, only the thick leaves of the holly all around me.

  “I’ll grant you, she is beautiful,” another man replied, “but must we tarry a week entire?”

  For the flutter of a heartbeat, I thought perhaps they were talking about me. My face flushed and my hands trembled as I pressed them to my mouth to keep from gasping aloud. But then the truth collapsed upon me like a pile of rotten timber: no, not Kathryn the shrew, Kathryn the unmarriageable, Kathryn the unlovely. I knew I should walk away and not listen to their conversation any further; gossip was a sin, and so was eavesdropping. But in that moment, I could not have made my feet move if my dress had been on fire.

  “Your father will be mightily displeased,” went on the second voice.

  “What of it?” the first man said, all impatience and command. “It’s just a few days. I’ll still get to Warwick and deal with his affairs before he gets there, and he’ll be none the wiser. And in the meantime, I’ll spend my time with her. A girl like that is a treasure rarely to be found. So lovely, she would tempt Jove himself down from Olympus.”

  A treasure? Jove? Heavens above, did anyone outside of poetry speak thus?

  “If you’re determined to do this, you need to know the obstacles you face,” said the other man, clearly the more practical of the two. “I am given to understand that there is an older sister yet unmarried, and the father will not permit anyone to court the younger sister until the elder is respectably attached.”

  “What of it? You’ll step in and court the elder so I may have the younger.”

  I stiffened,
grinding my teeth. There was now no mistaking who they were talking about. The beauty for whom Jove would descend from Olympus was Blanche, the younger sister, and the unmarried elder sister was me. With nails again drilling into palms, I leaned in closer to hear their words.

  “No, no. You misunderstand,” the second fellow replied. “As I have heard tell, the elder is a shrew of notorious harshness. No man of good sense would risk kissing her hand for fear she’d smite his head off as he bent before her. That’s why she remains unmarried.”

  If the truth had been a hard fall before, it was more painful now. I closed my eyes and remembered why my heart was always bitter. Even these men—even strangers who had never met me—called me shrew.