Wicked

The Novels of Jill Barnett

The Novels of Jill Barnett
Now Available Or Coming Soon In Ebook
From Bell Bridge Books:

JUST A KISS AWAY

BEWITCHING

DREAMING

IMAGINE

CARRIED AWAY

WONDERFUL

WILD

WICKED

THE HEART'S HAVEN

SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

THE DAYS OF SUMMER

Visit Jill at
www.jillbarnett.com
and
www.bellbridgebooks.com

About Jill Barnett

Jill Barnett sold her first book to Simon and Schuster in 1988 and has gone on to write 19 novels and short stories. There are over 7 million of her books in print, and her work has been published worldwide in 21 languages, audio and large print editions, and has earned her a place on such national bestseller lists as the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Barnes and Noble and Waldenbooks—who presented Jill with the National Waldenbook Award. She lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest.

Wicked

By

Jill Barnett

Bell Bridge Books

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.

Bell Bridge Books
PO BOX 300921
Memphis, TN 38130

Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

Copyright 1999 © by Jill Barnett

2010 Electronic publication - Bell Bridge Books

eISBN: 978-1-935661-68-9

Originally published 1999 by Pocket Books, mass market edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers. You can contact us at the address above or at [email protected]

Visit us at www.bellbridgebooks.com

Cover Design: Debra Dixon

Interior Design: Hank Smith

Artwork Credits:

Knight (manipulated) ©
Vladimirs Poplavskis

Floral & Lettering (manipulated) © Jaguarwoman Designs

Texture © ©
Irinaqqq
|
Dreamstime.com

:M0:01:

Dedication

To the mistakes we made,

To the fools we were,

To young love.

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to

account for the curious attractiveness of others.

—Oscar Wilde

BOOK ONE

She sat in a tower room. Alone. Perhaps forgotten with the hubbub going on inside the castle. Her hand rested on a heavily carved table where a clock sat, a whimsical water clock that counted minutes and hours in single, clear drops of water. ’Twas an odd-looking contraption with a metal and glass globe and birds that flapped their wings when enough water dropped to form an hour. She had bought it many years past in a moment of fancy at a small May fair, where it had been quite the spectacle.

On that warm spring day when the farmers and villagers of Kent had gathered around a hawker’s brightly striped booth, Sofia had stood nearby, watching and listening while he showed them all how time was truly passing right before their very eyes.

Count the water drops! See the courses of time!

Like the rest of the crowd she had been drawn in, had stepped even closer, amazed that someone had actually trapped time inside that globe. She left the May fair that day with the wondrous water clock hugged tightly to her chest and her purse empty.

Perhaps it was her wishful thinking or youthful ignorance, but owning that clock made her believe she had gained some sliver of power over time, and thereby, over her own future.

But when winter came that year, one day the water inside the clock froze as if time itself was suddenly standing still. Day after day, hour after hour passed in spite of the frozen clock, until Sofia saw the plain truth: she never did have the secret of passing time tucked safely away inside her chamber.

Now she needed no clock to see time pass. In the mornings when she awoke and looked into the polished glass, she saw the changes time had made on her face— the small lines above her lips and on her neck and brow, the creases in the corners of her eyes. Her face had changed as much as her life. Like single drops from a water clock, time passed by in seemingly minute increments.

When she was young and so anxious to grow up, she had rushed headlong into life. She had lived her feckless youth in the same manner as one of the castle goats, stubborn, blinded to reason by the need to butt anything that by chance or by purpose got in her way. But now she realized that for all of her headstrong determination, for all of her need to race toward the future, none of it had made time move one single drop faster.

Time, death, life, they were all on her mind this day. Because it was on special days, days that marked your life, when you always dreamt backwards.

She rose from her chair near the window, then crossed her chamber in the tower, over the flat, painted floor tiles where amber sunlight coming through the leaded-paned windows formed a scattering of diamond patterns. She opened the heavily carved doors of a cabinet and took out a birchwood box, a gift from a merchant who wanted favor with the lady wife of the Earl of Gloucester.

Inside the box were two manuscripts. One was made up of thick pages of old paper so soft that they almost felt like cloth. Those pages were bound together with covers cast of solid silver inlaid with copper from the hills of Castile, Queen Eleanor’s childhood homeland. The covers were secured with a small lock shaped like a swan with its head tucked sleepily under its wing.

The other manuscript was plain; it had no expensive silver covers, no finely crafted locks that kept the contents from prying eyes. Its covers were made from a soft brown leather and tied together with rough laces of rawhide.

Sofia took out the ornate manuscript. A moment later, with the twist of a small iron key on a chain around her neck, the silver cover was unlocked. She turned back the heavy metal plate and the rich, exotic odor of cinnamon and anise rose from inside, the same familiar scent that had always shadowed Eleanor into or out of a room.

It had been so long since she looked at these books, for it was no easy thing to see yourself from someone else’s eyes.

She picked up the book and moved to a seat nearby, a beechwood bench with a tapestry pillow that had a tourney scene depicted in the small, colorful stitches Queen Eleanor had tried and dismally failed to teach her.

She set the book in her lap and again flipped open the covers, skimming through a few pages until she found a page marked with a pressed rose. At the top of the page, gilt letters formed her name, ornately inscribed and pigmented with color the shade of the rich wine Eleanor had loved. Then Sofia began to read.

Sofia

Since the age of four, Lady Howard has been ward to My Husband, Edward Plantagenet, her cousin, who is the King of England. Sofia was a lovely child, cherubic and striking but willful and full of mischief. As each year passed, she grew lovelier, and more stubborn.

By the age of two and ten, one glimpse of her fair face would cause grown men to stop and stare open-mouthed, for her black hair had grown thick and long, her skin was like snow in the meadows. But it was her eyes, those light purple eyes, that make you look at her and think there could be nothing lovelier. She is tall in stature, so all are aware that she is in a room as surely as if she were the King Himself.

Brave lords and knights who have caught only mere glimpses of Sofia’s profile in My Carriage claim they must have her to wive. As the King’s Ward, she comes heavily dowered, which combined with her exquisite beauty makes her a prize of the Land.

Until those same foolish men meet her.

Many times over recent years, the sound of Edward’s bellowing has echoed off the castle walls. “She has burned my brain with her foolery and now no hair will grow from my head that is not white!” Once my Edward called in Italian physicians to examine Him. He claimed that His Brain was boiling and the next hairs on His Head would grow in the color of the flames of Hell. This was after a spurned betrothal between Lord Geoffrey Woodville and Sofia. She was four and ten at the time of the match, which was considered by all to be a splendid one.

Sofia considered nothing about the match splendid. When the bright-haired young lord came to seriously court Sofia, she rubbed pork fat in her hair so it hung in dirty shanks. She scoured her face with what she later confided to me were willow leaves to make her skin turn sallow and a greenish color, then she wore a gown of a murky saffron yellow that seemed to blend with the putrid tint on her skin. Watching her entrance into the Great Hall was most amusing for she made her footsteps slow and shuffling like the mad old hag who begs for buckets of gold at the castle gates.

Upon first meeting Lady Sofia, I remember that Lord Geoffrey asked if the girl was not in truth very ill. Whenever Edward was looking elsewhere, she would cross her eyes and stick food in her ears and nose. Lord Geoffrey Woodville and his entourage left in a rush before Matins and under cover of night, for he did not want to displease the King. But word came back that even for royal favor and blood bond, he vowed he would not marry and breed sons with the castle idiot.

There have been others, sons of all the noble families in Court, even a Castilian prince. Sofia has continued to refuse her suitors . . . all of them, until Edward threatened to force her hand. I have been able to keep him from doing so. But there have been no more offers, so the only thing to plague Sofia is boredom, something she can never tolerate for long. Just this morn, the day of the Miracle Plays, she said to me that she almost wished for another suitor if only to keep time from moving ever so slowly.

I have prayed, beseeching God in Heaven to please, please send someone, the right someone, for my willful Sofia.