First page Friday: Heart of A Forest
Oct. 30th, 2009 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltd
Heart of A Forest
By Angelia Sparrow & Naomi Brooks
Available Here
As always, leave a comment for a chance to win a copy. Those who comment on every First Page Friday are eligible for the paperback drawing at New Years. Winner will be selected Monday.
Blurb:
In 1199, King Richard the Lion-Hearted lay dying in France. He commanded his lover, Sir David of Doncaster, to protect his small son by any means necessary.
Marion Fitzroy, princess of the blood on the wrong side of the blankets, now lives a constrained life in Nottingham castle, dreaming of her childhood betrothed, the son of the Earl of Locksley. As the Barons’ War rages around her uncle King John, her dispossessed fiancé—now called Robin Hood—and his merry irregulars make life miserable for Phillip, the sheriff of Nottingham. And fires Marion’s blood.
Robin, for his part, is about to learn the secret that Marion guards with her life. Thwarting Phillip’s gambits for Marion’s hand, a doubled price on his head, even shooting for an arrow of pure gold all pale next to the pleasures to be had under Marion’s skirts, deep in the heart of Sherwood Forest.
But Marion is no ordinary woman, no ordinary princess. In fact, her body isn’t a woman's at all.
First page under the cut.
Not quite work safe
First Page:
Chapter One
A Good Tight Butcher
Nottingham Castle, 1216
Marion watched the handsome man in Lincoln green move through the market crowd. She wished she could be down among the people, although it was not at all seemly for a princess, even an unacknowledged one. She was never permitted out of Nottingham Castle without a guard.
But she could look. She leaned on the heavy stone railing of the balcony and watched, pretending to look at all the people doing their marketing on this fine May morning but focusing on him. He stood half a head taller than most of the men he passed. She would come to his chin, possibly his nose. His fair hair shone in the sunlight where he’d pushed back the dark brown hood.
She leaned out more for a better look and her motion caught his eye. He looked straight at her. At the sight of his handsome face focused solely on her, Marion’s insides felt most peculiar, as if she were both too hot and too cold at the same time. Her stomach behaved most unusually as well, first rising as if to choke her and then falling down into her shoes.
When he smiled, just for her, all of her organs fluttered as if in greeting. Before she could stop herself or think of propriety, she waved a kerchief to him. In return, he pressed a kiss to the palm of his own hand and flung it upward to her, garnering a nasty look from a baker whose tray he nearly overturned.
Marion felt as if the kiss had landed squarely upon her mouth. The idea of being kissed by the tall man with the laughing mouth and fair hair made her tingle and her prick twitched. She looked down to make sure it wasn’t showing through her skirts. Her old nurse, Bess, was very strict about how nice ladies looked and stiff pricks were not allowed. She tended to scold Marion for even waking up hard, as if she herself didn’t wake jutting as well.
Marion remembered once, as a child, she had amused herself by trying to piss on the head of one of her uncle’s guards. Her stream fell short, but Bess snatched her away from the window so fast there was a mark on her arm for a day and she had landed hard on her bottom.
That was when Bess had explained that the primary difference between boys and girls was that boys were proud of their pricks and flaunted them, while girls needed to be modest.
The man was still staring up at her. The smile on his face made her prick twitch again. That was unseemly too and Bess would chide her. She returned the smile and gave a small wave of her fingers, then dashed away from the railing and back into her apartments before she could be tempted to more wicked thoughts.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 08:42 am (UTC)Later in the book, Bess--who is King Richard's last lover, Sir David--tells Robin, “On his deathbed, my king commanded me to protect his child in any way I could, by any means necessary. I never intended for this deception to last so long. But when John became king rather than Arthur of Brittany, I knew Marion could never be a prince. Kings’ sons harbor ambition. Kings’ ruthless brothers who are now king do not like ambitious nephews. A king’s daughter is no threat, most of the time, and can even be beneficial, properly married. It is for her safety and your own.”
“No. He can’t be revealed. I never would. I love him.” Robin’s words were out before he had given them any thought, but he knew them for the truth.
David glared at his words. “I have taken great pains, Robin. Marion believes herself female in every particular. All that is manly about her, I have called womanly. I have lied, constantly and wantonly, and shall answer for it before God at Judgment. But God will just have to understand that I would rather own a hundred thousand lies than see my girl dead. Marion must not know.”
The Hermaphrodite, Jene, turns up in Alive on the Inside. Jene is not intersexed, the preferred term for those whose biosex falls somewhere between male and female, but actually male, Gene, on the left half and female, Jean, on the right. And they quarrel frequently.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 11:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 02:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 02:53 am (UTC)We'd love your opinions on it.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-02 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-02 06:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-04 04:13 am (UTC)