The Black Knight of Ashfern

Chapter 1

England 1818

Another dead body. Is what Nan thought when she saw him lying there. She had been walking the beach, listening to the calming pull of the tide and the cries of the gulls overhead for hours. The day had been warm and sunny to start, but the heavy gray clouds looming in the distance would change that soon enough. By night, Ashfern would be drenched, and Nan hoped to have gathered enough wood by then to last throughout it, though her mission changed when she caught sight of a boot lying just around a sandy hill.

Coming closer, she found the boot had an owner, who was mercifully not dead, merrily sleeping against the small dune that had hidden him from view. His long blond hair covered the left half of his face, while the right showed the weathered state of his skin, making him look somewhat rough. His clothes were of a fine sort, clean and well-tailored.

Squatting down next to him, Nan observed his slumbering form. For several seconds, she thought of waking him. The tide would soon be in, and if he continued to sleep, he would be in for a very rude awakening and an even more unpleasant walk home.

Setting her bundle to the side, she reached out to shake him, stopping when she heard shouting in the distance. Turning to the voice; she waited to hear it again. When there was nothing, she turned back to find he had moved. Now the curtain of hair that had been hiding the left half of his face revealed a massive pink and white scar. A map of welts and shallow pits stretched from his forehead down his neck, disappearing under his shirt's collar.

Taking in his full countenance, Nan withdrew her hand. Her better sense telling her to leave him be, that it would be safer to walk away and let the tide do what she had been about to. Shaking her head, Nan tossed the thought aside. His scars may have made him intimidating, but that did not mean he was the devil. She would wake him and go. Reaching forward, she shook him until he began to grumble, an audible curse escaping his lips as he woke.

"What the bloody hell do you want?" He glared at her.

Rising as he did, Nan watched him brush the sand and grass from his coat and trousers.

"You'd best be gettin' home, Sir." She nodded out to the waves before looking back at him. "Tides comin' in. The beach will be no place to stay when that happens."

Snapping up to his full height, he continued to regard her with a hard glare. "I'll sleep when and where I damn well please. And I'll have no Fishmonger telling me otherwise."

"As ye like, Sir" She shrugged.

"Nan!" She turned toward the voice, smiling as she recognized her caller from the cliffs above.

"Good day to ye, sir." She gave a small curtsy to the scarred man, gathered her bundle, and left.

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For several moments, William stood staring after the girl, unable to make heads or tails of her. He had come to the beach to clear his mind. It was the only place he found refuge from the unending assault of stares and glares he received on a daily basis, but it seemed not even here, he was safe from the ogling of onlookers.

He'd have kept sleeping, ignorant of her presence, if not for some distant sound waking him. Alerting him to her being as she crouched next to him, mere inches from touching him. Wanting to rob him most likely, she looked the desperate sort, dirty, painfully thin, her wild dark hair kept under a grubby pink kerchief that at one time may have been bright and cheery, but now was as pale and faded as the rest of its owner's garments.

Thinking to scare her away, he'd turned his head, presenting the side of his face that was scarred. He'd not yet met a woman who could stomach the sight of his face without being paid to do so. Yet she had. She saw him and still reached out to him. Why hadn't she run? Why hadn't she tried to rob him? Why hadn't she been afraid of him?