Author's Note: Just posting something that's been buried in my laptop for awhile. Here's what I had, now to just finish the story :)


The early spring sunlight fell dimly through the window of Locksley manor as Catrine stared out the window's open frame, watching the gathering storm clouds roll in from the hill-streaked horizon. She sighed in frustration, completely bored with her wifely duties for the day. Dropping her embroidery to the ground in front of her chair, Catrine stood and began to pace. It had been only too long since she had last seen Guy, three entire days of him at the castle, working day and night, night and day for some plot of the Sheriff. And she could not help, far too dangerous, far too politically involved for even her capabilities. At least that's what the Sheriff's message had said. And if she dared showed her face, dared to insert herself into his affairs again, she would be the sorrier of the two of them.

By now, Catrine could stand no more of this waiting, this separation, this loneliness, angered that the Sheriff would take her husband away from her for so long still within the first year of their marriage. And she ached for him, three days alone in Locksley, alone in the manor, and alone in bed.

She had to see him, now.

Thunder began to rumble in the distance, but Catrine moved all the faster up the stairs to the bedroom. She stripped of her gown, tossing the grey fabric in a heap on the mattress. Riffling through her drawers and shelves, Catrine threw dress after dress to the ground, searching for just the right one. Finally, she settled for a simple dress of brown muslin, reaching into its coarseness and tugging it down over her. Rash, for once, she would allow herself to be rash. Running down the stairs, she had but one wish in her, to just touch her husband that night—wherever he wanted to be touched.

Opening the door, she looked out over her village, a light drizzle already dripping from the dark sky. Peasants frantically crossed the dirt road, running in from the distant fields to take shelter from the gathering clouds, as another thunder bolt cracked from beyond the hills.

"Girl!" Catrine called out to a young woman dashing off towards her presumable home through the water. The girl slowed in her tracks and turned, her bright blonde and curly hair mussed and dirt covered from working in the fields. The girl panted, wiping the rain from her smooth and pale face. "What do you want?" she asked, and even her voice was young.

"A crown for your cape, girl," she muttered, nodding her head to the girl's thick, heavy, and drown cloak, her hand fishing out a coin from her purse at her hip.

The young girl huffed and pulled the fabric even closer to her, "I hardly think so."

"What's your name?" Catrine half sneered.

"Kate of Locksley. What's yours?" the brat taunted back.

Catrine allowed her sneer to spread all the way across her face, and tossed an entire handful of coins to the mud between them. "Does it really matter now?" she laughed as the girl stared astonished, her eyes wide at the shining metal circles half-buried in muck. Kate bent down, her hand outstretched to the ground. But then a leather heel covered the gold, and the girl looked up. Catrine tutted, "Your cloak first, child."

The girl quickly unlaced the knot at her neck and flung the fabric up at the woman. Wrapping the cloak around her shoulders, Catrine hurried away, fairly sprinting down the road out of Locksley. If she ran, she could reach Nottingham by noon, sooner than that if she could plead for a ride into town.

Bumping and swaying, jostled and thrown, Catrine swore that if that baby didn't stop its screeching, there may be another distraught mother in the town of Nottingham. Forcing herself to take a deep breath, she looked towards the approaching walls of the city, feeling her anxiety and her relief clashing against one another. This cart ride, however much it had expedited her journey, had been hell—crowded with a family of nearly ten on their way into Nottingham. They had been easily swayed to help a woman reach the town, so long separated from her husband there; at least it had been the truth, no matter how over-emotional her plea had been. However, her pity plea had resulted in hours sitting in the crowded bed of the cart, surrounded by fighting children, sopping wet from the torrents of rainfall, and her legs dangling off the rough edge of the cart. Closing her eyes, she tried to focus on that night. She'd do anything to finally be with Guy again, to touch him, to taste him again in secret and in disguise. In her mind, she could almost see his smirk, his glinting grey eyes, his finely chiseled body. Her heart raced with her imaginings, and already she could feel the damp excitement between her thighs.

Clutching the cowl of her new cloak around her face, Catrine felt the cart slow as a man on the road shouted for them to halt. "Sorry, but you will just have to turn around," the guard ordered from his horse where it stood, stationed in the middle of the road.

The old peasant man shook his balding head, "Why is that?"

"Nottingham is closed to visitors today. No one is allowed in or out, by orders of the Sheriff of Nottingham himself." The horse, brown like roasted wheat, skittered nervously under the guard. And with a shrug of his shoulders, the man began to turn the cart, slowly driving the horse back up the road. Her heart raced, this couldn't happen. This wasn't what she planed. And she didn't want to just return and wait for Guy another single day; three had been enough. She had to get into Nottingham, one way or another.

She slid off the cart and walked down the road towards the mounted guard who now rode his horse over the bridge back towards the main gate. "Hey you!" she shouted, and the guard reined his horse in, turning it in a tight circle about face. "Yes, you, stooge of the Sheriff. You think you're so official, don't you?" she kept her hood deep over her face, trying to keep her nerve as the horse trotted up at her. "Think you've got all the power in the world to keep common peasants out," she shouted louder up at him into the falling rain, feeling his glare from his helmet-covered face. Catrine forced a laugh, "You see, I've got you figured out. You abuse your power on women and children, you ride a big horse, you wield a long, thick sword… I think, you're making everything else manly in your life larger than normal to fill the void in your manhood… the one between your legs." And with that, she spat at the ground just under the horse's toned legs.

With an enraged howl, the guard kicked Catrine to the ground. The mud felt slick and cold on her face, soaking through the thin and already sopping fabrics of her dress. His cruel laugher echoed through her head as she pulled herself up to her feet again, wiping the dirt from her mouth and her eyes. Rough hands clasped on her arms from behind. "Take this one to the castle. She needs to learn some manners," the guard leered down from his mount, "Only don't let the Sheriff hear of this, he's far to busy to trifle with this minor… issue." The hands shoved her down the road, and Catrine couldn't help the beginnings of a smile amidst the foreboding sense of dread.