Wonderful by Jill Barnett Page A

iron.”
    “Aye.” She nodded, agreeing with him.
    A miracle.
    “I can see it.” She stood back and eyed the entrance.
    The drawbridge would be the best for defense, he decided to himself. The bridge could be pulled up to thwart an attack.
    “The stone would be lovely.”
    She was right, he thought absently. A stone bridge had its merits, since it would not burn.
    She leaned over the old wooden railing and made a face at the water. “The moat is filthy. It should be drained and refilled.”
    “Aye. We’ll have it drained.” She was a practical maid and he was pleased with her and with himself for choosing her six years ago. “The moat should be enlarged, two to three times the size.”
    He paused in thought, imagining the size in his mind’s eye. It would be wide and deep, too deep to fill and difficult to tunnel under. No siege tower would be able to scale the outer wall of this castle.
    With a wider moat, burning the bridge would be more difficult. He could have the drawbridge, which still appealed to him. He liked the idea of having the power to control the entrance.
    “Then we can have swans,” she said with enthusiasm.
    Swans?
    She was already walking ahead of him.
    He followed her, frowning as he watched her enter the gate ahead of him with a bounce in her step. There would be no swans atop his moat. Unless she could find swans that spat poison or devoured their enemies.
    She had stopped underneath the barbican and was frowning upward by the time he joined her.
    “That’s disgusting,” she said, her hands planted on her hips.
    He looked up.
    “Those are murder holes, aren’t they?” she asked.
    “Aye.” Even he couldn’t believe it. It was disgusting. There were only two murder holes chiseled into the roof and those were small and thin and looked useless. He shook his head in disbelief. On a castle in the borderlands where the Welsh came raiding regularly. Two puny holes. “I agree. ’Tis stupid.”
    He would build a stronger higher gate tower and pepper it with plenty of holes from which to drop missiles and rain arrows on their enemies. No man would slip past his gate.
    For the next hour they moved through the castle. She insisted on showing him where every tapestry had hung, where carpets had been, and telling him how the windows’ panes had been polished bone. He tolerated it, knowing it was difficult for her to return to the castle that had been her home and see it in such shambles.
    Also she was a woman. He supposed she had different priorities and saw most things differently than he did.
    So when he talked of the arrow slits and she wanted glass windows, he said nothing. When he mentioned adding more chimneys and she talked of the queen’s decorated fireplaces, he just moved on. His lady had not been trained in war. So he tolerated her interest in furnishings and glass windows and decorated fireplaces.
    Most of the time Merrick had expansion on his mind. He had decided to double the size of the keep and replace the roof with iron tiles. She thought it a splendid idea until he informed her that the iron tiles the castle blacksmith would forge were to protect them from fire arrows, not to allow them to hear the patter of the rain in the solar.
    By the time they sat at the high table in the hall and were quenching their thirst with wine, his patience was thinning. She refused to eat the bread and kept shoving the platter out of his reach, while she prattled on about things that were unimportant.
    “I can just imagine the moat, Merrick. Black swans and lily pads, perhaps some marsh marigolds along the borders and a small boat.”
    “A what?”
    “A boat.”
    “Would you have the Welsh raiders float across our moat to the honking of swans and the scent of flowers? Why not give a feast for them and lower our drawbridge to the sound of trumpets?”
    She scowled up at him, not looking the least meek and submissive. “You needn’t make me feel foolish. I was thinking about the beauty of the