First Impressions
Summary: Sarah, a young woman taking refuge in the fort at Hadrian's Wall after fleeing her village during an attack by the Saxons, gets the attention of one of the knights. He accidentally forces her to leave for home with his attentions. Can he make her understand that he means her no harm? Gawain/OC.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything of value to anyone but myself. Sorry.
This is my fifth KA fic and I will eventually write one for each of the knights, including Arthur. I might even let it involve Guinevere, but more than likely will let it be before she comes into the picture. I could really use a beta for this story if anyone is interested. I have about twelve chapters written, but I don't trust my own judgement where my stories are concerned. Just drop me an email if you're interested.
Now, on with the story…
Chapter One - The Tavern
The group of knights was in their usual place… the tavern. The bar wenches were again vying for the attention of one or the other of the men, each hoping to be the one chosen to go back to their room for another night of passion. Even though the men never gave any impression that it would be anything other than just sex, in the back of the women's minds was the hope that sooner or later they would decide that it might be more. Some even secretly hoping to become with child, then at least there would be a tie to the man. Maybe a tie that would bind as it had for Vanora.
Sarah stood behind the bar and watched, disgusted at how the other women were so eager to give themselves to men who regarded their horses with more respect. She had only been in the fortress for about four months and she had witnessed this same scene many times. She knew that the women were glad that she didn't become involved with their little schemes. They had seen her away from the tavern, when the men were not around and knew she was more beautiful than she appeared. They thought she was a little crazy because she purposely tried to be as unattractive as possible so she wouldn't be bothered. All she wanted to do was make enough money to leave and go back to her home. She cared little for what this place had to offer except the chance to see her family again if she was careful with the meager earnings.
She was, she ate little, spent no money except for a place to lay her head at night and worked every hour she was awake. She was happier when the knights were gone. She could be herself. She hated having to hide under all the layers of clothing she now wore. It was hot, and worse, it was confining. The soldiers that always stayed at the fort had tried to get her attention when she first came in the tavern without her 'disguise'. But they had been easy enough to dissuade. The knights would not be so easy. Especially the one with the long blonde hair or the one with the short curly dark hair. She had seen them pursue others and wanted to avoid the hassle. It was just easier to wear lots of clothes and hold herself so that her features were hidden, even if it became uncomfortable and made her back hurt.
She longed to wear the leather britches she had been wearing the day before with the simple leather tunic. She knew she had the curves that men desired on a woman. But she desired no man here. She desired the man she had been forced to leave as she fled her home in the northern corner of the island. The home that had been burned as her brother had pushed her and told her to leave when the Saxons had invaded.
She closed her eyes and prayed that Timothy and Anna had made it also. She knew that Derek had, he had been away when the attack came. She saw his face in her mind, even though it had grown fainter over the last month. She clenched her fist and opened her eyes. She would not forget him and she prayed he would not forget her. They would have been married by now. He had asked her father and been given permission, to her delight. Unlike other fathers, Sarah's father had told her he would not betroth her to someone she did not wish to marry. She smiled at the memory of the man who wanted her to be happy in a time when happiness was usually not within the grasp of simple women.
It was because of her father that she had grown up with the idea that even though she was a woman, she deserved what she wanted out of life and not what some man decreed she should have. For him, she was now thankful, for if she had been raised as the other girls in her village, she would probably be dead now instead of trying to return to pick up any pieces left of the life she had before.
The bellowing coming from one of the knights brought her out of her thoughts. These men may fight hard, but they played harder and had no patience for waiting on something they wanted. Especially ale or wine. She grabbed two pitchers of ale in each hand and headed toward the table, careful not to stand straight. Curves were easier to hide when one slouched.
She sat the pitchers on the table and turned to leave the noisy group. She felt a hand on her waist and tensed. 'Damn, isn't one girl on each lap enough?' she thought as she turned to see who had thought it necessary to grab her. When she saw that the hand belonged to another serving wench she raised her eyebrow, "Unless you have raised in position, I am not required to wait on you, Marilla." She stated unnecessarily. She saw the other woman flinch at her tone. She felt a little sorry for her, but then she was asking for it and Sarah found no reason to be friendly to any of the others. She preferred to be alone, away from the giggling, scheming wenches who only thought of themselves and what the men could do for them.
"I just wanted to thank you for covering for me, but since you seem to be in your usual foul mood, never mind." Marilla's voice held a hint of hurt, but mostly anger. It didn't matter to her, the girl really had no idea what hurt was or anger for that matter. Hurt was when you saw everything that meant anything to you go up in flames and anger was the emotion brought out with the laughing men who did such a horrible deed without regard for anyone but themselves. Sarah knew both.
She nodded to the other woman and turned back toward the bar. She saw the man standing there, waiting impatiently for someone to wait on him. 'Arrogant ass,' she thought. 'Just like the rest of them. How I hate warriors. They kill, maim, and destroy without regard to the end result. They are no different than the Saxons except for the difference in purpose.' She stepped behind the bar and gave him a questioning look.
"Hello, a pitcher of ale, if you don't mind." He said as he observed the others. She could tell he couldn't wait to join them. She set the pitcher in front of him and turned back to her duties. "My name is Gawain, and yours is?" He said. She ignored him, he couldn't be talking to her. The 'pretty' maids were already at the table.
Gawain waited for her to answer, when she didn't he started to say it again in case she hadn't heard the first time. But decided she wasn't interested in his conversation, so he turned and headed for the table. He wondered why she was so unfriendly. She hadn't been here that long and as far as he could tell, she had no friends. It wasn't unusual for a woman to be alone at the fort. There were plenty who had lost their whole family before coming here for protection. But it was unusual for a woman to be so accepting of the aloneness.
He walked up to the table and sat on the first available chair to the greetings of his best friend. "Hey Gawain, you're behind. Where 'ya been?" Galahad shouted from across the table. Gawain just shrugged, "I wanted to take care of my horse before I came. Jols had his hands full with yours and Bors." Galahad nodded and returned his gaze to the blonde woman sitting on his lap. Gawain noticed it was the same blonde that he'd taken to his bed the last time. He also noticed that Galahad either didn't notice or didn't care that the woman was giving him 'the' look.
He watched her as she flirted with him while sitting on Galahad's lap. He had no doubt that if he encouraged her she would swap laps without blinking an eye. He remembered the night he had spent with her. Sure she was pretty, maybe beautiful, and she had been good, knowing all the right moves to satisfy his lust. But lust had been all he'd felt. He needed more. He needed someone who would satisfy more than just his physical desires. He wanted someone who would listen to his dreams. Someone who would then share her dreams. Someone who would he content just to sit and be near him. Someone who didn't expect passion with every touch. Sometimes he just wanted to hold a woman's hand without being led to a bed to perform.
He shook his head, not understanding why he suddenly found such discontent in the way his life was. He'd never been happy in his service to Rome. But the closer the end came, the more he realized just how much he'd missed in the fifteen years he'd been in Britain. He'd missed the opportunity to know a woman who could be the other half of himself. The woman who knew him better than he did. Maybe he could have found that if he'd acted differently in the beginning. He thought back to the first few years of his service…
It had all been a contest then. Mostly between himself and Lancelot. Who could woo the most women and get them to spend a night in their bed. By the time he had matured enough to realize that wasn't all there was to a woman, he had bedded most of them and knew that anything deeper wouldn't be possible. There was the odd visitor. He'd tried to change the way he looked at them, but the rivalry with Lancelot had gone on so long neither could change it. Even the ones he thought might mean more had been too eager to just spend a night proving how satisfying they could be. Physical satisfaction had come to mean more than just release. And impossible to find here.
His thoughts drifted back to his homeland. He remembered the happiness and contentment of the older men of his tribe. How his father had looked at his mother and how she had talked to him without speaking. Just a touch on the arm had been enough for her to tell him everything she held in her heart. How they would walk beside the stream near their hut, holding hands, never saying a word. Then he thought about the sounds he'd heard in the night. Sounds he had not recognized as their lovemaking until he'd been gone and experienced those same physical feelings. Well, not quite the same. Theirs had gone much deeper than the ones he'd felt.
He took a long drink from his mug and looked around the room. He recognized every face he looked at. Even the woman he'd tried to talk to was familiar. He found himself studying her more closely. Her face was smooth and without the usual wrinkles of a woman he assumed her age to be. Her hair was pulled back from her face and wrapped in some kind of bun at the back of her head. It was brown in color with little wisps of a lighter color that had come loose and was framing her face. Her body looked a little plump, but her hands and face were not so. He tried to remember what her eyes looked like. Then he realized he'd never really looked at them.
He picked up his mug and headed toward the bar, curious about her eyes and determined to get a good look. He set the mug down with a clank to get her attention. She jumped and turned around. "More ale?" She asked him without looking up. She grabbed the mug and proceeded to pour ale from the wooden barrel behind her. He watched as she deftly handled the spigot, not spilling any of the liquid. She placed the mug back on the bar and turned to continue what she had been doing before he interrupted her.
He cleared his throat and saw her turn to look at him with her eyebrow raised in question. "You require something else?" She asked him. He looked at her eyes and found them to be a brilliant shade of green. He wanted to get a closer look, but couldn't think of any way to do so without offending her.
"I just wanted to ask if you're always so friendly to the customers?" He tried to make it light, as if joking, without seeming to flirt. He wanted to avoid flirtations.
"If you mean efficient, then yes. If you mean do I flirt? No, I do not." He watched her face and thought it would be prettier if she smiled.
"Why don't you flirt? It's harmless fun." He wanted to know, but he really just wanted to keep her talking. She had an accent that he hadn't noticed earlier and was trying to decipher where she had come from.
He heard her sigh and from the exasperation he knew he wasn't making a very good impression. "Look, there are plenty of women here that are more than happy to flirt with all of you. Why does it matter if I'm not one of them? Besides, giving my body to some man I don't intend to spend the rest of my life with is not what I call fun and it's definitely not harmless." She tried to turn away, hoping he would just go back to join his friends.
"Because you make me curious. I like find out about things that make me curious." He told her. His questions and comments were beginning to peak her anger and try as she could, she couldn't pretend she wasn't angry.
"Sir, I'm not interested in your curiosity or anything else you might be feeling at the moment. I'm not trying to be rude or anything and I'm definitely not trying to get your attention by being vague. My life and my thoughts are my own and I like it that way. Will you please just go back to your friends and let me work?"
Her anger was apparent in the clipped way she spoke, but the question at the end of her tirade held a pleading note. He nodded and turned to leave the bar. She had turned away from him as soon as he nodded so he hesitated and looked back at her. When she didn't look back around, he took his mug and headed out of the tavern. He wasn't in the mood for the revelry the other knights were involved in and decided to go to the rampart and watch the sun set over the horizon.
He settled himself on the edge of the wall and watched the sun, his mind going back to the woman at the bar. He thought there was more to her than she wanted him or anyone else to know and was intrigued. He suddenly remembered that he hadn't bothered to get her name but that wouldn't be that hard to find out. He'd just ask Vanora, she worked with all the women and knew most of them since she had hired them to help out.
Taking a drink from his mug, he looked over the wall and saw the green tint that had settled on the land. It reminded him of her eyes. It was spring and the weather was beginning to warm. At least when the sun was out. His years on this island let him know that with the warmer spring weather there would be more rain. Not the bone-chilling kind he'd experienced during the winter months. But lighter, more refreshing rain that seemed to wash away the ugliness left behind from the cold. For some reason, he found the spring more uplifting than even the heat of the summer months. Everything around him was renewing itself. Maybe that was what he found so beautiful about this time of year.
The land was repairing itself after all the fighting and bloodshed of the winter months. The Woads did not attack so often during the spring. Maybe they felt as he did. The land needed the time to become beautiful again before they started to make it ugly with their fighting. He turned up his mug to find it empty. He wished he'd brought the pitcher but he was reluctant to leave the serenity he felt up here. He sat there watching the field below him and saw a lone figure walking across, stopping occasionally to pick up something on the ground.
He recognized the woman from the bar and figured she was taking her evening break. She walked over to the big oak tree that had been spared when the trees were cut to build the fort. It had to be over a hundred years old and no one had the heart to remove it. As he watched, he saw her remove bits of clothing. He wondered if she was going to strip down, thinking no one would see her, he leaned forward to get a better view.
She now wore a simple green dress, the color of new leaves on the tree she stood under. Her form no longer seemed plump, he saw that she had slender curves hidden under all her clothes. She took her hair down and he saw it fall almost to her waist before she leaned over and shook her head causing it to fly around before she swung it back and ran her fingers through it to remove tangles. He let the breath he'd been holding out slowly. She was beautiful, even from this distance he could tell that. Why, then, would she purposely hide her beauty and try to look so unattractive? It made no sense.
No one in the fort would dare force their advances on a woman. Even if they wanted to. It was forbidden and any of the knights or soldiers under Arthur would make sure anyone stupid enough to go against the mandate would suffer greatly. Fear was not her reason. But try as he might, he could not figure it out. He could not figure her out and he suddenly realized that he wanted to.
He watched as she began pulling the clothes she had discarded back on and pulled her hair back up. When she began tying the apron back around her now plump waist, she headed back toward the fortress gate. Gawain stood up and hurried down the steps to the ground. He would go back to the tavern and be waiting at the bar when she arrived. He had seen her the way she was supposed to look and he wanted to see if he could find that look in her face. He was sure it would be there and was surprised that none of the men had noticed it before, especially Lancelot. How she had kept her beauty hidden so well was just another question he wanted answered.