Tuesday's Tales - Wine

I hope you have all enjoyed your Thanksgiving festivites and shopped 'till you dropped, or your keyboard groaned. Another week's come round and this week's Tuesday's Tales prompt is - Wine.
This is an unedited WIP so please be kind.  It is (I think) another excerpt from Simeon's story, but it true TT fashion.  none of the scenes are going down in sequence, so Ihave some stitching to do later. :-)

She cursed when her opponent’s foil whipped past her face, and pushed her thoughts away.

But along with the next clash of blades they came right back again...

Before she knew his intentions, the stranger had whipped the marriage certificate out of her hand and marched down chapel's the weather-smooth steps to the street.

“What are you doing?  I need that!”  She made a grab for the paper and found his fingers clamped round her arm. One peek up at his face, lips sealed in a thin line, eyes narrowed, she hoped against the glare of the sun, but accepted it was probably because of her. And his brows, beetled together in a frown, reminded her of a glass of fine sherry in sunlight.  The glass of soft golden-brown glow of wine she bought from the nearby bar seconds before she’d crossed the street to the chapel only minutes before.  Was it only minutes, in some way it seemed like hours ago.

She’d expected her ‘groom’ to be waiting for her.  She offered the man enough money, but he hadn’t showed.  Instead she’d expected the authorities to catch up with her before the deed was done and cart her off to jail to wait an escort to see her onto a plane out of the country.

“If you think you can wed me one minute and run off with the evidence the next, you mistook your mark.” Even his voice reminded her of warm Christmas punch. 

Well, she thought now, that was a long time ago, when her parents were still alive and before her cousin had conned her out of her home and stolen her inheritance.

She parried the stranger's thrust, measured his footwork and shifted to her right before his blade slashed past her face for a second time.

And still the memories intruded.

“Only one sip,” her father’s smile shimmered in front of her eyes and disappeared.  “When you are older you can have a full glass of punch.”

“Why not now?” she’d asked.  An old game, that sprang up between them years ago. “Because you’re too young to drink wine,” he told her and laughed.

“But there’s only a little drop in there, I could have some couldn’t I?”

Even while her mother tried to turn her smile into a frown, her father had tipped his glass to her lips and let her sample the fruity warmth of the punch.

She’d been five the last time she’d tasted her father’s famous Christmas punch.

There's plenty more wonderful reads at Tuesday's Tales