be just as difficult and temperamental and disobedient there as she is here, and they’ll have at each other fang and claw. And if the wretch even thinks about breaking his word, the prospect of answering to the duke will make him reconsider.”
“An’ thanks to the greedy old bishop, ye got the gold to pay the convent’s tithe to the cathedral for four years,” Archie reminded her. “Ye won’t have to worry about his harangues for money for another two years. Almost makes you want to thank the old trout.”
The abbess’s smile soured.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
Chapter Six
The Beast of Grandaise was living up to his name the next morning as he led his men on horseback through the convent gates. It had rained the entire night and every rock for miles around had somehow collected beneath his pallet as he slept. He had quit his bed of misery early, and two hours of predawn pacing in the cold and wet hadn’t improved his mood. Now his head was pounding, his stomach was growling, and his rain-wetted garments felt cold and heavy and restrictive. But by far, the most annoying thing he had to bear just now was his own prickly conscience.
The moment he rode out of the convent’s main gate last evening and heard it slammed and bolted behind him, he sensed he’d made a terrible mistake in allowing the abbess to dictate when he could have the cook for whom he had just bargained away half a year’s wine profits. Given the abbess’s attitude, how could he be certain the cook she handed him that morning would be the real one?
Dammit.
He should have insisted she produce the woman then and there and questioned her thoroughly before agreeing to such a costly scheme.
It was the food, he realized grimly. He’d been under the spell of that magnificent lamb, those mouthwatering pasties, and that absurd but delicious hedgehog. All he could think about was getting the abbess to let him have the woman responsible for his first unblemished taste of pleasure in years.
Now as they entered the convent courtyard, he groaned at the sight of the throng of females gathered to bid farewell to the cook. The sisters and their maiden charges parted to allow him and his men to pass but then stood glaring at him as if he were the devil himself come to spirit off one of their blessed number. Thankfully, their attention was soon redirected to the inner gate, where several women in black habits and veils emerged and moved toward the cart.
He scowled and rose in his stirrups to see what was happening. There was emotion in the voices coming from that knot of nuns and he witnessed a great deal of spontaneous clumping going on here and there.
Hugging, he realized. Why was it females never went anywhere without endless rounds of hugging?
Seized by the need to reassure himself he wasn’t being had, he urged his horse forward through the crowd until he spotted the top of a bare head crowned with a halo of reddish hair. It had to be her. She was the only one not wearing a habit and she was being hugged fervently by everyone else. He tensed for some reason as he watched her being passed from embrace to embrace and thought for a moment of his encounter with that kitchen wench … what she had said about the cook being strong …
Then the woman with the reddish hair paused some distance away and held out her arms to several distraught little girls. Those arms, even viewed through heavy sleeves, didn’t look sufficiently brawny …
“Don’t cry.” He heard only snatches from where she knelt in the midst of them. Something about a “recipe for gingerbread with Sister Helena,” “if you’re good,” and “tonight’s supper.”
Her condolences only elicited louder wails. She tried to move on; the girls attached themselves to sundry parts of her anatomy and had to be peeled from her by equally unhappy sisters. As she set the last child back into a pair of outstretched arms, she turned straight into his searching glare.
His heart
“An’ thanks to the greedy old bishop, ye got the gold to pay the convent’s tithe to the cathedral for four years,” Archie reminded her. “Ye won’t have to worry about his harangues for money for another two years. Almost makes you want to thank the old trout.”
The abbess’s smile soured.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
Chapter Six
The Beast of Grandaise was living up to his name the next morning as he led his men on horseback through the convent gates. It had rained the entire night and every rock for miles around had somehow collected beneath his pallet as he slept. He had quit his bed of misery early, and two hours of predawn pacing in the cold and wet hadn’t improved his mood. Now his head was pounding, his stomach was growling, and his rain-wetted garments felt cold and heavy and restrictive. But by far, the most annoying thing he had to bear just now was his own prickly conscience.
The moment he rode out of the convent’s main gate last evening and heard it slammed and bolted behind him, he sensed he’d made a terrible mistake in allowing the abbess to dictate when he could have the cook for whom he had just bargained away half a year’s wine profits. Given the abbess’s attitude, how could he be certain the cook she handed him that morning would be the real one?
Dammit.
He should have insisted she produce the woman then and there and questioned her thoroughly before agreeing to such a costly scheme.
It was the food, he realized grimly. He’d been under the spell of that magnificent lamb, those mouthwatering pasties, and that absurd but delicious hedgehog. All he could think about was getting the abbess to let him have the woman responsible for his first unblemished taste of pleasure in years.
Now as they entered the convent courtyard, he groaned at the sight of the throng of females gathered to bid farewell to the cook. The sisters and their maiden charges parted to allow him and his men to pass but then stood glaring at him as if he were the devil himself come to spirit off one of their blessed number. Thankfully, their attention was soon redirected to the inner gate, where several women in black habits and veils emerged and moved toward the cart.
He scowled and rose in his stirrups to see what was happening. There was emotion in the voices coming from that knot of nuns and he witnessed a great deal of spontaneous clumping going on here and there.
Hugging, he realized. Why was it females never went anywhere without endless rounds of hugging?
Seized by the need to reassure himself he wasn’t being had, he urged his horse forward through the crowd until he spotted the top of a bare head crowned with a halo of reddish hair. It had to be her. She was the only one not wearing a habit and she was being hugged fervently by everyone else. He tensed for some reason as he watched her being passed from embrace to embrace and thought for a moment of his encounter with that kitchen wench … what she had said about the cook being strong …
Then the woman with the reddish hair paused some distance away and held out her arms to several distraught little girls. Those arms, even viewed through heavy sleeves, didn’t look sufficiently brawny …
“Don’t cry.” He heard only snatches from where she knelt in the midst of them. Something about a “recipe for gingerbread with Sister Helena,” “if you’re good,” and “tonight’s supper.”
Her condolences only elicited louder wails. She tried to move on; the girls attached themselves to sundry parts of her anatomy and had to be peeled from her by equally unhappy sisters. As she set the last child back into a pair of outstretched arms, she turned straight into his searching glare.
His heart
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