first,” Severin answered.
It stirred Eloise from her near-trance. She washed at
herself with the wadded cloth, wiping away the sweat and salt crystals and
flecks of bark. The gelid well water woke her skin and made her nipples pucker
and harden even more; they snagged almost painfully on the new blouse she
dragged over her head. The linen clung to her damp and sensitized flesh, but it
was a relief to be able to stand in clean clothes. She loosened the ties of her
skirt and pulled her shift off beneath it, before arranging her attire so that
she was respectable once more. Wringing out the dripping ends of her hair, she
risked a glance over her shoulder toward the two gossipers. Ruda was talking
away happily, but Severin—she’d caught him mid-glance, his face set in a faint
frown, his eyes fixed on her. The moment he saw her looking he dropped his gaze
to the ground.
The thought that he might have seen something he shouldn’t
filled her core with heat. Her nipples pushed against the rough cloth, aching.
She looked away quickly, her mind churning. She wasn’t completely naive. She
recognized the pleasure at the kernel of her guilt. But it was childish, she
told herself, and vain. And very wicked.
Dropping the soapwort into a bucket, she walked slowly over
to the farmhouse. Her feet dragged on the cobbles as if she was toiling through
soft sand. What should she say, she asked herself? What would a woman say to
her husband? How could she cover for the blood burning in her cheeks?
“That’s better, isn’t it?” Ruda said, beaming.
“Oh yes. That water’s bitterly cold though,” she added.
“Good,” he growled, lurching to his feet and striding away
to the well.
Thankfully even Ruda didn’t have the brass to insist on
watching Severin getting washed—though when she took Eloise into the farmhouse
and set her to chopping vegetables, the younger woman had to stifle an
unasked-for pang of her disappointed curiosity.
“Your man Sev,” Ruda mused, stirring the pot.
Eloise braced herself. “Yes?”
“He’s a dark one, isn’t he? Inside, I mean.”
You have no idea , she thought, but nodded shyly.
“You need to look after a man like that. He’ll haul the moon
out of the sky for you, but he’s no friend to himself. That sort turns to drink
if you hurt them.”
The thought of looking after Severin de Meynard—or indeed,
of hurting him—made her shake her head, it was so incomprehensible.
* * * * *
Mithras and all his saints , he swore to himself. The
girl…the girl in the evening sun, washing herself by the well. He had not
needed that. He did not need the way that the inadvertent glimpses he’d caught
were painted in his memory in the bright colors of an illuminated prayer
book—her bare back, the motion of a hand, the wriggle of her hips, the water
cascading from the curls of her long hair.
It should not have happened.
He should have kept better control of himself.
Luckily the old woman had noticed nothing. Wrapped up in her
own version of events, she saw only a doting husband and a devoted wife. There
must be sap in the old stick still, he told himself, judging by the juicy
enjoyment she found in her fairy tale. After three days she let them sleep in
the farmhouse, in her daughters’ old bedchamber. That was certainly a step up
from the hay pile and the company of the cows. There was still only a single
straw pallet, though, for them to share, and he did not doubt that the old
woman lay awake every night with an eager ear cocked, hoping—in vain—to catch
the creaks and gasps of marital congress through the rubble wall.
Their sleeping arrangements were strictly chaste though.
Almost.
He found it discomforting that he woke every morning with
his arms around the King’s betrothed. It wasn’t anything he did consciously—in
fact back at Court in Kingsholme he had a distinct preference for sleeping
alone. Those women whom he took to bed were sent away before he rolled over for
sleep.
Mimi Riser
Thomas Kinkade
Aimee-Louise Foster
Margo Maguire
Merethe Lindstrom
John Harris
Eric Brown, Keith Brooke
Anya Seton
Chrystal Wynd
Liz Kessler