The Maiden and the Mercenary

by Nicole Locke

  It was similar to the warning feeling she had got when Margery raptured on about Ian of Warstone, the same feeling that made her warn her sister not to become involved no matter his wealth or charm.

  But now that feeling was amplified, causing the hairs on her arms to rise. But she shoved the feeling away when the mercenary stepped to her side as they walked between two long tables and she finally saw her sister.

  With Lord Warstone’s eyes on her, Bied could only give a cursory glance, but it was enough to see the dark circles under Margery’s familiar eyes, and her lips looked...swollen.

  Ian, however, from his pale eyes to his effortless manners, was as Margery described. He seemed to be discussing matters with Louve, who stood on the opposite side of the table.

  Louve with dark hair, but not raven black like Lord Warstone. The Hall’s lit torches revealed that there were warmer tones in it. And from this side, without Louve’s arresting gaze distracting her, the little twist he did to stretch his posture before collapsing it again took on a different light. Perhaps he adjusted it because he was forcing the poor posture. It looked wrong on him.

  It wasn’t only the angle of his wide shoulders giving that impression, but the rest of his build. His height, the tapering at his waist, the strength defined in legs encased in breeches that no tunic or boots could hide.

  ‘Is this she?’ Ian said.

  Louve peered over his shoulder, his eyes steady on hers. Not cold, or warm. Not empty. Surprised. Because she was here? Not possible; he’d known the mercenary came to fetch her.

  But what? So little time together and too many facets to this man. Was he an arrogant usher or a someone else? He sometimes acted like the guards who trained for hours every day and, at other times, he’d sound more subservient than those who cleaned the garderobes.

  Moreover, he kept prying and interfering which made her want to respond, to forget the servant role she played and...tie all his boots to the rafters. She needed to understand, to—no, she needed nothing from this enigmatic man. A man who appeared dark, but wasn’t when the light was shone on him. Purposefully weak, when his body was strong. Irritated there was no seasoning for the food until he laughed...that laugh! She wanted to share it with him even having no idea why he did it or why she cared.

  Only her sister should matter. Margery, whose hand fluttered about her as if wanting to eat, though she didn’t, so she drank and... Was her sister swirling the ale around her mouth and grimacing before she swallowed? Her lip was swollen, and looked cut!

  The bastard had harmed her. To have something to injure him with! The guard who still stood next to her had a sword—why couldn’t she?

  But she couldn’t, no matter how much she longed to. Rumours of Lord Warstone, which she only truly understood right this very moment, were enough to know none of them would survive if she attacked. This man was possessed by his own demons.

  There was no negotiating with him while she was empty-handed. She couldn’t attack when he was so well-guarded. If she attempted or said anything, she’d put her sister in danger. But there was one offence she could make. Because as long as Margery was alive and within reach, she’d answer any challenge. ‘I am she,’ she answered.

  Ian’s brows shot up and Louve shifted to keep Bied, the guard next to her and the brute behind Ian in his sights. Here he was, a hunched waste of an usher with no sword in his hand and in a situation as fraught as when he faced adversaries on a battlefield.

  It wasn’t customary for the Cook to reply directly to the lord of the manor. By doing so, she’d not only insulted Ian, but his position as well.

  ‘I don’t remember seeing you before,’ Ian said, easing back in his chair.

  ‘Is there anything of the meal that displeased my lord?’ she asked. Her eyes not on Ian, but on the mistress, who seemed to be sampling her brew as her wide eyes stayed locked on Bied’s.

  Louve widened his stance, prepared to fight. Bied provided Ian with neither a direct answer nor a gaze. If he could, he’d caution Bied on her obvious disobedience. No Warstone would allow it.

  ‘It isn’t possible that I haven’t seen you before,’ Ian continued as if he hadn’t been slighted.

  Bied slowly shifted her eyes from the mistress to Ian. ‘I help in the kitchens and am far from the private chambers, my lord. I hope my food revealed that I have some skill when it comes to your household?’

  ‘The food was adequate. In—’

  ‘The drink, perhaps,’ Bied interrupted. Louve watched her eyes go from Ian to the mistress and back. She needed to focus on the true threat, to have some sort of subservience. Quickly, and with much haste, for Ian had noticed her interruption.

  ‘The drink,’ Ian pronounced slowly, carefully, ‘was passable. Barely, but only because I allowed it.’

  Louve waited for her to understand Ian’s warning. Instead, Bied raised a determined chin and moved so the guard next to her was in a better position to knife her in the back when Ian gave the command.

  Louve ached to say something, to stop the volley of words and deeds that were causing only harm. Instead, she continued, ‘Any improvements there, my lord, for the ale, which is only passable, or suggestions from your—’

  ‘You’re new,’ Lord Warstone said, his words sharp. Definitive and almost ugly. He leaned forward like a hawk whose beak had made the first stab into its prey. ‘You’re new, which is something I do not, ever, tolerate. Who—’

  The mistress cried out, a clatter of a knife, and all attention pivoted to her. Eyes welling with fetching tears, she sucked the finger in her mouth.

  ‘A cut, my dear?’ Ian asked with a disconcerting concern.

  Keeping her finger in her mouth, she nodded. Louve breathed a sigh of relief that the attention on Bied had been luckily averted. Now if he could only extricate her from the Hall while Ian’s attention was solely for his mistress.

  ‘Here, let me help ease your mind of that.’ Ian grabbed the fallen knife, grasped the maid’s other wrist and made a shallow cut across his mistress’s palm.

  She cried out. Bied hissed.

  ‘See, one cut is worse than the other. Isn’t that better?’ Ian crooned, while tenderly wrapping a linen around the hand he’d damaged.

  In the madness, Louve had only moments and turned to Bied. ‘You’re dismissed. See that dessert is prompt.’

  He must appear uninterested, heartless, as he faced Bied, whose eyes brimmed with an emotion he never expected her to feel, let alone to hide from their rapt audience: wrath.

  Instead of outrage, instead of leaping across the table or any other ridiculous actions he could envision, Bied pivoted towards the kitchens.

  ‘Wait,’ Ian called out.

  Louve hoped upon useless hope that Bied would pretend she hadn’t heard Ian. To keep walking to the kitchens and out the other door. Towards the gates, where if she was fortunate they’d open them and she could be free of all this.

  But Bied turned. Her eyes flicked first to the mistress, to her hand Ian held against his chest, and then deliberately slowly to Ian’s paler ones.

  Ian’s eyes weren’t like his brothers’. They weren’t brutal, like Guy’s, young like Balthus’s, nor were they searing with intelligence like Reynold’s. They did, however, hold the same mad Warstone light that was all too familiar. But this time the promised madness was actualised.

  Those eyes feasted on Biedeluue while Louve stood there. He could do nothing to protect her, to warn her, nothing without jeopardising everything. Bringing down the entire Warstone family was the deed necessary to end wars. Casualties were merely part of it. Reynold’s mercenary, and his friend, Eude, had died because of this war. This brave woman, he feared, would be another.

  ‘I expect to be fed on the morrow,’ Ian said, cradling the bleeding palm to his jawline as if to soothe it before he set it on his mistress’s lap and stood. At his waist were
keys he unhooked and tossed towards her. They fell far short of her feet. To reach them she’d have to step closer to Ian, to the guard who stood near the high table.

  ‘I expect the food to taste to my specifications and to be served in the way of my family. Do you understand?’

  Louve didn’t breathe. Bied was trouble, wrecked by a joyous recklessness all of which he envied even as he needed to crush it. But if she displayed any of it with Ian, he would injure her.

  Taking two quick steps, she snatched the keys off the floor and straightened. ‘I’ll do as my lord wishes and am deeply honoured to provide him and his men with my humble fare.’

  Ian’s eyes narrowed. ‘Find that it’s not so conceitedly humble tomorrow or it won’t be to my liking.’

  Two steps, that’s all Louve needed to disarm the guard who gaped at Bied’s bosom when she bent for the keys. Two steps to grasp the sword and thrust it through his stomach. To toss the smaller dagger towards the eye of the guard next to Ian. Those would be the only two manoeuvres he had before his own life, and Bied’s, would be forfeit if she challenged Ian now.

  But Bied only clenched the keys, nodded once and with quick short strides was out of the Hall.

  ‘Usher,’ Ian said, ‘I don’t think you’re needed any more this evening. Feed my men dessert and have water and fresh linens brought to my chambers so that I might care for my love’s fresh wound.’

  A game. One he could forfeit now and be no better off or continue to play. ‘As you wish, my lord.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Stop!’ Louve commanded.

  Bied yelped, the wooden ladle flew, the entire contents of ale arced above her head and she ducked.

  He bit out a rapid curse as the ladle hit the wall behind him.

  She spun around, just as he straightened from a crouched defence. ‘Did you get any on you?’ she said.

  He brushed his hands down his front. ‘No, and—’

  ‘Let me grab this and fill it again.’ She rushed around him and snatched the ladle. ‘You deserve to be soaked. What are you doing sneaking up on me like that? Do you make any sound at all?’

  ‘What am I doing?’ he said watching her fill the ladle at the barrel and take a sip, then another.

  He knew she was up to something. Warstone’s malevolence permeated every stone of the fortress. Bied was reckless, but no fool, and had to know who the enemy was, but she’d kept looking at the mistress, kept asking about the ale. Now she was drinking it!

  Pointing the empty ladle towards him, she said, ‘There you go, repeating everything I said. You know, if I hadn’t been working with you, I would think you were simple.’

  She was spouting words, but he had absolutely no comprehension whatsoever. After the feast, he went to his room to rest, knowing he would need to be prepared for whatever Ian had planned for tomorrow. When he could sleep no longer, he went to walk, to think. Perhaps he could tell Balthus of the danger, though there was really no opportunity. That’s when he saw her slinking around shadows and against walls.

  ‘I’m simple,’ he said.

  ‘Right there, repeating again.’ She filled the ladle again and drank. ‘It’s a terrible habit you have. You have to stop or no one will take you seriously. I certainly didn’t, but I know better now. I’m relieved that I can tell you about it given the comradery we’ve developed.’

  ‘We are not friends. I don’t want to be friends. In fact—you’re shifting the subject.’ He didn’t want her as a friend. He wanted more. Dangerous thoughts. Distracting needs. He took a step back, rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Stop. Just stop. Biedeluue, I followed you. And you’re here drinking ale in the middle of the night.’

  ‘The middle of the night was a few hours ago.’

  ‘Bied.’

  ‘It’s true, it’s almost morning.’

  She prevaricated. What was she hiding and how to keep a fine line between what he’d come here to do and the irritating role as Usher? ‘You’re giving me no choice but to report you. You can’t possibly be that thirsty. You’ve met Ian—you have to know I cannot falter in my duties.’

  She swung the empty ladle between them, her hands and fingers deft on the instrument. ‘Does anyone else know?’

  ‘Anyone else know what?’ His eyes wandered to her hands, to the ladle and her now wary expression.

  ‘That I’m here—did anyone follow you? Did you tell someone before you followed me here?’

  There, right there. She acted as though she didn’t understand the nature of the household she laboured in, but then asked a question that indicated she did. Her coming to the cellars at this time of night meant she didn’t want to be seen, meant she knew she wasn’t supposed to be here and that she wanted to keep it hidden.

  Which only indicated they were in more danger than he understood because Bied had an agenda—but what and why? ‘Is it true that you’re new? Is Ian right in saying he allowed no workers here?’

  ‘How can that be true, he hired you.’

  But Ian had had his own agenda when he set the trap for Louve to enter. By Ian’s reaction, Louve knew Ian hadn’t expected her. Not that anyone could. She was wild, clever, intelligent, but he’d spent years employed with intrigue and knew when a person deflected.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he repeated.

  ‘To work.’

  ‘Where are your family?’

  ‘Asleep, most likely.’ She swung the ladle, filled it. Drank again.

  Games! ‘Give me some of that.’

  She shrugged and handed it to him. He sniffed and took a sip. Drained the rest when it tasted as he expected. Bied’s expression and eyes weren’t. She was too curious about his reaction, too wary.

  ‘This ale seems fine,’ he said.

  She scrunched her face and scrutinised the other barrels. ‘I think this one is, too.’

  ‘Then what are you doing with the ale?’ he said.

  ‘I’m...tasting it,’ she said.

  He could see that she was tasting it, but in the middle of the night and alone. Only two possibilities existed and neither sat well with him.

  What did he know about her? That she was a terrible liar, that she didn’t know her way around the kitchens. That even though she was new she had the support of the servants, who held a power of their own in a house such as this. He could still use her to help his mission, but asking her directly wouldn’t foster trust and seducing her, if she was at all amenable, would only weaken his own defences.

  This woman. If he had met her in any other time, even a few weeks ago, he would entice her from her secrets, then out of that taunting gown. As if he needed the crest of her breasts to desire her. He wanted her every time she moved.

  ‘Lord Warstone accused you of being new. Let’s assume he’s right,’ he began.

  She held out her hand. ‘If true, I did the task you wanted me to do, so what was the harm? It was fair to think you would rid the house of me after what happened to the goblets and the baker Tess tried to secure my position.’

  ‘You lie horribly,’ he said, handing her the tool.

  She swung the ladle once again. ‘I know.’

  ‘That’s how I know you’re telling the truth, at least in part. If all you’re doing is tasting ale, that can be determined quickly. You’d be gone by now.’

  ‘Maybe I’m being diligent,’ she said. ‘When I came to the gates requesting work, the guards turned me away. Tess, however, sponsored my presence and I need to prove myself. Most of the staff were born and raised here—in fact, I don’t know who hasn’t been—but Cook hasn’t been well and the kitchens were in trouble.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him? And before you try to shift subjects, you’re drinking in the cellars in the middle of the night. I need some answers.’

  ‘Cook’s young son died less than a month ago. Choked on a bit of food Cook popp
ed into his mouth. He’s been blaming himself...grieving. Drinking and trying to forget. Since then Steward has been organising meals and Cook has mostly prepared Lord Warstone’s meals, but...we’ve all been helping.’

  She cared for others—that was also a crack in her defences and could be used against her. But it was also a crack in his. He couldn’t be an usher with this woman. She wasn’t a servant to him and he could never order her about. Even if he could, she wouldn’t let him.

  ‘I knew,’ he said.

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That you were trouble.’

  Tilting her head, she grasped the ladle with both hands. The shape, the way her fingers danced along the wood, stopped almost all other thought.

  ‘And you’re not?’ she said.

  He wrenched his gaze to hers again. ‘You’re very direct.’

  She huffed. ‘I’ll repeat, you’re not?’

  He needed to return her irreverent tone. To bend her wit to that moment of awareness when, with just a glance, they acknowledged what it was they both wanted.

  He wanted this woman. Not now. Too dangerous. He needed to be outside this mad intrigue and betrayal. To leave behind lies and games. To have a home of his own, a wife...some peace. Instead, he was in the very centre of mayhem with a woman who would only cause him more.

  ‘You think I am direct?’ he said. ‘Not this time...no.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ she said. ‘You’re an usher, aren’t you meant to order tenants and villeins about?’

  She teased. Flaunted. Couldn’t be contained. That alone he’d take advantage of if he didn’t want it for himself so very much. For the rest? She cared. How could she be in this household, even with so little time, and still care? She’d lied her way into this position, for security, a roof over her head. There was nothing safe here.

  ‘Don’t tell Ian—’

  ‘Ian?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Lord Warstone,’ he corrected. ‘Any of this. Before you ask the reasons, remember I was there in the Hall when he talked to you.’