by Tamara Leigh
“You disregard my warning to stay out of the wood.” The deep, heavily-accented voice speaking her language spun her around.
He stood between two sturdy oaks, Cyr D’Argent and yet not, this one very different from the one who had come to her two days past. No longer did he look the lord, not even a common soldier. If not for his short hair, she could be forgiven for believing him a common Saxon.
That which must have once been a fine brown tunic evidenced hard labor, from dirt flecking and streaking the cloth to perspiration molding it to his muscular frame. Hose encasing long calves was snagged and torn, and short filthy boots would not long keep their soles.
Was it his presence felt in the garden, so strong he had but watched from the wood?
“What do you here?” he asked before she could demand the same of the one who might have seen her leave food for Balduc’s needy—blessedly, of far less detriment than had she provided proof she colluded with the rebels in checking for a message.
“Do you not answer because you have something to hide?” he baited.
More than something.
“Aelfled?”
She almost wished he would not speak her name. It made her center go askew, but it was naught compared to how she would have felt had he revealed his presence after she unclothed.
Nervous laughter escaped her, and therein was opportunity to throw him off whatever scent he followed. “Certes, I have something to hide.” She scooped up her apron, dangled it. “It can be no more obvious I am here to bathe than that you are in greater need of scrubbing than I.”
His lips curved. “We have both been hard at our labors—you tending your garden, I harvesting hay.”
She tensed over verification he had seen her in the garden, meaning he had seen her conceal the baskets. And were he working the land, difficult though it was to believe of a noble, it was surely because she had warned him to attend to what could be taken from him. In the first instance, she acted against Normans, specifically Campagnon. In the second, she did injury to her own by denying the rebels the lord’s hay.
When D’Argent strode forward, she retreated a step, her slippers sinking into moist soil a reminder the stream was at her back. Though she considered drawing her meat knife and running opposite, neither would aid in escaping this warrior. But she was not without hope—that of being fairly certain that just as he had done her no harm the first time they were alone in a wood, he would do her none now.
He halted, and though several feet separated them, the scent of his labor was so strong she felt as if clasped close. Or was this but an attempt to explain away her breathlessness?
“Though you did not heed my warning to stay out of the wood,” he said, “I found merit in your warning.”
And her language. How had he become so versed in it when it was told the one awarded Stern had returned to Normandy after his duke was crowned?
“Thus,” he continued, “since dawn, Balduc’s villagers, my men-at-arms, and I have gathered in the lord’s hay.”
She moistened her lips. “Men of the sword working the land. Unimaginable.”
“And more difficult and strenuous than expected. But worth the effort, and for that I am grateful to you.”
Had the rebels learned what he did upon Balduc? If not, they would soon. Would they guess it was she who had betrayed them? Would they turn their efforts elsewhere?
She swallowed loudly. “Also you bring in the lord’s hay upon Stern?”
“Later—unless you know it to be at immediate risk as well.”
“I know naught. What you think a warning was but a response prompted by anger and a good guess after what befell the lord’s hay a year past—and for which Campagnon retaliated against those beneath his yoke.”
“As well you are aware, they are no longer beneath his yoke.”
She raised her chin higher. “As well you are aware, still he rules people who cannot know life will be different beneath a new lord.”
“I do not think my brother, Theriot, could have made it more clear the D’Argents are different, and for that, far less your rebels—”
“Not my rebels!”
He shrugged his mouth. “Far less the rebels harry Stern than Balduc.”
“You fool yourself in thinking they have more liking for a D’Argent than Campagnon.”
“If they are not your rebels, how know you that?”
“It is no secret that vile Norman is to be feared only for being a brute, that he is so deficient in strategy and leading men he makes a better target than a D’Argent—and a more desirable one for how much suffering he causes.”
“Then the rebels do have a greater liking for my family.”
Realizing she was working herself into a hole, and more quickly for how flustered she was at being so near him, she sidestepped to put more distance between them. “If by liking you mean respect, perhaps.”
He stared so long it took all her will not to look away. Finally, he said, “I need your aid, Aelfled.”
She narrowed her lids. “Mine?”
“To end the rebellion. To return men to their wives and children. To see Stern and Balduc prosper in an England struggling to rise from its knees. To make Wulfenshire among the first to stand and serve as an example for how Normans and Saxons can live and work alongside one another.”
She tried to seal her lips but the words pushed past. “Alongside?” The distance between them closed, and only when she halted so abruptly she swayed did she realize she was the one who had moved. “There is naught alongside about what your people do to ours. Your king sets Saxons behind Normans, yoking us so if we do not follow we are dragged, and if we resist we are choked to death.”
As she replenished her breath, she noted the creasing of his brow and wondered if it was over what she said or because she spoke so rapidly he struggled to make sense of her language. “You came for land and took it,” she continued, “and with it life as we knew it and would have it be again. The Saxons who rebel do so because there is no alongside with Normans who regard even our nobles as inferior. Aye, many of your men seek marriage with our ladies, but only to strengthen their hold on stolen lands. They—”
Moisture on her inner lip tasting of salt, she snapped her teeth. Now she felt the burn of tears and the wet on her cheeks, heard the quick breaths moving her shoulders.
“Aelfled.” Calloused fingers pressed the soft underside of her jaw and raised her chin. Though already her eyes were on his, she had been looking through him as she loosed accusations and emotions against a Norman who gave her less cause than any other. Now as she more deeply smelled his unwashed body and wondered why it did not offend as much as it should, she saw herself in his eyes.
He bent his head, but though she feared he meant to kiss her, he said, “I am Norman, the lord of lands taken from a Saxon and given me by one who is now king—he who, do I not serve well, will award them to another the same as he gave Campagnon’s lands to me. But unlike whichever Norman would eagerly take my place and could prove the same as Campagnon, you know me.”
“I do not. I have kept company with you for…three hours in all?”
A frown gathered his eyebrows, and she wondered if it also seemed more to him. “Aye,” he said, “but I believe a life could be made of so few hours—who I was to you at Senlac, who I became between Senlac and Wulfenshire, who I am to you now I am upon Wulfenshire. Though I have much to answer for and may never be acquitted of what I did on that battlefield, I aspire to be worthy of the words inscribed in your psalter.”
When last he was at Lillefarne, he had told he had read and prayed those words, but that profession had not moved her then as it did now that he inserted her in all the months between their first meeting and this.
A chill went through her—of wonder that a warrior and enemy should speak thus, of hope he was as genuine as he sounded, of greater hope that just as it seemed his faith had been elevated, hers might be restored.
“The prayer book is so beau
tiful, I am loath to lose it,” he continued, a reminder he had said he would return it when next they met. But that was not this day, it being nowhere visible on his person.
“By way of prayer and guidance found there and aid of a priest met on pilgrimage, I repented for the animal I was before and upon Senlac—that which previously made me proud of being named Merciless, that which made me join William more for the promise of land than Church reform. And of great benefit to many of those wronged, your psalter showed me how to govern your people.”
As she had challenged him, albeit derisively.
“And that I shall do. If I stay.”
She blinked, said in a rush, “Then it was not to take your place here that at long last you crossed the narrow sea?”
This time she glimpsed teeth in his smile. “At long last? The wait for my arrival seemed a very long time?”
She told herself to retreat, but light though his touch, she could not move. “Your absence from lands awarded you is fact,” she snapped, “not of any yearning for the return of a Norman.”
“Not just any Norman. One you know, Aelfled.”
“I do not know you.”
He moved his gaze from hers, sent it around her face, settled it on her lips. “You do.” He angled his head as if…
Once again, he did not, and she shocked herself by asking, “Do you mean to kiss me?”
His lids flickered, and when his eyes returned to hers, she noted as she had not before how long his lashes. “Would you allow me, Aelfled of Lillefarne?”
Lillefarne, not Senlac. That acknowledgement weakened her, tempting her to catch hold of his foul tunic to remain upright. Resisting the pull of him, she pressed nails into her palms.
“Would you?”
Tell him nay, demanded a voice within. Tell him never would you allow a Norman such intimacy. But the voice was so small she thought it possible she misunderstood and said as she ought not, “I would not know what to do.”
“Have you never been kissed?”
She had not, though there had been occasions she wished it. “Were my heart right, a virtuous Bride of Christ I would make.”
“Then selfishly”—he leaned in—“I am glad your heart is not right, my little Saxon.”
My?
She would have tugged on that to determine how strong its threads, but he brushed his lower lip over hers and the contact was so dizzying she did not know if it was the fabric of her gown suddenly filling her hands or his tunic.
“You were not meant to be a nun, Aelfled.” His breath fanned her lower face. “You were meant to be here with me. Like this.”
She opened eyes she had not meant to close, looked into his, breathed his scent and told herself it was unpleasant. But she did not wrench away—not that it would be necessary. From the feel of the fine, tight weave that ought to be coarse and loose, it was she who held to him.
“Why?” It was all she could think to say. But though uncertain what she asked, she knew she should not have when that one word brought her lips into contact with his.
He slid his hands up her back and neck, pushed fingers into her hair, and pressed his mouth to hers.
Still she did not know what to do, but he did, the deepening of his kiss making her feel as if she fell down something very high and steep. Or did she fall up? Was that possible? And when he coaxed open her lips, inwardly she reached for something to slow her. But descent or ascent, there was naught to hold to—until he ended the kiss and pressed her head beneath his chin, her face to his collarbone.
“That is why,” he rasped, breath warming her scalp, chest heaving, heart pounding.
Her body was guilty of the same, and though she commanded herself to push him away, she felt weaker than before.
They might have stood there a minute, looking the lovers they were not, it might have been ten, but it seemed seconds for how much she longed to remain thus.
“Release me,” she said with so little outrage she could hardly have been offended had he laughed.
His arms eased, then his hands traveled the same path taken when he had drawn her near—sliding out of her hair, down her neck and back, lowering to his sides. But he did not retreat, and that had all to do with her.
She looked to fingers filled with damp, begrimed fabric, against her knuckles felt the stone of muscles and movement of his heart. Did her own beat as fiercely?
She released him that she might set a hand to her chest. Blessedly, she realized how much more the fool it would make her appear and snatched her arms to her sides. “I should not have allowed that.” She raised her gaze from rumpled material that evidenced how fast she had held to him and seeing he watched her, whispered, “Why did you do it? For what did you kiss me, Cyr?”
Chapter Fifteen
Now the watched was the watcher.
Feeling exposed beneath Aelfled’s beautifully dark gaze, especially for how moved he was to hear her speak his name without Merciless or D’Argent attached to it, Cyr wanted to refuse her an answer. But though he could tell himself all day every day he had kissed her only to seduce her into aiding him, all day every day it would be a lie—and contrary to all to which he aspired since the great battle.
“Why, Aelfled? Not because I could for the yoke you believe around your neck. I kissed you because I wished to.”
“But why would you wish it?” she said in that husky voice that sounded of long winter nights beneath a feather-stuffed coverlet amid the flickering light of an exhausted fire. “Why me?”
Discomfited, he fought down the urge to walk away by reminding himself of what had nothing to do with that wondrous meeting of mouths—that he did want her aid, and all the more if sooner it solved the mystery of Guarin and returned the eldest son to his family.
Despite the ache of slicing open the warrior and letting his pride spill out, he determined his best chance of gaining her cooperation was to be honest about all the days and nights since that first meeting when, more than ever before, he could not think quite right around a woman. And finally understood his uncle’s warning not to allow one so near he neglected his reason for being.
However, before he could begin softening Aelfled, she said, “You think to use me. You say I am meant to be here with you as if we have a future, but we do not—certes, not an honorable one. As I am but a commoner who keeps a garden, I cannot aid you in securing your lands.”
“You do far more than keep a garden, Aelfled. I saw the food you brought to the wood. For the rebels, hmm?”
“Not the rebels!” she said so vehemently he was inclined to believe her.
“Then?”
She looked down.
“Aelfled, I have only to detain you—to prevent you from warning away those who come for the food—to verify for whom you leave it.”
She sighed. “It is for the people of Balduc. Thrice a week I replace some of what Campagnon steals from them.”
There was sense in that, especially as the villagers were not as ill fed as they ought to be for all that was taken from them. And yet, two baskets three times a week could not supplement many. There had to be others who provided. “Who collects the baskets?”
“Villagers.”
“I want names.”
“Why?”
“If what you tell is true, they have naught to fear from me. I would but assure them that should they require sustenance beyond what their crops yield, it need not be collected in secret now I am lord. Meaning no more must you venture beyond the safety of Lillefarne’s walls—unless ’tis but an excuse to conceal another reason you come to the wood.”
“As you yourself bore witness, I came to bathe. Concealed, aye, but you must agree it is not something a woman alone—and a Saxon at that—wishes known.”
“Still, I think you play with me.”
“And I think you would use me for your own ends, that you kissed me to gain aid you believe I can give.”
He stepped nearer. “As told, I kissed you because I wanted to. Why? Because y
ou have been with me since Senlac and only now is it possible.”
She caught her breath. “I do not understand.”
“Then I have not been with you since Senlac?”
Her gaze wavered.
“I believe I have, Aelfled. And quite possibly, just as often you visited me at night whilst there was a sea between us, I visited you.”
Silence.
“You know it was no coincidence these lands were given me. I chose them.”
She nodded. “And yet only now you come. And you say you may not stay.”
“I may not, and had not much conspired against me, it is possible never again would I have set foot on English soil.” A breeze moving through the wood stirring up the scent of his body, he grimaced and turned to the stream, lowered to his haunches, and splashed cold water over head and shoulders.
Aelfled stepped alongside, so near her skirt brushed his arm. “Conspired?”
He straightened. “What returned me to your shores was, foremost, what may have been a sighting of the brother for whom I searched on the battlefield.”
Though he watched closely for her reaction to talk of Guarin, he saw only what seemed genuine regret.
“I am sorry he remains lost to your family, just as I am sorry for all the Saxons who, having no bodies to bury, also hold dear the hope their loved ones live.”
“You know my brother, Theriot, searches for Guarin?”
“I have heard.”
“If he is alive, he will be found. And those who took him from Senlac shall answer for all the ill done him.”
She thought on that, said, “You tell foremost it was for your brother you returned to England. What else?”
Did discomfort cause her to change the topic, or was there nothing more to be said?
Yielding, he said, “The king nears the end of his patience over my absence from Stern and threatens to award the demesne to another. If my brother is dead and I am our sire’s heir, I choose to live in Normandy. However, as I do not wish to lose these lands, more greatly I aspire to end the rebellion in the hope William is more easily persuaded to allow me to pass them to one or both of my younger brothers.”
