by Janzen, Tara
“I am not most women.”
He tended to agree, but kept the opinion to himself and dipped a measure of water into the pan on the brazier.
“And if you believe all I face is marriage, you are a fool, the more so for speaking of what you know naught.”
Some of the water splashed into the brazier. He’d never heard sarcasm and despondency blended together so neatly, in such a tight package of condemnation. She’d called him a fool.
He struck flint to tinder and started the water heating for the infusion.
“You cannot hold me,” she continued, adding a good portion of resolve to her despair, proving herself to be a rare, multifaceted chit. Even so, the novelty of her presence was wearing thin. He would send a courier to Morgan, letting him know the price had gone to two hundred marks.
She’d called him a fool.
“I will hold you, chérie.” He arched an eyebrow in her direction. “I will hold you until I have a mind to let you go.”
Only silence greeted his pronouncement, which was as it should have been. Or so he thought.
“Beast.” The word came at him from the depths of the bed.
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t deign to give her another look. “If needs be, I can play the beast.”
Her answer, for he was sure she had one, no doubt tart, was arrested by the clomping sound of Erlend climbing the stairs, cursing on every step. The hatch was pushed open, followed by the old man.
“Yer goin’ to make yerself sick, what with all yer bathin’.” He hauled a pot of water up after him, holding the hot handle with a folded rag.
“Fill the tub and bother me no more,” Dain ordered impatiently, pouring the ground herbs into the brazier pan.
Erlend stomped around the room, emptying the pot he’d brought as well as the cauldron of boiling water on the hearth into the wooden tub, grumbling beneath his breath about some people’s ideas. Dain busied himself with putting honey into a cup and fighting the temptation to silence Ceridwen’s tongue with a stronger sleeping draught. She was the foolish one, provoking him with her misplaced rebelliousness.
A soft, rhythmic tapping at the door stopped both men. Erlend looked up at Dain with a wicked, toothless grin.
“That one, eh?”
Dain ignored him and went to the door. Edmee, at least, could be counted on as a calming, noncombative addition to the evening.
He opened the door and greeted the maid with a touch of his hand on her cheek, which made her smile. Then he took the tray she carried and gestured for her to come inside, an offer hampered by Erlend scuttling to the fore, bobbing and bowing like a child’s toy in front of the maid, cap in hand.
“Good e’en, Edmee. Aye and ye did a fine job with the gel, a demned fine job gettin’ er to drink the physick and all. I was wonderin’, tho, if ye might have a minute here or there.” He laughed, a dry, cackling sound. “I got me an ache ye see, and I was—”
Dain was in no mood for the servant’s lecherous wooing and with a gesture, he set his black hound on the man. Erlend yelped and jumped away from the dog’s bared teeth with a spryness Dain would have thought beyond him.
“Be gone with you,” he said, then called the dog off with a hushed command, despite the appeal of letting Elixir eat the old bastard for supper and being done with him.
“I’m goin’, jongleur. I’m goin’, I am.” Erlend’s voice trailed off into mutterings of “demned dogs” and “demned ungrateful masters.”
Dain followed him to the hatch and shoved home the bolt after the man was down. That all his problems could be dealt with so easily.
Turning back to Edmee, he asked, “Did she eat well today?”
The maid nodded and spoke to him in her way, with her hands and expressions, using a graceful pantomime to clarify when needed.
“The lord and the lady? Together?” He repeated her words aloud with an inflection designed to make her smile. Edmee had a beautiful smile. He walked back to her side. “Mayhaps ’twas better I wasn’t here when they came. I’ve never yet had to fight them both off at once. Could be too much for me.”
A merry light came into her eyes, and her shoulders shook. He’d made her laugh. The night wasn’t a complete loss.
Her fingers flew in a series of quick gestures and signs, and it was his turn to laugh.
“No, Edmee. I can’t cast an un-love spell, and you know as well as I ’tis not exactly love that brings them to the Hart Tower.” ’Twasn’t exactly lust that had brought them this time either. As he’d told Morgan he would, he’d gutted a chicken before them and had seen them both pale with the mention of Caradoc’s name. He was sure they’d come to see for themselves whether or not the maid fared well.
From her vantage point propped up in the bed, Ceridwen watched the pair with growing interest. The mute maid had come before, earlier in the day. Something was familiar about her, the smooth oval of her face, her auburn hair, and soft green eyes, yet Ceridwen knew they had not met. There had never been a mute at Usk.
The maid and Dain were strikingly beautiful together, a fair match. He had warned her against putting her trust where it would be betrayed, but he’d warned her too late. She knew it made no sense to feel betrayed by a mythical being who had never existed, but her heart was not paying heed to sense. From the moment Caradoc had found her at Usk, she’d needed a savior, and in the night, under the influence of Dain’s potion and dazzled by the dark fire of his gaze, she’d thought she’d found one in him.
She’d been wrong.
Sinking into the bed, she pulled the coverlets up to her face. She was alone, again, the more so because of the easy friendship she witnessed between the other two on the far side of the chamber. All friendship and family had been stolen from her. Even if she wished, she could not return to the nuns and novices at the convent, not with the Prince of Gwynedd wanting her married and at Balor. There were no other people to whom she belonged, except a thieving cousin doing the prince’s bidding.
An unwanted tear ran down her face. She wiped it with a corner of sable fur. Her tears must stop soon. Maybe they would leave with the pain. She had never thought she would miss the convent, but she did—the quiet bustling of the nuns, the serenity of long hours spent in silence, the comfort of combined prayers. Living with Morgan and his men, even for just a few days, had made her wonder if she was more suited to the religious life than she had thought. She missed her friend Bronwyn, and Sister Judith, and Sister Isobel.
Fighting a sob, she squeezed her eyes shut and began a silent round of prayers. The familiarity brought a measure of comfort, as did the faith. She dare not forsake her God.
An easy touch on her arm brought her head around. It was the quiet maid, bringing her supper. With a sure and knowing touch, Edmee helped her sit up and offered her Dain’s draught in a silver goblet. Ceridwen took a sip and found it sweet. The thought to refuse the drink or the meal did not enter her mind. She needed to heal, and she needed strength either to fight or to run to the ends of the earth to escape Caradoc.
Chapter 6
The maid had helped her to the chamber pot before settling her back in the bed and closing the curtains, but Ceridwen didn’t think the girl had left the tower. She hadn’t heard the great door creak open, and there were too many sounds of movement in the room.
Laughter reached her ears, rich and full. ’Twas Dain, she knew, recognizing the edge of his cynic’s heart in the sound. She snuggled deeper into the bed and willed herself to ignore her pain and go to sleep. She had no use for his laughter or his company, and she would not ask for his simples, but sleep evaded her with the same dogged nimbleness as freedom.
Water was poured somewhere in the room, a great rushing stream of it splashing down into more water. The laughter stopped and was replaced by a rumbling groan of pleasure coming from deep within a man’s throat.
Inside the safe confines of the curtained bed, Ceridwen felt the vibrations of that great sigh roll across the chamber to touch her. She shi
vered, but not with cold. Numa whimpered and scooted to the end of the bed to push her head out between the lengths of green and yellow damask. Candlelight poured in through the opening along with the murmurings of a one-sided conversation.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Dain asked, his voice as mellow and satisfied as a cat’s purr.
The silence that followed confirmed Ceridwen’s suspicion that it was the mute maid and not the old man who remained in the tower room.
“If you’re going to play dangerously,” Dain went on, “mayhaps I’ll increase my wager.”
His laughter came after a short break of silence.
Curious, Ceridwen angled her head to see him—and saw more of his backside than she could ever have imagined, given all her years in a nunnery. Her first thought was to look away, but her second thought waylaid the first with surprising alacrity. He was beautiful and naked, lean and muscular and wet, with a warrior’s body from the breadth of his shoulders to the curves of his buttocks and the length of his flanks.
Her gaze drifted over him, lingering in the shadows between his legs, following the lines of muscle across his back and farther to where he was marked with the sign of an ancient religion: A dark torc circled one of his upper arms in the slinky, graceful lines of a woad tattoo, and above the torc was a repetition of the arcane symbols on his gambeson. The man was bound by charms even down to his skin.
As she watched, he reached up into the drying racks hanging over the tub and chose a few flowers, some with the bloom of freshness still about them, picked—no doubt —from the pots of plants set beneath the window. He sank back down into the water, smiling at the maid sitting on a stool close by. Between them was a table set up with a gaming board and playing pieces.
Edmee was fully clothed and already had sweet violets in her hair, to which he added blue iris buds and pink roses, gently slipping each stem into the crown of braids circling her head. The effect was that of a riotous spring garland. The maid didn’t move once during his ministrations. Her attention was focused on the board.
“Take care, Edmee,” he warned, tucking in the last flower. “If you check me now, I’ll have you mated in two moves.”
The maid glanced up with sloe-eyed impertinence, then went back to concentrating on the board.
He laughed again and removed one of the roses he’d just put in her hair. Steam wafted up around him, dampening and straightening his chestnut mane into lank strands and adding a silvery sheen to his skin. He brought the flower to his nose and lazily twirled it, waiting for Edmee to make her move.
Ceridwen watched everything, fascinated and oddly disturbed by the scene, by the sensuality of it, the hint of unknown dangers. What she saw was laced with the forbidden, the more so for being observed by herself, yet the two of them appeared so casual, Dain most natural in his nakedness. Women oft bathed men. ’Twas not that which brought a blush to her cheeks, but rather the play between them. The air was ripe for something more.
Her gaze touched upon the studious maid and the chess game, then was drawn back to Dain. Candlelight marked him with shifting shadows; they slid around the sinuous blue-black torc and the curves of muscle in his arms, and down the bared length of his back. They hovered in the darkness of his eyes and dwelt in the crease at the corner of his smile.
The rose brushed against his mouth, and he blew into it, separating the pink petals and setting them aflutter, his gaze never leaving Edmee—except when he brought the flower back to his nose to inhale its scent, and he gave the bed a discerning glance.
Ceridwen blanched. The look was personal, focused on her with an impossible intensity. There was no way for him to see her in the depths of the great bed, to know she was awake and watching—unless he truly was the sorcerer Ragnor thought him to be.
She lowered her lashes in defense, not knowing if the invasion she felt was real or her own imagining. She had believed in his magic in the great hall, when he’d swept in with his cloak billowing about him and his dogs on either side. Now that vision seemed more of a fancy, a glamorous trick to snare weak minds.
She did not suffer from that affliction. The strength of her mind, Abbess Edith had assured her, would be the end of her one day. He would not snare her. If he had power, most likely ’twas only the power to deceive... and the power to fascinate, she admitted, her head coming up at the sound of his laughter. He was unlike any other, playing both the spectral demon and the Light-elf with equal ease; and the beast also, she was sure, when the mood was upon him.
Edmee made her move to check. The game ended quickly, just as he’d predicted, in two moves, but ’twas Edmee who took his king, not the other way around.
“You witch’s daughter,” he said, laughing again. “You have beaten me. Be off with you, then.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Take your winnings and leave me in peace.”
He rolled over onto his back in the tub and rested his head on the rim, seeming to ignore the maid as she walked up and down his rows of shelves with a pleased sashay to her hips, picking and choosing what she would take.
“Not that one,” he called out, “unless ’tis for your mother. She knows well enough the use of crocus seeds.”
Ceridwen saw the girl take one seed capsule and return the jar to the shelf before moving on. When she was finished, she went back to Dain and spread out her bounty on the gaming table for him to see.
“You play well and choose wisely, Edmee. Madron will be proud of you.”
In reply, the girl made a gesture Ceridwen couldn’t see, but Dain grew still.
“’Tis never part of the bargains we make.” And then, “Ay, you know well how to please me, but...” His voice trailed off as the maid dipped her hand beneath the water.
“Jesus,” he cursed softly. “Your mother would put a hex on me to shrivel my balls if she but knew what we did.”
For herself, Ceridwen wasn’t sure what they were doing, or rather what the maid was doing to him, but she knew enough to understand that the hushed noises he made bespoke pleasure, not pain. There was no mistaking the encouragement lacing his whispered words, just as there was no mistaking the effect those words had on Ceridwen herself. A flush of excitement coursed over her skin, making her painfully aware of her body while at the same time overriding the pains she felt.
All the rules of God and men told her to look away, but she could do naught but watch the whole of it: the intent tenderness in the maid’s gaze and the smooth rhythm of her touch; the small waves of water lapping upon the taut shore of his abdomen; the arch of his throat as he bent his head back over the rim of the tub, sending a damp slide of hair to the floor.
She could do naught but watch and wonder and feel the strange heat of what she saw.
Dain let his eyes drift closed as he sank into the spell Edmee wove with her hand. He released a breathy groan at one of the particularly enticing moves he’d taught her, but the sound was only half pleasure, the other half being frustration. Whenever Edmee visited, he always hoped ’twould come to this or more, but he never asked, had never asked, not even the first time when she’d so innocently seduced him with her mouth.
Her mouth was not so innocent now as it had been at the Yule. She’d proven adept at everything he’d taught her—from chess, to receipts her mother had sent her to learn, to the art of driving a man over the edge.
Aye, the witch’s daughter knew her way around a man’s shaft with her tongue, as she’d prove again soon enough, but tonight he wanted more. Tonight he wanted a kiss.
’Twas the chit’s fault, for sighing in his mouth with a sweetness he still could taste.
A kiss. Was it so much to ask? He lifted his head and, silent and fluid, moved through the water to reach for Edmee. The maid eluded him with a quick step. Cursing and laughing, he sank back into the tub.
“You are unreasonable,” he exclaimed. “Could we not once do this thing face-to-face? With all the parts where they fit best?” And there was the truth of it, he thought. ’Twas more than a ki
ss he would have taken if he’d caught her. After four years of chastity, he had succumbed to Edmee’s mouth, and now he wanted to be buried deep inside a woman.
Edmee shook her head, and he cursed again, this time without the laughter.
“I know what you think, Edmee, and for the thousandth time, you are wrong. I can give you much without getting you with child.” He watched her answer and grew more grim. It wasn’t only the possibility of a child that stayed her. She was virgin, and though he’d promised to leave her as such—at least the first time—she was adamant about saving herself for marriage.
No matter to her that what she did with him was considered by many to be the ultimate intimacy, she would not take him any other way; and in Wydehaw, he would have no other. In truth, other than Vivienne, no other would have him. Some of the women were too pious to consort with a wizard, and all of them were too frightened. Piety and fear, the same pair of reasonings that kept him out of Lady Vivienne’s much-used bed.
As for Edmee’s kiss, he chose to ignore why she would not kiss for the same reason he chose to ignore what had brought her to him in the first place. Magician’s milk, she’d called it in her way of things. He’d never heard the like, not even in the tents of Jalal al-Kamam, and as a cure for muteness, he ranked it no higher than the most ridiculous concoctions he’d seen for sale in marketplaces from Akabah to London.
Smart maid, she hadn’t told him what she really wanted until she’d had him three or four times. By then he’d been well on the path of a momentary addiction. Three months later he was still on the path, and no amount of talking had been able to convince her that while he couldn’t cure her, he also couldn’t harm her with his kiss. Actually, that idea did have merit, of sorts, for a few years earlier she’d kissed a boy who had soon after died of fever. Within a week of his death, she’d had the fever, and ’twas the sickness that had taken her voice.
He’d had the story from her mother, who was under the mistaken impression that a maid who wouldn’t kiss wouldn’t do anything else. Madron didn’t make many mistakes, as either a healer, trickster, mage, or mother. Dain could only hope the one involving him lasted throughout his lifetime; and he could only hope Edmee would return to his side now and finish him off. ’Twould ease him greatly, both in mind and body, if not in spirit. His spirit needed the succor of a kiss.
