The planking of the stall partition was old and warped, and knots had fallen out to leave holes. Instinct made her keep as quiet as she could, as she raised her head and put her eye to a gap.
It was him, Severin de Meynard. He was sitting in the next stall, on the other side of the partition. She could see his profile and his shoulders. He was frowning into the distance, with a look on his face as if he was trying with great difficulty to remember something. The muscle of his shoulder was flexing, back and forth.
Eloise realized only gradually what he was doing. She stifled the breath in her throat as her eyes widened. Admittedly her education on such matters had been haphazard—mostly consisting, as it did, of the gossip of servant women who stopped every so often to remind each other, “Not in front of the lady!” And she’d once walked in by mistake on a footman pressing a scullery-maid up against a wall, her bare thighs furled around his hips as he jiggled and thrust ferociously up against her. She’d been as shamed as the two servants by that indiscretion—yet somehow had never managed to push it far from memory, and often recalled it in private. Now she recognized the same rhythm, the same focus, at play silently in front of her.
She knew she shouldn’t be watching Severin. She knew this was private and a shameful thing for a maiden to see. But she didn’t stop. The very fact that she was trespassing made it unbearable in some strange way to tear her gaze from that scene. She felt the blood mount in her cheeks, but she kept looking. There was something compelling in his expression, but she wanted to see more than his face. She wanted to know what was going on with his hands.
As if he had heard her silent wish, Severin stirred restlessly, pushed himself to his feet and backed up against the wall opposite her. He was now facing her full on, and standing farther away, so that she could see all of him from thighs to head. For a moment he seemed to be looking straight at her and she froze in terror, thinking he had spotted the eye at the planking. But then he tipped his head back against the wall, lifting his chin and closing his eyes.
He was beautiful. The shock of it hit her hard. He stood with thighs braced a little apart, throat exposed, both hands at the unlaced crotch of his hose. His left hand gripped his cock while his right hefted his stones. He was pulling at his shaft, bouts of ferocious rubbing interspersed with long lingering strokes. It looked thicker and darker than Eloise had imagined a man’s member to be, stiffly upright. His balls were big enough to fill his cupped palm, and were nested in jet black hair.
They said men did this all the time. They described it with giggles and sneers, as if it was undignified and disgusting, so she had never expected the reality to bring a warm flood rushing to her sex the way it did now. Nor had she expected those glimpses of a man’s cock, under his moving hand, to assert such a fascination. She hadn’t been given the words to anticipate how strong and hard and fierce he looked, and yet how vulnerable. As if this was the most important thing he could be doing with his body. As if this was what a man really was, under all the posturing and politics and politesse.
Severin’s hips tilted. His thighs were rigid and quivering with tension, his neck corded, and his hand a moving blur. Then suddenly he stopped. There was a flash of white, falling upon the trampled straw. Three more strokes, slow and firm. Pale rain, its patter barely audible. His breath suddenly harsh and strangled as he tried to keep it quiet.
A soft sweet thrill shivering right through Eloise’s body, as if in sympathy. She was suddenly aware her inner thighs were slick with dew. And as he dropped his hands and she saw his cock standing there flushed and turgid and upright, as if waiting to impale something, the unbidden thoughts rushed into her head—What would it be like to touch that hot hard flesh? How would it feel? Or taste?
Confusion seized her. Her skin, so cold moments before, was burning now. She’d not known what to expect and now she didn’t know what she should do with this revelation. It was like a secret too big to keep. She lowered herself, quivering, into the hay and lay there, eyes shut, pretending to sleep as Severin gathered himself, made himself respectable and eventually slipped quietly out, past her feet into the yard.
* * * * *
“Boscia, eh?” said Ruda, staring at them. “You’ve a long way to walk home.”
Eloise was too busy shoveling cold pottage into her mouth with her fingers to meet the old woman’s question. The stew was mostly pease and barley—coarse staples of a farmer’s diet, which she’d barely tasted at home on Venn—and burnt leftovers from the bottom of the pot at that, but she was so hungry she didn’t care. The lack of a spoon wasn’t slowing her down much either, nor the fact that she and Severin were seated on upturned buckets in the yard with their bowls in their hands. She supposed that she must look a disgusting sight by the standards of her normal life, but her empty belly overruled her pride.
Severin nodded for both of them. “It’s certainly not what we had planned for this journey, mother.”
Ruda jerked her chin at Eloise. “And she doesn’t look like she’s going to be hobbling far on those feet. Not for a few days.”
Ruda’s rough-coated dog, which had chosen to lie across Eloise’s feet, opened one eye, wondering if it was the object of their attention.
“I will work, if you’ll feed us both while she heals.”
“Will you now? You don’t look like a stockman to me.”
“I can chop wood. Reap. Repair that barn roof for you. It’ll be leaking come winter.”
Eloise remembered the spots of light diffusing into the byre and ducked her head. She didn’t want to recall what that light had revealed. Not just now; not in front of him. She’d thought, when she first came out to join him, that he would look furtive or shamed, but he’d appeared no different to normal. Serious and a little weary, that was all. It was hard to imagine that she’d spied on such a secret moment, and the memory seemed unreal and dreamlike.
“Can you build a wall? My field wall’s fallen down and the cows are getting in to eat the vegetables.”
“I’ll give it a go.”
“What about you, lass? I could find you a pair of old shoes, I suppose. What can you do to earn them?”
Eloise stopped chewing, and looked up. She’d never had to work for a living. “Whatever you like,” she said, embarrassed.
“Can you shovel out that byre then?”
She arched her brows, trying not to look dismayed. The cows made her nervous. “If you want.”
Ruda laughed, showing her broken teeth. “You’ll be at it all week, a skinny girl like you!”
Eloise felt herself coloring. She was all too aware that she’d had to be carried the night before. Her weakness was mortifying. Severin must despise her, she thought. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Then I’ll look out those shoes for you, lass.”
“That’s kind of you, mother.” Eloise risked a glance at Severin. Right now she thought there was a hint of a smile on his lips, though whether it was mocking or approving she couldn’t tell.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” she muttered, casting her gaze down.
* * * * *
Ruda set her, in the event, to climbing the olive trees in her little grove to shake and beat out the green fruit onto blankets spread below. Eloise had never climbed a tree before, even ones as small and gnarled as these, and in borrowed shoes that slid around on her bandaged feet she found it hard, precarious work. She ended up scraped and dusty and aching by the early afternoon, and with bruises all the way up her legs.
“That’ll do,” Ruda announced as they carried the last load into the yard. “I’ll get them sorted. You set yourself down while I find us some food.”
Eloise found a patch of shade under the wall and sank down to rest. Severin was nowhere in sight. If he could have seen her at work, she thought, he would have disapproved mightily of the indignity wreaked upon the King’s person by his betrothed’s actions. She pulled out the front of her shift and blew down on her sweat-glazed breastbone to cool herself. H
eat and perspiration and their night in the hay had left her itching all over. She wished for a moment she could be back in her own chamber, with her attiring-women filling her bath for her and scenting the water with oil of roses.
Her womenservants were dead though—drowned in the storm. Among them Edith, who had scolded and exasperated and looked after her most of her life. The back of Eloise’s throat began to swell.
She shook her head. There was no point in thinking about what was lost. What good would it do? It would only make her more of a burden to de Meynard if she were to end up weepy and upset. She tried to run her fingers through her hair, but they caught on the rough twist of rag that she’d used to tie it back. Despite her good intentions tears prickled in her eyes. She felt filthy and sore and lonely. She wanted Severin to be there telling her what they were going to do, and how it would all work out just as he planned.
Ruda lurched back out of the farmstead with that swaying gait she had, the movements of a woman whose joints were worn down by a lifetime of labor. She was a decent soul, Eloise thought, distracted from her misery. They were lucky to have fallen in with her. Ruda had spent all the morning telling the tale of her family’s woes—a husband dead years back, three sons volunteering into the military levy, her little farm decaying around her as her sons-in-law failed to take up the burden of the extra work. She was barely scraping a living out of the land, and the two strangers had been a godsend to her.
Maybe they should stay here for a few weeks, Eloise thought—though she feared the work might cripple her. It was safe, at least. Safer than the open road.
“Here, lass,” said Ruda, dropping a loosely wrapped bundle into her lap. “Take it up to that husband of yours at the top of the field.”
“Thank you.” There was a whole loaf in the cloth, and a chunk of strong cheese, and a leather flask that sloshed a little. Eloise stood, levering herself against the wall.
“He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?” Ruda remarked. “You’re a lucky girl.”
“Um. Yes.” She tried not to meet the old woman’s sharp gaze.
“And just as fine with his clothes off, I’ll be guessing.”
Eloise’s eyes widened. How was she supposed to answer that? Was this what married women talked about?
“Have you fallen with child yet, lass?”
“Not yet,” she said hoarsely.
“Not from lack of trying, I’ll bet, eh? I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
Eloise was glad her face was flushed from exertion already. She had no answer to that at all, twisting self-consciously. Ruda cackled with mirth at her discomfort.
“Oh, it’s no secret! Don’t you think an old woman hasn’t seen it all before! That’s new husbands for you, all fire and frolic. Make the most of it, pretty lass, that’s my advice. Keep it coming as long as you can. There’s little else in life that’ll bring as much delight.”
Frolic was the last word Eloise would have chosen to describe anything about Severin. She doubted he could frolic even with a skin of brandy inside him. She was glad to make her excuses and escape, but as she walked up toward the top of the field with the food in her hands she almost laughed to herself. That the King’s Viper, as cold-blooded as the snake he was named for, should be mistaken for an uxorious husband was quite a joke. Ruda had badly misunderstood the heat she’d discerned in Severin’s expression. It was calculation, not passion, that ruled him. Or at best, a sense of responsibility. And yes, he was handsome in his dark, forbidding way—she’d thought that from the moment she’d set eyes on him. By the standards of work-worn peasants he might be an exemplar of masculine beauty. But she’d seen King Arnauld. Now there was a man—tall and broad-shouldered and fair… Old Ruda would probably pass out if she saw Arnauld in the flesh.
Her gaze settled on Severin at that moment, and the word flesh hung uncomfortably in her head. He had hung up his shirt on a branch to keep it clean as he labored, and his chest was bare of all but his dusting of dark hair. She’d never thought of him as a bulky man, but now there was more than enough muscle on show. He had good strong shoulders and arms, and a torso that narrowed from them down to the hard V of his hips. His sallow skin wasn’t leathery enough to look like a true peasant’s though. It was hard for her to ignore his partial nakedness, or the way the line of black hair running down from his navel seemed to be pointing the way beneath the waist of his lower garments. For a moment all the confusion and shock of the thing she had witnessed that morning swept back over her, and she felt suddenly clumsy and self-conscious.
No, she mustn’t think about that.
She saw him stoop and heft a stone from among the chaos of fallen rocks, turning it in his hands to examine every angle. Of course, she told herself. Even with a task as physical as building a wall, de Meynard would approach it thoughtfully. No one could ever accuse him of not analyzing a situation.
Having familiarized himself with the stone’s shape, he slotted it into place on the topmost course of the wall and tested to see if rocked. A small stone slipped in as a prop seemed to satisfy him and he stepped away, eyeing up the next space.
Eloise picked her way through the fallen rocks. “Ruda sends food.”
Severin turned and looked at her. He didn’t smile in greeting, but his gaze seemed to strike through her and she was suddenly conscious that his eyes weren’t really black, not out here in daylight. They were darkest brown—like the timbers of the great jetty of Venn harbor, savaged by salt and tide and storm, but enduring still.
I’ve seen the way he looks at you.
She felt a shiver slide up between her shoulders. She felt like one of his stones, to be examined and assessed and finally slotted into the place where he wanted her. She was horribly conscious of how filthy she was and how useless, of how much she depended on him to save her from their plight. Of the burden of the responsibility that lay on his shoulders.
“Has she been working you?” he asked, looking at her hands—the scuffed knuckles of her right hand, which she’d bashed against a branch, the swollen fingers.
“She’s had me harvesting the olives. I’m not used to it, that’s all.” Eloise passed the bundle to him. He nodded and went over to sit upon the largest of the fallen stones.
“Have you eaten yet?”
“I’ll have what you leave.”
He began to break the bread up with his dusty hands. Eloise turned away, uncomfortable to be seen just watching him, and looked at the sagging drystone wall. It stood at the top of a steep bank. It looked like the soil beneath had given way at some point, she thought, and about six feet of the wall had simply collapsed. All the stones, irregular in shape, lay strewn down the slope.
“Is it difficult to build?”
“It makes sense once you know what you’re looking at,” he answered, round a mouthful of cheese. “The outer faces of the wall slope in toward the top to give it stability, and there’s a core of small rubble. You just build it up row by row.”
Eloise rubbed her hands on her skirt. He was right. There was more structure to the wall than there appeared at first glance. The topmost intact course was of narrow plates of rock set vertically instead of horizontally—she guessed that that was to deter animals from climbing on top. The rubble was all jumbled together, of course, rocks of every size and shape strewn pell-mell. It must, she thought, make it even more difficult to find just the right rock for the next slot, if you had to look through the whole lot every time.
One of the narrow stones lay by her feet. She stooped and tested its weight in her hands, feeling the pull of her shoulders.
Without saying anything, she set to sorting the stones where they lay in the grass, separating out the narrow top plates and laying them out in a row, a little way away from the rest. Severin made neither protest nor comment. The sound of the crickets in the long grass was hypnotic.
She worked with him for the rest of the day. He built the wall; she sorted the stone into piles of similar sizes and shapes.
By the time they came down the hill back to the farm, Eloise was weak-legged with tiredness, but satisfied in a way she’d never been. They’d repaired nearly the whole fallen stretch, and when she turned to look back, even from the farm building, the length they’d rebuilt was clearly visible. She’d never done anything like this in her life. She didn’t mind so much now how grubby she looked. She had helped Severin, and they had made something lasting together.
Back at the farmyard the dog greeted them noisily, already treating them as friends. Eloise sat down on the curb of the well and rested her feet while Severin wound the windlass to raise the leathern bucket.
Old Ruda bustled out of the house, a heap of clothes in her arms. “Here you are. I found some of my husband’s old clothes for you, laddie. And you, lass—a decent blouse, in exchange for that flimsy thing you’ve got on. It’ll make a fine pillowcase for my old head.”
Severin, it turned out, was more than pleased to swap his fancy silk shirt for anonymous homespun. Eloise shook out the clothes offered to her, fingering the rough linen. In this stuff they would no longer stand out as strangers on the byways of Mendea. It was a good idea, and fair exchange.
“Go on then, lass. Get yourself cleaned up. I picked you this.” Ruda proffered a handful of leafy greenery, but Eloise only looked at it blankly. “It’s soapwort,” the old woman had to explain. “For that hair of yours.”
Eloise was used to fine rendered soap back at home, but she at least knew what the herb was. She thanked Ruda.
“Get on with it then, while there’s still heat in the day. Here’s a sheet for drying off.”
Eloise felt the warmth rise to her cheeks. She looked round a little nervously. The yard was enclosed by its wall and private enough. It trapped the sun’s warmth too, and stripping off would be no hardship. Except for de Meynard’s presence. How could she undress in front of him? The very suggestion made her squirm inside. “I’ll take a bucket into the barn…” she muttered.
“Oh now, lass! Don’t put on airs—it’s not like it’s anything I haven’t seen before. And your man’s no stranger to it either, is he? Get you washed, and we’ll have a bite of supper on afterwards.”
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