by Lisa Hendrix
“As you should. Marshal, what work do you have planned for young Tom tomorrow?”
“He’ll be running the hill, my lord.” Oswald looked Tom up and down. “Twice. In mail.”
Tom’s groan was barely audible, but Ivo laughed. “Go on to bed, then. You’ll need the rest.” He glanced up at Alaida. “As do you, my lady wife.”
“Come along, you lot.” Oswald scooped up the Morris board and stones, and he and the others followed Tom out, offering their “God’s rests” as they went. Only Bôte lingered to turn back the furs and fuss over the tray that Hadwisa had carried up earlier, slicing bread and spreading butter.
“Ach. That lazy thing.” She lifted a clay jar and clattered around in it with a spoon. “The honey’s gone hard as stone, and Hadwisa did naught about it. I’ll tell her to bring up better.”
“Just put it by the fire,” said Alaida. “It will soften long before Hadwisa straggles back upstairs.”
“Aye, I suppose it will, at that.” Bôte set the little clay jar at the edge of the coals and straightened with a grunt. “Don’t leave it too long, lamb, lest it boil.”
“We won’t,” said Alaida. “God’s rest, Nurse.”
“And you, my lady. My lord.”
As the door shut behind her, Ivo shifted up onto his knees, so his eyes were nearly even with Alaida’s.
“You’re doing well with Tom,” he said. “There’s less of the stable in him every day.”
“He would still embarrass you at court,” said Alaida. “But given time, he’ll serve. He’s as quick as his father, and if you’re lucky, he’ll prove just as brave.”
Ivo’s brow creased. “Oswald said he’s a bastard and an orphan.”
“He is. But ’tis clear who his father is. Was, I mean.”
“Oh? And who is—was that?” he teased.
“Merewyn’s husband. Aelfwine.” She pursed her lips at Ivo’s dubious expression. “Tom is the very image of him, down to the way he walks. Even Merewyn sees it—perhaps especially her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She never had a child of her own. I was too young to know, but Bôte said that’s why Aelfwine turned to other women. Tom’s mother was one of them.”
“Merewyn mentioned her husband dying, once when I stopped with Brand. What happened?”
“It was four, no, five years ago. I had just come back from fostering at Bamburgh. A dog attacked a flock of our sheep on Swinlees. Aelfwine heard and ran to help the shepherd. Both were bitten, not badly, but …”
“It was mad,” said Ivo quietly.
She nodded, lost in the memory. “Bôte and Merewyn worked so hard, and we all prayed, of course, but they both died of the mad fever within the month.”
“A terrible death.”
“And a terrible loss for the village: Merewyn and Ebba widowed, six children left with no father—and young Tom left with no one at all. His mother was already gone. Grandfather took pity.”
“That’s how he came to work in the stable?”
She nodded. “And how I ended up with Hadwisa. She was the oldest of Will Shepherd’s children. They needed her wage to eat.”
Ivo’s eyes brightened. “Aah. That explains much.”
“About what?”
“About why you’re so easy on the girl. She needs a firmer hand. You tolerate from her what you do not from the others, even from Bôte.”
Alaida sat back, frowning at him. “Perhaps you are correct.”
“Perhaps?”
“Oh, all right. You are correct. But I do tolerate much from Bôte as well.”
“Too much, even if she was your nurse.”
“How can I scold the woman who wiped my tears?” she demanded. “And what about you? You tolerate just as much from Sir Ari. He vanishes every night to go off whoring and you say nothing.”
“Whoring? Is that what he’s doing?” Amusement twinkled in his eyes as he said with all innocence, “I did not know there were whores among the good women of Alnwick.”
“Why? Are you looking for one?”
“I am not,” he said firmly. “Besides, when would I have time for one? Or energy?”
“Phfft.” She pushed away the hand he’d slid up to cup her breast. “He has a woman in Lesbury, Bôte says.”
“Ah, Lesbury. I knew it couldn’t be Alnwick.” His hand slipped back and she left it, enjoying the warmth.
“You should make him stay here, my lord, to amuse you, if nothing else. He does tell good tales, the few times I’ve been able to corner him into telling one.”
“I’ve heard them all.” He tugged at the edge of her robe to expose the upper curve of one breast and leaned forward to place a lingering kiss there. “Besides, I prefer the amusements you offer.”
“But he—”
“Enough, Alaida.” His voice was calm, but when he raised his head, his eyes sparked with warning. “Ari’s nights are his own.”
“Ah, yes. Like your days, monseigneur.” Angry, she pushed to her feet and stepped around him.
Behind her, he sighed. “Do not do this, Alaida. Things are as they are.”
She turned, ready to snap at him, but stopped. He suddenly looked so worn, so alone, staring off into the fire like that. “If you would just tell me why, perhaps I could …”
“It would not make things different. Leave it. Please.”
Please? In all this time, he had never once said please, not about this, and her anger softened at the hopeless sound of the word. “I will leave it for now, my lord, but I cannot promise it will not come to mind again.”
“Then ‘for now’ will have to do.” He glanced up, some small measure of his humor back. “For now.”
She ruffled his hair gently. “Pax? I would come down and offer a kiss as pledge, my lord, but I fear you would find too much merriment in watching me get back up again.”
He sprang up before she finished the sentence and held his arms wide. “Never let it be said I make it hard for my wife to kiss me.”
She went to him willingly, so happy his strange melancholy had vanished that she didn’t even remind him that, not so long ago, he had made it very difficult indeed. But that was the past and this was the present, and the kiss they shared was tender and undemanding and full of forgiveness that flowed in both directions.
“You do look tired,” he said a long moment later as he held her.
“No more than I am any night.” She leaned back in his arms to look up at him and caught the smell of the warming honey, drifting up from the hearth. “But I am hungrier.”
“Go to bed. I’ll bring you your bread.”
She had taken to having a slice of bread with honey every night before retiring. It kept her from waking at midnight, ravenous, and seemed to ease the sick stomach. As Ivo retrieved the honey from the hearth, she laid aside her robe and slipped into bed, pulling the covers up to hide her ever-growing belly.
“I think we left it too long,” he said, holding up the spoon. The warm honey ran off in a thin stream.
“It will be fine. Two slices, please.”
“Two? You are hungry.” He quickly spread the honey over three slices and carried them over, offering her one, keeping one for himself, and holding the extra. As he ate, the second piece tilted a little, and honey ran over his fingers.
“Here.” Alaida gobbled down her first piece and reached for the second before Ivo was half done. She licked off the edges and took a bite. “You’re getting all sticky.”
“So are you.” He gestured as a drizzle she’d missed landed in a warm stream on her breast, just above the covers. “We’re going to have to wash again.”
They sat there, finishing their bread, holding their sticky hands up to keep the linens clean. As Alaida came to the last bites, the imp that so frequently got her in trouble poked her with his fork.
“You know,” she said lightly, “the best way to get honey off skin is to lick it away.”
“Is it?” A slow, wicked grin spread over his
face. He held out his honey-covered fingers. “Show me.”
Suddenly embarrassed by her brazenness, she took only a tentative lick.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” he challenged.
She drew his finger into her mouth, sucking it like a sweet. He groaned, and her embarrassment melted away in the heat that flamed up between them. She moved to the next finger, then the next, finishing one hand, then the other, taking her time over each finger until the honey was gone, even lapping the last traces off his palm before she sat back.
“See? All clean.”
She raised the last bit to finish it, but he curled his still-damp fingers around her wrist and drew her hand toward him. Instead of stealing the bite, though, he dragged it down and touched it to his chest, so that a streak of honey spilled over his nipple. “I’m not convinced. Show me again.”
She leaned forward, obediently, hungrily, and tongued away the sweetness, hearing him suck in his breath as she rasped over the tightening circle. By the time she sat back the second time, his arousal was evident. She popped the last bite of bread in her mouth and held out her hand. “Now clean me, if you please, monseigneur.” He obliged, taking even more time over her fingers than she had over his, until she could feel every suckle, every flicker of his tongue, in the center of her. Then he leaned forward to the drop on her breast. It had apparently run lower, as he worked the covers down to follow it over her nipple, cleaning it quite thoroughly before he finally stopped.
When she opened her eyes, he was smiling down at her in that hungry way of his. How that look had ever frightened her, she couldn’t comprehend. Now it only summoned her own rising appetites, wanton that she was. Wickedness lay in that smile. Sin that called her to sin with him.
Without a word, he rose and stripped out of his braies, then walked over to the table to pick up the pot of honey.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer, but he came back and crawled up on the bed beside her, the honey in one hand. He stirred the honey, the spoon making a soft stutter across the bottom of the pot. “Lie back.”
She did, but asked again, “What are you doing?”
“I wish to discover something,” he said.
“What?”
“Uncover yourself, sweet leaf. I want to see all of you.” She obeyed once more. He shifted to kneel between her legs, nudging them wide apart, and she felt herself blush at the way he devoured her with his eyes. Stirring the honey once more, he held the jar over her belly and lifted the spoon.
Honey, still warm and thin from the fire, cascaded down over her belly. She gasped as he trailed it up, tracing slow, liquid spirals around her breasts. He took another spoonful and worked his way down this time, and she gasped again as the warm honey spilled between her legs. She trembled there before him, already on the edge of pleasure even without him touching her.
“I wish to discover,” he finally explained as he set the jar aside and bent over her, “which is sweeter. You, or the honey.”
“Oh,” she said as he began to taste her. “Oh.”
It was a long time before he decided, and by then she was very, very clean.
The sheets, however, were not.
CHAPTER 21
SIR ARI WAS scribbling again.
Alaida stood on the landing and watched him hunch over the bound book that held his attention. He added to the volume often, but it wasn’t the only writing he did. She often spied him late in the afternoon scratching furiously on a fragment of used parchment or a scrap of plain leather, or even, a few times, on a bit of wood or bark. Frequently, she spotted the same oddments later in her husband’s hand or Sir Brand’s, or saw one curling to ash in the fire—the only evidence she’d seen that Ari ever crossed paths with them at all.
She grew more curious about his writing by the day. It might, she suspected, have something to do with why her husband still was hers only during darkness—time which grew so short as summer neared that she barely saw him.
Not that Ivo didn’t put their limited time to good use. She flushed just thinking of what he’d taught her over the last weeks—what he had done with that honey, for example, would likely send them both to Hell, and she would never be absolved because she had every intention of asking him to do it again someday. Someday soon, she resolved as she went all liquid just thinking of it.
She was still immersed in thoughts of honey when Ari noticed her. He immediately came to his feet. “Do you require something, my lady?”
“Mmm?” It took her a moment to come back from the heat, and she was sure Ari must see her high color from where he stood. “Oh, no, messire. I merely grow tired of the chatter.” She motioned vaguely toward the solar, where a burst of derisive laughter interrupted Mildryth’s complaints about her husband. “My head begins to ache from the noise. What do you write, messire?”
“A chronicle.” He leaned down and blew gently over the lettering to encourage the ink to dry.
“A monk’s duty.”
He chuckled. “I assure you, I am no monk, my lady.”
“So I’ve heard.” She started down the stairs. “Read me a little and let me hear what you write.”
Laying a square of fine kidskin over the page to protect the new ink, he closed the book firmly and pulled the straps tight before she could catch more than a glimpse of the text. “No, my lady. I would be ashamed, for you would see that I have no skill with words at all.”
“Phfft. I hear you speak every day, sir, and you use words like a goldsmith uses his tools.” That made him color, and she pressed on, teasing. “I could always order you to read.”
He looked down at his book and back up at her, his face growing grave. “Please do not, my lady, for I would have to disobey.”
His reluctance only increased her wish to see what he wrote, but it was clearly not going to happen today. “I only intended to persuade, messire, not command,” she said lightly, pretending it was altogether unimportant. “If your story is so clumsy, you should keep it to yourself. Give me another in its place, though, for I grow bored with those the women tell.”
His face eased, though he still rested one hand on his book as though he thought she might snatch it up. “Another dragon, my lady?”
“No, this time I think I would like some other monster. Perhaps a—”
“M’lady!” Tom came crashing through the door, wooden practice sword in hand, face flush with excitement. “There’s a man at the gate. He says he’s brought a message from the king!”
“Well, my lady,” said Ari evenly as he scooped up his book to put it away. “It seems you will not need my story to ease your boredom after all.”
WITH A MIX of curiosity and foreboding, Ivo took the folded parchment from the king’s messenger and motioned for Brand to follow him upstairs.
Alaida rose as he entered, showing a belly that he could swear was bigger than it had been just that morning.
“Have you—?” She stopped as she saw the message in his hand. Her hands twisted together anxiously. “You have. He arrived just after dinner. What does it say?”
Ivo pressed a kiss to her cheek and smiled at her fretfulness. “And greetings to you, too, wife. Don’t frown so. ’Tis only a message.”
“From the king,” she said with distaste. “Little good has ever come from that direction.”
“I have had both good and bad from William,” said Ivo. “Let me see which this is before you assume the worst. Go, begin supper. I will be down in a little.”
He waited until the door closed behind her and her women before he popped the wax on the seal. The text inside was plainly written and direct, and Ivo frowned as he read it, hearing William’s choleric stutter in each word. However, there were possibilities in what the king asked as well, and he considered them quickly. “Hmm.”
“What?” asked Brand.
“Good and bad, as I told Alaida. There is more trouble in Wales, plus he suspects that Roger of Poitou plans treason in Cumbria and order
s me to look into it.”
“Is that the good or the bad?”
“Both, I think. On the bad side, it will take me away now, just when Alaida and I finally have a true marriage. On the good, it will take us away now when the nights are so cursed short. She has begun questioning my habits again.”
“Wonders why you barely get your clothes off before you start putting them on again, eh?”
“Something like that. I suppose Merewyn never questions why you visit at such odd hours.”
“In truth, no. She just seems to … accept it, as she accepts everything.”
Ivo thought that strange, but the healer was a little strange, so he let it drop.
“It solves another problem as well,” he pointed out. “These woods are too small for a bear in summer.”
Brand nodded. Summer had always been the worst time. The long warm hours brought mortals both common and noble streaming into the forest for timber and beeswax, game and berries, charcoal and wattling, and there were far too many hours of daylight in which to be seen. For Ivo the only real risk lay in being caught changing; for Brand, it was in being seen at all—there were no more bears in England.
“Cumbria has forests thick enough to lose entire armies,” Ivo pointed out. “You will be safe there while I do my spying for the king, and by the time we get back, harvest will have started and only swineherds will be in the woods. I can keep them away from you.”
“That would be good. But what about the third problem?” Brand curved his hand out over his gut to shape Alaida’s belly. “You don’t want to be away when the child comes. It will need you. She will need you.”
“She is only”—Ivo ticked it off on his fingers—“a bit over four months gone now. We will be back in plenty of time, and maybe while we’re gone, we will find something, learn something, have some new thought. I don’t know. But it will be better than sitting here, useless, watching her swell.”
Brand nodded in sympathy. “Aye. I watch her, too, and she isn’t even mine. All the same, you’ll find it difficult to tell her you’re leaving. I remember how Ylfa used to look at me when I’d say we were going a-viking again—like I was either mad or already dead. And she’d cry.”
