The stable lad led them in, turned as if to say something else to Rob, then, eyes going wide, he turned and hurried off, leading the captain’s horse with him.
Unsure, Rob started to follow; then a familiar voice called his name.
“Rob?”
Rob abruptly understood the stable lad’s caution. It was one thing to rough about with Gamelyn in the green Wode. It was another altogether to greet him here.
Rob suddenly felt as he had done standing before the Horned Lord, knowing that he could neither bend the knee nor show throat; that either could be construed as weakness….
“Rob!”
So he plastered on the cocky smirk that had more than once earned him an arse-thump from his mother’s besom, and turned around.
Gamelyn was striding across the cobbles, an irrepressible grin scrawled over his face. “You’re still here! I was hoping you wouldn’t get away before I finished my errand, and then Brand said he’d sent his lad to help the captain and the forester, so I knew you must be staying.” He was laughing, and seemed no different, really, than the lad in the forest.
Except for the clothes. Worn tunic and leather breeks had given way to a fine woolen tunic trimmed with silk threads, soft linen braies, and a cape almost the same green as his eyes. It all made Gamelyn look… older, somehow. As if he’d all to the sudden grown to fit them.
“You’re tarted up a bit nicer than usual,” Rob drawled. He was not about to admit to the trepidation writhing in the pit of his belly. Not.
Gamelyn snorted. “You’re not.”
“We canna all afford fancy threads, can we? I’ll have you know this is me best tunic!”
“I meant your hair, not your clothes. Do you never take a comb to it?”
“It’s windy,” Rob defended. Then growled, “Watch it, now!” as Gamelyn started to grab his arms.
“Aye, sure enough. Come on.” Gamelyn looked around, shrugged, then led deeper into the stable’s deep-hewn cool. Rob followed as Gamelyn took an abrupt left then halted. “The boxes are full, but you can tie up here, near Diamant.”
A row of horse boxes, all occupied, spanned beyond them. Motioning to several metal tie rings attached just above their heads, Gamelyn took Arawn’s rein. “Who’s this, then? Wait… Willow’s all right, isn’t she?”
Rob nodded, tying his father’s chestnut to a free ring. “She’s just not fast enough for the long rides me and Da take for forestry duties, but her foals meant Da could do some horse tradin’ for Arawn. And the extra fodder for him.” Rob grinned and walked over to Diamant, giving his rump a fond slap. “Thanks to you, old fellow.”
Diamant gave a grunt and sidled his rump closer for a scratch. Rob obliged.
“It’s good to see you!” Gamelyn tied Arawn, then skipped over and grabbed Rob’s arms once again, looking him up and down. “This is brilliant, you know. We shan’t be bothered here, save by Brand, and he and his lad think your father has hung the moon or something.”
“Or something,” Rob agreed, and raised a palm to lightly smack Gamelyn’s cheek. To his surprise, Gamelyn gave a pained hiss. As he recoiled, Rob could see the nasty gashes along cheek and jaw.
“I’m sorry… but bloody hell, whatever happened to you?”
Gamelyn shrugged it away. “I was sparring. With my brother—”
“Your brother?” The slow burn of ill will that rose in Rob’s chest surprised him.
Gamelyn twitched his shoulders again, which just made Rob angrier. “No doubt when I am a better swordsman, I’ll avoid the consequences.”
All Rob could think of, suddenly, was that knob of a soldier who had knocked him off his horse. Surely a nobleman’s son didn’t have to put up with such a thing. “What kind of brother sets himself to beat shit from you?”
The green eyes swiveled his way. “Are you angry on my account, Rob Loxley?”
The question, stated so baldly, threw him. Rob opened his mouth, but those eyes, still leveled upon him, made his tongue stick behind his teeth, mute. Then Gamelyn gave a tiny, one-sided smile that, for some reason, further silenced Rob, and asked, “Does that mean you forgive me for almost losing the buck, last time I visited?”
Well, didn’t that figure. Exasperation freed Rob’s tongue, quite abruptly. “I dinna carry grudges like a nobleman,” he huffed. “We had it out then, all good and proper. It’s done.”
The smile had broadened. “So you giving me a split lip is different than my brother giving it to me?”
Now this was absolutely unfair. “I didna knock you with a mailed fist, did I?”
Gamelyn’s grin slipped. “I didn’t tell you that.”
“Aye, well, I know what a slap from a mailed fist looks like, don’t I?”
The grin was truly gone, now. “But… you haven’t any mail—”
“Of course I’ve no mail, you great prat; happens I’ve likely been on the receiving end.”
Gamelyn had a very strange look on his face. “And your father didn’t stop it?”
“Like your father didn’t?” This line of questioning was just brassing Rob off, truth be told.
“That’s… different.”
“Aye. It is. Quite.”
Gamelyn just kept peering at him, in that odd, passive but insistent I’m not forcing any truths from you but… tell me way he had. And what was Rob supposed to say? Adam had power—real power, the kind that could change hearts and minds—but it wasn’t enough to stop an angry soldier from knocking his son about? That Sir Ian obviously had the power that counted—his own castle and spoils, people who had to bow and scrape, serve him and his family—yet thought that holding that power meant he had to encourage his own sons to fight like dogs? Not wolves; there was sense in their order, in the strongest holding the pack with his will and strength. Dogs were too like people, the weak ones often ruling just because they played dirty.
“Here.” Rob started digging in his pouch. He had to do something—either to cover up his own sudden awkwardness, or Gamelyn’s, he wasn’t sure—but once his fingers met with the small pot jar, he knew what he was looking for. It was the perfect out.
Out from what? He wasn’t sure, and he still wasn’t sure as he grabbed Gamelyn’s tunic and strong-armed him over to Diamant’s manger, sat him against it. Diamant was, naturally, eating there, but when he thought to protest, Rob gave him a pat and a soft word. Diamant nuzzled down his front, gave Gamelyn a sigh just for good measure, then bent back to the corner of the manger that wasn’t occupied by Gamelyn’s behind.
“How do you do that?” Gamelyn always asked it, and Rob could have answered, but knew he shouldn’t.
It’s magic, don’t you know? I’m son to what your Church claims is a demon, see, and I can speak the language of things that really ent got language, and if I was to tell you, would you pour pitch over me and set me afire, like me mam says your kind does?
“I just do. Belt up, and let me put some of this on your face.”
Gamelyn smiled as Rob pulled the stopper from the pot jar and the familiar smell wafted out. Eluned’s arnica ointment, infused with all sorts of other things that Marion knew but Rob didn’t want to. It smelled well enough now, but not when it was being boiled up. Rob considered his target, reached out, and tilted Gamelyn’s face up to the light. Despite the lack of sun and the wind’s force, the day was bright. The gash was clotted up, nasty with pus and swollen.
“Bloody hell, did you even bother to clean this?”
“I—”
“I didna realize your god told you bathing was a sin, too.”
“It’s not…. I… I bathe!” Gamelyn protested. “What do you mean, ‘my’ God? He’s yours too, you know.”
“Is he, then?” Rob restoppered the ointment.
“What?”
Rob didn’t answer, simply went looking. If this was a proper stable, there’d be medicaments, fresh water.
“What?”
Well, and that was typical. If Gamelyn didn’t know what was going on every moment�
�. “I need water.”
A pause, then Gamelyn said, “There’s a kettle always over the fire pit just outside.”
“Hot water in a stable? I’ll wager you even get hot water when you do bother with a bath.” Rob’s face went euphoric. “Hot water. What I’d give!”
“You’ve a hearth,” Gamelyn pointed out.
“And we’re only allowed to take so much wood from the forest,” Rob said, still rummaging about. Surely there were rags, or something. “Hot water’s sommat we canna afford. Where’s the groom’s box? Eh, never mind, you probably don’t even know—”
“It’s over against the wall, by the bridles.” Gamelyn was curt.
Well, fine, then. Surely the grooms wouldn’t get too arsy at him going through it for the benefit of their lord and master. Lord and master’s son. Rob considered saying this out loud, snuck a look at Gamelyn, and decided he’d probably been bashed enough as it was.
Rob found a shallow burl bowl, went to the fire pit for warm water. There were several of the Abbess’s soldiers taking their meal next to the fire pit. They shot a narrow look at Rob; he kept his eyes down and did his business quickly.
Finally he returned to the manger with a shallow wooden bowl of water and a reasonably clean stable rubber. Gamelyn’s eyebrows were drawing together rather thunderously. Rob nudged Diamant with one shoulder and the stallion readily sidestepped. “We’re cleaning up that cut. I ent putting Mam’s good ointment on filth. Won’t do any good that way, and she’d clout me for not doing m’job right.”
“It’s not ‘your’ job,” Gamelyn murmured, rebellious. “I can do—”
“Aye, and you’ve done so well this far. Shut up and let me get on with it.”
Gamelyn shut up. Not, however, without a roll of his green eyes.
And green as juniper needles, they were, even to the tiny hint of blue around the edges….
Juniper needles? Rob snorted at himself. Next he would be spouting girly poetry like his mam did on his da’s birthing morning. Not that he knew any poetry, and whatever was possessing him?
The poncy ginger paramour….
Sod you, Scathelock, Rob thought, then Gamelyn closed those juniper-green eyes and held his face up with a compliance that hit Rob like a hundred-weight of sacked corn. Truly, it was all a massive thud in the chest, with the slip-slide-trickle of spillover rustling about his ribcage.
Gamelyn’s eyelashes were tipped all pale on freckled cheeks, and strands of rose-gold hair caught against the damp of slightly parted lips with the rest scattering down, settling across the hard, skin-and-sinew bow of that neck. And the worst—the best?—was how Rob could see/smell/feel the pulse beating in that throat….
Oh. Oh.
Gamelyn opened his eyes, narrowed them on Rob. “What are you on about?”
You. I’m on about you, Lady Huntress save me. The bowl tottered, nearly slipped from the sudden laxness of Rob’s fingers. That was the only thing lax, though—he was abruptly glad his mam had always insisted her offspring wear a snug linsey loin-wrap beneath their clothes instead of naught, because otherwise it would be pretty flaming obvious that his knob was about as blind-stupid and subtle as Diamant, there.
“Ha. Caught you, Hob-Robyn.” Even Gamelyn using Eluned’s nickname for him didn’t blunt the edge of sudden want. “You were about to tup that on my head, weren’t you?”
Nay, Rob thought, leaden-dull and shaken. That ent what I was thinking of tupping.
Perhaps he should tup the bowl, but over his own head. Perhaps it would help.
And chance would be a fine thing, at that. The perfect out? Nay, this was sinking him deeper in, somehow.
Gamelyn was bemused, still watching him. That didn’t help, either. Gamelyn bemused was, all to the sudden, as subtly sexed up as….
As Diamant, there.
With a small growl, Rob tugged the cloth from about his neck and dunked it, then took it all dripping and laved it over Gamelyn’s face.
“Hoy… ow… that’s hot!”
“Better than cold. Dinna be such a bairn. I’d wager there was no whinging when you got that whack in the face.”
“Whinging in front of Johan just makes him want to hear more of it.”
“One of those that gets hot on a blood trail, eh?” Aye, just like the soldier. Noblemen were dogs, all right.
“That’s—ow… ow… stop digging, will you?—that’s one way to put it. Eh,” Gamelyn twisted his face as Rob kept scrubbing, “Johan’s all right. Just trying to knock some sense into my thick skull.”
Thick… aye, that about described the predicament Rob found himself in; mesmerized by nothing more than the trickles of water runneling down the cords of Gamelyn’s neck and beneath his tunic. Gamelyn twitched and gave a yank at the embroidered collar, canting it sideways and exposing a surprisingly substantial pad of pectoral muscle dusted with copper freckles. That led into a shallow dip of breastbone, and the smattering of gilt hair was shivering and lifting at the wet.
Bloody fucking hell. Gritting his teeth, Rob focused on the clotted gash on Gamelyn’s jaw. “This is going to hurt more,” he warned, though the gash wasn’t as bad as he’d first thought. It was obviously painful; Gamelyn grimaced again and swore, low and inventive, beneath his breath.
“The priests would have at you for that, wouldn’t they?” Rob quipped. “You’ve been listening to me far and away too much.”
Gamelyn slid him a look, rolled his eyes once more then closed them. “Just have it done, will you?”
And bloody damn, not only did he have a rod in his loin-wrap that would make the Horned Lord proud, but it was back—the sense of… too much sensing, too much of… everything. It set him on edge, buzzing like a jiggered wasp behind his ears. His hands were shaking, again. Mayhap he should just hand over the arnica and whatsis, let Gamelyn apply it himself.
Mayhap he was a big coward.
Rob took his time at opening and dipping his fingers into the pot, reached out, and dabbed salve over the cut. And, since arnica was good for bruising, he started working up the rest of Gamelyn’s face, all the while wondering if he had a liking for peculiar self-torture. Or was just plain daft.
Because that’s what it was. Daft and gormless, to boot. It was also sharp as the knife along his hip, the realization that this was the first time he’d really ever touched Gamelyn. Oh, he’d touched lads before—Simon wasn’t the first nor would he be the last—and it had been with much more direction and intent than a trail of fingers across a cheekbone. Rob knew what he liked and how to share that liking; he had nimble hands and a growing appreciation of what might be technique in a few more years. Will’s teasings were simply that, and there had never been much need to take care because his own kind didn’t have reason to take care. Sex was what nature was—making and bleeding, birth and dying. All to be venerated, not disparaged. Let the conquerors be damned in their contempt for such sacred things.
And that was the daftest of all, ill-advised beyond any sense or sanity. Gamelyn was of those conquerors. Of their religion. He even smelled of it: the heavy, thick incense Rob ever only caught wind of in the folds of the monk from Beauchief Abbey who visited Loxley for tithe and little else. And something else, too, besides sweat and horse… was it myrrh?
“He’s your God, too.”
Nay, he really ent.
It was foolish to keep at this. More than foolish… dangerous. Yet Rob couldn’t pull away. A tiny ghost of a smile had begun quivering at the corner of Gamelyn’s mouth, and Rob’s fingertips were leaving slick tracks across the freckles on Gamelyn’s cheek, riffling the fine down shading his jaw. Rob found himself leaning in—close, ever so close—found his breath turning to mist upon the balm skimming that upturned throat. Gamelyn gave a tiny, unconscious shiver, and his lower lip dropped in an outward sigh. Then those green eyes opened, slowly, angling toward him. There was puzzlement, and curiosity, and more than a little of What in bloody hell? But there was also an artless, deep-set knowing, a recogniti
on of something being spoken, ever-so-silent.
“Gamelyn? Gamelyn!”
And just like that, the moment broke itself in twain. That hundredweight sack pressing Rob’s breath tight in his chest had its underside sliced, and all the grain went funneling out to scatter about his feet.
Rob turned away, tapping the cork back into the mouth of the jar just as Sir Ian, trailed by several liveried men, came hobbling in.
“Gamelyn, where are you, boy? I need you to—” He stopped. “There you are. What in the devil are you…. Who is this?”
Rob turned to the lord, dipped his head, was careful to make no eye contact with anyone. Including Gamelyn. “Milord, I’m Rob of Loxley, son to—”
“Son to the forester, are you?” Like many of his kind, Sir Ian spoke with a firm haste, a for-granted authority. “I see.”
“I was seeing to our horses, milord.”
“Looks as if you were seeing more to my son.” It was a drawl, and one Rob had no idea how to interpret. Yet he did not make the mistake of raising his gaze, even in curiosity.
“’Tis n-nothing,” Gamelyn’s voice was a tight stammer. Rob cut him a swift look beneath his brows, trying to decide what that stammer was founded on. “I was showing him a free spot for his horses and he saw that I’d cut my face, and thought to help. His mother is a healer.”
“A healer, eh?” As Sir Ian came closer, Rob dropped his eyes. “You’re the one who found Gamelyn in the Peak Forest, aren’t you?”
“Aye, milord. ’Twas Loxley Chase, actually, the woodland there.”
There was a silence. Rob held to it for as long as he could stand, then peeked at Gamelyn, who was staring at his father with quirked brows. Rob followed that gaze to Sir Ian, who was standing with his hand outstretched.
“Well, young man,” Sir Ian fussed. “Obviously you know my son, by chance or design. Am I allowed to know what concoction you have there?”
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