Anxious to change the subject, Alex smiled at her muddy feet. “You look like a little girl who’s gotten into something she ought not to have.”
She bent over to inspect her feet. “It washes off.”
“The hem of your tunic is muddy in back.”
Nicki groaned. “Edith will give me that look.” Hiking her skirts up to her knees, she waded into the stream.
“Why do you...” Alex shook his head. “Nay, you’ll think it a foolish question.”
Crouching over, she scrubbed at her submerged feet with her hands. “Why do I what?”
He rubbed his neck. “I know naught about...writing and such. I was just wondering...why you would go to this trouble to do it. What compels you?”
She splashed water onto her legs and wiped the mud from them. “What compels you to fight for your king?”
“‘Tis no longer a labor of love, if that’s what you mean. ‘Tis simply all I know how to do.”
Straightening up, Nicki regarded him with that hushed alertness of hers. “Have you ever considered...” She bit her lip.
“Have I ever considered what?”
She waded out of the water, pausing at the edge of the mud with her skirt still clutched in her hand, and looked around. “Would you bring me my shoes so I don’t get my feet muddy again? They’re over by that tree.”
Alex fetched the soft kid slippers, stained with mud, but held them out of her reach when she tried to take them from him. “Have I ever considered what?”
She took a deep breath. “Have you ever considered learning how to read and write?”
Alex couldn’t stop his bark of harsh laughter. “Don’t you think I’m a bit old for that sort of thing?” He knelt before her. “Lift your right foot.”
“I can do that, if you’ll just give me those slippers.”
He looked up at her. “Do you fear me?”
Her eyes were fiercely luminous in the forest halflight. “Of course not.”
He stroked her ankle lightly. “Then why are you so skittish with me?”
“It’s just that...it’s unseemly for you to be touching my feet.”
He felt goose bumps rise beneath his fingertips. “I’ve touched you in more intimate places than your feet.”
“I thought we were going to forget that summer.”
“I’ll never forget that summer,” he said softly, holding her gaze as he caressed her calf. “We merely agreed not to talk about it.”
“Then don’t,” she said tightly.
“As you wish.” Reaching up, he took her free hand and placed it on his shoulder. “To help you keep your balance,” he explained, lifting her right foot and cradling it while he wriggled the slipper onto it. Even her feet were soft, he marveled, and strangely pretty—as small and delicate as a child’s.
“So you think you’re too old to learn something new?” she challenged.
“Probably.” He slid the other shoe onto her left foot and took her hand before she could remove it from his shoulder. Holding it, he rose, standing far too close to her, but making no move to back away.
“Is that so?” Wresting her hand from his grip, she stepped around him. “If someone handed you a new form of weapon, some wonderful advance—say, a machine that shoots missiles—”
He propped his hands on his hips and smiled. “It exists already. It’s called a crossbow, and I know how to use it, even if I don’t have Luke’s skill with it.”
“Not a crossbow, a...” She drew a small shape in the air with her hands. “A device you can hold in your hand. ‘Twould expel tiny little iron balls very quickly.”
“Tiny little iron balls?” He laughed skeptically. “The point of a weapon is to kill the enemy, or at least cause serious injury. A little iron ball might take out an eye if one could aim it well enough, but—”
“I’m not sure exactly how it’s supposed to work,” she said. “It’s my friend’s idea. He invents things. On parchment, that is. He makes drawings—tools, weapons, scientific instruments...”
“Your friend?” Foreboding crawled over Alex’s scalp. Did Nicki have a ‘friend’ of whom Milo was unaware—a lover she entertained in secret while protesting her fidelity? Considering Milo’s longstanding impotence—not to mention Nicki’s history of manipulating men’s affections—the possibility seemed all too likely.
“Sometimes, if it’s a particularly promising design,” she said, “he’ll actually build one of these inventions, or a model of it.”
“Does Milo know about this friend?”
Her expression of puzzlement gave way to outrage as she digested his meaning. “My friend is a monk,” she said acidly. “An old monk. Brother Martin, the prior of the St. Clair Abbey. And of course Milo knows about him. I’ve been visiting him since I was a child.”
Alex executed a sheepish little bow. “I apologize if it seemed I was implying—”
“It didn’t ‘seem as if you were implying’ anything,” she spat out. “You all but accused me of adultery.”
“Nicki, I’m—”
“A fat lot of nerve you’ve got, being so self-righteous, considering...what they say about you.”
“What do they say about me?”
Her cheeks pinkened in the cool, dusky light. “They talk about...all the women you’ve had.”
“It’s true, I’ve known many women.” Gravely he added, “I only ever loved one, though.”
A breeze swept through the forest, rattling the leaves overhead. Some of them broke loose, spinning and twirling around Nicki as she gazed at him.
“I have to go.” She turned and strode away.
Alex sprinted to catch up with her. He grabbed her shoulder. “Would you teach me how to read?”
She pivoted to face him, her eyes immense. He could see right through them, as if looking into the clear green depths of a tidal pool. “You really want to learn how to read?”
“And write, I suppose. Yes,” he said, astounded that he really meant it. “Yes, I do. Will you teach me?”
Her eyes searched his. “What changed your mind?”
“You.”
She frowned. “Alex...”
He closed his hands around her upper arms and implored her to meet his gaze. “I mean the fact that you write such extraordinary poems, and I can’t even read them. Milo can. Luke can read and write, and so can every woman I know—they all learned in convent schools. Christ, even little Robert wrote that blasted poem about honey cakes—”
“Almond cakes,” she corrected with a little laugh. The music of it tickled his chest deep inside. He didn’t think he’d heard her laugh since Périgeaux.
“Almond cakes,” he chuckled. “With honey glaze.” He still had his hands around her arms, he noted happily. She hadn’t recoiled from his touch—not yet, anyway. “Will you teach me?” he asked, gliding his hands down to capture hers. “Please?”
She withdrew her hands from his, but gently, without the agitation she’d shown before. “I suppose I could talk Brother Martin out of another writing desk. We could put it in front of a window in the great hall, and I could instruct you there.”
Alex moaned. “That awful hall? It’s so dank and gloomy.” And crowded. He’d be sacrificing an opportunity to have her all to himself if he agreed to take his lessons anywhere in the keep. “Can’t you teach me...well, out here?”
“Here?” She looked around doubtfully. “In the woods?”
“Or in a meadow...” He smiled. “Perhaps we could even find a nice little cave.”
She did not return his smile.
He raised his hands placatingly. “Sorry. That was...sorry. I would rather we did this outside, though—anywhere you’d like. I can’t stand being in that gloomy old castle. How can you bear living there?”
The shadow that crossed her face said it all: she bore it because she had to. “All right. I’ll teach you out of doors. No reason we can’t bring tablets with us.”
“And a blanket.”
She hesitated,
then shrugged. “Yes, I suppose we’ll need a blanket.”
Thank the saints. Progress.
“What about your oath to Milo?” she asked.
“My...my oath?” Alex stammered.
“You swore that you’d teach swordsmanship to the men. Will you have time for that?”
Alex let out a sigh of relief. “I’ll do that in the mornings. We can take our lessons in the afternoons.”
“Very well.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “One thing, though. It might not look good, our spending so much time alone together. Milo won’t care. He’s...well, he won’t care. But others might talk.”
“I’ll be discreet,” he assured her, irritated as always by her fixation with propriety, but thrilled at the prospect of long hours alone with her. “We can leave the keep separately and meet at some agreed location. Is this a good place?”
“As good as any, I suppose.”
“Excellent.” This was a secluded spot, deep within the woods. The likelihood of unwanted company was minimal. Alex pictured them on a blanket beneath the sheltering trees, their heads bent over their tablets, her arm brushing his, her scent drifting around him. A sweet ache rose within him, speeding his heart.
He did want to learn to read and write; he also wanted to be with her, to touch her, to finally claim that which he’d let slip away nine long years ago. He shouldn’t desire her—even just her body—after all that had transpired between them, all she’d done to tarnish his ardor. Yet he could no more stop wanting her than he could stop breathing. “Shall we meet this afternoon, then?” he asked, trying to contain his eagerness. “After dinner?”
“I can’t this afternoon. I must supervise the changing of the rushes in the great hall.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
“Aye. Tomorrow.” She addressed him with a stern look that made him want to laugh. “You promise to apply yourself to your studies?”
“I assure you,” he said with a slow smile of anticipation, “I approach this endeavor with the utmost enthusiasm.”
* * *
Alone in his quarters, Gaspar uncorked a tiny vial and tapped a few grains of pungent white powder into his mortar, being very judicious as to the amount. Hemlock was the among the most formidable of his many herbal remedies, but it was by far the most dangerous. A pinch in a sleeping draft could bring on a deep, almost deathlike sleep. Too much produced a mindless frenzy, during which the heart seized up and stopped.
Satisfied with the dose he’d chosen, Gaspar unfolded a parchment packet on which he’d written Valerian and poured a little drift of the brownish powdered root next to the hemlock in the mortar. He paused, wondering whether to add more. Lady Nicolette was tall for a woman, but of a slender build.
Valerian, being governed by Mercury, had warming properties, which made it useful for nervous conditions, seizures and headaches. But, as with so many potent herbs, too much could produce symptoms similar to those for which it had been employed—searing headaches, wrenching spasms, even hallucinations.
For his purposes, Gaspar sought an amount sufficient to soothe the nerves, but not enough to cause any alarming side effects. He wanted merely to complement the sedative effects of the hemlock. There would be little harm in the lady Nicolette’s awakening with a headache, but hallucinations might raise suspicions.
Too bad he had to sedate her with the hemlock. How he’d love to look into her eyes, wide with terror and mortification, as he did all the things to her he’d yearned to do for so long. How he longed to hear her cry and beg, to feel her thrashing beneath him in a panic as he pounded into her...
The hemlock would rob him of such pleasures by inducing a deep sleep. Did he have to use it? Excitement mounted within him as he reflected on the potential of dispensing with the hemlock and giving her valerian alone—but far more than would be prescribed for its curative properties. Bereft of her senses, she’d be easier to control. And, deranged or not, as long as she remained conscious—and no woman could sleep through what he had in store for her—she would be completely aware of what she was being made to endure, a tantalizing prospect.
Quite possibly the valerian would affect her memory, and she would not even recall her ravishment afterward. If she did, her mind would be so dazed, and her account so confused, that she would most likely be deemed ill and suffering from delusions. The only real risk would be if her report was believed and she could identify Gaspar as having been the one to force himself on her, but if he wore a bandit’s mask, she’d never know it was him. Most likely some hapless cutpurse would be hanged for the deed.
It would never come to that, though. Even if she did remember, they’d think she was imagining things, perhaps going mad. He could take her night after night, and no one would be the wiser.
Gaspar tossed out the contents of the mortar and replaced it with a generous mound of valerian. He hesitated, then added yet more. Hallucinations might actually be rather intriguing, and he didn’t much mind spasms; he was certainly strong enough to hold her down. Or he could tie her to the bed; he’d probably have to gag her, anyway, so she wouldn’t awaken the household. As for headaches, he cared not how much she suffered upon awakening. Let the bitch suffer, as he had. Let her writhe in agony, her mind a chaos of nightmarish memories, wondering what was real and what was imagined. It was only just, after all the years he’d striven to prove himself to her, hoping that she’d eventually view him as a man, only to have her regard him as dispassionately as she did the rest of her inferiors.
As an afterthought, he added to the valerian a handful of other herbs known to affect the senses, crushing them together with his marble pestle. He winced at their noxious odor, the kind of smell you could taste in the back of your throat. He’d have to grind the stuff fine and mix it well into something strongly flavored, or she’d never swallow it. She liked spiced wine with her dessert; he could give it to her after supper tonight.
The rest would be easy. Milo had moved out of the solar; she was all alone up there. After the household had retired for the evening, he could slip into the pantry and climb the little service stairwell to the solar. She’d be feeling woozy by then, perhaps even have begun seeing visions and hearing things. Or perhaps she’d be insensible. He’d slap her awake.
And then she’d pay, he thought, grinding the brown powder into dust, grinding and grinding until sweat beaded on his forehead and his hand ached. She’d pay for ignoring him all these years. He’d show her she wasn’t so high and mighty.
He’d show her.
Chapter 11
“Spiced wine, milady?”
Nicki looked up from her peach tart to find Gaspar hovering over with a flagon. Having drunk more wine than usual at supper, she was tempted to wave him away, but he’d be disappointed. Given his facility with herbcraft, he liked to mix up the spiced wine himself and serve it at the end of the meal—to the family, of course, not to the dozens of soldiers supping noisily at the rows of tables that filled the great hall.
“Thank you, Gaspar.”
Smiling, he set a fresh goblet before her and filled it from his flagon, which he then re-corked.
“What about me?” Milo demanded thickly. “I’d like some.”
“This bottle is empty, milord,” Gaspar explained as he headed toward the buttery. “I’ll fetch another.”
Obviously disgruntled, Milo lifted his wine goblet and drained it. This was the first he’d gotten out of bed since they returned home yesterday, and it seemed he was back to his old habits. To her knowledge, he’d eaten nothing since those few spoonfuls of porridge this morning, but he’d drunk steadily all day. “So, Alex,” he said to his cousin, who sat across the table from them. “I understand you’re going to learn how to read and write.”
Alex looked at Nicki as he took a slow sip from his own goblet. She evaded his gaze, as she frequently did, fearful that he’d see it all in her eyes, the stubborn passion that had never died, but which could never be—a passion, moreover, which he evident
ly didn’t share. He’d never denied hating her, she reminded herself. Although his feelings may have mellowed into ambivalence since their encounter at the longboat, any interest he might have in her—beyond her ability to teach him to read—could only be of a purely carnal nature. His love for her had died nine years ago, when she’d chosen to marry Milo. Now she had to live with that choice.
“Aye,” Alex said. “Lady Nicolette is most kind. I hope she’s patient, as well.”
Milo smiled. “I think I can attest to her patience. I must say, I was delighted when she told me you’d asked her to be your teacher.” He chuckled. “I should have thought of it myself.”
Alex looked down at his untouched peach tart, frowning. Nicki wondered what had discomfited him.
“You two are getting on quite nicely, then. Excellent.” Milo lifted his goblet, grimacing to find it empty. Unsurprisingly, he reached for Nicki’s, swallowing down half of her spiced wine in a single tilt.
“Milord!” Nicki turned to find Gaspar hurrying toward them from the buttery, another flagon in his hand. “I poured that for your lady wife.”
“You can pour her another.” Milo brought the goblet to his mouth, but Gaspar snatched it from him before he could drink any more. “What do you think you’re—”
“That was from the old batch,” Gaspar said soothingly. “It might have begun to turn.” He filled Milo’s empty goblet from the flagon in his hand. “There you go, sire. This will taste better, I wager.”
“It is better,” Milo pronounced upon taking a sip. “Much better.”
Some time later, as the serving wenches were clearing the tables, one of them reached for Milo’s goblet, which still contained some wine. He yanked it out of her reach, then, swaying on his bench, set it down awkwardly, its contents sloshing onto the table.
“Milo,” Nicki said quietly. “Perhaps you’ve had enough.”
Shaking his head, he reached for the goblet again, but knocked it over, spilling wine onto the table. Nicki stanched it with a napkin.
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 118
