Enchantress Mine (38 page)

Young bachelors, however, had to depend upon strangers to sew for them when they could afford it, usually women servants anxious to earn an extra penny or two. It was also necessary that they purchase their own cloth, and their limited incomes naturally limited such purchases to the least costly fabrics. Eada and Mairin, both expert seamstresses, complained more than once as they viewed the sorry state of the wardrobe that Aelfleah’s new lord possessed. Raiding the storage room of the manor house they brought forth linens that they themselves had woven, fine wools, and cottons, brocades and silks from Byzantium. They measured him carefully, making him stand for what seemed to Josselin hours. Then they cut and stitched until suddenly the cloth began to assume shapes. He saw a fine new wardrobe appearing before his very eyes.

At first he was embarrassed by this sudden largess, but Eada took him aside saying, “You are the lord of Aelfleah, Josselin. All that belongs to this manor belongs to you. Your old clothing was in such a bad state of disrepair that mending it was even beyond our skills as needlewomen. It is necessary to make you new clothing. We would have done the same for my husband and Brand. Who else should do these things for you?”

“I like him better without clothing,” said Mairin saucily, and to her delight her husband blushed which made her laugh mischievously.

“Mother,” he said to Eada, “your daughter does not render me proper respect.”

“You should beat her then,” replied Eada seriously, but her bright blue eyes were laughing.

“Do you really want to spank me, my lord?” demanded Mairin tantalizingly, sliding her arms about her husband’s neck and looking up at him in a provocative manner. The tip of her tongue darted over her lips, moistening them.

He could feel the tightening in his loins as her teasing body and her suggestive words taunted him. “I think you need a good spanking to instill within you a proper reverence for my position as your lord and master,” he growled back, “and I am of a mind to administer it now!”

“Then you will have to catch me,
my lord!
” she mocked, pushing him so hard that he fell back. She made her escape running across the hall and up the stairs, shrieking with pretended horror as he pursued her, roaring with equally feigned outrage.

Behind them Eada, and Dagda who had also been seated by the fire honing knife blades, smiled at one another, their silent thoughts quite in accord with each other.

Mairin fled down the hallway to their bedchamber, but before she might bar the door behind her he was in the room.

“You’re a poor tactician, wife. Not being swift enough to outrun me, you should have given yourself at least one other route of escape.” His green-gold eyes glittered wickedly as he stalked her into a corner. Reaching out he easily captured her, drawing her from her useless sanctuary.

“You’re not
really
going to spank me?” she said.

“Oh, but I am,” he replied, backing over to the bed where, as he sat down, he pulled her into his lap and over his knees.

Mairin was unbelieving. Then she felt him yank her skirts up to bare her bottom. She cried out in a shocked tone, “Josselin!” as she felt a hard arm clamp across her back to prevent her struggles.

For a moment he viewed with satisfaction the tight little hillocks of her pure smooth flesh. Then his hand descended with a satisfying smack which left the clear pink imprint of his hand upon her heretofore unblemished skin. Mairin shrieked more with surprise than any hurt for the blow had been only noisy, and not severe. “I will have your respect, woman,” he said, his voice a parody of an outraged and offended husband. Then he laid two more spanks upon her squirming bottom, and turning her over demanded, “Are you chastened now, lady?”

“Oh, oh!” she cried, squeezing out two false tears from beneath tightly closed eyes. “Thou art a brute, my lord, to abuse me so!”

“What now? You would criticize your lord’s behavior? I think I must chastise you further, lady.” He stood, lifting her up into his arms as he did, and dumped her unceremoniously upon their bed. Then before she might escape him he flung himself upon her, pushing her long skirts before him, and burying his dark blond head between her thighs. That he immediately found the mark was instantly evident.

“Ohhhhh!” she squealed. “Ohhhhh, Josselin! Oh, how you punish me!”

His skilled tongue moved over her quivering pink flesh with unerring accuracy, and though he held her down tightly, his hands clasping her hips, she squirmed most deliciously beneath his marauding tongue. “Sweet,” he murmured against her body. “You are so sweet, my enchantress!”

“Ahhhhh, Josselin, my lord,” she whispered breathily, “I am well punished by you this day, but you will have to continue to discipline me in future quite regularly lest I forget my place again.”

“Shall I correct your wayward behavior like this?” he asked her, worrying the bud of her womanhood with a flickering tongue.

“Ahhhhh, ’tis cruel torture, my lord,” she cried, “but do not stop I beg of you for I would be all that you want me to be! Ahhhhh! Ohhhhh! Ohh!” And suddenly fulfilled, Mairin’s body relaxed as a wave of warm, honeyed pleasure swept over her.

With a growl of lust that came from deep within his throat, Josselin pulled himself up, and mounting her, plunged his aching manhood into her welcoming passage. Like one possessed, he drove himself into her over and over again . . . withdrawing and thrusting . . . withdrawing and thrusting until she raked his back bloody with her nails and they bruised each other’s mouths with hungry kisses. At last when neither of them could any longer sustain the pleasure, their juices poured forth and mingled wildly, leaving them weak with the force of their passion.

And after a long while it was Mairin who, recovering her senses, said in a shocked tone, “It is not two hours past the noon hour yet!”

Josselin laughed weakly. “Lady,” he said, “what has the hour to do with it?”

“Should we be making love now? In the daytime? It seems somehow indecent.”

“I know of no rule of either God or man that forbids a husband and wife from enjoying each other whenever it suits them.” He rolled off her, but quickly took her hand in his, and kissing it, held it.

“Do you remember your parents making love in the daytime?” she asked him.

“Before they were married, aye, but once they had wed, she became very proper. Not so proper that she didn’t have another baby. It seems so strange. My sister, Linette, is legitimate, and I am not. I hardly know her, for mother was not anxious that her precious daughter be exposed to her bastard.” There was a hint of bitterness in his voice.

Mairin squeezed his hand. “We will love all our children, Josselin. I never knew my half-sister, but Brand was all the world to me. I loved him dearly. I would have our children love each other too in that way.”

She was magnificent, this beautiful girl he had married! He had never known such kindness of heart in any woman, and he marveled at her sweetness. What had he done to merit such good fortune? he wondered. He wanted to shout aloud with his joy.

“I must write to my father,” he said, “and tell him of our marriage. It is past time I did so, but I have not a fine hand. Can Father Albert do it for me?”

“I will do it for you,” she answered him, standing up and smoothing her skirts down demurely. “If, my lord, you can compose yourself, and come back to the hall with me.”

“Very well, lady, I will come with you, but from now on I shall keep a strict accounting of your behavior, and each night we will settle matters between us.”

“And your behavior, my lord?” she asked, her mouth curving into a mischievous smile. “Shall I also keep a strict accounting?”

He nodded. “I am a fair man. You will have your chance to plead your case.” He stood up, and settled his own clothing so that it had a semblance of neatness. Then reaching out he swiftly swept her into his arms. “You’re a saucy wench, Mairin, my wife.”

“A saucy wench for a bold knave, my lord,” she answered him pertly, and pulling his head down kissed him hard.

“Not so quickly,” he laughed as she moved to pull away from him. Then he kissed her slowly, and sweetly, his mouth moving sensuously on hers, his tongue running softly along her lips.

Why,
she thought, why is it that when he kisses me I feel as if my veins are filled with honeyed wine? She managed to pull her head away from him. “Don’t,” she begged weakly.

“Why not?” he demanded. “I like kissing you.”

“I like it too,” she admitted, “but it makes me want you very much.”

He chuckled. “I find that extremely acceptable behavior in my wife.” He held her tightly against him, his hands rubbing up and down her back in a suggestive manner.

“We shall never get anything else done if all we do is . . . is . . .”

“Fuck,” he supplied cheerfully, and then he laughed. “The word may be Anglo-Saxon, Mairin, but I know it. It means
to plant,
and that is just what I want to do with you. Plant my seed in you deep and sure, and see you ripen with child.” The hooded eyes blazed down at her with passionate intensity. “I don’t think I shall ever get enough of you, enchantress mine.”

“Nor I of you, my lord!” she whispered. “Do you know how very much I crave you? I wonder if I should not be ashamed of such a fierce desire.” Reaching up she touched his cheek softly, and Josselin shuddered with his feelings.

Then he loosed her, and shaking himself said, “You are right, Mairin. We shall never get anything done if we do not leave this room.” Without another word he took her by the hand and they descended back down into the hall where Eada sat still placidly sewing, and Dagda yet honed on several knife blades.

Mairin picked up the tunic she had been working on, and began once again to add embroidery to the neckline. Josselin returned to the high board where he studied the manor books. Every once in a while, however, their eyes would meet, for neither could help but look at the other. Their ardor excited and thrilled them and they felt they could not get enough of one another.

When the evening meal was served, they ate automatically, tasting little, anxious for the time when they might once more leave the hall and escape to the private world of their bedchamber. The letter to Raoul de Rohan was momentarily forgotten. Eada and Dagda cast amused looks at each other. Finally when Mairin and Josselin, with much yawning and complaint of fatigue, had left the hall, Eada said, “I think, Dagda, that we may look for an heir to Aelfleah by Michaelmas. I confess that I long to hold my grandchild in my arms!”

The Irishman rumbled with humor, but there was a touch of nostalgia in his voice. “She is like Maire Tir Connell if she but knew it. My princess was as hungry with her passion for Ciaran St. Ronan as Mairin is for her husband.”

“Pray that that passion does not result in the same end,” fretted Eada.

“No,” said Dagda. “My princess was always delicate in her health. Mairin has always been strong, and she is broader across her hips than the princess was. Mairin has her natural mother’s face, my lady Eada, but she is more like her father in build. There’s a look to her. She was meant to breed up babies, and she wants to have them. My princess was joyful to be bearing Baron St. Ronan’s child, but she was also secretly fearful. Such fears can take a toll on a woman. Mairin is not that way. Maire Tir Connell was a fairychild, delicate and elusive. Her daughter is made of sterner stuff. Have no fears for her safety, my lady Eada. She will not only survive whatever life offers her, she will thrive.”

T
he winter had seemed long, but now suddenly the winds were blowing from the south. The snows upon the ground began to turn to mush, the drifts pitting first, then melting down into nothing more than icy puddles of dirty water. The earth began to thaw and warm. Everywhere there was mud. Soft and oozing in the sunshine, freezing again in the dark of night. The tips of the tree branches, tight dark nubbins throughout the winter, now began to grow lighter and burgeon with newly revived life. In a meadow by the river the lambs, born so improvidently during the harshest part of winter, gamboled within sight of their mothers, scampering and bouncing with each other amid the faint new green of the longer days.

Early each morning as the sun began to rise, and again each afternoon when the chill of evening began to creep into the air, Master Gilleet would climb up the western hills to the castle site. He would push his staff into the ground to check the gradual retreat of the frost from the bosom of Mother Earth. Already in these final days of the late winter the serfs belonging to Aelfleah had begun to build the barracks that would house those coming to erect the castle. It was still too early to till the fields and plant.

One week Dagda and Master Gilleet went off to Hereford, to Worcester, and finally to Gloucester seeking laborers, diggers, and carpenters. They returned successful each time. Aelfleah’s population doubled, and then tripled as the barracks filled with workers. The stonemasons had already arrived from Normandy. A blacksmith’s forge was constructed on the site for Osweald, the manor smith, so that he would not have to travel back and forth with his work between his own smithy and the castle site.