Queen of Lost Stars (Dragonblade Series/House of St. Hever) (14 page)

Seven days later

A
stride a big
dappled charger, a very expensive and hairy beast that had come all the way from Saxony, Nicholas rode into the bailey of Lavister Crag Castle with the air of an arriving hero. He was exactly where he wanted to be, thrilled that Edward had moved him out of hellish Anchorsholme Castle, and thrilled that he was finally on the Marches where the action was. His victory at Beeston had only whetted his appetite more for a border command and he’d waited with great anticipation for Edward’s decision to his request to be moved to Lavister. With l’Ebreux dead and St. Hèver injured, Edward had agreed to the transfer and Nicholas had made all due haste to his new post.

Finally, he had arrived.

But there were drawbacks to the Lavister appointment. The castle wasn’t nearly as large as Anchorsholme Castle and there weren’t nearly as many women. In fact, there were none at all that he could see, so he was a bit disgusted at the fact that it was a true military installation with only smelly men about. Still, it was better than where he’d been so he accepted the fact that there were no women other than, he was sure, servants or whores. He would have to live with it.

As he reined his steed over near the stone-and-wood built stables, a skinny young groom came out to collect his mount. Nicholas dismounted into the mixture of mud and straw that comprised the stable yard, collecting his saddlebags as his gaze moved about the fortress. A great hall with a steeply pitched roof, two stone bunkhouses, a squat-like keep, and not much else, but the place had massive walls around it. Not that it would matter if the Welsh took it into their minds to try and overrun the place, but it seemed fairly well fortified. He grinned, thinking on the action he would see here. He was looking forward to the battles.

As Nicholas stood there and inspected the walls as his horse was led away, Thomas saw him from the keep entry. He had seen the man ride in and was coming forth to greet him, but he paused before doing so, watching Nicholas as he surveyed Lavister as a king would survey his kingdom. There was something haughty in Nicholas’ manner as he drew in the walls and watched the men move about. Although Thomas had told Kaspian that he wasn’t opposed to Nicholas being there, the truth was that he wasn’t much looking forward to it. He didn’t particularly like the man. As he took a deep breath and prepared to go forth, Mavia came up behind him.

“Who is that?” she asked.

Thomas turned to his curious wife. “That,” he said, “is Sir Nicholas de Dalyn. He will be with us for a time while Kaspian heals. Edward has sent him to reinforce our ranks with Cairn’s death and Kaspian’s injury.”

Mavia squinted at the knight in the stable yard; her eyes weren’t very good and it was difficult for her to see at a distance.

“Did you know he would come today?” she asked.

Thomas shook his head. “I knew he was coming but I did not know when.”

“Who is that?”

Same question, different voice. Both Thomas and Mavia turned to see Madelayne standing in the keep entry, looking at Nicholas near the stables. She had an apron over her surcoat and she was wiping her hands on it, having come from helping the cook prepare the evening meal. Lavister’s keep had two ground floor chambers, a large one and then a very small one, like a guard’s room, and Madelayne had been in the larger room cutting up pears to be sauced. Hearing the commotion at the entry had brought her out.

“Sir Nicholas de Dalyn,” Thomas said again for Madelayne’s benefit. “He is a new knight to be stationed at Lavister while Kaspian is injured. I must go and greet him now.”

Madelayne merely shrugged and turned back for the keep, returning to her duties, but Mavia put her hand on her husband’s arm. “I will go with you,” she said. “Where would you have him housed?”

Thomas started to walk with his wife beside him. “In the gatehouse,” he said. “He can have the chamber opposite Ewan and Reece’s chamber.”

He was pointing to Lavister’s gatehouse, which was big and block-like, with an enormous portcullis slicing through it. There were two guard rooms on the bottom and then two additional rooms on the second level where the wall walk was. The knights usually slept in those second floor rooms although one of them was empty and used for storage. Mavia thought on the room her husband was referring to, the storage room, and scratched her head.

“That chamber?” she said. “It is a mess, Thomas. You should have told me sooner that Sir Nicholas was coming so I could have had it prepared for him.”

Thomas waved her off. “You can still have it prepared for him,” he grumbled. “He does not need anything fancy, simply a room with a bed.”

Mavia eyed her husband with some disapproval as they came upon Nicholas, who was still looking up at the parapets. Thomas called out to the man.

“De Dalyn,” he said loudly. “Welcome to Lavister.”

Nicholas turned around to see Thomas and a blonde woman approach. He forced a smile at Thomas but his attention was really on the woman, who was average in height with a somewhat attractive face.

“Thank you,” he said to Thomas, his gaze inevitably moving to the lady at Thomas’ side. “Greetings, my lady.”

Thomas indicated Mavia. “My wife, Lady Mavia,” he said. “She is chatelaine and will be of assistance to you.”

Mavia dipped into a polite curtsy for the handsome blonde knight. “Welcome to Lavister Crag Castle, my lord,” she said. “My husband tells me that you are to stay with us for a while.”

Nicholas smiled at the woman, turning on the charm. He always did when women were around. “Permanently, I hope,” he said. “I cannot tell you how happy I am to be away from my previous post. A terrible place with terrible weather, year ’round. And full of Irish!”

Mavia smiled at the man with the bright personality. “God’s Bones,” she exclaimed softly. “Were you in Ireland?”

Nicholas laughed softly. “Indeed not, my lady,” he said, pushing between Thomas and Mavia and extending his elbow to the woman. “I was at a terrible place called Anchorsholme Castle north of Liverpool. An awful place with Irish conscripts, as the Lord of Anchorsholme has lands in Ireland and he ships them over to serve him. But Lavister seems quite impressive, so would you be good enough to show me around?”

Mavia was already under his charming spell. “It would be my pleasure, my lord.”

She led him away and began to give him the grand tour as Thomas tagged along behind, shaking his head at his giddy wife. She was such a silly woman, easily flattered by a smooth-talking man. She was a foolish woman in general, he’d always thought, but it wasn’t of great concern to him. Neither was Nicholas. Leaving his wife in charge of Nicholas, he headed to the gatehouse to tell a few soldiers to clean out the second floor storage room.

After his business in the gatehouse, he headed back to Lavister’s keep, noting that Mavia and Nicholas were over by the bunkhouses now. But he didn’t give them a thought as he entered the keep to find Madelayne sitting at the scrubbed feasting table in the large, ground floor room with bowls of fruit around her. This room always smelled heavily of damp earth for some reason, as it did now. When he entered the room, Madelayne looked up from her knife as she sliced pears.

“Where is the new knight?” she asked.

Thomas gestured in the general direction of the bunkhouses. “My wife has him in-hand, showing him Lavister,” he said. “I am having the second floor storage room in the gatehouse cleaned out for him. Can you have the servants take a bed to the room for him?”

“Indeed I will,” she agreed.

Thomas nodded. “My thanks,” he said. “Where is Kaspian?”

The mere mention of Kaspian’s name brought a smile to Madelayne’s lips, one that she quickly suppressed. “Dolwyd permitted him to walk today,” she said. “The last I saw, they were over near the stables. I am surprised you did not see him when you were out in the bailey.”

Thomas saw the flash of a grin on Madelayne and knew it was for Kaspian. He wasn’t surprised. In fact, they all knew that there was something in the air between the pair although no one would dare speak of it for fear of upsetting Kaspian, who tried very hard to pretend that he held nothing but polite esteem for Lady l’Ebreux.

But it was clear that there was more to it. At Cairn’s burial in Shrewsbury nearly a week before, Kaspian had been unable to attend and had been very concerned for the party taking Cairn’s body into the town. He had sent three hundred men as an escort, which was excessive, but with the Welsh unstable, he had insisted on the massive escort. Moreover, he had explained, Cairn deserved such an escort and so did Lady l’Ebreux. He’d been particularly clear about protecting the lady and that was when Thomas began to suspect that his stone-faced commander was feeling more than simply gratitude towards the lady who had virtually saved his life. That “something more” had been clear in everything about him.

So the party from Lavister had proceeded into town with their enormous escort, frightening the villagers half to death, thinking they were being overrun by soldiers, and continued on to the cathedral where mass was said for Cairn and his lost son, and the two of them were interred together in the church yard next to the baby that was born prematurely the year of Cairn and Madelayne’s marriage. It had been a solemn but rather bittersweet ceremony in that the father was now protecting his children in death as he was unable to protect them in life.

Madelayne had wept at the mass, of course, but no one knew that she was weeping for her children far more than for her lost husband. She was sorrowful for Cairn’s death, of course, but it wasn’t as if she had lost the love of her life. She’d lost a man who had been very kind and attentive to her, and she would miss the man she was fond of. She had enough guilt over her growing feelings for Kaspian versus the fact that she needed to mourn for Cairn, so she wept quietly for him, thanking him for watching over their sons in death. Still, no one knew the true reasons behind her tears and no one ever would.

But Thomas suspected what lay in her heart when, upon their return to Lavister, she went into Kaspian’s chamber and didn’t come out until the next morning. He thought it in rather bad taste, in fact, that Cairn’s widow was showing such attention to Kaspian on the day she buried her husband, but it wasn’t her fault. The truth was that Dolwyd had forced her into the unsavory task of tending Kaspian with his distasteful use of her breasts. It was no wonder the woman was confused in her weakened mental state, and if her heart was compromised because if it, she wasn’t to blame. Thomas also suspected that was the reason she had run away, trying to get free of Dolwyd and Kaspian’s clutches, but they had brought her back and enslaved her once again even though Kaspian was starting to eat regular foods again.

It was all very confusing, this odd triangle of affections between Cairn and Madelayne and Kaspian, but it truthfully wasn’t any of Thomas’ business. What Kaspian did with Cairn’s widow was his own affair. But whatever it was, shockingly, she seemed to be liking it.

“I did not see them in the stable yard,” he replied belatedly to her statement. “I will go and look again. Meanwhile, please have the bed taken to the gatehouse.”

Madelayne sliced through another pear. “I will,” she said. “The evening meal will be in about an hour. If you see Dolwyd and Kaspian, please tell them.”

“I shall.”

Thomas wandered out of the chamber, leaving Madelayne to her pears. She had almost the entire bowl cut and peeled, as the old cook would make a compote out of them with currants and cinnamon, cloves and honey. She didn’t mind doing labor like this; she’d been doing it her entire life so cutting pears wasn’t troubling to her. Moreover, Lavister mostly had male servants except for the one old lady who did the washing, and male servants weren’t fond of kitchen work. Even the cook was male, a big man with only one eye who had been at Lavister for years. He was Welsh and had been helpful in the past when the harsh Welsh language needed to be translated. Cairn hadn’t spoken Welsh and Kaspian’s knowledge of it was limited, so Ioin the cook was often called upon for his translating services.

Even now, the fat man lumbered into the keep with his heavy leather apron, dragging a swollen gout foot behind him, looking for the pears he was soon to boil. Madelayne turned over nearly everything she had, still working on the last few, but the cook took a big bowl of peeled and cut fruit. As Ioin shuffled away, Madelayne continued cutting until she heard voices at the entry. Looking up, she could see Kaspian and Dolwyd enter the keep.

Madelayne’s heart leapt at the sight of him; ever since that precious moment seven days ago when he’d kissed her so passionately, it was as if their relationship had transformed into something else, something deeper and warmer. All guilt for Cairn aside, whatever she was feeling for Kaspian was beginning to overwhelm her to the point where she was eager to see the man, any time and in any fashion. He still nursed against her at night, as Dolwyd was still convinced that the organic nourishment was helping Kaspian heal, and Madelayne was more than willing to continue doing her duty, which wasn’t so much a duty any longer as it was the thing she looked forward to the most. Kaspian would wrap his big arms around her and suckle her breasts tenderly until she was dry on both of them. More often than not, they fell asleep in that intimate and compromising position and she would awaken to him suckling her again.

God help her, she craved it.

But he never tried anything more than that with her, anything more suggestive, but the gleam in his eye had told her he very much wanted to. He showed remarkable restraint. But she was coming now to frequently climax as he suckled her and she knew he was aware of it because her breathing would come in rapid pants no matter how much she tried to suppress her reaction, and he would suckle harder as she tried to bite off her cries. What had been an embarrassing happenstance the first few times was now becoming a regular part of their time together, as odd as it seemed. And she knew for a fact that she didn’t imagine his rock-hard arousal against her leg, but he never tried to do anything about it. It made for a very strange situation between them but something that wasn’t unpleasant in the least. It was simply the way of things between them.