The Maiden Bride (8 page)

Christ, she'd kissed him. Just like that. Felled his resolve with the single pressing of her lips against his heated skin.

That close to his mouth—a slight turn of his head and he would have been lost for days in the scent of her, lost for eternity in the fires that would come later.

Bloody hell. That's just what he needed, a wife who touched and embraced at every turn.

Thank you, Nicholas. Good night, Nicholas.
He scrubbed at the brand she'd left, but that only warmed his hand, spreading heat down his arm into his chest to scatter through his loins like torch fire,
making
him long for her in the fragrance she'd left in the cool air.

He prowled the gatehouse for a time, wanting to follow her, wanting to run for his life. He would stay on his guard at all times. Not only against her outlaws and her lunacy, but against her random embraces.

Belling the damned gatehouse had served him nicely; he would override all her decisions
with stealth.

He had no sooner folded himself into the torturous chair again when the bells in the rafters began to ring: a cloud of annoying jingles that sent him caroming down the gatehouse stairs to the gate, where the taut rope continued the clamoring.

"Wait just a bloody moment!" Damned impatient outlaws. He had a mind to toss them out on their backsides.

Enterprising, Nicholas.

Aye, madam, but you'll never know about the derelict ones that I got to first.

It wasn't until he was throwing open the postern door that he realized it wasn't barred or latched, though he'd left it that way not an hour past.

Damnation, that could only mean this was Eleanor. "My God, woman. Are you mad?"

"Your
welcome
bells work perfectly, Master Nicholas. I could hear them from here."

She was grinning at him from the other side of the doorway, clearly proud of something. Of him or herself or the bright moon that shone down across her shoulders and the broken-down village beyond, God only knew.

"Very clever indeed."

"You doubted me?" He leaned hard on the open hinge, blocking her way, thinking how
easy it would be to close the door against her.
To start the day again.

"Only to see it for myself, sir." She touched the middle of his chest and stepped through the opening. The hem of her night shift snagged on the tall sill, pulling her off-balance enough to make her grab hold of his belt and then his arm.

"Have a care, madam." He caught her waist, then stooped and tugged her gown free, only to catch the scent of her bath again and the shape of her hip as he stood up slowly, resisting the urge to lift the linen hem and run his hand, his mouth, along her bewitching calves, the backs of her knees, her thighs, and over her softly rounded bottom.

She's your wife after all, Bayard. Who would stop you? Or blame you for it?
The devil's voice,
or God's—a luscious temptation, nonetheless
enticing for its source.

He wanted another kiss from her as he held her—wanted far more than that, more than his fingers threading through her hair as they were doing now, or her cheek fitting so perfectly, so persuasively into the curve of his hand.

"Do you like sugared plums, Nicholas?" She let go of his arm and pulled a small bag from
her sleeve, capturing
his wrist as she put the bag into his palm.

Sugared plums—his weakness. Deeply red, overripe, and darkly sweet. How could she possibly have known? A wife's instinct to satisfy her husband, to tempt him to sample her as well? "I do, madam. Thank you."

"My pleasure. And good night again, sir. I shall pray tonight for a carpenter, and a mason, too. I hope that you do as well."

As it always was, his prayer would be for peace and salvation—both of which seemed more impossible than ever as he watched her leave the barbican with her bobbing lamp. Aye, and her lushly bobbing breasts.

He followed her, well out of her hearing, just to be sure she made it all the way to the keep, his heart rambling the passages ahead of her, wondering where she would sleep, wishing it could be in his arms.

Bloody hell. Barely half an evening with the woman and he was already making love to her fingers, making marvels of her casual kiss.

And imagining so much more.

Chapter 7

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E
leanor had dreamed through the night of a prowling, red-eyed gargoyle and awakened before dawn, thoroughly rested and eager to organize the day well ahead of her steward's prejudgments.

That would remain her creed in her dealings with him: to take firm control of the reins and never—

Dear God, I kissed him!
Out of habit, because she kissed all sorts of people, regularly. Pippa and Lisabet and Dickon, the abbess, Father Clyde and … well,
everyone
whom she cared for, respected.

Nicholas's carving had charmed her completely.
He
had charmed her. She'd meant only a simple kiss of appreciation, but she'd ignited flames and yearnings instead. She'd lingered like a thief, tasted the surprising black softness of his beard. His scent of bay and woodsmoke swept round her still.

But these were hardly the kind of thoughts she needed with a castle waiting to be rebuilt.

She shook Dickon awake at the portico door. Rubbing his eyes and yawning, he got to his feet.

"Dickon, what do you know of horses?"

"I've stolen more'n my share." She loved the bumptious slant of his grin, mostly because he wore it too rarely. And too quickly his face flamed beneath all those freckles, and wariness filled his eyes. "But I've given up stealing, ya know."

"I would never ever ask you to go raiding for me. But since we now have a horse, would you know one end of it well enough from the other to feed and saddle and shoe Figgey?"

That smile came again and stayed. "My lady, I know horses well enough to do all you ask, on a moonless night, at a dead gallop, with a legion of Edward's English bowmen on my arse. Why do you ask?"

She couldn't help her own smile. "I'd rather the king's men never again have reason to follow you so closely, Dickon. And I doubt Figgey could raise a trot, let alone a gallop. I'm asking because I want you to be the constable of Faulkhurst."

"Me, my lady?" His face grew unaccountably surly. "Why the bloody hell would you do a thing like that to me?"

"A thing like what?"

"To tempt me to sinning." He crossed his arms and ankles and leaned stubbornly against the arch jamb. "I
am
a highwayman, ya know."

"Were a highwayman."

"Aye. Were one—but sometimes I still get the itch to—" He shoved his fingers into his belt as though to trap them away from temptation.

"To jump out of the hedge and rob a passing merchant of everything, right down to his garters?"

Dickon's mouth hung open for a long moment, and then he nodded fiercely. "Exactly right, milady."

"And does this itch pass you by an instant later?"

"God be praised, it does."

"Then, love, it's only the prickly remains of a bad habit. The feeling will fade completely one day—like mine has for sugared ginger." A tiny falsehood, but only to gain the point that he had will enough to decide rightly and
to get on with his future. "You will be the very best constable."

He still looked stunned and afraid and unreasonably angry, with his sturdy arms fused to his chest. "What would a constable have to be doing?"

And there it was: opportunity. In its most divine splendor, offered to those who needed only to reach out and take it.

Just as she had offered throughout the towns and villages on her way to Faulkhurst. A rumor of opportunity whispered into a hungry ear. To an apprentice cobbler, a beleaguered smith, or a reformed highwayman.

Or a stubborn steward too, with a little coaxing.

"You'll
mind the gatehouse and the stables, take inventory of the armory, round up the carts and wagons that are scattered all over the bailey, make ready for—"

He snorted. "For your garrison of ghosts and gargoyles."

"Aye, Dickon!" Eleanor rounded roughly on the boy, her patience scattered, that ever-present fear whispering harshly of her folly, her conceit. "We'll make ready for whoever will fight on our side. For anyone with hope enough to start again. You'll stand with me, won't you, Dickon? I need you."

His clear eyes reddened and watered, but he steadied his chin. "You know that I will follow you into hell, my lady."

That made her smile and warmed her bones, made her take his hand, and say quietly, "We've already been there, Dickon, and stayed far too long. Now I'm ready for an ordinary view of earth. What about you?"

He made a broad swipe across his eyes with his ragged sleeve and snuffled back a sob. "Ah, yes, my lady."

Tears filled Eleanor's eyes as her freckled champion went down on one knee in front of her.

"Your staff of office, Master Dickon." An old ladle was the only thing near enough at hand for an instant naming. "And my abiding love."

Blushing far up into his hairline, as he always did at the slightest kindness, Dickon took the honor and the ladle with a gigantic smile and an all-the-way-to-the-ground bow.

"Did you just dub Dickon a knight, my lady?" Lisabet and Pippa had been watching in rapt silence from their pallets in front of the hearth, and now surrounded their new constable, Pippa holding fast to his neck, Lisabet absently twirling a hank of his hair.

"If I were queen, Lisabet, I'd grant Dickon a dozen knighthoods for his bravery. For now he'll have to settle for constable here at Faulkhurst."

"It'll do, my lady." Dickon stood amongst his fondly clinging admirers, squared his shoulders, and offered one of his
engaging
grins. "For now."

* * *

She found Hannah
in the kitchen, powdered to the elbows in flour and bread dough and looking happily frazzled, her grey hair caught up in a cap that was missing a tie on the right side.

"I've only enough for three more loaves after these two, my lady. After that—"

"You'll be baking in the kitchen with Faulkhurst grain tonight, Hannah. And tomorrow, in the bakehouse. I will find my husband's larder, store of grains, and winter fruit supply if I have to break down every door in the castle with my bare hands."

Meanwhile, Nicholas would start on the bakehouse.

She spent the next hour before breakfast forcing William's stubborn locks: picking some cleanly, whacking others when they wouldn't budge.

"Fie and damn you, Bayard, to a hell filled with insatiable lice and poxy harlots."

She cursed her way down the passages and up the tower steps, adding to the growing map in her head of a castle rich with possibilities and risk, retreating only when a corridor was blocked by a dangerous stone fall.

Her husband's obstacles stood guard over all manner of rooms, from vaulted chambers to dank undercrofts to small metal coffers. But each finally gave up its secret cache to her, opening to a startling discovery of one kind or another, from echoingly empty to absolutely captivating.

"How do you fare down here, my lady?" Hannah found her just as she broke into a well-stocked spinning room.

"It's like finding treasure, isn't it, Hannah?"

"Oh, yes, my lady."

They ogled and speculated as though they had been let loose at a mile-long market faire, with a bottomless purse and all the time in the world. Restraint was difficult, but Eleanor's plan was to open every door and save the exploration and cataloging for later in the week.

Food stores were the most critical, and she offered a grateful prayer when she finally found the larder: long and low, cluttered to its square, squat vaultings with a mottled mix of furniture and chests, barrels and casks, and odd things hanging from the ceiling.

"Dried peas, my lady," Hannah called.

"And persimmons, Hannah! And walnuts, combs of honey, chests of barley and wheat-berries." And crossbeams hung thickly with smoked fish and beef, and shelves of green-rimed cheeses. "And a spice chest for you,
Hannah."
A flurry of exotic scents wreathed the tall cabinet, even before Eleanor had its door unlocked and one of its small drawers pulled out to show the woman.

"I've never seen such a thing." Hannah stuck her nose into the drawer and sniffed so hard she came up sneezing fiercely, nearly dislodging the new bright green-linen cap Eleanor had found for her in a small wardrobe. "What is …
is …
it?" Another, bigger sneeze made Eleanor laugh.

She sniffed the airy yellow powder lightly and sighed in pure pleasure, then recited from memory, "Roasted capon stuffed with bread crumbs and ground almonds and currants and spiced with saffron."

"This is saffron, is it? Oh, my aching bunions." The woman looked horrified and clutched the drawer to her thin bosom. "God's dusted gold, and I just sneezed a handful of it all over my apron."

"It's all right, Hannah."

"Saffron's so dear that I never smelled it before, or tasted it." She replaced the drawer with
a trembling hand and pulled out another, sniffed at it, and shook her head. "And this, my lady? It's got the sharp pinch of ginger to it."

"Zedoary. I know the scents and tastes well, Hannah, but I haven't the least idea what to do with them in the kitchen."

"Though I'm a baker by trade, my lady, I'd like to offer
my
hand at the kettle, too." Hannah smiled
hesitantly.

"Then a cook you will be."

They stacked three boxes of kitchen things and carried them up the stairs and into the pantry. "If you don't mind me asking, my lady, what happened to your husband? Was he taken in the pestilence?"

Aye, taken straight to hell by the devil himself.
Or so she had imagined the scene—with a
great deal of cursing and cowering and gnashing
of teeth. "Aye, he was, Hannah."

Hannah clicked her tongue in unwarranted sympathy.
Don't waste your prayers on him, Hannah. Please.

"I am sorry for your loss, my dear." Hannah rubbed Eleanor's back in just the right place to make her sigh and detest her husband that much more. "Such a ferociously wicked time, it was."

"Aye." William Bayard hadn't been the cause, but he'd surely been a symptom, his phantom shape always at the head of her nightmares—the fifth Horseman, a demon of his own making, always chasing her.

"My Fergus and I …
we lost every one of our children, milady. The grandchildren, too."

Eleanor's heart collapsed. Tears crowded her throat, brimmed her eyes, and fell swiftly. "Oh, Hannah, no. How awful."

"A dozen they had been, my babies. All grown-up and healthy to a fault, every one of them. Then all of them lost in the course of ten days. Such horrible anguish they suffered, one after the other. And me not being able to do a blessed thing to help, don't you know?"

"I do know, Hannah."
So well, so deeply, that I'm too much a coward to let myself remember too thoroughly.

So she dodged the horrifying memories again—of a malady so accursed and anguishing it had sent good fathers and mothers running from their dying children, priests from their flocks, the starving into the homes of the dead with the dogs.

Sent her into the places of the dying, where she did her best to give comfort and peace, yet failed so often.

Save me, my lady.
But of course, she couldn't. No one could.

And so she shoved aside these horrifying, paralyzing memories and all the others that pursued her when she wasn't planning or writing or humming—exchanged them for better, safer ones. She slipped into Hannah's sagging arms and held tightly to her as they clung and rocked each other in the kitchen pantry.

"As unrighteous as it seems, my lady, I prayed that God would take them quick."

"As I did, too." Hundreds of times. "There's no divine penance to be found in that kind of torment." There couldn't be.

"They're all with God now, don't you think? Together and feasting on candied ginger, like they never had in this world." Hannah laughed sharply and fanned at her reddened eyes. "And me, my lady, as old and useless as I am, was left behind instead of my little Timothy. For what reason, I don't suppose I'll ever know."