The Wagered Wench (14 page)

“Such behavior is permitted as long as it’s you?”

He turned his head and watched her nibble a crust of pastry. “Of course.” Again she almost captured that elusive smile. “What was that tunnel you took me through. Who made it there?”

She shrugged. “No one knows. Ancient people. You see, Coeur-du-Loup, I know this place better than you do. I warned you.”

He looked at her, his eyes thoughtful. “No one else knows of it? No one else has followed you into it before?”

She shook her head. He meant Stryker again, of course.

“I am lucky then,” he murmured, “that no one has bothered following you further into that cave before. Others give up on the chase. I do not.”

“So I see.”

“Unlike some men, I am not afraid of the dark, or the unknown.”

“Yes.” She rolled her eyes. “You made your point. As you told me already, you fight over anything, even an old pair of boots.”

His brows lifted; his eyes twinkled. “I never said they were old.”

She shrugged.

“Perhaps this is why you never accepted Bloodaxe,” he said, dark eyes searching her face. “He gave up too easily.”

Barely had he finished his sentence than her father pulled on the Norman’s sleeve for his attention and so he forgot her again. But it was the most he had conversed with her at one time, she realized.

She looked at his large fingers clasped around his goblet, squared fingernails clean today. Sun-browning was slowly filling in the white gap on his finger where he’d once worn that ring. He smelled good, she thought, but not of anything she could identify. Perhaps it was just his scent. Elsinora suffered an odd little twist of gladness in her heart. She dismissed it as the first sign of hiccups.

Chapter Eleven

She was in the cookhouse when another stranger arrived in Lyndower. This one was a woman. She came to the door in a moth-eaten cloak, her small, round, pale face peering hopefully as she inquired if there was any work to be had.

Her name was Aelin and she declared herself willing and able, in need of shelter and food. Elsinora, always having a kind heart for strays, invited her to stay.

It was a decision she would soon regret.

Aelin was not the shy, timid creature she’d first appeared, and it was not long before she felt at home enough to flirt with every man in sight. Including and especially Dominic Coeur-du-Loup. The woman took one look at the Norman and made up her mind to seduce him. Elsinora saw it plainly, for Aelin was too simple to hide her motives, and it was evident she did not consider the fact that he was married as any sort of deterrent.

One day Elsinora heard the woman declare it selfish to keep a man to oneself, particularly when he was young and virile. And other women had no man to warm their beds on a permanent basis. She ceased talking, of course, as soon as the others nudged her, warning her of Elsinora’s presence behind her—as if she hadn’t known. There was a smug expression on her plump pink face and that did not end when her chatter did.

Furious, Elsinora watched the newcomer bat her lashes and smile at her husband. Dominic pretended not to notice but she was certain he must see the other woman’s unsubtle attempts to gain his attention. It shouldn’t matter to her, she told herself constantly. She knew what men were and he was no different to any other, no matter what he said about mating for life. His eye wandered. She knew it did.

Watching as he sharpened knives at the whetstone one sunny afternoon, she asked him if he thought Aelin was pretty.

“Which one is Aelin?” he muttered, eyes on the work at hand.

She studied his face.
Good answer
, she thought, not in the least fooled. “The one who makes sure to walk by you every night at dinner at least thrice,” she replied in a tight voice, “in a gown too small across the bosom.”

Dominic frowned. “Do
you
think her…pretty?”

“Yes,” she replied sullen. “I suppose so. Men like that sort of thing, don’t they?”

“Yes,” he answered finally.

She pouted. Although she wanted to stop herself, she couldn’t. He had, after all, told her once that this marriage was no more convenient for him than it was for her. “Is she fair of face? Fairer than me?”

At last the wheel of stone halted. He held his blade up to examine the sharp edge. Then his gaze focused on hers. “No,” he said.

Yet again he tempted her to laugh, but she swallowed it and kept on walking to save her pride. Perhaps her hips swayed a little more than usual now that she knew he was watching her backside as she walked away. She thought of that day in the cave when both men had shot their seed onto her skin and she’d felt it drip down her arse and the folds of her pussy. Immediately the yearning began its steady grinding deep inside. She had enjoyed the attention from two men, because she was a wicked wench. But they’d enjoyed it too. Where was the harm in that?

* * * *

Her father’s health had rallied at the beginning of summer, but as the heat lingered and the days lengthened, he wearied again, spending most of the time in his private chamber. Occasionally he ventured out on her arm to look at the crops growing tall, but that was as far as he went. He no longer had patience for the petty squabbles of villagers and left that to Dominic, relying on the Norman more and more. When anyone came directly to him with a problem he referred them to his son-in-law, readying for the moment when he could step down from the post he’d held more than forty years.

The sunlight was mellow, slightly frayed as evening closed in. The air was sweet, fragrant, buzzing with drowsy, drunken insects, humming with the last birdsong of the day. Daisies at her feet already curled their pink-edged petals, preparing for sleep. “What does it matter what I think?” she murmured, kicking the grass. “Count Robert will make the decision, not me. If he has not forgotten us again already.”

“But you do not want Bloodaxe for a husband.”

“Again, father, what does it matter what I want? It never did before.”

Gudderth stopped walking and held her arm tightly. “You must know your own mind, Elsie, because Count Robert might well ask you where your preference lies. For your future happiness, chose wisely.” He looked sad suddenly. “If only you were born a boy. There is a fire in you, Elsie. Don’t let them put it out.”

Up on the far hill, her husband still worked with the builders. He spent most of his day there now. It would be years before his castle was complete, but the foundations were dug, plans laid out, stones began to pile up, brought from a quarry miles away. Soon the landscape she’d looked at all her life would begin to change. Normans put their mark on things.

“I shall hope for tidings of a grandson soon,” said her father as they walked on.

She knew the entire manor waited to see her belly sprout with her husband’s child, but her flux still came once a month, as it had since she was fifteen. Perhaps she would have no child. What then? If she failed to provide sons she would be cast aside by whoever became the next master of Lyndower and they would search elsewhere for a woman more fertile.

She was no use, so she was always told, for anything but providing babes. Would she fail at that, just as she failed at everything she tried?

“Don’t keep me waiting too long,” Gudderth added genially, patting his daughter’s arm as they walked along under the pear trees. “I might not last many more months.”

“Why do you say such things, papa?”

“I am not afraid, girl. We must all meet our maker in time and now at least I know I have provided for you before I go to Valhalla. All I ask is that you remember my wish for a proper send off—in the old style of our ancestors.”

He always insisted he would go to Valhalla, whether he died in battle or in peace. To ensure it, he wanted Elsinora to place his sword into his hands before he took his last breath. Since she was ten he’d made her promise to send his spirit off in the right direction. He had not trusted his Christian wife to do so, because she believed only in heaven and hell. She had no time for his traditions and beliefs—no time for anyone’s ideas but her own.

“I won’t forget,” Elsinora assured him. “But don’t talk of that.”

It was, however, much on his mind it seemed. “I see spirits in the air all around me now, Elsie. Spirits of those who came before. They wait for me and they won’t wait much longer.”

Spirits indeed. Better start watering down his ale again, she mused.

* * * *

Stryker came to find her while she worked in the fields beside the other laborers, sweating to bring the harvest in before the weather changed. His mood softened this time, apparently trying another angle to win her away from her husband.

“You know I have always loved you, Elsie, since first I saw you wandering by that stream. I was a boy of eighteen then and ten years have—”

“I was nine,” she exclaimed, half-laughing. “How could you have loved me then? I was a child.”

“Yet you took the air from my lungs, Elsie. Never had I seen such a beautiful creature. Never have I seen one since more beautiful than you. I knew I’d claim you one day.”

“You liked the look of me, Stryker, because my brother had just died and you wanted my father’s lands.” She laughed, reminding him, “I was just a chubby-faced child with scabby knees from always falling over.” Usually, by now they would be quarreling again, but today it was different. He tried hard to listen when she spoke, to treat her words as if they mattered. Never before had he taken such trouble. It amused her, warmed her heart toward the big, foolish oaf. Mayhap the arrival of Dominic Coeur-du-Loup was good for more than the obvious reasons, she thought, laughing inwardly.

Abruptly, Stryker clasped her hand and raised it to his lips. His eyes glistened, his cheeks flushed. There amid the swaying rows of wheat, the scythe dropped to the ground by her feet, he kissed her hand and swore his love for her. “I want you, Elsie,” he whispered, choked with too much emotion, it seemed.

“You want Lyndower.”

“Yes. But you too.”

Then why did you leave
, she wanted to shout at him.
Why did you go away so long to sulk? Why did you never chase after me into the cave when I ran from you?

“When your father is dead, the Norman will cast you aside,” he said. “He too wants this manor. Like any other Norman warrior he came for the land and cared naught for what he must do to conquer it. He tricked your father easily enough, but he cannot pull the fleece over my eyes.”

Why
, she wondered,
because you and he are much the same, alike in many ways?

“That woman Aelin was once his lover you know,” he added, his voice low. “She has boasted of it all over Lyndower and beyond. He probably sent for her so he can move her into his bed as soon as he can be rid of you—once your father is no longer here to stop him.”

This was no more than she’d already suspected, but it bit into her heart, splintered her nerves like an axe through a log of dry wood.

“I would never treat you thus, Elsie.” He raised her hand and pressed it to his chest. “I love you. Let me prove it to you. Come to my bed and then you’ll see what you’re missing.”

Ah, he had to spoil it, didn’t he?

Was that all men thought about? Apparently yes—while it stood in front of them, at least.

“Your heart is on the left, Stryker,” she sighed, pulling her hand away from the right side of his chest, where he’d mistakenly held it as he swore his undying devotion. “If that is the side of you that hurts, you ate too much and you have wind.” Shaking her head, she picked up her scythe and moved on with her work.

But he’d given her much to think about. Her place was slipping through her hands. Life was changing. If she left everything up to Count Robert, who knew when the decision would be made. Looking over her shoulder she watched Stryker walking away, back to his horse. He was a good looking man, strong and generally well-meaning—if somewhat hot-tempered, impolite and uncivilized. Perhaps he just needed a good woman to change him for the better.