The Wagered Wench (4 page)

A jolt raced along her spine as if a splash of that fresh, clear stream water just hit her quinny again. Only this time it was warm. Gathering the box of jewelry to her chest, she glared hard at the scarred warrior in her father’s chair. “I would not give you
that
unless you were the last man in Cornweal.”

His dark brows raised in high arches. “That can be arranged. I don’t see any other real men around here to challenge me.”

Flustered, she realized her error and hastened to correct it. “
If
, is what I meant! Even
if
you were the last man…in the world.”

He resumed his meal, throwing another piece of bread into his mouth, his gaze lowered to the plate. His fingernails, she noted, were lined with dirt, his knuckles scarred. He wore a ring on his finger with a crest. Probably ripped from a corpse on some battlefield, she thought angrily. He was clearly a thief with no conscience. A scavenger, thriving from other folks’ misfortunes.

“Listen, Norman swine, you don’t want this place. It is remote and the land yields poorly. Why else do you think we have been left alone this long, unmolested by your countrymen? The people here will never welcome you. Surely there are other manors. Friendlier, richer, more fertile places that would suit you better.”

He said nothing.

She sank to her bench, the box of jewelry in her lap, her fingers fidgeting with the catch on the lid. “It is very dull here. Nothing new ever happens. No one new ever comes.” She sighed. “Except
you.”
When he remained silent she continued, “Count Robert cares so little about this place that he has forgotten us. If you stay here, you too will be forgotten. Don’t all men want to make their mark in the world and be noticed?”

He used his crust to mop up the remaining streaks of gravy on his plate and then chewed it slowly, not looking at her.

“The last vainglorious Norman knight who came here did not know enough to keep from eating poisonous mushrooms he found on the moor. This is a place of many dangers for those unfamiliar with its terrain. If you have not lived here all your life, you cannot know the pitfalls. Better you go back to what you know, before something bad happens to you.”

He yawned so wide she saw all his back teeth and the remnants of his supper disappearing down his gullet.

Elsinora shook her head at his ill manners. “There is no war here. The only battle we fight is with the land and you are no farmer. You know nothing but bloodthirsty sword-play. You are simple-headed, I see that. Of course, your Norman king wanted stupid recruits who know how to wield weapons and have no conscience. I doubt you can even read your own name.”

Now he pushed the chair back and swung his feet up, his boot heels falling to the table with a bang that shook the candles and empty platters. Clearly no one had ever told him it was bad luck to put shoes on a table.

Dominic slept that evening in the stables with the grooms. Gudderth’s steward, an elderly fellow named Alf, had offered him a pallet in the great hall, but he preferred the hayloft.

He lay on his back, thinking over this curious adventure upon which he’d embarked. He should have left that evening, once he saw the old fool safely to bed, but instead here he was contemplating the shrew daughter, thinking about staying just to help the bony wretch out.

Dominic had spent more than twenty years of his life traveling—first as a groom, then as squire to a knight, and finally as a soldier. He was quite content with his life. Getting by without drawing undue notice to himself, not seeking any great rewards, content to do the bull work and let others take credit. As for women, he’d been foolishly in love only once and that ended disastrously. He touched the scar on his cheek, remembering.

Since then he’d decided they were not meant to be a permanent fixture in his life. He was far better off with a few wenches scattered about the country, women he could visit once in a while and never have to see when they were in a bad mood. The minute they began questioning him he could be out the door and back in the saddle.

Elsinora, he knew the moment he met her, would be full of questions.

Why then did he even consider staying to help Gudderth? And her? Not that she’d see it that way, or ever thank him.

Lucky for her she was the Eaorl’s daughter, he mused grumpily, for if she was any other woman she would have had a ride in the ducking stool by now. Evidently she’d got away with her belligerent tongue for too long and way beyond the limits suffered for any other female. Her father must have spoiled her, because she was his only remaining child. Well, Dominic Coeur-du-Loup, did not argue with women. He simply stopped listening.

More disturbing to him than her attitude was the fact that he’d seen her in his mind only that morning. While he was swiving another woman.

It was her. He was certain of it, even though, in his imagination, she’d had her back to him. It was exactly as he’d seen—that long, harvest gold braid down her back, falling like an arrow, drawing attention to a rounded, ripe little bottom. Déjà vu some people called it, although Dominic believed in more practical reasoning. Was it possible he’d seen her somewhere before and his mind had tucked the image away for when he needed inspiration while between some other wench’s thighs?According to Gudderth, his daughter had never traveled far outside Lyndower, so it seemed unlikely he could have seen her previously. He’d never been further west than Marazion himself. Still, the idea lingered that he must have seen her before. Perhaps, he mused, his mind had tried to warn him of imminent collision.

He rolled onto his side, head propped up on one hand as he surveyed the star-spattered sky through the opening in the hayloft. Gudderth swore his daughter was a virgin, which seemed incredible to Dominic considering she’d been of marriageable age now for several years. Where he came from healthy girls were often married off at fourteen. Clearly other men had been scared away by her tongue and her scowls. But Dominic had fought many worse opponents. He was also accustomed to fine ladies drawing away from him in repulsion because they did not see beyond his scar.

In the beginning, as a young man first wounded, that scar was his bane. It caused him to lose forever a woman he’d loved—a woman who, so it turned out, did not care for him enough to overlook his scar, despite the fact that he earned it by protecting her from the cruel husband she claimed had beaten her with his belt. Dominic was wounded in a swordfight with her husband, but he managed to rescue the lady, only to have her run off into the arms of yet another man. One who was, apparently, also her lover. He’d thought her an angel trapped and she’d used him, led him on with subtle looks and whispered promises, just until he helped her get free of her husband. Then she had no more use for him. Especially when she saw that scar.

He glanced at the ring on his finger—the ring his old love once gave to him when she let him believe he had her heart.

Ah, what was the point of thinking about all that again? It was far behind him now. At thirty he was a much wiser man than he’d been at twenty.

Now that scar was a part of who he was, a badge of courage that brought Dominic Coeur-du-Loup respect from other men. In many ways he was glad his marked face kept women from nurturing romantic ideas about him. Love and all that nonsense was for men with pretty faces, he’d decided. Dominic preferred a good, serviceable fuck with no expectations beyond it, no canoodling.

Now, he must decide what to do about Elsinora—a wench who’d fallen into his lap by accident; a scrawny wench with much to say for herself and bitten-down fingernails.

He sighed heavily, rolling onto his back again, arms behind his head.

Elsinora Gudderthsdottir. How grandly she’d said her name, demanding his respect. Yet her face was naught but stone uncarved, unmarked. It was gilded prettily enough, but there was no story to be read in it, no lessons learned. She knew naught of life. Someone should teach her, correct that smug pride.

This wench would not give any man a safe ride around a paddock, he mused, thinking of her angry frown.

Fortunately for her, Dominic Coeur-du-Loup had a way with wild beasts and no fear of her claws getting through his hardened skin. He’d suffered heart’s wounds once before and he would not do so again, not with this pixie princess who thought herself too fine for him.

Chapter Four

The following morning in the cookhouse, Elsinora tried stirring rebellion against the Norman, but her father’s serfs stared at her in various states of irritability and offered no support for her cause or sympathy for her plight.

“You ought to take this opportunity for a husband,” said Bertha. “I don’t know why you complain. He’s well-equipped to service you. Indeed, if I was twenty years younger I’d be after that myself and you wouldn’t get a look in. But then I know what to appreciate in a man. It’s all wasted on you.” And she broke off to laugh in a raucous fashion. The other women joined her, giggling and looking at one another.

“Why the hilarity?” Elsinora demanded, hands on her waist.

“We were out with the laundry, early today, and we saw him bathing in the stream,” one of the women gushed.

She was horrified. He’d been in
her
stream already? How dare he?

“Without clothes,” another young woman clarified unnecessarily, “and my sweet Saint Geraint, I’ve never seen such…” she gestured with her hands far apart and the other women, including Bertha exploded in merry, red-faced laughter.

Alf, her father’s steward, stepped closer and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Softly he suggested she might want to remember that no other healthy young man was coming to Lyndower to marry her. It was as if she would soon be past ripe and left on the ground like a maggot-infested, wind-fallen apple. “Think of your father, Elsinora.”

“As much as he thinks of me?” she exclaimed. Her father still had not yet raised his head today and she’d been up for hours. Having caused all this fuss he now hid under a fleece, blocking out daylight, reality, and the consequences of his drunken actions.

“This particular cat can’t sit washing her whiskers forever,” Bertha interrupted. “That won’t produce any kittens. She needs a wild tomcat to give her a good seeing to.”

Again the women broke into a riotous noise of chuckles, silenced only marginally by the darkest scowl she could conjure. No one gave her any respect, she thought angrily. The moment her father’s back was turned they regarded her as a naughty child in need of a spanking. They would never dare treat her so if she was a man. Unfortunately, losing her mother at a young age and with her father so distracted, she’d spent much of her youth running about like a stray, helping around the manor with all the other women, often falling under Bertha’s management. Consequently, it was hard for many of her father’s serfs to see her as a lady now. They treated her as one of their own and mocked her as they would any other maid they caught acting superior.

“Will no one in this damned place help me save it?” she cried. “This Norman must be routed or he will bring all his laws here and Lyndower will no longer be ours.”

“Accept your lot,” said Bertha with a shrug of her round shoulders, “as other women must. He may not be to your high taste, but he will suit others.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, my lady Elsinora, that he will have his pick and may not need you at all for a wife. Then we’ll all have a new mistress and so will you.”

She was speechless, for one of the few times in her life.

“The Normans are here to stay,” said Alric the shepherd, who rarely spoke and had come into the cookhouse to warm his feet as he did every morning. His solemn voice made them all stop and look at him. “He is one man. Better that than an army.”

Immediately the women descended into more guffaws and even the men struggled to keep straight faces, except young Nat, who failed to understand, and Alf who, finally remembering she was the master’s daughter, chided them all for speaking crudely.

Elsinora gathered her temper. “It does not escape my notice, Bertha, that when we were all to be ravished in our beds while we slept, it was a matter for great lament and all my fault. Now that I am to be the only one ravished in her bed by a mercenary Norman cuckoo no one seems at all concerned. In fact, it is to be encouraged and I must shut up and be
brave!
”

Bertha couldn’t meet her eye, but held her apron to her mouth and turned away to get on with the cooking.

Elsinora was frustrated by the giggles of the other women. She’d once heard one of her father’s milk-maids refer to her as “frost-bitten”. They said she was like her mother—a lady who had considered the act of coupling with a man as something God gave to women as punishment, a painful, terrifying ordeal that must be suffered and got over with quickly. All desires of the flesh, her mother had preached, were wrong, sinful, and should be repulsed. Men forced themselves on women to beget heirs, but women never had pleasure from it, and once it was done they must pray to God and repent the sin they’d tempted with their own bodies.