by Tamara Leigh
“Babes,” Bernia said.
Though Aelfled’s face warmed again, she summoned a smile. “Wed me, Cyr D’Argent.”
A simple ceremony. A tense ceremony. More disapproval than approval.
The only witnesses clearly in favor of the union were Nicola who could not contain her smile and gasps of pleasure, and Bernia whose face had never appeared so tranquil.
Lady Chanson, Theriot D’Argent, and Maël D’Argent presented as grim. And Dougray D’Argent come late to the chapel had turned on his heel and stalked away after learning the reason for his summons. Nor had he been amongst the confused and curious retainers and servants during the feast.
“Ah, Dougray.” At table, Nicola had leaned near. “It is not you. It is all Saxons. But though he is broken over the loss of an arm, my brothers are putting him back together with every piece they drag out of him. And I say, he is more tolerable now than when first we arrived at Stern. Be patient, dear Aelfled. He will come around.”
I think I shall love this sister made mine, Aelfled mused as she reflected on the few bright spots during a meal that had lasted too many hours. Another bit of bright had been Cyr feeding her the choicest pieces of meat from the point of his dagger as Isa’s husband had done his lady. Even better, beneath the tablecloth he had covered her fist on her thigh, eased open her fingers, and raised their joined hands to the tabletop for all to see.
Now standing in the solar beneath a window set high in the wall, its open shutters letting in the light of falling night to play among the golden flicker of candles, she raised her left hand and once more considered what passed as a ring. Not until they were at the chapel door was it discovered Cyr had none to place on her finger. Lady Chanson had not offered one of hers, Nicola’s fingers were bare, and Cyr’s ring too large.
Bernia solved the dilemma. Her betrothed having no coin for a ring when they wed scores of years ago, the young woman had herself provided one. Now an old woman, she had instructed Nicola to cut the longest lock she could find upon her brother’s head, then a lock of Aelfled’s hair. The two were gathered together, divided into three, and tightly plaited. Thus, it was a silken ring fashioned of golden, black, and silver hair placed on Aelfled’s hand, and she thought it more lovely and meaningful than any band of precious metal. It would not last, her grandmother said, but would suffice until the baron commissioned a ring worthy of the Lady of Stern and Balduc.
Aelfled turned her palm up, and as she confirmed the joined ends of the braid tightly bound with a stout thread from her grandmother’s hem remained secure, caught the sound of the one come unto her.
Since entering the solar a quarter hour past, she had become oblivious to the din in the hall beyond, but as the curtain was thrust aside and before it fell back into place, it became louder. Now she heard his boots over the floor and the length of his stride.
It was time for what came after a kiss. And she was glad, longing for the nervous knot made of her insides to loosen and the satisfaction of curiosity.
Cyr halted at her back, and when she did not turn, said, “All is well?”
She peered over her shoulder at her husband and raised her left hand. “I think this beautiful. See how the black and silver and gold take the light over their crossings? And where they go under before coming up again on the opposite side, the dark of them is so soft and silken.” She sighed. “If only it would last that ever it be upon my hand.”
“Then you are pleased to be my wife?”
She hesitated, said, “I am, but—”
“Non, Aelfled. This is not a night for discussion. It is a night for knowing and feeling.” His eyes moved to her temple. “If you are well enough.”
She fingered the bandage. “As I have hardly thought on this since ere we spoke vows, I must be.”
“Then shall we know? Feel?”
She drew a shaky breath. “Pray, let us.” She started to turn to him, but of a sudden his hands were in her hair.
Running his fingers over and through it, he gathered the tresses and draped them over one shoulder, letting them tumble down breasts and abdomen.
“Do you remember I told you were not meant to be a nun, Aelfled?”
The brush of his stubbled jaw and warm breath in the curve between shoulder and neck making her shiver, she nodded. “You said I was meant to be here with you. Like this.”
“At last you are.” He drew back and began loosening the laces coursing her spine. “Like this, Aelfled.” He slid the shoulders of her gown down her arms to her elbows, exposing the thin, short-sleeved chemise that was all there was between her skin and his fingertips. He kissed her neck. “And like this.” He pushed the gown’s sleeves lower, trailed his finger over her arms to her wrists, rasped, “My wife is too soft to wear coarse material. I shall see her garbed in the finest weave and loveliest colors.”
With the night air slipping through the window, she should not have been so warm she felt faint, but she was. And more so when he pushed the sleeves off her wrists and the gown dropped around her feet, leaving her clad in only her chemise.
“I do not know what to do, Cyr. And I think I am afeared.”
“Think?” There was a smile in his voice.
“For what else would my heart beat so fast and breath be difficult to draw?”
“For this.” More closely he fit his body to her back, slid his fingers through her splayed ones and curled them into her palms. “I will not hurt you.” He kissed her neck, jaw, the corner of her mouth. “I will love you well.”
Love? Though Aelfled longed to question that word, when he turned her into his arms and closed his mouth over hers, all that mattered was what he made her feel—and the hope she could make him feel half as much.
She returned his kisses and caresses, and for a wondrously long time they learned each other. But when he gentled her back on the bed, Aelfled of Senlac nearly cried when he said, “This night and every night and day hereafter, you are mine as I am yours, Aelfled of Cyr D’Argent.” Burying her face against his shoulder, she held fast to him, and he stroked her hair and soothed her with sweet promises.
When finally she asked him to show her what came after, he kept every promise. And ones not made.
In his arms. It was what he had wanted, what he had gained. No regret—terrible or slight—did he feel, only gratitude he had ceased struggling before it was too late to himself discover what came after with Aelfled.
He smiled into the dark of candles long guttered out, listened to the quiet of a hall settled into sleep, and once more slid his fingers from the crown of his wife’s head resting on his shoulder to the ends of her hair splayed across his chest.
He had been confident he knew what followed a kiss such as theirs, but would wager he was nearly as surprised as his little Saxon who had shed self consciousness and given as she received—not wantonly but with sweet, reverent fervor.
Moving his fingers off the silken strands to her hand on his abdomen, he touched the ring braided of gold, black, and silver, wondered how to preserve it so she might wear it always as wished, then pressed his lips to the top of her head.
This night he had loved her as told. But as not yet told for being heretofore unaware—or was it resistant?—beyond the pleasures of the body he would love her to their end days. Though attracted to and protective of her since that morn at Senlac, he did not understand how he came to feel so much for one who had defied and frustrated him.
Was it her courage and resolve? That.
Strength and loyalty? That.
Compassion and willingness to sacrifice herself for others? That.
Spontaneity which often made her speak ahead of thought, evidencing she was not easily given to deception? That.
For this and more he loved her. God willing, one day he would love her for how well she loved him.
Unbidden, Hugh rose to mind. How he would scorn his nephew—after striking him upside the head. Or worse. A warrior was not to allow a woman to incite him to emotions only sh
e should feel. Too much they distracted, threatening to soften the steel out of which men of the sword were forged. Though good to be protective and passing fond of those who bore worthy children to carry their sire’s name into the ages, that was all. It was as Cyr believed before the bloody battle sent him in search of answers God had provided through Fulbert who would have him believe love for others gave a man greater purpose and more reason to survive the battles he must fight—especially love for a godly woman.
Godly. Though many her deceptions and lies, they had been in service to her people whose lives were dependent on her holding close their confidences and giving aid in an England ruled by men they had cause to fear. He would have to be patient with his Saxon bride. He would have to earn her trust. He would have to make allowances for secrets not her own. And of the scattered faith of she who had challenged his own at Senlac…
He lowered his lids, murmured, “I will help you gather up what has fallen away and put it back together. I shall be your Fulbert, Aelfled of Cyr of the silver.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
She had fallen asleep in his arms and now awakened with him curled around her, his chest to her back, arm over her waist, hand on her belly. A belly that would swell had they made a babe on the night past and nine months hence birth a son or daughter of mixed blood. It was as she hoped and as she would pray.
Though for nearly two years her faith had been terribly tested, and time and again she failed it, perhaps the Lord had not entirely turned His back on her and her people.
Was this not answered prayer—peace between conquered and conqueror, even if only here between one Saxon and one Norman? And surely across England there were others like Cyr and her. A small beginning, but the same as in centuries past when the people from whom she was descended had fought over these lands and slowly mixed to become Anglo-Saxons.
Unseeing Bernia saw that and believed it the way forward. Though other Saxons did not yet see it, many a Norman did. Self-serving, aye, but if those from across the narrow sea kept hold of this island kingdom, eventually most of those sprung from them would be of mixed blood. What then might they be called? Anglo-Saxon-Normans?
The man at her back stirred, caressed her belly.
Opening her eyes on morn whose misty light swept the wall opposite, Aelfled slid her hand atop her husband’s. “I dreamed of you.” Before speaking, she made no attempt to think those words front to back and top to bottom, having no care where they led since she could not imagine being more vulnerable to Cyr than she had on the night past. There were truths not her own she could not yet discuss—if ever—and blessedly he told he did not require them, but she could speak her own truth to one who had not been self-serving in taking her to wife.
She heard his breath, felt it expand his chest and the hair on that muscular plane rasp her skin. Then he rose, eased her onto her back, and lowered his face near hers. “I dreamed of you.”
She peered into green eyes shadowed by hair fallen forward, drew strands of silver and black through her fingers. “I speak not only of the night past,” she revealed another of her truths, “but of many a night since you left me in Andredeswald.”
A smile parted his lips, tempting her to touch strong white teeth that had grazed her skin as they made love. “As told you at the stream when first I kissed you, Aelfled, you have been with me since we met, visiting me at night whilst there was a sea between us. I am pleased to know I was visiting you as well.”
Remembering the hopeless kiss that was hopeless no more, she said, “Oui, it is as you told me that day, but I dared not believe it. I thought…”
He grunted low. “I admit to motive beyond emotion—an attempt to soften you to gain your aid in ending the rebellion—but it was no exaggeration, no lie. That I chose as my reward these lands upon which you could be found ought to bear witness to that. And though it is true the sighting of Guarin is the foremost reason I returned to England, I had other reasons—you around whom I cannot think quite right as is very wrong for a warrior.”
Aelfled could not keep her mouth from bowing. “I pray when you must take sword in hand to defend your life and the lives of others, you think only there the sooner to return to me here.”
He brushed his mouth across hers, then trailed fingers down her neck to the hollow of her throat. “There are many who would think me a fool, but they are not here with you.”
“Like this,” she repeated his words of the night past.
“Like this,” he murmured, then more slowly, gently, sweetly made love to his wife.
Afterward, with his heart beating beneath her ear, his hand once more in her hair drawing out tresses and winding them around his fingers, he said, “Should I prove my sire’s heir, do you think you could be happy in Normandy?”
So earnestly was it asked, she knew that though great his hope of recovering his brother, great also was doubt.
“Aelfled?”
She looked to her hand splayed on his chest, upon it the ring fashioned of Cyr and Aelfled. “I could be happy there. Mayhap more so.”
He was silent a long while, then lifted her chin to move her gaze to his. Head propped on the arm angled behind it, he frowned. “Truly?”
She had said it, and with not much thought, it being more feeling than consideration. “Oui, providing I am with you—and my grandmother.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You surprise, my little Saxon. I feared you would not like to leave the country of your birth.”
“I do not wish to, but…England hurts.”
“It will heal.”
“I pray you are right.” She smiled sorrowfully. “Beyond your brother and me, what other reasons had you for returning to England?”
He released her chin, and when she resettled her cheek on his chest said, “Two, if they can be named reasons—Nicola and Dougray. My sister was caught with a stable boy in a manner unbecoming a marriageable noblewoman. Though to save his life she submitted to an examination and proved she remained virtuous, the damage was done, the scandal far flung. Thus, it appeared all that remained for her was the convent—until I determined to return to England. It is hoped here might be found a suitable match either unaware of her past or willing to overlook it.”
It was a sorry, ruinous thing to be so compromised, Aelfled reflected, whether in Normandy or England, and whether a woman was of noble or common blood. And yet one would not know the lively Nicola had been sent out of her country—in a manner, banished. “I like your sister.”
Cyr gave a murmur of agreement. “She is reckless and fierce in all things in which she takes an interest, be it family or matters of men. Had she been born a male, I do not doubt the feats of Nicholas would have brought honor to the D’Argents—once control was learned.”
Aelfled smiled. “She told she knows the bow.”
“It is a weapon favored by Guarin who instructed her in its use—and the dagger.”
“Not a sword?”
“That our mother would not permit.”
“Nor your sire?”
After a long moment, Cyr said, “Nor him though much he indulges Nicola.”
Aelfled’s curiosity was piqued over the man who fathered her husband, but there was now time aplenty to learn more about one whose brother, Hugh, seemed to have been more a force in Cyr’s life. “What of Dougray?” she asked.
“He requires more telling, and further back I must go to well before Duke William began assembling his great host to invade England and take the crown from Harold. As you may have guessed, the reason Dougray’s hair is not black marked with silver is he was not sired by a D’Argent. I will not elaborate now, but suffice to say the circumstances of his conception outside the bounds of marriage allowed my sire to accept his wife’s child and give his name to him. But for all that, it is well known Dougray is misbegotten. Though his brothers and sister count him fully kin and equally worthy of the D’Argent name, he struggles over the whispers and mockery of those outside our family. And in more recent yea
rs the limitations.”
“What are those?”
Lowering to his chest the hand wrapped in her hair, he said, “He thought himself in love with a noblewoman, and she was taken with him. But her sire refused a match, citing Dougray’s illegitimacy and landlessness. He became so sullen that when I determined to cure my own landlessness by joining the campaign to gain England’s crown, I set to persuading him to do the same. He resisted, not out of cowardice but the belief it an ill and unjustified business destined to shed the blood of thousands and subjugate innocents. It was my suggestion lands of his own could prove sufficient to gain his heart’s desire that moved him to pledge his sword to the duke’s cause.”
Feeling what had been relaxed beneath her tense, Aelfled looked up. “You suffer guilt that rather than lands and his heart’s desire, he lost an arm.”
Down the length of his nose, he met her gaze. “I do. And guilt over Guarin as well.”
“Why?”
“When he tried to dissuade us from crossing the sea, I accused him of not understanding the need since he was to have lands of his own and a prosperous future. I knew he did not seek to deny his brothers the same, that he foresaw the slaughter and sought to protect us, but my need to prove my prowess that had earned me the name Merciless during contests of arms bade me challenge him to join the invading army and fight with us. He accepted and has been lost to us since.”
She considered the dagger found inside the abbey’s walls and longed to tell him of it, but so dear to him was his brother she feared in seeking answers from his captives the merciless side of him would show were he denied them. Though he might learn it was Vitalis who carried the weapon, Isa’s man would own to naught.
“You may yet recover him,” she said.
“That is the plan.” Before she could question it, he said, “As for how Dougray became a reason for my return to England, so bitter was he over the loss of an arm that made his lack of lands and illegitimacy lesser things, it was hoped removing him from D’Argent lands would loose him from the miserable existence in which he wallowed. Though he is coming around and has resumed training to reclaim the warrior left upon Senlac, methinks that a long road, especially with such scarcity of faith.”