"'Tis he who doesn't care for me," she said. "My feelings for him are..." Careful. "He's my cousin by marriage, and I'm endeavoring to be hospitable. But that's not what I meant. I want to know why you invited him."
"Must there have been some reason, other than merely wanting his company?"
She stirred the porridge thoughtfully. "There might have been."
"Such as?"
She tried to feed him another spoonful, but he swatted her hand away. The porridge plopped onto her apron, which she'd taken to wearing while attempting to feed him. Even her most utilitarian wool tunics, such as the one she had on, were troublesome for Edith to clean.
"I need some wine to wash the taste of that sewage out of my mouth," he growled.
Nicki wiped off her apron with a napkin. "Not yet, Milo. Can't you wait a bit till you start—"
"If I could 'wait a bit' for my wine, do you think I'd have turned into this?" he snarled, holding out his arms—as frail as sticks in his too-big shirt. A few faces glanced in their direction, then turned away. Everyone at Peverell was used to Milo's sporadic outbursts by now.
Nicki studied him, discouraged by what she saw. He'd grown even more gaunt and jaundiced since the Rouen trip. She never should have allowed him to go. "Milo." She laid a careful hand on his shoulder, heartsick at the feel of sharp bone through the linen. "Please. I know you hate it when I talk about your drinking, but—"
"Then don't," he said wearily. "Just bring me the wine jug and a goblet."
She shook her head resolutely. "I told you a long time ago, I won't give you any more wine. I'll bring you juice, water, fresh buttermilk—"
"Buttermilk, for pity's sake." He grimaced. "I'd rather drink fresh piss."
"But don't ask me to help you kill yourself with wine, because I won't."
"Thank God Gaspar is more accommodating than you. He'll be in soon. I'll get it from him."
Nicki had tried to forbid Gaspar and the rest of their staff from giving her husband wine, but Milo had overruled her, his prerogative as castellan—if only in name.
"You didn't answer my question," he said, his good humor returning as precipitously as it had fled. "Why do you think I invited Alex here?"
"I don't know." She evaded his shrewd gaze, unsure enough of her suspicions to feel embarrassed about voicing them. "I was thinking about...what you proposed."
He cocked his head slightly, as if puzzled as to her meaning.
She took a deep breath and glanced around to make sure no one was near. "About my...having another man's child."
His eyebrows shot up. "You think that's why I brought Alex here?"
"Nay! I...I don't know. I thought perhaps—"
"But you rejected the idea outright."
"Aye, but—"
"I took you at your word," he said, his look of mild indignation transforming to interest. "Why? Have you changed your mind?"
She slammed the porridge bowl on the little table. "You know I haven't changed my mind. The idea disgusts me." To open her legs for a man, any man, for the coldblooded purpose of getting with child...it made Nicki shudder.
"Well, then." Milo shrugged his skeletal shoulders. "I took you at your word, and that was the end of that."
"Aye, but...but I thought perhaps you had hopes of...changing my mind, or...I don't know. You might have come up with some scheme—"
"Would it do me any good? After all, you'd have to consent for...anything of that sort to happen, would you not? And you've already made it clear that you won't."
"I most certainly won't!"
Chuckling, Milo took the napkin from her and wiped his mouth with it. "My dear, I do hope you don't fly to such conclusions every time one of my relatives comes for a visit."
She swore at him, but the novelty of hearing such words from her lips only made him laugh harder. "Milo, have you given any more thought to my idea?"
"Your idea?"
"Our staying on here as stewards."
Now it was his turn to swear, which he did far more colorfully than she had. "I told you, Father Octavian would never allow it. He mistrusts women, and he despises me. And, as abbot of St. Clair, he'd have to appoint us himself—"
"But I've thought of a way—"
"I ordered you to abandon this idea, did I not? 'Twill only shame us, to have you begging favors of that malicious bastard."
"Will it be any less shameful to be tossed out of here on our ears?"
He smiled inscrutably. "It won't necessarily come to that."
"It most certainly will come to that, unless we take measures to prevent it—something you seem curiously unwilling to do."
"I did come up with a solution."
"Ah, yes. I'm to save Peverell by playing the whore. Do you honestly think that's less shameful than asking to remain here as stewards?"
"Your outrage at my proposal strikes me as a bit much, my dear. After all, 'twouldn't be the first time you've bestowed your favors on a man to whom you weren't wed."
Nicki stared at her husband in shock, heat scalding her face. This was the first time in nine years of marriage that Milo had taunted her with her youthful indiscretion. The hurt she felt took her breath away.
Leaping to her feet, she grabbed the bowl of porridge and thrust it into Milo's hands. "Here!" She whipped the bed curtains closed around him, turned and strode out of the hall. "Feed yourself! I'm going to go dump all the wine into the moat!"
* * *
Alex, astride Milo's sorrel gelding, found Nicki's mare exactly where her husband had said it would be—on the bank of the stream that meandered through the woods to the north of the castle, at the top of a rugged declivity that produced a waterfall. She always fled to the same little refuge in the woods when they had words, Milo had assured him. Alex would be certain to find her there—alone.
The day was clear and sunny—a relief for his hip after yesterday's downpour—but little of that sun filtered through the dense canopy of foliage overhead, producing the effect of twilight in mid-morning. It was pleasantly cool here, the air still redolent with the wet, green scent of rain. Most of the forest floor was thickly carpeted with ferns, but the rest had turned to mud. His mount's legs were coated with it by the time he found the stream.
Dismounting, he tethered his horse next to Nicki's and went in search of her. He spied her about a hundred yards downstream, leaning over a patch of mud with her back to him—although at first he didn't believe it could be her.
She had on a humble gray tunic—nothing like the gleaming silks she'd worn at William's court—and her hair was bound up in a white scarf twisted around her head rather like a Moorish turban. Her skirts were gathered up in one hand, exposing her bare, mud-splattered feet and ankles. In the other hand she held a twig, which she scraped purposefully on the ground. She was writing, he realized, etching words into the mud as if it were a tablet. So absorbed was she in this activity that she didn't hear him approach. Of course, with his instinct for stealth, only those with the keenest hearing ever detected his presence from behind.
"What are you writing?"
She spun around, dropping her twig. "Nothing." Turning back around, she dragged a foot across the mud, obliterating the carefully scratched words.
"I can't read it, remember?" Alex said quietly.
She paused with her back to him; her shoulders slumped. "I forgot."
He stepped closer to her. "What was it?"
"A...a poem. The beginnings of one. The words came to me, and I had no tablet with me."
"What was it about?"
She hesitated. "Nothing. 'Twas just a poem." Yet she picked up the twig and began scratching in the mud again, her brow furrowed. "Oh, blast it, I can't remember." She hurled the twig into the stream. "What are you doing here, anyway?"
He cleared his throat and tried for a nonchalant tone. "I was bored, and—"
"How did you find me?"
"Milo told me where you'd be. He said this is where you always come after...that is..."
"Did he tell you what we quarreled about?"
Damn. Sometimes he wished he had Milo's gift for easy deception. He wanted to shrug carelessly and say, "Nay, was it anything of consequence?" but in fact, Milo had warned him about her suspicions and cautioned him to deny everything if she voiced them...Learn to lie! You're a grown man, for pity's sake.
So preoccupied was Nicki with her stewing that she paid no heed to Alex's tell-tale hesitation. "Nay, he wouldn't have told you," she muttered. "Even he knows better than to air such matters openly."
Anxious to change the subject, Alex smiled at her muddy feet. "You look like a little girl who's gotten into something she ought not to have."
She bent over to inspect her feet. "It washes off."
"The hem of your tunic is muddy in back."
Nicki groaned. "Edith will give me that look." Hiking her skirts up to her knees, she waded into the stream.
"Why do you..." Alex shook his head. "Nay, you'll think it a foolish question."
Crouching over, she scrubbed at her submerged feet with her hands. "Why do I what?"
He rubbed his neck. "I know naught about...writing and such. I was just wondering...why you would go to this trouble to do it. What compels you?"
She splashed water onto her legs and wiped the mud from them. "What compels you to fight for your king?"
"'Tis no longer a labor of love, if that's what you mean. 'Tis simply all I know how to do."
Straightening up, Nicki regarded him with that hushed alertness of hers. "Have you ever considered..." She bit her lip.
"Have I ever considered what?"
She waded out of the water, pausing at the edge of the mud with her skirt still clutched in her hand, and looked around. "Would you bring me my shoes so I don't get my feet muddy again? They're over by that tree."
Alex fetched the soft kid slippers, stained with mud, but held them out of her reach when she tried to take them from him. "Have I ever considered what?"
She took a deep breath. "Have you ever considered learning how to read and write?"
Alex couldn't stop his bark of harsh laughter. "Don't you think I'm a bit old for that sort of thing?" He knelt before her. "Lift your right foot."
"I can do that, if you'll just give me those slippers."
He looked up at her. "Do you fear me?"
Her eyes were fiercely luminous in the forest halflight. "Of course not."
He stroked her ankle lightly. "Then why are you so skittish with me?"
"It's just that...it's unseemly for you to be touching my feet."
He felt goose bumps rise beneath his fingertips. "I've touched you in more intimate places than your feet."
"I thought we were going to forget that summer."
"I'll never forget that summer," he said softly, holding her gaze as he caressed her calf. "We merely agreed not to talk about it."
"Then don't," she said tightly.
"As you wish." Reaching up, he took her free hand and placed it on his shoulder. "To help you keep your balance," he explained, lifting her right foot and cradling it while he wriggled the slipper onto it. Even her feet were soft, he marveled, and strangely pretty—as small and delicate as a child's.
"So you think you're too old to learn something new?" she challenged.
"Probably." He slid the other shoe onto her left foot and took her hand before she could remove it from his shoulder. Holding it, he rose, standing far too close to her, but making no move to back away.
"Is that so?" Wresting her hand from his grip, she stepped around him. "If someone handed you a new form of weapon, some wonderful advance—say, a machine that shoots missiles—"
He propped his hands on his hips and smiled. "It exists already. It's called a crossbow, and I know how to use it, even if I don't have Luke's skill with it."
"Not a crossbow, a..." She drew a small shape in the air with her hands. "A device you can hold in your hand. 'Twould expel tiny little iron balls very quickly."
"Tiny little iron balls?" He laughed skeptically. "The point of a weapon is to kill the enemy, or at least cause serious injury. A little iron ball might take out an eye if one could aim it well enough, but—"
"I'm not sure exactly how it's supposed to work," she said. "It's my friend's idea. He invents things. On parchment, that is. He makes drawings—tools, weapons, scientific instruments..."
"Your friend?" Foreboding crawled over Alex's scalp. Did Nicki have a 'friend' of whom Milo was unaware—a lover she entertained in secret while protesting her fidelity? Considering Milo's longstanding impotence—not to mention Nicki's history of manipulating men's affections—the possibility seemed all too likely.
"Sometimes, if it's a particularly promising design," she said, "he'll actually build one of these inventions, or a model of it."
"Does Milo know about this friend?"
Her expression of puzzlement gave way to outrage as she digested his meaning. "My friend is a monk," she said acidly. "An old monk. Brother Martin, the prior of the St. Clair Abbey. And of course Milo knows about him. I've been visiting him since I was a child."
Alex executed a sheepish little bow. "I apologize if it seemed I was implying—"
"It didn't 'seem as if you were implying' anything," she spat out. "You all but accused me of adultery."
"Nicki, I'm—"
"A fat lot of nerve you've got, being so self-righteous, considering...what they say about you."
"What do they say about me?"
Her cheeks pinkened in the cool, dusky light. "They talk about...all the women you've had."
"It's true, I've known many women." Gravely he added, "I only ever loved one, though."
A breeze swept through the forest, rattling the leaves overhead. Some of them broke loose, spinning and twirling around Nicki as she gazed at him.
"I have to go." She turned and strode away.
Alex sprinted to catch up with her. He grabbed her shoulder. "Would you teach me how to read?"
She pivoted to face him, her eyes immense. He could see right through them, as if looking into the clear green depths of a tidal pool. "You really want to learn how to read?"
"And write, I suppose. Yes," he said, astounded that he really meant it. "Yes, I do. Will you teach me?"
Her eyes searched his. "What changed your mind?"
"You."
She frowned. "Alex..."
He closed his hands around her upper arms and implored her to meet his gaze. "I mean the fact that you write such extraordinary poems, and I can't even read them. Milo can. Luke can read and write, and so can every woman I know—they all learned in convent schools. Christ, even little Robert wrote that blasted poem about honey cakes—"
"Almond cakes," she corrected with a little laugh. The music of it tickled his chest deep inside. He didn't think he'd heard her laugh since Périgeaux.
"Almond cakes," he chuckled. "With honey glaze." He still had his hands around her arms, he noted happily. She hadn't recoiled from his touch—not yet, anyway. "Will you teach me?" he asked, gliding his hands down to capture hers. "Please?"
She withdrew her hands from his, but gently, without the agitation she'd shown before. "I suppose I could talk Brother Martin out of another writing desk. We could put it in front of a window in the great hall, and I could instruct you there."
Alex moaned. "That awful hall? It's so dank and gloomy." And crowded. He'd be sacrificing an opportunity to have her all to himself if he agreed to take his lessons anywhere in the keep. "Can't you teach me...well, out here?"
"Here?" She looked around doubtfully. "In the woods?"
"Or in a meadow..." He smiled. "Perhaps we could even find a nice little cave."
She did not return his smile.
He raised his hands placatingly. "Sorry. That was...sorry. I would rather we did this outside, though—anywhere you'd like. I can't stand being in that gloomy old castle. How can you bear living there?"
The shadow that crossed her face said it all: she bore it
because she had to. "All right. I'll teach you out of doors. No reason we can't bring tablets with us."
"And a blanket."
She hesitated, then shrugged. "Yes, I suppose we'll need a blanket."
Thank the saints. Progress.
"What about your oath to Milo?" she asked.
"My...my oath?" Alex stammered.
"You swore that you'd teach swordsmanship to the men. Will you have time for that?"
Alex let out a sigh of relief. "I'll do that in the mornings. We can take our lessons in the afternoons."
"Very well." She caught her lower lip between her teeth. "One thing, though. It might not look good, our spending so much time alone together. Milo won't care. He's...well, he won't care. But others might talk."
"I'll be discreet," he assured her, irritated as always by her fixation with propriety, but thrilled at the prospect of long hours alone with her. "We can leave the keep separately and meet at some agreed location. Is this a good place?"
"As good as any, I suppose."
"Excellent." This was a secluded spot, deep within the woods. The likelihood of unwanted company was minimal. Alex pictured them on a blanket beneath the sheltering trees, their heads bent over their tablets, her arm brushing his, her scent drifting around him. A sweet ache rose within him, speeding his heart.
He did want to learn to read and write; he also wanted to be with her, to touch her, to finally claim that which he'd let slip away nine long years ago. He shouldn't desire her—even just her body—after all that had transpired between them, all she'd done to tarnish his ardor. Yet he could no more stop wanting her than he could stop breathing. "Shall we meet this afternoon, then?" he asked, trying to contain his eagerness. "After dinner?"
"I can't this afternoon. I must supervise the changing of the rushes in the great hall."
"Tomorrow, then?"
"Aye. Tomorrow." She addressed him with a stern look that made him want to laugh. "You promise to apply yourself to your studies?"
"I assure you," he said with a slow smile of anticipation, "I approach this endeavor with the utmost enthusiasm."
* * *
Alone in his quarters, Gaspar uncorked a tiny vial and tapped a few grains of pungent white powder into his mortar, being very judicious as to the amount. Hemlock was the among the most formidable of his many herbal remedies, but it was by far the most dangerous. A pinch in a sleeping draft could bring on a deep, almost deathlike sleep. Too much produced a mindless frenzy, during which the heart seized up and stopped.
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