As for the Hainfroys, they had been invited to the castle many a time since their marriages, but so far had failed to make even one appearance. Lenora had sent him along this morning to make sure all was well with them.
To his surprise, he did not see Berta in the low beamed kitchen, but instead Magda and Ivo sat opposite each other at the kitchen table. Garman checked on the threshold, unsure whether to intrude. Magda was cutting vegetables to pieces and nervously chattering in a manner which seemed very uncharacteristic of her haughty character. She looked skittish in the extreme, and small wonder Garman thought a moment later when he noticed Ivo, for his friend’s gaze was trained on her with a single-minded intensity that even a stout-hearted person would find unnerving.
Ivo, he realized, was watching his bride like she was his prey. Brows raised, Garman turned back to his cousin who was making a right hash of preparing their food, though Ivo clearly did care. Magda’s face was red as a beet and she kept stealing lashes at her husband like some shy village girl at her swain.
All of a sudden, she let out a yell and dropped her knife. Ivo was on her in a trice, binding her wounded finger in a cloth. Even from his spot at the door, Garman could see it was just a trifling nick. For some reason, Ivo, who had his own face sliced open on the battlefield, was fussing over it more than if it were a war-wound. Garman cleared his throat, and both turned toward him guiltily, Magda looking embarrassed and Ivo resentful of the interruption.
“Morning. Where is Huw?” Garman asked with a frown.
“Out in the barn.” Ivo did not even trouble to take his gaze from his wife as he spoke.
Garman backed out of the kitchen as fast as his legs could carry him. Still, to his surprise he saw Ivo drop a kiss on the top of her injured finger. Magda turned crimson and held her breath. Garman turned away hurriedly. What the fuck was this about? He’d find Huw and ask him.
Huw had not been as keen as Ivo to go through with the hand-fasting ceremony and had looked surly on the occasion, getting very drunk in the aftermath. No doubt, it would take him far longer for him to smooth things over with his bride.
He had only got halfway to the stables when he heard the rumble of Huw’s deep-timbered voice. It wasn’t coming from the barn where they kept the horses, but a smaller one where Berta did the laundry. Garman made his way warily in that direction.
As he approached, he could hear Agnes’s voice raised and belligerent. “What do you do here and what do you want with me?” she asked crossly. “I thought I would at least find some peace in this quiet corner, but you come and persecute me with your company even here!”
“I’m bored,” Garman heard Huw rumble back at her. “Your sister and my brother are acting like a pair of lovebirds and frankly, I find it hard to stomach. Come and bear me company at least.”
“I will not!” Agnes flung back at him. “I’ve no more stomach for it than you have!”
Huw gave an amused chuckle. “Well, you’re not dull in any event.”
“Were you expecting me to be?” Agnes asked sharply.
“I was expecting you to be a damn useless invalid,” he admitted bluntly. “But I have heard from other sources that you’re not lame, just lazy.”
Garman heard Agnes’s indignant splutter and braced himself to intervene if Agnes let fly, but instead all he heard was the rustle of something.
“What are you doing?” he heard Agnes ask with a muffled squeak.
“Determining how much sensation you have in your legs. You feel that?”
“Of course!”
Garman frowned. Instead of blundering in, he applied his eye to a crack in the barn door. Huw was knelt next to Agnes’s chair, his hands encircling her ankles. Agnes looked stunned to find her ankles being touched in such a fashion. She blinked down at her husband in astonishment. After a moment, Huw slid his hands up her calves to Agnes’s knees.
“And this?”
“I—yes! S-stop that!” Agnes gasped, sitting upright, her face flushing bright red.
“Shhh, keep quiet now or your little dog will come running, yapping his head off and then we’ll be interrupted,” Huw advised her, glancing swiftly at the door. “And neither of us wants that now, do we love?” His hands were still under Agnes’s skirts and from the slight rustling sound, Garman suspected he was stroking her calves. Huw’s voice lowered. “How about you let me go higher still, Agnes?”
Agnes clamped her mouth shut, looking scandalized, but not, Garman noted, telling him to stop. He straightened up hastily. He didn’t need to see any more. If his cousin had cried out or objected, he would have made it his business to interrupt them. But clearly, that was not the case, so he swiftly made his way back toward the stables where he had left Bria’ag and made his way back home. He was halfway to Twyford Castle before he even realized he had not seen Berta or the cats. Damn it, he would have to call out again the next day or Lenora would be setting a flea in his ear.
*
“Things are even more chaotic at the Grange,” he announced, entering the great hall where Lenora sat pouring over some ledger. He had paused only to hand Bria’ag to Kit and give him his list of exhaustive duties for the day. So far, Lenora’s cousin was proving to be an apt learner, though sometimes his high spirits needed ruthlessly suppressing.
Fendrel had taken to following Kit around the courtyard, watching his training with great interest. The little gray cat mewed a greeting to him from a window ledge and Garman reached up his hand to absently scratch his ears as he passed by him.
Lenora looked up with interest at his greeting and returned the swift kiss he pressed to her cheek. “Why husband? What’s happening now?”
He shot a glance in the opposite direction where Oates and his grandfather Sutton were stood conferring over some household matter. “If I didn’t know better, wife,” he said slowly. “I would suspect you had been trying to thwart my revenge from the very start.”
She smiled at that. “I can’t think what you mean,” she said, closing her book. “What’s amiss?”
“Depends on your viewpoint.”
A look of concern crossed Lenora’s face. “Not Agnes? Her leg—?”
“Does not seem to be troubling her,” Garman cut her off, reaching for a cup and the jug of ale. “Or slowing down Huw’s seduction.”
Lenora’s mouth fell open. “Huw’s seduction—?” she spluttered.
“Aye.” He poured a drink. “It’s just as well you did not accompany me. It was not fit viewing for a modest woman.”
A question trembled on Lenora’s lips. He could see discretion was struggling with blatant curiosity. “What happened?” she blurted as curiosity came out the victor.
He smirked. “Well, first I was treated to a display of Magda mangling the vegetables for their dinner.” He took a deep drink of ale.
“Was Ivo around?”
“Aye and watching her like a hawk.”
Lenora’s eyes were round with wonder. She sat up straighter. “Go on,” she urged. “How did they seem?”
“She’s a rotten hand in the kitchen, I can tell that much. Ended up bleeding all over the leeks.”
“Oh dear!”
He regarded her a moment with narrowed eyes. “This is your doing, wife.”
“What is?” She colored at his words and touched the hair coiled at her nape lightly. “I don’t know what you mean. Tell me about Magda,” she insisted. “Was Ivo concerned when she cut herself?”
He snorted. “He acted like she’d suffered a mortal wound.” He watched the small smile play around Lenora’s lips. At one time, he would have been annoyed by this turn of events, he reflected wryly. All his plans had come to naught, but for some reason, he didn’t give a damn. Even now, he could feel the flicker of a pulse in his groin that had kicked into life at the sight of his wife’s curving lips.
“Why do you say Huw is seducing Agnes?” she demanded.
He rolled his eyes. “Because I walked in on them playing farm-hand and country-maiden
in the barn.”
Lenora looked intrigued. “How does one play that?” Then she seemed to collect herself, catching sight of his expression. “Never mind,” she said hastily. “But relations seem to be going well between them?”
He grunted a reluctant affirmative. “You anticipated this turn of events, wife and you won’t convince me otherwise. It always seemed odd to me that you insisted the elder Hainfroy was married to the younger of the sisters,” he added suspiciously. “You had some reason for it, I have no doubt.”
“You said you did not wish to know anything about my nefarious plots,” Lenora reminded him virtuously. “You were quite firm on the matter as I recall.”
“True,” he growled, regarding her with a gleaming eye. “Shall I show you how one plays that game, Lenora? There are plenty of barns and outhouses on our own property.”
Lenora looked evasive. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Is it a proper thing for a countess to know?”
“It depends.”
She lifted a brow. “On what?”
“If the farm-hand is also an earl.”
She laughed at that. “I’ve got far too much work to do,” she scolded as he rounded the table and scooped her up in his arms. “Garman!” Grizelda, who had been sleeping on the bench next to her, opened sleepy eyes in reproach. The white cat yawned and rolled onto her other side.
Garman nodded to his grandfather who was watching them exit the room with benign approval.
“You can’t keep carrying me off to our bedchamber like this whenever the fancy takes you!” Lenora reproached him.
“I think you’ll find I can, my love.”
“Not without repercussions,” she warned him direly.
“Such as?” he asked idly as he mounted the first few stairs.
“You realize you’ll likely put a baby in my belly?”
His step never even faltered. “Oh yes,” he agreed richly. “I’ll do that, alright. Probably several, you’d like that, would you, wife?”
She gazed at him speechlessly a moment. “Do you know,” she said. “I rather think, I would?”
A wolfish smile greeted this. “Just as well,” he said. “Because it turns out I have absolutely no control when I’m with you.”
She fell silent a moment. “If we have daughters,” she hesitated. “They may be beautiful.”
He almost laughed at how troubled she sounded at the notion. “Bound to be, if they follow their mother,” he acknowledged calmly.
“That could bring attendant difficulties,” she said. “How should you handle suitors lurking around every corner?” she asked, biting her lip.
“How do you think?” he growled.
Lenora laughed. “I think you might be equal to the problem.”
“As do I,” he agreed. “If we have a son, he may be very stubborn and strong-willed. What say you to that?”
“Honestly, that’s the only kind of male I have experience in handling,” Lenora pointed out.
Just for an instant, his elusive smile flashed out again. “Never a truer word was spoken.”
“Of course,” she pointed out as they reached the top of the staircase. “It will mean expanding the tiny cache of people you permit yourself to care about.”
He halted a moment, looking down at her. “People keep sneaking into that category now,” he complained.
Lenora perked up excitedly. “Such as?”
He glowered at her. “We’ll discuss it later.”
Lenora beamed. “I look forward to it.”
“You will be exhausted, and I will be brief.”
“I will rouse myself from my lethargy to pay attention,” she said smugly. “And then remind you of it at inopportune times.”
“I don’t doubt that, wife,” he said, swinging open the door to their bedchamber. “So long as you remember who heads the list, I don’t mind.”
“Who heads your list, husband?” she asked softly.
“You do,” he replied promptly, heading for the bed. “You know I love you with all my heart.”
It still took her breath away when he said it. Glancing down at the enameled ring she now wore on her finger depicting the black Twyford heart shedding its three drops of red blood, Lenora nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. “The same way that I love you.”
THE END
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More stories coming from Alice Coldbreath in 2020. Please visit my website for more information.
The Consolation Prize
Princess Una harbors no illusions about her claims to Karadok’s throne. The days of the royal house of Blechmarsh are done. The last of that ill-fated line, she is just grateful she emerged from the dark days of war with her head still on her shoulders. Now if only she could stop these rebellious northern lords from plotting to overthrow the King and set her up in his stead!
When her royal cousin bids her to join him at court, Una is eager for the opportunity to publicly renounce her rights. After three years languishing under house arrest, she is keen to start her own life afresh, hopefully in relative obscurity.
What she does not realize is extraordinary husband that fate has in store for her.
The Unlovely Bride (Brides of Karadok Book 2) Page 43