Again the same hinted question, and this time she felt it was petty to resist. “My name is Katherine.”
“Ah, a Kate.” Thorkill allowed Edith to grab his nose and the older man cooed as if delighted. Katherine was also pleased—if Edith was snatching things, she was not too weak. Part of her wanted to protest at the shortening of her name, but Thorkill was busy changing Edith, nodding to a pile of moss and rags heaped farther along the bench for her to use with Jack. The simple kindness undid her.
“Thank you.” Shielding Jack with her shoulder, she stretched a trembling hand to the moss. Thorkill pushed it closer to her.
“Are you staying with us, then, Kate?”
“By Adam, father, of course she is!”
* * * *
Exasperated by his father’s muddle-headed courtesy, Valens decided it was time to intervene before the girl and her brat wound them both round their fingers. “Katherine…”
“Kate,” said Thorkill.
“…Katherine is Edith’s wet nurse.” He hoped he was not red-faced, as he could not stop recalling the stunning picture of the young woman bare-breasted. He reminded himself firmly that he should not think of Katherine in that way, although he knew the full, comely shape of her bosom and those pink, dainty nipples would haunt his nights. “A wet nurse,” he tried again, wanting to keep matters seemly.
“And your captive,” the girl spat, changing from a Madonna to a scold in an instant.
Before he could remonstrate, she launched herself off the bench and lurched to the crib, prodding and flicking the bedding there as if it had done her an injury. “The child needs more rushes here, and another coverlet,” she remarked. “Do you have such?”
Valens nodded, turning to the chest and the rush bundles beside the door, but his father spoke before he did.
“Captive? Valens, what in God’s name have you done?”
Thorkill was frowning now, never a good sign. Does he not want Edith to survive? Resentment coiled through Valens, sharpening his answer. “Nothing very much. Just saving your grandchild’s life and giving this woman and her son a roof over her head.”
Returning to the bench and resuming her changing and cleaning of Jack, Katherine gave him a dark look but said nothing. His father had no such restraint.
“So not a captive. Yet where are your manners, my son? Our guests need drink and require more food than a strip of dried meat.”
Valens felt his face color up and his shoulders stiffen. He told himself determinedly that any sniping from his father was worth it. As long as Edith thrived, this entanglement was worth it. Even if I have to marry the girl. He recalled his earlier pleasure at the thought and wondered why he now felt ashamed. Perhaps I am regretting the loss of my freedom. And what of hers?
Feeling slimy with disquiet, Valens stalked to the central hearth and crouched by the simmering crocks. “Ale? Pottage?”
Katherine—or should he call her Kate?—patted and kissed a newly-changed Jack. “Please,” she replied, without looking at him, blowing a soft kiss in her son’s tummy. “And the extra bedding for Edie.”
Edie? Not content with bewitching my father, the wench wants to beguile my Edith. But he was above such jealousy. The girl was a wet nurse, pure and simple. He would marry her, for Adam’s sake. She should be grateful to him.
“Allow me.” Thorkill jabbed an elbow against Valens’s ear as he crossed the hut to collect the rushes and coverlet. Seeing his father, a fellow fletcher, undertake such woman’s work as re-making a baby’s bed made Valens more uncomfortable than ever.
“Put those children down, both of you, and heed me.”
His order was ignored. Thorkill stroked Edith’s face and tucked a fresh coverlet about her as he laid her in the crib and Katherine gulped a mouthful of ale and allowed Jack to grab her hair. He tried again. “The crib is large enough for Edith and Jack. Katherine will sleep with me.”
“I will not,” snapped Katherine, rising from the bench and bringing Jack with her. “I am a decent widow.”
“With no wedding ring,” Valens countered and watched her pale then redden, her beech-green eyes darkening to moss.
“Son.” Thorkill gave Edith a last kiss, straightened and peered at him, a flinty, disappointed look. “That is unkind.”
“I was forced to sell it.” Katherine bounced her son on her knee with such vehemence that Valens thought Jack would howl. The baby giggled instead and he felt more wrong-footed.
“Look.” The irritating wench shot out her arm and flaunted her bare hand. The third finger showed a paler mark, where a ring had lately been.
“You poor child.” Thorkill’s easy sympathy made Valens want to stamp around the hut and throw things. He has hair as red as mine, so how is it he is so calm? “What happened?”
As this was something Valens also wanted to know, he held his tongue. When Katherine said nothing, he raised his eyebrows, a silent challenge she took up at once.
“My husband died,” she said bluntly. For an instant grief and something else showed in her elfin face, then it was gone and she looked as communicative as marble. “I took up with the goose herders and lived with them until your son kidnapped us.”
“So much death.” Thorkill sighed. “My wife, last winter. My son-in-law this spring. Then Edith’s mother…”
Valens closed his eyes and endured the loss of Julia afresh.
“…But child, what do you mean by kidnapped?” Thorkill went on, maddeningly persistent in that quiet, kindly way of his. “And how are you a captive? You must be mistaken.”
“Your son will explain,” she replied with poisonous sweetness, continuing with the same milk-and-honey reason. “Might I bed down in a corner with Jack? I would like to feed Edith again soon. She will feed more easily when I am less weary.”
“Use my bed.” Valens surprised himself by offering. “The cot beneath the window. It is yours and Jack’s from now on,” he added, and watched her eyes widen.
“Where will you sleep? Her tone was meant to be waspish but Valens caught the quiver of anxiety. For an instant he was tempted to tease, but dared not in case Katherine lost her milk.
“I can sleep anywhere,” he said easily and followed that up with a bow. “My father and I will be outside. Arrows do not make themselves. Call if you need anything. Come, Father.”
Wishing he were as tall as Sebastian, Valens swept from the hut and out into the dawning day.
* * * *
He left Katherine and the babies alone then, or appeared to. He wanted Katherine and Jack to settle and Edith to recover. It was a test of his patience and a test of his spying. He would not give up on his sister’s child, or her safety.
Valens lurked beside the door and peered through the wattle cracks, listening and watching. He saw the girl tumble into bed with her son, mother and child falling almost instantly asleep. Later, he saw her stir the instant Edith whimpered and rise to feed his niece, whispering the same baby-talk to Edith that he had heard her use with Jack. He spied on her while she slowly ate a bowlful of pottage and coaxed Jack to try a little. He followed her weary movements as she changed both infants and settled them in the bed. A rummage in her tiny bundle of things produced a rag doll for Jack. She tottered to the crib and found Edith’s doll for her.
“Son, it is not good to skulk in shadows.”
Still in a crouch, Valens spun on his heels to find Thorkill looming above him. A hot sizzle of fury burned through his body at his own folly—it had been years since anyone had sneaked up on him. But then, I was not paying any attention to anyone, save Katherine and Edith and Jack. And how can I find them so fascinating? Why is watching Katherine such a necessity, like breathing?
“What are you doing here, Valens?”
Abruptly, he realized that his father’s lined, weathered face was as dark as it ever became, in disapproval, at him. “I have to know that the girl will serve,” he began, but Thorkill kicked his legs from under him and he crashed against the hut wall.
“Come
away, boy. Attend to your own work.”
Thorkill had not called him boy for years. Mortified, Valens scrambled back to his feet and followed after his father. I am going mad, I think. It was lack of sleep and a decent meal, he decided. He would work hard today, eat well tonight and tomorrow…Tomorrow he would be able to look on Katherine without this dragging in his chest. Even if I do dream of her naked chest tonight.
Soon he would need to take Katherine to Lord Sebastian’s tower and they could be married.
Valens sighed and tugged hard at his dyed hair. And what then?
Chapter 4
“No. I cannot leave Edith or take her or Jack on such a journey.” Katherine was tempted to fold her arms, as her mother had always done when her father proposed something foolish, but her bosom was too sore to hold anything against them. At least Valens has never mentioned my half-nude moment. “I told you that yesterday, and the week before, and the week before that.”
Valens poked his head out of his bedding and scowled at her. He was dressing under the sheets and had a sleeve of his tunic flapping round his ear, so his scowl was less than fearsome.
“My lord will not wait much longer,” he said. “He wants us to be married.”
“And it is not your lord who is marrying,” Katherine answered tartly, ignoring the snort from Valens’s bedding.
On the bed behind her, Jack burped and giggled. “Eee!” he called, a shout which had Edith kneeling up in her crib and holding out her arms to be picked up.
“Soon, sweetheart,” Katherine reassured her, relieved afresh by the little girl’s continuing signs of returning life. “Your uncle and I are talking. Why marry?” Is this another false promise, like Eric’s? Another secret?
“Why not, by Adam?” Valens was under the sheets again but Katherine heard his next unspoken statement as if he had bawled it to the rafters. All women want to be wed. His arrogance made her teeth ache.
“Up!” Edith commanded and raised her hands higher.
“We are still talking.” Katherine picked up Jack’s dolly and made it walk on the bench, to the giggles of both infants. “I am not convinced, sir.”
“No. I am talking. You are arguing.” Flipping aside the sheets, Valens emerged fully dressed from his nest of blankets in the corner. These past few nights and weeks he had proved that he could indeed sleep anywhere, and he could snore, too.
Eric had not snored, Katherine thought primly, before she wrenched her thoughts onto something else than her dead husband. “I must feed Edie.”
That usually silenced Valens, but this morning he stalked toward her, his full lips set in a firm line. And when had she started to notice his lips? Startled, Katherine flashed back in her mind to the kiss he had inflicted on her when he had stolen her from the women’s camp. Her mouth and jawed tingled and heat crawled into her face.
“Katherine. Kate,” he began again, taking her hand in his. “Am I so terrible? Is living here so terrible? What must I do?”
“You sound like a boy,” she replied coolly and watched that astonishing blush surge up his face. To her discomfort, it pleased her less than she expected.
Valens persisted, clearly remembering her earlier words. “You said you wanted something in return for your help. What is it? You should know I keep my promises.”
But such a demand, like their looming marriage, was too soon. Katherine flinched away from both. “What can I say?” she answered. “How can I tell if your promises are worth anything?” Her breath stuttered in her sore bosom as she recalled Eric’s promises, all broken. Swiftly, she returned to the attack. “Jack and I have been here less than a season.”
Valens, his color now normal, smiled in an open, generous way and stroked a thumb over her knuckles. “Is it not even a little easier than traveling daily, with people you could not trust?”
“I cannot trust you now,” Katherine rapped back, wishing she had said nothing when Valens’s amber eyes twinkled.
“I should think not!” Stepping back, Valens scooped Edith into his arms and handed her across, ruffling Jack’s downy black curls as he passed by. Her boy crowed with delight and Valens smirked, the pig. She watched him duck to go out and wished he would crack his head on the low lintel.
He halted in the doorway, half-turning back to her. “Father wants to take our cow and its calf to higher pasture. He will be gone a day or so with the beasts.”
He meant that she would be alone with him, save for the children. Glad to be sitting down, Katherine checked if Edith needed changing. Thorkill had been a comfortable shield for her, like a pillow, between Valens and herself.
“We will go on as we have.” He sounded very sure of that and a part of Katherine relaxed. She told herself she was not disappointed, then wondered why should she feel that way.
“Will you look for mushrooms again?” she asked, proud that her question was sensible.
“If I can find the morels and giant puffballs that you like, I shall bring those.”
On that promise, Valens made to step out into the late summer dawn and go, as he had on other days. Instead he lingered still. “What do you do today?” He shuffled his feet, his shoulders hunched, as if he was shy. That made her less resentful and her reply less sharp than it might otherwise have been.
“Your father told me it would be sunny all day today, so I mean to do the washing.”
Valens’s red eyebrows quivered. “Take care with the hot water. Shall I bring the big cooking pot out from the barn?”
Pleased at the offer, Katherine nodded. “Shall I feed the geese?” she found herself offering in return and decided she was just being polite.
Valens gave his twisted half-smile. “If you have time.”
“I will,” she replied, to see his amber eyes lighten, and sat back among the pillows to watch him leave.
It was strange, she thought later, as she fed her charges and set them to play with their dolls and feathers in a little pen used for sickly chickens and young goslings, a safe place which she had swept out, scrubbed, and lined with old rugs. It was better than strange. In the five weeks she and Jack had been held here, she had been finally free of hunger and thirst. She had slept at night in a comfortable bed with Jack beside her. She had spoken to Thorkill as she had tried to speak to Eric, easily and without fear. Even in bed with Eric she had felt constrained.
Valens had not molested her. He had kept out of her way, working in the small courtyard in a lean-to with his father, both of them making arrows. Dawn to nightfall he labored, longer than Thorkill, who always returned to the cottage at sunset to hinder her with his help as she cooked or re-heated their supper. At night, with the door shut and pelts pinned over the thatch to keep in the warmth, Thorkill would cuddle Edith and speak of his time in Lord Sebastian’s militia. Open in his smiles and warmly weathered in his looks, Thorkill was as he appeared, Katherine decided, an amiable, good-natured man.
Valens remained a man of moods to her, silent and watchful in the evenings, crisply courteous by day. This morning’s exchange was the most conversation she’d had with him.
Katherine frowned as she bent over the big cooking pot. Inhaling steam, she slipped her hands into the warm water and pounded the clothes inside. She checked the water warming by the fire and clapped her wet hands at Jack and Edie, encouraging them to clap their chubby fingers in return. She wrung out a patched tunic that she guessed belonged to Thorkill, gave it a pat, and laid it on the bench to resume her pounding.
Valens was a mystery. Why did he dye his hair? Why should it matter if his auburn hair was distinctive? Katherine spread more washed clothes on the bench. He had been watching before he snatched Jack and herself. No, he had been spying on us. And spies need to blend in.
She shivered and bent again to the washing. For the first time since she had been taken, she wondered what might have happened to the others in the women’s camp. Perhaps Jack and I have been lucky. But this is another man with secrets. What do I want with a spy?
A
t this point Edith chose to vomit onto her baby clothes. Swiftly, Katherine fell to tending to the little girl, deciding then and there to bathe both infants now, instead of later in the day as she usually did. And bathe myself, too, or at least my hair. She knew she should have washed it earlier but had put off any task that meant stripping off. And her hair clean and combed was quite pretty. I feel safe to bathe here as I never felt when my step-son was around at Eric’s. She had deliberately not ordered her hair at all when she had lived there and it had become a habit, but now? Now I can rinse with rosemary to bring out the shine.
Why she would want to show herself off in any way was not important, she told herself, but still wondered if Valens would notice.
* * * *
Valens put down the pot of beeswax and tallow that he used to protect the thread that bound the fletchings to the arrow shafts and stretched his aching arms out in a cross. Breathing deeply, he took in the familiar scents of the workshop, that smell of dusty feathers, wood shavings, and leather. Outside the lean-to, the shadows of the browsing geese were long in the evening light, the surrounding woodlands quiet. He inhaled again and smiled, guessing from the enticing smell that there would be mushroom pottage for supper. Katherine was a good cook.
He turned and looked across the yard to the house, his heartbeat quickening. Katherine had brought Edith and Jack with her while she spread the washing out to dry on the bushes nearby. He waved to the little group.
“Any ale for a thirsty man?” he called. Katherine had made fresh ale, not as excellent as Julia used to produce, of course, but still very fine.
“Jack will bring your cup down,” Katherine returned, dipping back into the cottage.
Companionable, Valens thought. He and Katherine were companionable, whether it was him stepping by earlier that day to drop off the mushrooms or here and now, with her son trotting down the dusty path between cottage and workshop, Jack hissing at the geese beyond the wicker hurdles and laughing at him. Valens ran out to meet the tiny black-haired figure, catching the toddler into his arms before the boy went sprawling over tree roots in his haste to bring the empty wooden beaker to —
Valens the Fletcher and his Captive [Medieval Captives 2] (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 3