Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01]

by Falcons Fire

  Father Simon broke Thorne’s reverie by rising and delivering a stream of long-winded good-byes. A group of adolescent boys in the corner watched in silence as he exited the hall. The moment he disappeared, they brought out their dice, kicked aside the rushes, and squatted down, commencing animated play.

  Estrude said, “Lady Martine, have you no one to serve you? No lady’s maid traveling with you?”

  “Nay, my lady. I had no such person in Paris.”

  “We shall have to find one for you.” She turned to her maid. “Clare, do you known of anyone? One of your sisters, perhaps? The fat one. She’s got nothing better to do.”

  “She has fits, my lady,” Clare said.

  “Yes, but in between the fits, she’d be fine, I’m sure.” Estrude nodded happily. “I shall send word to your father tomorrow that we’d like her to—”

  Thorne said, “Perhaps Lady Martine would prefer to choose a maid herself from among the house servants.”

  “The house servants?” Estrude said in disbelief. “But surely the daughter of a baron would prefer a girl of breeding to one of these—”

  “Why don’t we let Lady Martine decide?” Thorne turned to Martine. “My recommendation, if it’s of any interest to my lady, would be Felda.” Estrude gasped. “I’ve known her for many years. She’s reliable, has a good heart, and will serve you as well as any girl of noble birth.”

  Felda displayed as much astonishment at this referral as Estrude. Martine looked at Rainulf as if for guidance, but he smiled and spread his hands as if to say, This is up to you.

  “Felda,” she said, “would you be at all interested in this position?”

  “In being a lady’s maid?” Felda said, grinning. “I should think so!”

  Estrude shook her head. “This is preposterous.”

  Martine said, “Then it would please me greatly to have you.”

  Felda yelped with delight. Then she leaned over, took Thorne’s face between her fleshy hands, and kissed him on the lips.

  Thorne grinned. “Don’t make me sorry for suggesting you.”

  “Nay! I’ll be wonderful. Oh, milady, thank you. Can I start now?”

  Martine shrugged. “I suppose so.”

  Felda called to the boys playing dice in the corner. “Pitt! Sully! Brad! You and them others go heat up some kettles of water and bring them upstairs to milady’s chamber, then fetch the big tub. Hurry, now!” Groaning, they pocketed their dice and left the room.

  “A bath!” said Lady Martine. “I haven’t had one since leaving Paris. ‘Twill be heaven.”

  Felda grabbed two of the serving girls. “Beda, you come help me unpack milady’s things. Carol, go out to the cookhouse and bring back one of them fresh squire’s loaves and a hunk of that ripe Brie. Milady didn’t touch her supper. Also some of that buttermilk, and some brandy. Put them next to her bed.”

  As the guests rose from the table, dozens of house servants settled down in the rushes and prepared to sleep. The torches were extinguished one by one. Soon there would be only candlelight, and then the candles would be blown out, and darkness would consume the great hall.

  Thorne bid the assembled company a collective good night, then turned to stare after the new serving girl as she entered the stairwell, carrying two pitchers. Just before she disappeared from view, she turned and caught Thorne’s eye, holding his gaze for a brief but meaningful moment.

  Smiling to himself, Thorne jogged after her.

  “Zelma!”

  The kitchen girl paused on the stairs just below the landing, a pitcher in each hand, and looked up at him. When she saw who it was, she smiled, turned, and leaned back against the curved stone wall.

  “You’re coming undone,” he said in English, and began smoothing stray hairs off her face and tucking them into her snood. She watched him calmly. Even when his hands lowered to her breasts, she didn’t move.

  Two wolfhounds trotted down the stairs, but otherwise Thorne and Zelma were still alone. He lifted the two ends of the cord that had come unlaced and tugged hard, pulling the kirtle once more snugly around her chest. With slow deliberation, he tied the cords into a bow.

  “You’re the Saxon knight,” she said. “The falconer.” He liked her raspy voice. It reminded him of the cat’s tongue.

  He tied the ends of the cord and arranged the bow just so, then rested his fingertips on her breasts, gauging her reaction out of the corner of his eye. There was none except perhaps a lowering of her eyelids and a slight smile.

  He allowed his fingers to move slowly, tracing feathery patterns over the taut brown wool. He heard her sigh, felt the warmth of her breasts beneath his trailing fingertips. Soon his aching need would be satisfied. Lust was but a demand of the body, like thirst. He had a raw thirst that needed quenching, and it didn’t matter whose cup he drank from. Tonight it would be Zelma’s.

  He encircled her with his arms. “Come outside with me.”

  “I’m married,” she said.

  All the better. Married women tended to be realistic, not expecting his heart to worship them as his body did. “Where’s your husband?”

  “Hastings.”

  Thorne smiled, then leaned down and closed his mouth over hers. She yielded to the kiss, allowing him to explore the warmth of her lips and tongue with his own. He closed his eyes and Zelma’s face transformed into another, pale and mysterious, shrouded in saffron veils. The veils shifted, and he found himself gazing into the deep blue eyes of Martine of Rouen. His heart drummed in his chest; desire overwhelmed him. When he took her full lower lip between his teeth, a moan rose in her throat.

  Voices from below made him open his eyes. Three of the boys who had been playing dice were coming up the stairwell, each carrying two huge buckets of steaming water. Thorne broke the kiss, but they had seen and heard enough. They snickered as they passed, the first one mumbling, “Sir.”

  “Boys.”

  Zelma said, “You’re taking a chance, kissing me like that. My husband’s Ulf Stonecutter. Do you know him?”

  “Nay.”

  “Well, he’s quite a big man.”

  He lowered his hands to her hips and pulled her against him so she could feel his desire—desire for another, but desire nonetheless. “How do you know I’m not bigger?”

  She smiled, but not, he sensed, in amusement at his reply. She looked like someone who had an idea she wanted to test. Nodding toward her pitchers of spiced beer, she said, “Would you hold these for me?”

  He took one in each hand, finding them full and quite heavy. She must be a strong woman. Then, as casually as she might lift a tablecloth, she pulled up his tunics, loosened the waist-cord of his chausses, and reached into them with both hands. Thorne gasped as they closed around his erection, feeling him with liberal familiarity.

  “Bless me,” she said. “So you are.”

  “Zelma!” With the two heavy pitchers and no place to put them, he might as well have had his hands tied. His only option would be to drop them and let them crash on the stairs, spilling their contents in a waterfall all the way into the bailey. It did not seem like a good plan.

  Thorne heard voices on landing above—Peter and Guy. Zelma must have heard them as well, but made no move to let him go. Thorne shook his head, amused at her audacity despite his embarrassment.

  The men found his predicament hilarious, laughing as they squeezed past with their full tankards. Guy said, “Careful, now. A fall down these stairs would be a nasty thing.”

  Zelma stroked him with tantalizing expertise. “You’re a regular stallion, that’s what you are. I daresay you could do me some damage with this.”

  The serving girl named Carol came running down the stairs on her way to the cookhouse, calling out as she passed, “That one’s married, Sir Falconer. Her husband’s enormous!”

  “Your Ulf is quite a legend,” Thorne said.

  “He’s a wonderful man, and I love him very much. It’s just that I’ve got a real weakness for big, tall Saxons. ‘Tis
quite a burden, really. I try to be strong.”

  “Of course you do.”

  More footsteps from above. With a sigh of irritation, Thorne looked up... and beheld the lady Martine, gazing down on him from the landing.

  Shock kept him rooted to the spot, robbed his tongue of the power of speech. At first she frowned slightly in obvious puzzlement. Then, with a strange and horrible detachment, Thorne saw her gaze travel slowly from his face to Zelma’s, and finally to Zelma’s hands where they disappeared beneath the hem of his tunic. Her eyes widened, and she took a step back.

  With her nunlike dress and her hands clasped primly before her, she looked like a saint who had just stumbled upon some sinners and didn’t quite know what to make of them. Despite her coolness and her intellect, she was, he reminded himself, a convent girl, unused to the ways of the world. He would have understood if she had gasped in horror, had turned and fled. But she merely returned her gaze to his, and he lacked the power to look away. His eyes were riveted on hers as the kitchen wench, oblivious to everything but her little game, continued to fondle him.

  To look upon Martine’s face as those skilled hands worked their magic both aroused and disturbed him. He wondered what Martine was thinking. Did she know that he had imagined her in Zelma’s place, had seen her eyes behind the shifting veils, felt the warmth of her lips on his? Did she know?

  He saw something in her eyes... a secret knowledge, an understanding.

  His heart pounded; he could barely breathe. He closed his eyes, willing Martine gone. She mustn’t be here. She mustn’t know.

  “Are you all right?” Zelma asked, her hands stilling.

  He opened his eyes. The landing was empty.

  Zelma said, “You looked dizzy for a moment.”

  A moment. Yes, a moment. It had just been a moment. Martine had appeared and left in the space of two heartbeats, but it had seemed much, much longer.

  He took a deep breath and banished all thoughts of Martine from his mind. “I’m fine. Come outside with me.” Zelma’s teasing had driven him perilously close to the edge. He would not let her finish him here in this stairwell, like some randy youth who had to take what he could get. He had to get her to the hawk house.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You won’t get pregnant. I’ll finish outside of you.”

  “I’m barren as a stone. Doesn’t matter.”

  He wouldn’t have to pull out! He had to have her. Perhaps she feared that he would hurt her. She had commented on his size, something about him doing her damage.

  “I’d be so gentle,” he said. “You’d never even know I was in there.”

  “Ah. Well.” Abruptly she let go of him, pulled her hands out of his chausses, tightened the cord, and adjusted his tunics. “There’s hardly any point to that, now, is there?”

  “What?”

  “If I wanted to fall asleep in the middle of it, I’d spread my legs for that Sir Guy or one of them other fine Norman ladies. A real Saxon stallion should be able to make a woman scream.”

  “Zelma—”

  She turned and descended the stairs, saying, “Try again when you’re not in such a gentle mood.”

  He watched her disappear and stood staring after her, still holding the pitchers. The throbbing ache in his groin was suddenly matched by a headache of blinding intensity. He turned, closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead against the cool stone wall. It had been a trying day.

  More voices came from below—Peter and Guy on their way back up from wherever they had gone—but still Thorne didn’t move. Their conversation trailed off as they came up behind him. For a moment they regarded him in silence, and then Peter put a hand on his shoulder, saying softly, “Thorne?”

  “Aye?”

  He tapped his empty tankard against one of the pitchers. “Mind giving me a refill?”

  * * *

  Martine sat down in the hot, scented water and leaned back against the smooth wood of the tub. She closed her eyes and sighed. All the woes of the world were expelled from her in that sigh, replaced by a delicious, consuming warmth. She slid down until only her head and knees were above water, her hair hanging over the side of the tub and spilling onto the rush-covered floor.

  Felda pulled up a stool, draped the hair across her lap, and spent a wonderfully long time brushing it. The feel of the stiff boar bristles against her scalp intoxicated her. Such sensual luxuries were foreign to Martine. She wondered what it would feel like to be caressed by a lover, and her mind instantly conjured up a picture of Sir Thorne and the black-haired kitchen wench. She saw them locked together, doing that which she had heard described, but which she had never been able to fathom anyone wanting to do—and then imagined herself in the wench’s place.

  The longing, the pulsing void deep within her belly, came as a shock. She wanted him to enter her, to consume that void. Never in her life had she felt so empty.

  “The bath smells heavenly,” Felda said. “What was that you put in the water?”

  “Lovage and oil of rosemary,” Martine murmured.

  “I seen all them oils and powders when I unpacked your bags. Beda said you had enough to set up a stall on market day.”

  Martine opened her eyes. Her chamber, barely illuminated by the light from a single oil lamp, was but a cell within the thickness of the keep’s massive stone wall. It was so small that there was barely room in it for a modest chest, the stool, and a narrow, curtained rope bed, upon which Loki now slept. The bathtub took up nearly all the remaining space.

  She took the bar of lavender-scented soap that Felda handed her and began washing up. “Some of my herbs are from the garden at the convent, some from the Paris physicians who taught at the university. I used to sneak into their lectures. One of them even let me assist him with his patients.”

  “Sit up now, dear. Let me do your hair.” Felda poured steaming water over Martine’s head, then lathered her hair with the lavender soap. “Stand up now.”

  Martine stood, and Felda poured a bucket of hot water over her to rinse her off, then began drying her with a large linen cloth. No one had ever done such things for her before, but self-consciousness soon gave way to the novel pleasure of being pampered.

  Felda tossed the damp linen into an empty bucket and helped Martine on with her wrapper. “Sir Edmond’s going to be one happy young stag when he gets your gown off on your wedding night and sees what he’s got himself. He’ll have mounted you twice before you can make it to the bed.”

  “Felda, really.” Martine regretted the reproach the moment she uttered it, but Felda’s comment had summoned afresh those disturbing mental pictures of Sir Thorne and the kitchen wench.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, milady. My big mouth is always getting away from me. Here I promised Sir Thorne I’d be such a good lady’s maid and I go prattling on about such things, and you a convent girl.”

  The boys who had poured Martine’s bath were now playing dice on the other side of the chamber’s leather curtain. Felda called them in to empty and remove the tub, then took a fresh linen and toweled Martine’s hair with it. “You must be hungry.” She handed her mistress a piece of bread and a cup of buttermilk, sat her down on the stool, and began combing her damp hair. “‘Twill be a warm night. You hair should be dry by morning.”

  The bread tasted fresh, the buttermilk smooth and tangy. Felda seemed like a good sort. Like someone Martine could talk to, someone she could ask questions of and expect candid answers. Attempting a nonchalant tone, she asked, “What is he like, by the way? Sir Edmond?”

  “He likes to hunt, milady,” Felda said, handing Martine a slice of cheese.

  “Yes, but what else? Doesn’t he do anything else?”

  Felda combed in silence for a while, then said, “You see, it’s the way he was raised. After his mum died. The Lady Beatrix, God rest her soul.” She stopped combing for a moment, and Martine knew she was crossing herself. “Eleven years ago Easter.”

  She sighed a
nd continued. “The whole household went downhill after that. Lord Godfrey never has gotten over it, but that’s another story. Your Edmond was only eight years old, and suddenly no mum. I mean, it’s not like he’d had much of one before, her being so sick all them years. But all of a sudden she was gone, and his lordship... well, he wasn’t much use to the boy, in his state. ‘Twas Bernard raised that boy. Bernard and his men.”

  “His men?”

  “His knights. There are four here at the castle, besides him and Thorne. And Edmond, now that he’s been dubbed. Two are his and two are Thorne’s.”

  “But surely they’re all Lord Godfrey’s.”

  “I’m not telling you how it should be, milady, but how it is. If you’d rather not know—”

  “No, please.” She turned and looked into the other woman’s kind green eyes. “You know I want to know. Everything. You must always tell me everything.”

  “Yes, milady.” She poured Martine a generous brandy and handed it to her. “Bernard’s got his men, and Thorne’s got his. We call them the dogs and the hawks, ‘cause Bernard hunts with his dogs, and Thorne with his hawks. Not that that’s the only difference between them, God knows.”

  “What else? Tell me about Edmond.”

  “Like I said, Bernard and his men raised little Edmond. Bernard’s much older, you know. He’s a good six and thirty by now. Him and his men took the boy everywhere they went: hunting, whor—uh, on trips to Hastings... everywhere. Godfrey’d wanted to send him to a monastery school, or perhaps to serve one of Lord Olivier’s knights, but Bernard wouldn’t have it. He said the boy needed him, and he wasn’t going anywhere. In truth, I think ‘twas him what needed the boy.”

  “How’s that?” The brandy warmed her stomach and made her drowsy. How delicious to drink brandy while having one’s hair combed.