by Josie Litton
Krysta's eyes had widened during this telling. She had known bad storms before, snow that fell so thickly no one could stir from indoors for weeks, lashes of ice that bent full-grown trees to the ground. But never anything such as Hawk described. “You think that will come here?”
“I think there is a possibility and that is enough. However, there is nothing for you to worry about. Hawkforte's walls can withstand any blast.” He glanced toward the men, who were on their feet again, ready to resume work. To Krysta, he said gently, “Go now and rest. You have done enough.”
“Rest? But everyone else will be working through the night.” Everyone, she thought, save Daria and the priest, Father Elbert, for she had seen nothing of either of them.
“I certainly don't expect you to do that,” Hawk said. “You have already done more than most ladies would.”
Just how was she to take that, Krysta wondered. Had she shown herself to be less than a lady by the work she had done? Or did he simply presume she was of such delicate sensibility as to be incapable of doing more? Reluctantly, she remembered Daria's claim that he had wanted to marry a “lady of true nobility.”
“I am glad to help,” she ventured tentatively.
“There is no reason. All is proceeding very well. Go get some rest.” He gave her a little pat on the back to speed her on her way.
Hesitantly, Krysta went. She did not wish to gainsay him, much less present herself as less than a proper lady. Still, she glanced back several times over her shoulder, thinking he might relent. He was too busy to notice her, heaving huge bundles up onto the wagons with rhythmic ease that made her vividly aware of his strength and will.
Trudging down the road back to Hawkforte, she felt her gown sticking to her back. She glanced down at her hands, seeing them stained with dirt. Her face felt suspiciously as though it might be in the same condition.
Wincing at the thought of the picture she must have presented to him, Krysta plodded on. She was tired and the thought of sitting down in a cool, stone room was almost irresistible. Yet she loathed the notion. Everyone save Daria and her pet priest was hard at work. As she passed by one group on their way to yet another field, she glimpsed Raven perched on a bundle of sacks with Thorgold crouched beside her. They were chatting amicably with several of the townsfolk who seemed puzzled by them but still glad to have their help.
The littlest children were asleep already in the cool shadows at the edge of the fields where their parents were working, but those even a few years older were still scampering about, doing their best to gather up fallen sheaves. They could continue to contribute to the effort but Krysta was supposed to absent herself, being too refined a lady to possibly continue.
What hogwash! She was nothing of the sort and if Hawk wished otherwise, he was in for a keen disappointment. With a glance over her shoulder, she confirmed that she was out of his view. Resolve filled her. He might be angry later but that was a risk she was willing to take. She couldn't bear the thought of acting like such a weakling that she would take her ease while others labored through the night.
Coming upon a group of women bundling sheaves, Krysta saw her chance. She slipped in among them and began doing as they did without a word to anyone. For quite some time, no one noticed her. She was just one more pair of welcome hands—hands that were quickly sore and aching. The small of her back throbbed and her shoulders felt as though they were being wrenched from their sockets, but she persisted. Gather … tie … gather… tie… over and over until she lost all track of the passing hours. She could only be grateful that there were men to lift the bundles into wagons. The piles of oats waiting to be bundled seemed never to lessen, for others were going before them, scything through the field. As one filled wagon pulled away, another appeared.
Night came and still they worked. The torches did help but it was the moon that lit their way, turning the world to brilliant silver and casting long shadows across the fields. Were it not for the bleaching out of all color, it might have been day. From time to time, a woman would break off to check on the children. All of them were now fast asleep and still the adults labored. The night was warm but the wind was increasing. Even knowing what it might portend, Krysta was glad of the faint relief it offered.
It was well after midnight, by the position of the moon, when a woman came up beside her, began gathering more sheaves, and suddenly stopped.
“My lady?” Aelfgyth stared at her in shock. Like Krysta, she was sweat-stained, grubby, and exhausted. Her hair hung in tatters, as did Krysta's. Her face was smudged with grime, as was Krysta's. And her hands bled from a hundred tiny pricks of the oat sheaves, as did her mistress's.
“My lady, you cannot possibly be here!”
So tired was she, so numbed by the endless hours of exhausting toil, that Krysta could do nothing but laugh. “Then this must be a dream. What a relief! Obviously, I'm asleep in bed.”
Aelfgyth continued to gape at her, as though she were an apparition previously unimagined. “Surely his lordship did not tell you to remain here?” In the stark white light of the moon, even her pretty face looked wan and weary.
“Well, no, of course he didn't, but neither did he tell me I had to leave … not precisely.”
The maid shook her head. “You do not have to be here. Why are you?”
“Why do I not have to? Will I not eat of this oat just as everyone else does? Through the winter to come, will it not help to sustain me even as it does you?”
Aelfgyth blinked, so tired she could scarcely follow but trying all the same. “Yes … I suppose … but no one expects you to do this.”
“I see no harm in doing what is not expected.”
And so they returned to work, mistress and maid together, as the night aged and with aching slowness, dawn came.
And still the fields were not yet emptied.
Sometime in the depths of night when the moon had set and only stars whirled overhead, Krysta fell asleep. Aelfgyth was beside her. So exhausted were they that neither could have stayed on her feet a moment longer. They slumbered only a few hours while all around them weary men and women dropped where they stood and did the same. Before the cock's crow, the laborers stirred and stumbled to their feet, rubbing bleary eyes. It was the wind that woke them for it had increased significantly.
As Krysta helped Aelfgyth up, both their skirts whipped around their legs. Scattered blankets suddenly freed from the weight of sleepers began to billow across the fields. Children raced after them and after the empty baskets that also went tumbling. Yet still the sky was clear.
“Perhaps we'll just have a blow and it will be done,” Aelfgyth suggested.
Krysta nodded but she was unconvinced. There was still that strange, heavy smell, all the more pronounced now.
Wearily, aching in every bone, they returned to their tasks. Krysta's arms felt so heavy she marveled that she could still lift them. The pain between her shoulder blades had become a burning ache. After a night spent on the ground, her whole body felt bruised. Yet as she gazed out over the fields, she was astonished to see how much had been accomplished. Whole swathes of land she had last seen still covered by uncut stalks were now bare. She blinked, thinking she must be imagining it for surely it had seemed to her that all the workers had gotten at least some sleep.
All save for the bands of men still moving through the fields, still scything and gathering, still hoisting the bundles into the wagons. Schooled to the stamina of battle, led by the unrelenting Hawk, the garrison had worked through the night without pause. Men who under ordinary circumstances would never have deigned to do such humble labor had put aside class, pride, and every other consideration, at their leader's bidding.
As a group of them approached down the road, accompanied by half-a-dozen wagons, the peasants Krysta was among stopped. As one, the men pulled off their caps in deference to the weary warriors. In their midst, helping to push one of the wagons over a deep rut, was Hawk himself. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes a
nd deep lines etched around his mouth. Yet he flashed a grin as the wagon came free and continued on its way. A moment later, his gaze fell on Krysta.
He stopped as the others continued on and stared at her. She fought the urge to try to fade back into the little group. Those around her became aware of the focus of their lord's attention and found sudden, pressing matters to see to elsewhere. Aelfgyth lingered, but as the Hawk shook off his stunned stupor and advanced toward them, she shot Krysta a sympathetic look and vanished.
“It's you,” he said slowly. He lowered the scythe he was carrying to the ground and leaned on it as he studied her. So tired was he that he seemed not quite sure of what he was seeing. “Didn't I tell you to go back to the manor?”
“You told me I could go back to the manor,” Krysta said softly. “It didn't sound to me as though you were saying that I had to go back.”
He was shaking his head before she had finished. “You know perfectly well I expected you to return to the manor. Why didn't you?”
Krysta took a breath, willing herself to be calm. He didn't look angry, just surprised. He was also very tired. Her heart twisted as she thought of him laboring through the night. The possibility of adding to his travails by disappointing or displeasing him wrenched at her.
Softly, she said, “I really wanted to help, to be part of this. Hawkforte is to be my home and these my people. It did not seem right to me that I should sit at leisure while everyone else was laboring so hard.”
He blinked at her once, twice, and leaned a little harder on the scythe. “You look worn out and you're very dirty.”
“Well, I'm sorry,” she said with some asperity, “but you might want to take a look at yourself.”
“That's different.”
“Why?”
He shot her a skeptical look, as though she couldn't possibly be so obtuse. “Because I'm not a lady.”
That anything so blatantly obvious needed to be pointed out made Krysta laugh despite her fatigue. “Well, I guess not.” She was silent for a moment before she said quietly, “Perhaps I'm not either. Or at least not your idea of a lady.”
Tired though he was, Hawk's battle senses were not dulled. He realized at once that this was important. It was just that his poor, fogged brain couldn't figure out why. Loath though he would be to admit it, he was dog tired. It would be many a day, if not forever, before he looked at peasants scything a field with anything less than utter respect.
“I guess you're not,” he said slowly. His sister, Cymbra, was a lady but Cymbra was so unusual that she wasn't a useful standard to set anyone beside. Daria too was a lady, and he shuddered at the thought of more of the same. His first wife had been a lady and the less he dwelled on her, the better. Perhaps then being a lady, whatever that meant, was not so important after all. Perhaps it was the woman herself who mattered.
Krysta looked upset but he had no idea why. He could barely remember what he'd just said to her and besides, he had no more time for standing around chatting. Weary though he was, he was also well aware that the wind was strengthening.
“We'll be finished in a few hours,” he said, “and just as well. At least promise me you won't dawdle in the fields. Get back to the manor promptly as soon as we're done.”
She nodded but said nothing, leaving him to wonder why she was so quiet suddenly. She wasn't a quiet sort of woman. He definitely could add that to his list of things he knew about her. Hell, he didn't think he'd had a quiet moment since she'd arrived—strange servants, outrageous disguise and all. A weary smile lifted the corners of his mouth. Quiet was not so desirable. Perhaps even order was overrated. There was much to be said for a fey Norse beauty, freckles and all.
His smile deepened. He felt less tired suddenly than he had done. They were going to win; the crops would be gathered before the storm hit. It was a small victory in the overall scheme of such things but it was his own and he savored it.
When this was over, he decided, he was going to buckle down to the business of getting to know Krysta. And to start with, he would satisfy his curiosity about an aspect of her that had been tantalizing him from the first.
Exactly how many freckles did she have?
Chapter NINE
DAWDLE. krysta had never dawdled in her life. And she most certainly hadn't been dawdling the past day as she'd worked herself to exhaustion helping to save his oats and his apples and … No, that wasn't fair. Hawk was working harder than anyone else and he hadn't expected her to do anything. He had even asked if she would supervise the children instead of telling her to do so.
But he did not think her a lady, that much was clear, and the knowing of it hurt especially when her mind wandered yet again to the damnable “lady of true worth.” Granted, they had gotten off to a poor start but her motives were pure and he might have forgiven her, indeed she thought he had. She should have known better. It was all well and good to dress up in her mother's beautiful clothes and have a maid for the first time in her life, but none of that made her a lady.
Ladies were not sweat-stained, dirt-splattered, grimy wretches with bleeding hands and the aroma of a day's worth of hard labor clinging to them. They did not tumble into water and come up laughing, or confess to never having ridden a horse before, or kiss back.
That was probably where she'd gone wrong, right there in the stable when Hawk had kissed her and instead of protesting as a proper lady no doubt would, or merely passively assenting, she had actually kissed him, too. Her wantonness had shocked him, he'd made that clear, but she'd been foolish enough to think it was because he believed her a servant disloyal to her mistress. Now, looking back, she saw her folly and with it every misstep she had taken.
Mortification gripped her. She had told him—no, shouted at him—that she did not want him in the beds of other women. She had tried to chase off the redhead. She danced with the children and went grubbing about on the beach when she should probably have been—
What was it ladies did?
Daria seemed to do nothing but order people about and complain that they did nothing right. Likely, she was not the best example to consider. But Krysta knew no others, knew nothing at all about being a lady save the few bits and pieces she had managed to glean about the fabled Lady Cymbra, sister of the Hawk, wife of the Wolf, gifted healer, possessor of strange powers, and utterly devoted to the cause of peace. Surely no one could hope to live up to the standards of such a paragon.
The problem ate at her as she rejoined Aelfgyth and the others. She had no good model of ladylike behavior, no method for proceeding. Never had she felt so lost and uncertain. Were she not already sweating so much, she would have suspected the tang of salt striking her lips was from tears. But she knew better. She was not crying. She was not.
Gather and tie … gather and tie … over and over while the pain of her weary body dissolved into the anguish of her heart. Until at long last, as she bent over to scoop up yet another bundle of oats, Aelfgyth laid a hand on her arm.
“Lady, we are done.”
She straightened up as much as her back would let her and glanced around. The fields were bare. As far as her eyes could see, not a single stalk was still standing. Which was all to the good, for as she turned around and looked to the south, Krysta gasped. Dark thunderheads were moving toward them. Already the sky was a sickly yellow, and the wind groaned in the trees.
“Come,” Aelfgyth said, “we must go.”
They and everyone else still in the fields went in a rush, pressing their exhausted bodies to the limit as they made haste to reach Hawkforte. The children had already been sent on ahead, only the garrison force lingered, making sure everyone was safely on the way. Last within the manor walls was the Hawk himself, who came switching the backsides of the oxen pulling the final wagon filled to brimming with golden sheaves.
With her last bit of strength, Krysta drew two buck-etfuls of water from the deep well inside the stronghold. Aelfgyth offered to help, then looked tearfully relieved when Krysta sent her
on her way. She was just beginning to drag the buckets up the stairs to her tower when Daria stepped out of the shadows near the bottom of the stairs.
“Oh, my,” Daria said, “what have we here?” She lifted the hem of her wide sleeve and placed it delicately before her nose. “Have you been rolling about with the pigs, Krysta? You certainly smell as though you have been.” Small, dark eyes gleamed. “You would be funny, really, if you weren't so pathetic. You haven't done a single thing right since you got here. Poor Hawk! He must be frantic, trying to figure out how to break the betrothal he never wanted.”
Krysta's head throbbed. She was wearier than she had ever been in her life and Daria was the last person she wanted to see just then.
It wasn't so much the reminder that she was less than a lady but the malicious smile of satisfaction that accompanied it that undid Krysta. She could have simply gone on her way but pride would not allow it. Grimly, she said, “I smell the way almost everyone else here smells because the only people who have not been working desperately hard since yesterday morning are you and your pet priest. Apparently, you two think yourself too good to labor saving the crops, but I warrant you'll be happy enough to be eating them come winter.”
“How dare you—!”
“I dare nothing but the truth. As for the rest—” She looked Daria up and down coldly. “You may call me pathetic but it is you I feel sorry for. I would not wish to be in your position.”
“My position? I am the lady of this manor. I say what is to be done. People obey me and they always will!”
“They don't obey you,” Krysta said. “They serve Lord Hawk. As for you being lady here, you know perfectly well that is soon to change.” She spoke with far greater confidence than she felt, mindful that she was not the lady Hawk wanted, but not for a moment would she let Daria see her doubts.
Scarcely had the words left Krysta's lips than Daria turned a bright, mottled red. Her eyes glowed with fury. “Nothing will change! Nothing! You vile little upstart! If you seriously believe for one moment that you will ever be lady here, you are stupider even than you appear! These are my lands, my manor. I will always rule here!”