Something reckless overwhelmed him. The tight rein he kept on his emotions loosened. The analytical mind that always thought before acting had been sent on a sabbatical. That part of him that always remained subservient to his more rational self decided it would be a good idea to kiss his bride.
Now.
He strode over to the bench where Frey sat with her brother, took his hand in hers, and called out loudly over the noise of conversations in the hall.
“Minstrels! I wish to dance with my wife!”
The red-and-green-clad musicians scrambled for their instruments, and, as they hastily tuned up, Sebastian seized Frey around the waist and kissed her thoroughly. He felt her resistance at first until her natural passion rose and she softened in his arms, her lips parting to his.
For a brief few seconds, they were the only ones in this room, until his ears remembered their function and the sound of appreciative hoots and yells filtered through to his brain.
Sebastian thought he might be drunk. Perhaps a bit.
He had been very drunk once when he was a squire and found himself ambushed by three of his more sober colleagues, who stole his purse of coins and blackened his eye in jealous retribution over their losses at dicing.
This did not feel like that.
He watched Frey losing some of her reserve throughout the evening and actually dance with Rhys.
“I think Rhys is beginning to warm to Frey, don’t you, Brother?”
Sebastian wrapped an arm around Rosalind’s shoulders and hugged his sister.
“And I know his change of heart is in no short measure due to you. Thank you.”
“I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t believe you two belong together.”
“I’m going to miss you come spring.” He added weight to his words with a kiss on her cheek.
“Come now, you will have other things to occupy you than having your sister underfoot. Rhys and I need to get home to Leicestershire and arrange for Heloise’s marriage.” Rosalind smiled.
“Rhys says there is a newly elevated baron in a county twenty miles away who he believes would be a suitable match.”
Rosalind’s smile softened. “It would be nice to see her settled. I’ve been concerned for her over these past few months. None of us had any idea her girlish fancy was serious.”
Sebastian shook his head, absolving his sister of any guilt over the matter. He cast his eye across the hall and did not see Heloise among the revelers.
“She’s been behaving oddly ever since…secretive,” he observed. “And whenever I have given her greetings, her manner has been colder than a witch’s tit.”
Rosalind swatted his arm for his uncouthness.
“She’s a young woman who has had her heart broken. Just give her time. You will always be her favorite brother-in-law, and she will be a doting aunt to your children, you’ll see.”
The dance ended with the announcement that a course of sweets would soon be served.
“I’m going to check on William,” announced Rosalind. “Cook promised sambocade cheesecake as one of the dishes, and I don’t want to miss out.”
“Go,” Sebastian smiled. “I’ll save you a slice.”
Rosalind walked off with a wave of a hand in acknowledgment.
“Perhaps half a slice!” Rosalind pulled a face at him and continued on her way.
* * *
Heloise edged her way toward the passage that led to the stairs while watching Sebastian lead that woman into the newly cleared center of the hall. As she had been instructed, there should be no one who could find fault in her actions, and she carried out her duties assiduously. She smiled and laughed throughout the day and whenever anyone enjoined her in conversation, she offered nothing but good wishes and affected an air of familial pride to anyone who watched.
A rope of gold beads, a gift from her brother for the wedding, hung around her neck. She rolled one around in her fingers and waited until she was sure she would not be missed before slipping down the stairs.
Heloise moved quietly past the guards’ quarters and then past the kitchen, where the sound of banging pots and barked commands announced the wedding feast at Tyrswick had another few courses to go.
It was easy, so very easy, to slip into the outer bailey and toward the stables. Heloise tugged her wolf’s-pelt cloak around her and stopped at the entrance, eyeing the distance between the keep and the stables.
A few steadying steps against the chill and the wind beginning to rise, then Heloise darted forward, keeping her attention fixed on the dully glowing lamp that marked the stable entrance. All the householders in the keep were upstairs celebrating, even the groomsmen. They would not come to check on the horses until much later.
So fixed was Heloise on her destination that she didn’t hear the crunch of a booted footstep to her left until the body it belonged to stretched out and snatched her midstride. Nothing more than a surprised mewl escaped her before a hand ruthlessly clamped over her mouth and propelled her toward the stable opening.
“Shh,” hissed the voice. “It’s me.”
* * *
Later, Heloise watched Rosalind pass up the stairs and round the corner to the guest chambers just as she reached the landing on the Great Hall. Heloise stopped to warm her hands by the fire. She did not notice Sebastian until he spoke to her.
“There you are! You’ll miss out on the dances standing here by yourself,” he told her.
She blushed. Sebastian swept her hands into his. “Your hands are freezing!”
His notice of her discomforted rather than flattered.
“I know where you’ve been,” he announced.
Heloise jumped. She worked to pry her tongue from the roof of her mouth.
“You do?” she exclaimed, eyes darting for the door.
Sebastian grinned and folded her arm through his and led her toward the knot of dancers.
“You’ve been down in the kitchen pestering the cook for a taste of the syllabub, haven’t you?”
The minstrels began a new tune, and Sebastian led her through the steps effortlessly.
The words lingered for a second or two before they sank in. She sunk with them. If she told the truth, he might save her from this unwise and dangerous course of action.
The dance took them a few steps away from one another, but Heloise kept her eyes on Sebastian as they split—he taking the hand of a second dancer as her hand was taken by another dancer around whom she turned before her hand was reclaimed by Sebastian.
Then the dance progressed in two concentric rings, the inside ring moving to the left while the outside moved to the right.
She watched as Sebastian danced farther and farther away from her.
In life, as in this dance, Sebastian would return to her. Each step and each action would eventually bring Sebastian back to her for good. But eventually was not enough.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The seasons turned from autumn to winter, bringing flurries of snow that melted away by noon. But as December heralded shorter days and longer nights, the focus of the keep turned inward.
The cooks and kitchen servants stayed by the warmth of their fires, deliberating on the final menu for the Christmas feast and how to manage the inevitable leftovers into pies that would form the basis of Tyrswick Keep’s main meals between Christmas and Candlemass.
Patrols were short and Sebastian suspended sessions for a month.
Little happened in and around the greater Tyrswick holdings at this time of year, and nothing requiring the intervention of the baron and his men, but Sebastian knew men with little to do were apt to get into the greatest mischief.
He set them to work on replenishing the armory. Arrows, spears, lances, bows, and swords were fashioned and forged with the aid of the blacksmith. Armor was cleaned and new links were added to the mail of young squires who had grown.
When those tasks were done, hands experienced at carving shields and straight shafts for spears and arrows were turned to do
mestic woodwork, and Tyswick’s store of turned platters, goblets, and cups grew.
Frey had much the same thought regarding the management of the household servants, and when she broached Sebastian about her plans, she was delighted to find he gave her full reign to run the household as she saw fit.
He told her with a smile and a kiss, of which she was rapidly becoming accustomed, that as his wife she had his full confidence. And with the authority she now possessed as the baroness of Tyrswick, Frey injected the same structure and discipline inside the Keep as Sebastian demanded of his men outside it.
All the same, housemaids didn’t mind the mending of clothes and blankets when their laps were kept warm as they worked. Others not so occupied were seated at looms, completing tapestries to curtain walls, keeping in warmth and holding out the bitter cold that seeped through the stone masonry.
Even the children of the Keep and the younger members of the household, prone to restlessness at spending so much time indoors, were sent out to forage for sprigs of holly, trails of ivy, and other evergreens to dress the Great Hall.
However, while the days were filled with activity so as to wrest the most out of every usable second of daylight, evenings were for leisure.
Larcwide and some of the older men watched as two others sat studiously at a table, contemplating their next move in a game of draughts. Every now and again heads would lift and the displeasure of other occupants of the Hall were made known when the sounds of wooden skittles being felled or the laughter at the antics in a play-acting game became too distracting.
Sebastian taught Frey the game of draughts and, despite a few initial missteps, she could now boast of being a worthy opponent. Her brother was a better one.
“Ah!” Brice announced triumphantly, having landed his counter on the last row of the board.
“I should wonder what they do all day at St. Cuthbert’s if you have time to become so expert,” she grumbled, then added cheerfully, “but now that you are living here, you will have all the more time to teach me your skill.”
Brice looked uncomfortable. His head dropped and chin trembled.
“Frey, I wanted to wait until after Christmas, but I ought to tell you something now,” he started, first tentatively and then with increased excitement as he shared his news.
“In summer, I might be going to a town in the south. It's called Oxford and the church has started a school there. Brother Abbot Ranulf says I have a fine mind and if I keep up my studies, he will recommend I study under Gerland, who is the greatest mathematician and computist in all of England.”
While Brice spoke avidly of integers, modulos, and divisions, Frey swallowed past a lump in her throat and inwardly mourned while outwardly she managed a smile and told him with all sincerity that his mama would have been so proud of him.
* * *
That night alone with Sebastian in their bed, Frey didn’t hide her tears.
“You could speak to the abbot; you could make him stay,” she pleaded.
Sebastian wrapped his arms around her and wiped away her tears with the sleeve of his nightshirt.
“I probably could, but I won’t,” he said, dropping a light kiss on the crown of her head. “Most boys his age would already be fostered to other families. You admit yourself that even his lameness notwithstanding, your brother has not the stomach or the will to be a knight.”
Frey shrugged and rested her head on Sebastian’s chest, saying nothing.
“And, as Providence would have it, Brice seems to have an academic gift. It would be a shame if it were not exercised to its full potential.”
“Brice idolizes you. He’d stay if you asked it,” she told him.
“And Brice would stay if you asked,” Sebastian countered. “But imagine all the things you’ll have asked him to give up. The chance to learn with the finest minds of Christendom, the chance to travel. Just think, Frey, all the things he could do if you gave him your blessing to go and be the man he was meant to be.”
Frey sat up and crossed her arms.
“I hate it when you’re right.”
At a glance she could see Sebastian smirk. “Get used to it, princess, I’m more often right than wrong.”
“’Tis a wonder there’s enough room for two of us in this bed, with you and your enormous self-regard,” Frey huffed.
Sebastian laughed, then his voice turned husky.
“Would you like to see my enormous self-regard?” As he spoke Sebastian trailed his fingers softly up and down her arms.
In spite of her disappointment at losing Brice, Frey smiled and shook her head at her husband’s jest. The melancholy evaporated, and in its place was a sensual stirring his touch evoked in her.
Following the stroke came a kiss.
One, then another, brought warmth and desire up her arms and across her shoulders, then her neck where Sebastian presented a bounty of kisses.
He propped himself up on one arm and with the other, untied the neck of her bed shift.
In one swift motion, the neck of the garment was past her shoulders, exposing her breasts. Her nipples puckered and hardened in the cool night, but they were soon worshipped by the warmth of his tongue on one, then the other.
Limited by the fallen shift to the use of her lower arms and hands, Frey encouraged Sebastian on with soft words and brushes of fingertips edging up the hem of his own shirt. He moved over her and Frey’s legs parted to receive him eagerly, and they were joined flesh to flesh.
Exquisite sensations like those she had never known before Sebastian warmed her and filled her with a compounding yearning, not just for physical release, but also the communion of souls that bound them inexorably in a union that grew and strengthened with every day they shared.
With it came a dawning realization that what she was beginning to feel for Sebastian was not simply gratitude, desire, or even affection—all three words were a grossly inadequate expression.
As Sebastian skillfully brought her to climax, Frey knew without a shadow of a doubt in her heart that she started to fall in love with her husband.
* * *
The days of Advent led to the arrival of Christmas and, following a tradition established by Sebastian from his first year as baron of Tyrswick, the household of the Keep walked or rode down into the village to attend the first of three masses to mark the holy day.
The Angels’ Mass was held at midnight on Christ’s Mass Eve. The small stained-glass window of the church spilled light and color from the hundreds of candles lit inside, which added much welcome warmth inside the building.
The sweet scent of incense removed the sting of frosty air as well as the odor of unwashed bodies.
Following the mass, the party returned to the Keep and chilled bodies were treated to a feast of warmed pies, both sweet and savory, served with warmed spiced wine.
Some of the household would retire straight after the meal for a few hours’ sleep before the Shepherds’ Mass dawn service, while others eschewed their beds in favor of sharing the fire with friends.
Return from the third Christmas celebration, Mass of the Day, marked the end of Christmas formalities and the beginning of the feasting.
An enormous roast boar was the centerpiece of the Christmas table, along with several roasted geese. A Christmas pudding called a frumenty, a thick wheat-based dish filled with currants and dried fruit and spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, finished the final course for the evening.
Despite the lateness of the hour after such a busy day, the younger members of the Keep determined to work off their excessive feasting with dancing. One of the knights obtained a mandolin and started singing a folk carol.
Tomorrow shall be my dancing day:
I would my true love so did chance
To see the legend of my play,
To call my true love to my dance.
“In a manger laid and wrapped I was,
So very poor, this was my chance,
Between an ox and a silly poor ass,
While others chatted, dined, or danced, Frey glanced around to see Heloise sitting to one side on her own.
The girl had studiously ignored her at the wedding, sparing only a few mumbled words as she kept her eyes fixed on Sebastian. Since then, she was little more than a ghostly presence, only haunting the meal table in the evening.
Concerned for the girl, Frey broached the subject with Dorcas, who seemed quite surprised Frey thought there was anything strange about her mistress’s behavior. Why, the older woman proudly boasted, her charge attended mass in the village church every day over the forty days of Advent.
In the light of the woman’s fulsome praise of her mistress’s exemplary behavior, Heloise certainly looked devout now, with her head bowed and hands clasped over her lap, sitting in a corner.
In the spirit of good will dictated by the season, Frey decided to put aside her reservations and attempt a conversation. After one of the courses, she left Sebastian’s side at the high table. Heloise remained with her head bowed, but when Frey approached, the girl’s hands unlocked and fumbled with her fur muff for a moment before emerging with a string of jasper rosary beads.
“Art well, Lady Heloise?” Frey inquired.
“Quite well, Lady Alfreya,” Heloise replied politely but formally.
“We missed you sitting with the family at Mass. There’s no need for you to sit at the back of the church.”
“It suits me quite well,” she said, standing and looking down at Frey. “Excuse me, it’s been a very long day and I would like to get some rest.”
Frey shook her head as she watched her young sister-in-law leave the hall. She debated whether to discuss her concerns with Sebastian, but as she watched him in deep conversation with Gaines and his steward, she decided against it.
What happened within Tyrswick Keep was her responsibility, so if she was unhappy with the way things were done, then she had the authority to deal with it as she wished—as Sebastian reminded her just after they wed.
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