Only with Robert did he maintain his former relationship, and the boy continued to bloom under his tutelage.
The very thing that had led to her discovery of his true status proved to be the most troublesome aspect to teach. Lyssa did not know how to use a sword. She dared not trust Stephen's guards, and there were no others to help. She worried about the problem often as she wove and spun, but could think of no answer. Finally, she went alone with him to the woods, commanding him to bring the sword he carried, and there made him take it up, and practice swings she had witnessed in dozens of lists. "It must become part of you," she said.
He did not like it, a woman telling him how to manage a weapon. With a wryly lifted brow, he raised the heavy broadsword over his head and brought it down on a stump, cleaving it neatly with massive power. "Like so?"
"Aye," Lyssa said. "Now you must learn to do it when there are bandits or horses or a whole tournament about."
"Lists," he growled. "'Tis the lance that most worries me in that, I admit."
"Robert should be learning. Watch while the others teach him. Meantime, when you are alone, that sword should ever be in your hand, till it feels like a part of your arm."
He hefted it and inclined his head, nodding.
As they walked back, he spoke the first near-friendly question he'd uttered in a fortnight. "How came you to know so much of swords, my lady?"
"By watching my father and his knights, sir."
"God's teeth," he growled. "Do not call me sir in private."
Surprised, Lyssa asked, "Why?"
He halted, that brooding in his eyes again. "Because it makes me feel a fool."
"I do not mean it so."
"You mean nothing," he said, and stalked away from her, his back rigid, his arms gleaming with faint sweat in the sunlight.
Bewildered, Lyssa stared after him, and finally a bright kernel of anger burst through her careful facade. "You ungrateful swine!" she cried after him. "Is that better? Shall you be worm and blackguard and lout?"
He glanced over his shoulder, but did not halt, and Lyssa picked up her skirts to run after him. "What ails you, sir, that you stomp all the day like some spoiled child, never smiling or laughing, but always brooding?"
They had broken into the clearing nearby the castle, and he whirled. "Do I not suit, my lady? Shall I tug my forelock for ye, so you feel more generous still?"
It wounded her deeply. "Nay," she said, and shook her head. "I am ill-suited to this business, I see. 'Tis a pity Tall Mary forgave me, for the pair of you could make sport of me as the foolish lady of the manor."
As she made to push by him, he grabbed her arm. "My lady, wait."
It was the first time he'd touched her, and Lyssa felt his grip through her body. Angered by her response, she yanked away and lifted her skirts to run before he saw how grieved she was.
But two of his steps equaled five of hers, and even running, he overtook her in moments, snagging her arm in mid-flight. "Stop," he said fiercely, gripping her so she could not flee.
She glared at him, but he did not release her. Furiously, she pulled hair from her mouth. "So speak, lout."
A glimmer of humor touched the sapphire eyes. "What shall I say?" he asked, and sobered, shaking his head. "This is madness."
Earnestly, she said, "I vow 'tis not, sir… er… my lo—"
His thumbs moved on her arms. "Call me what you wish, Lady. 'Tis flattered I am you think me worthy."
She curled her hands into his tunic. "Thomas, you do wrong yourself! You put to shame many a so-called knight of my acquaintance."
"I do wrong you, my lady."
At his unexpected nearness, a swirling spell sharpened her every sense. "Wrong me?"
"Aye," he said gruffly. His fingers tightened on her arms, and his gaze touched her mouth. "I wish for more than you are free to give, as Tall Mary wanted more of me."
She bowed her head, stung. Realizing she also had her hands on his chest, she gently took them away. "And in that, I am not free."
"Do not be ashamed that you do your duty, my lady," he said, and when she still did not raise her head, tucked a finger below her chin to lift her face to him. "'Tis what makes you who you are."
A pain cut through her. "Duty only? Is that all I am?"
"'Tis what you've been given, and what makes you good."
She pushed his hand from her. "I do not always wish to be so good! I wish to be free as Mary and Alice are, to lie where I wish, and stay where I love, and never be blamed for the ills of the world!"
"And I," he said gently, "do wish I did not need leave you to it. But you've taught me honor, and so I must." He bowed with courtly exaggeration, and held out one hand. "Come, my lady, let us not ruin this day with wishes of what life could have given."
She closed her eyes so she would not have to see his black hair lying just so on his shoulders, nor his mouth, nor his bare arms gleaming. "There's truth enough in that," she sighed, and opened her eyes. "But, please, Thomas, must you ever be so sober as you've been these last weeks?"
And for a fleeting second, she glimpsed bleakness and sorrow in his eyes before he inclined his head. "Henceforth, I'm a jester if it please you, lady."
"'Twould be better than the hangman I've seen about."
This time, there was genuine humor in his grin.
* * *
Isobel, sitting in the cool shadows of her chamber, watched Thomas and Lyssa in the field with a calm face and screaming heart. Nearby, Nurse hummed under her breath, oblivious to the fury that made Isobel's hands tremble so that she stabbed herself twice with her needle, bringing up a well of blood the second time, blood she sucked from her finger as she watched them. Pretending not to love each other.
They thought none knew his secret, but the night Thomas had gone to Lyssa's solar to confess the truth, Isobel had gone to seek comfort from her stepmother, and there had she overheard the confession.
She had also heard the wound in Lyssa's voice at his betrayal. The fool fancied herself in love. With a common peasant who climbed into society with his bedsport, giving pitiful females what they thought they wished.
It infuriated Isobel that she had been one of them. Still was. Even now, as he strode across the meadow at Lyssa's side, Isobel felt a pooling hunger low in her belly at the sleek, gleaming look of him, a base-born creature born to serve the baser needs of females, as whores served men in the cities.
She could not halt the strangled cry of frustration that rose in her throat. Nurse glanced up, but Isobel only lifted her thumb to her mouth as if she'd pricked herself again.
A horn sounded into the bright day, and Nurse bustled over to the embrasure. "Your man comes, my lady! Come, put your sewing away, and let's make you pretty for him."
Isobel quelled a wish to roll her eyes. Her man. Her boy. Not for all the world did she intend to marry the mewling creature, but for now she bided her time, till opportunity presented itself.
Chapter 14
In the blaze of a hot afternoon, just past Lammas Day, Lyssa stood in the open space between the kitchen door and the vegetable garden, where cabbages gleamed pale green and round. The carrots had gone to seed. She stirred a vat of dye with a long stick.
Around her other pots boiled on other fires, each simmering with herbs and water, awaiting their next load of combed wool. A small willow nearby served as a drying rack, and below it the earth was stained with several shades of blue dripping from the sky-and-sea-colored wool festooning the branches.
Behind Lyssa, Alice and Nurse gathered piles of carded but unspun wool into long skeins tied loosely with thread. Isobel, head draped with white to protect her delicate skin against the sun, carded raw wool adeptly. Lyssa smiled at the earnest pleasure on the girl's face. The simple soothing rhythm had captured Isobel's attention, and she had also discovered she did not mind the flow of conversation between women at such times. She laughed at the faintly ribald stories Alice told, and hung on the herbal remedies for which the peasant w
as so famed. Lyssa, teaching the skills of dyeing, had explained the qualities of each herb she used as it was placed in the pot, and each time, Alice had embroidered the lesson with the properties of healing each plant had.
Surprisingly, Isobel seemed fascinated by the fact that plants could dye and flavor and heal when one knew how to use them.
And glad Lyssa was for the girl's good humor. In spite of the heat and hard work of the dyeing, it was among Lyssa's favorite tasks. She was relieved that Isobel would not spoil it with one of her bouts of discontent.
Today Lyssa wanted blues to work into the tapestry on her frame. Whatever was left after the small amounts she used would be woven into cloth for other purposes. After more than a year without the work of weaving and sewing, many of the castle inhabitants were near threadbare.
In the pot she now stirred was indigo, the deepest of the blues, and most pleasing for its true, deep color that would last without mordants. The wool swirling around her stick was nearly finished, the tone so rich it nearly hummed. With a satisfied smile, she hauled it, steaming, out of the pot and carefully let the excess drip back into the cauldron.
"'Tis the blue of Lord Thomas's eyes," Isobel said of the wool.
"So it is," said Alice. "Mayhap our lady knows it, too."
Lyssa lifted her chin. "'Tis also the color I seek for the shadows in my hunt scene."
"Is that where you'll use such a shade?" Alice asked. "What about the meadowsweet and woad?"
Grunting a little with the weight of the wet skein, Lyssa carried it to the willow tree and hung it carefully, making certain the dark blue would not drip onto the lighter skeins. "Meadowsweet," she said, pointing to the pale blue, "will make parts of the sky. And woad the horizon." She inclined her head. "A lord's cloak, too. 'Tis a pretty shade."
"You should weave Lord Thomas a cloak in that dark blue, my lady," Nurse said, and chuckled. "'Twould suit him, though not so much as his skin."
Lyssa ignored her, even when Alice joined the jest, as if she were not his mother—which no one knew but Lyssa—and commented, "Aye," she laughed, "in his skin alone, he'd be a pretty sight indeed." Sly she added, "D'you not think so, milady?"
"I have not thought on it," she said without turning around. Thomas, for reasons known only to himself, chopped wood nearby, his ax making a pleasant undercurrent of noise in the still hot day—a crack of the ax, and the hollow clunk as the pieces fell, then the solid thunk of a new piece on the block. She glanced at him over her shoulder. "He's a most industrious man."
"He works like a peasant," Isobel said with a hint of disdain.
Lyssa looked at her quickly, but nothing showed on that angelic face. With a shrug, Lyssa turned back to the pot of woad and wool, and tested the color. A little longer. With hands to the small of her back, she stretched her tired muscles, trying to look anywhere but at Thomas, but the steady sound—crack, pause, clunk, pause, thunk—drew her eye.
In the heat of the day, he'd shed his tunic and worked only in braes that fitted closely over his lean hips and strong thighs, a pleasing sight to any female, no matter how old. As he swung the ax, the muscles in his long, dark back flexed and shifted in a splendidly beautiful dance. His flesh, the color of walnuts and smooth as silk, gleamed with a faint sheen of sweat.
She sighed and stirred the pot, eyeing the color critically. 'Twas criminal how much pure beauty God had granted a single man. And it did not stop with his fine form, for his face and his carriage were as easy to look upon, and even that ethereal part of him that men called soul was as beautiful.
A child shrieked with laughter nearby the well, and glad of the distraction, Lyssa glanced over to see Mary Gillian's eldest daughter, a cherubic girl of seven, running from a boy with a small bucket of water. The pair danced around the well, and the girl dashed toward the safety of the women, the grinning boy hot on her heels. Seeing he was near to losing, he lunged and tossed the contents of his bucket toward the girl with a misaimed fling.
Lyssa did not even have time to duck. The well-cooled water caught her in the face with a stunning shock. She yelped. A taste of copper-flavored air touched the back of her throat.
The boy, horrified, halted where he stood. Before Lyssa could catch her breath enough to reassure him, Mary Gillian's girl caught her skirts. "Milady, he meant no harm. 'Twas meant for me."
Lyssa blinked, and wiped water from her face. She put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "I'm not angry," she said. "But take your game elsewhere. If you'd overturned one of these pots, you'd be most savagely burned."
They scurried away without a second nudging. Smiling, Lyssa pushed tendrils of hair from her face, and glanced at the women. "Shall I get a bucket for each of you? 'Twas quite cooling, in all."
Alice chuckled. "You're a sight, milady."
Lyssa glanced down. Her tunic was wet in a triangle from shoulder to waist, but it was old and plain, stained with old dyes and some blues from this day's work. It would dry soon enough. She shrugged and picked up the bucket. "Some water to drink would be fine enough, I think."
It was only then that she realized the noise of Thomas's ax had halted. Walking toward the well, she glanced at him to find him looking at her quite intently, with more purpose than she had seen on his face since the morning she had begged him not to leave. Blue fire sparked from those indigo eyes, and she saw his gaze touch her chest, where the water had made her tunic cling to her breasts. Smiling to herself, she thought it only fair he should lust for her after she'd spent the day climbing his body in her imagination, and she deliberately slowed her pace, for once feeling the womanly power of flirtation move in her.
She knew his eyes would caress her breasts, and the thought was oddly arousing. Deliberately, she turned her back to him to send the bucket down the well, thinking to tease by hiding herself, but as she bent and reached, she grew all too aware of those other parts of her anatomy.
When she had drawn the bucket, she took the wooden cup, and braced the bucket of water against her hip. He watched her as she approached, his eyes burning into hers, touching her lips, touching her breasts.
Mayhap it was the heat, or the simple wonder of his beautiful form that drew her like a moth to a candle, but she found herself smiling up at him lazily. "Water, my lord?"
"Aye," he said, near a growl, and looked away as he drank it. Lyssa found herself staring at the long brown length of his throat as he swallowed, and in a heated rush, imagined her mouth on that place, imagined her tongue stroking the whole long length of it. He drained the cup and gave it back. "More?" she offered.
He would not look at her. "Nay," he said, bending to pick up his ax once more. She admired the cut of his hard jaw, almost painfully clean-shaven.
"Mayhap 'twill cool you, sir," she said silkily.
"Twill take more than a cup of water, my lady," he said, straightening, and he stroked her form with his gaze before looking at her face.
"Pray sir, what more than water?"
He inclined his head, a low gleam in his eye.
"I'm in mind of apples, my lady," he drawled. "White and round and sweet. Or, better still, cherries to nibble."
A flush moved over her chest and face, and her breath felt suddenly far away, but she managed to lift a brow teasingly. "Apples and cherries, sir? At this time of year?"
He leaned closer, and Lyssa smelled his flesh, leaf and sweat and man, a scent as heady as a kiss. "Aye," he said slowly, letting his gaze fix boldly, plainly upon her breasts. "Small tender cherries, and round white apples. And then a long, slow drink of honey."
She'd held her own when they'd sparred in the past, even when the talk grew bawdy. This time, her mind instantly filled with a vision of that mouth upon her breasts, his black hair scattering in silky softness over her face, and she could think of no parry to return. She only stared into his indigo eyes blankly, her lips parted for the words if they came. She grew hot with embarrassment.
He grinned. "What's this? She's gone speechless?"
"Y
ou are too bold, sir," she retorted, and suddenly flung the entire contents of the bucket at him.
His reflexes were quicker than hers, and without halting to wipe water from his face or hair, Thomas laughed and dropped his ax, his eyes leaping with mischief. "Methinks you're the one in need of cooling," he said, moving toward her with a swift step.
Lyssa backed away instinctively, but he grinned all the more and easily captured her with one arm, sweeping her against his body as if she were a sack of fresh milled wheat. Alarmed at the sudden feel of his body and his intentions, she struggled mightily. "Thomas, what are you doing?" She shoved at his arms and swung her feet. "Put me down."
"I think not."
Wickedly, he let his thumb, hidden below her arm, stray upward to the side of her breast, and at the unexpected touch, she froze. "Thomas," she protested in a whisper.
He halted at the well, and braced her against his thigh, his thumb moving deliberately in that hidden way, swirling dangerously close to the aroused center of her breast, though no one watching would know. It made Lyssa feel hot and weak, a thick golden feeling in her middle, and she wanted nothing more than to wriggle closer, to let her breast fill that palm.
"Turnabout is fair play," he said quietly, using his free hand to send the bucket down. More quietly, he said against her neck, "Though I'd rather you were bent over the well again. That was a pretty view."
She renewed her struggling, a playful fight. She pounded against his arm, kicked at his shin, but he held her as if she were a kitten, and all her frustrated noises did nothing but make the bored hot group in the bailey chuckle with pleasure at the unexpected amusement.
When he drew the bucket up, he turned to them. "Shall I?"
"Aye, aye!" they cried, laughing and clapping.
She raised her hands in protection, caring not how he touched her now. "Thomas!" she squeaked, struggling afresh. He nearly dropped her, but managed to capture her again, this time hauling her tightly against his fierce erection so she'd not mistake it. "I think we're both in need of cooling," he said for her ears only, and upended the bucket of water over them both.
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