“Take some good men,” the young widow told Dunstan, “and see if you can pick up their trail in the woods. It shouldn’t be too difficult. From Sir Luke’s account, Hengist is badly hurt, and possibly dying. Look for blood.”
“Aye, milady.” Dunstan left. Luke had but a few moments to be surprised that the earnest young reeve had left his mistress unprotected against the Black Dragon. As Dunstan exited the great hall, he called out, “Firdolf!” to a fair-haired, brawny young man who was hauling in firewood. After dumping the wood next to the fire pit, this fellow stood in the spot Dunstan had vacated, arms crossed, and stared at Luke.
Retrieving two parchment packets from the box, Lady Faithe ordered some honey and salt brought to her. Two voluptuous young flaxen-haired wenches—twins, from the look of them—sprinted through a door at the far end of the hall and returned with the requested items.
“Thank you, girls,” said Lady Faithe in obvious dismissal. They backed up a step, but couldn’t seem to wrest their gazes from Alex. Luke’s little brother had the face of an angel and the well-muscled body of a soldier. His many old scars—mementos not of the battlefield but of the savage beating he’d taken at seventeen after a liaison with the wrong woman—only served to add an intriguing edge to his beauty. It was little wonder women were drawn to him, but they usually didn’t get quite this much of an eyeful on a first meeting. The young man standing guard, Firdolf, scowled at Alex, then at the girls.
“Lynette, Leola...” their mistress said, “that will be all.”
“Can we help, milady?” one of them asked plaintively.
“Nay!” Firdolf snapped.
Lady Faithe raised an eyebrow at him, and he muttered an apology; it appeared to Luke that she was trying to keep from smiling. “Nay,” she echoed softly as she poured some salt and honey into a bowl. “Go out back to the cookhouse and see if Ardith needs anything.”
“But...”
Lady Faithe smiled. “When he wakes up, I’ll let you feed him.”
The girls brightened instantly and left amid giggles and whispers.
“Your brother won’t mind, will he?” her ladyship asked as she unfolded the first packet, revealing a number of narrow, dried leaves.
“I should hardly think so.” The twins were pretty and, from all appearances, already ripe for Alex’s persuasive charms.
Lady Faithe crumbled several leaves into the bowl and then opened the second packet, which held smaller leaves. When she crushed those between her hands, they released a familiar aroma.
“Mint?” Luke asked.
“Pennyroyal. The other was hyssop. They’re excellent for wounds like this.” She stirred the herbs with her fingers into the honey and salt, spread the mixture onto a strip of linen, and laid it over the wound on Alex’s hip.
Alex moaned as she gently pressed the poultice into place. “Easy,” Luke said, patting his brother’s shoulder.
As Lady Faithe worked on smoothing the poultice down, that disorderly hair of hers kept getting in the way; each toss of her head only seemed to make it worse. She lifted a hand to tuck it behind her ears, but her fingers were coated with the greenish herbal mixture. “Moira,” she said without looking up from her work, “would you braid my hair?” Receiving no response, for the stout maid who’d been hovering so closely was now nowhere to be seen, she let out a little growl of exasperation.
Reaching behind him, Luke unwrapped the long leather thong from his own braid. Lady Faithe watched him out of the corner of her eye as he knelt behind her, slipped the thong between his teeth, and began gathering up her hair.
It was perfectly straight and slippery-smooth; no wonder it was so unruly. He divided it into three sections, combing his fingers through the slick strands to coax out the little tangles, and then began weaving them together.
His knuckles brushed her long neck, as soft as the skin of a peach, and warm. He could have avoided the contact, but instead he let the back of his hand caress her, again and again, as he slowly braided her hair. It felt oddly comforting to touch her this way, like stroking a kitten.
The skin on her upper back was especially smooth, a film of warm satin over the delicate bones of her spine. Tiny goose bumps rose on that skin as he worked his way down, and her breathing quickened to keep time with his. He felt disappointed at the first rough touch of her wool kirtle.
Soon she’ll be your wife, he thought, and then you may do more to her than braid her hair.
Luke tried to concentrate on keeping his hands steady and his work neat—on resisting the urge to pull the ribbon that laced up the back of her kirtle and watch it come undone. He imagined doing just that, imagined reaching inside to glide his hands around her narrow back and close them over her breasts. He imagined how they’d feel, warm and heavy, their nipples stiff against his palms.
When he took the leather thong from between his teeth, he found that he had bitten it in half.
Chapter 3
Faithe’s chest hurt from the thudding of her heart. She felt a gentle tugging as de Périgueux tied off the braid, and then she felt his large, callused hand resting on the curve where her neck met her shoulder.
The heat of his palm permeated her, easing the ache in her chest and filling her with a shivery warmth. His hand shifted as he gained his feet, grazing her throat like the delicious scrape of a cat’s tongue.
He stood behind her. She looked over her shoulder and found him staring down at her, his loose hair falling about his face, his expression guarded but alert.
“Thank you,” she managed, and quickly returned her attention to his brother. She made a show of patting the poultice, which she’d long since forgotten, then dipped her fingers into the bowl and spread the mixture on another strip of linen.
He cleared his throat. “Is there any ale to be had?” She turned toward him, but he looked away from her—pointedly, it seemed—and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Of course. Willa?”
The kitchen wench filled a horn for him, and he sat on a bench to drink it while Faithe applied the second poultice to his brother’s side.
“Why the flowers?” he asked presently.
She looked up. He avoided her gaze, indicating with a sweep of his arm the, garlands and swags with which they’d adorned the great hall that morning.
“It’s May Day.” She covered her patient with a blanket.
“Ah.” He still looked confused.
She smiled. “On the first of May we decorate our homes with flowers. ‘Tis a celebration of spring.” And fertility, but she hesitated to tell him how her villeins would observe the holiday that night. With any luck, he’d be too wrapped up in caring for his brother to venture outside.
“I see.”
Faithe glanced up to gauge his expression. Many of the Normans viewed their ancient customs as ungodly. Would he attempt to ban them now that he was master of Hauekleah?
She saw a muscle tense in his jaw. Lifting his horn, he drained it. He didn’t like to be read, this one, to be examined and interpreted. From all appearances, he was a man very much sealed within himself, like a soldier buckled into his armor. She wondered if he ever took it off.
As she pressed a small poultice to the wound on Sir Alex’s forehead, he began to stir, muttering things in blurry French. She washed her hands, then tied a bandage around his head to hold the herbal compress in place as de Périgueux came and knelt next to her in the rushes. “Open your eyes, Alex,” he said softly, in his own tongue. “Wake up.” His gentleness struck her as touchingly at odds with his fierce demeanor.
Faithe listened to de Périgueux coax his brother into wakefulness as she repacked her medicine box and tidied up the area.
“That’s it,” Luke said as Alex opened his eyes and squinted at his surroundings. “Welcome back, little brother.”
The young man turned toward the voice and winced. “What in the name of God...”
“We were ambushed in the woods.”
Sir Alex’s large brown eyes n
arrowed in concentration. His coloring was as dark as his brother’s, and he looked to be nearly as tall, but with a somewhat leaner build. The men bore a strong family resemblance, and were both very striking, but in different ways. Despite the scars, both new and old, young Alex’s clean-shaven face had an open, almost innocent beauty, whereas there was nothing innocent about Luke de Périgueux. He had the savage eyes and firmly set jaw of a flesh-eater. Faithe had the sense that if she pushed him too far, he might leap upon her and sink his teeth in her throat.
“Ambushed,” Alex murmured. “That’s right. Two of them, weren’t there? Saxons?”
“Aye. Ugly bastards they were, and out for blood.”
Alex shrugged. “Can’t blame them. If I were one of them, I’d be trying to kill us, too.”
Faithe thought this a rather singular sentiment, coming as it did from a Norman soldier.
Sir Luke quirked his mouth in a way that conveyed bemused forbearance. “They tell me those two are ordinary bandits, not insurgents hungry for Norman blood. They got away, worse luck. Supposedly a party of men is looking for them now.”
“Supposedly?” Frowning, Alex reached up to gingerly finger the bandage wrapped around his head.
Sir Luke cast a furtive look in Faithe’s direction; his brother seemed unaware of her presence. “I don’t know what to believe from these people. They could be lying just to keep me from going after them myself, so they have time to get away. We can’t trust the English, Alex. They despise us.”
He has no idea I can understand him, Faithe realized. And why should he? The notion of her knowing French was as unlikely as his knowing English. She eavesdropped shamelessly as she gathered her things.
“Of course they despise us,” Alex said. “How could they not?” He groped around for something beneath his blanket. “Where’s my sword?”
“Here.” His brother unbuckled the swordbelt and handed it over.
Alex hugged the sheathed weapon to his chest. “Where are we?”
“Hauekleah Hall.”
“Oh, yes? Have you met your bride?”
“Aye.”
The young man grinned. “Is she pretty?”
Faithe stilled, listening intently.
“She looks like a goose girl,” Sir Luke finally said.
Alex chuckled. “But is she pretty?”
Sir Luke glanced uneasily toward Faithe, who pretended to be absorbed in refolding a pile of linen strips. She noticed Sir Alex follow his brother’s line of vision.
“Is that her?” the young man asked delightedly.
Sir Luke rubbed his forehead. “Aye. Don’t stare.”
Alex did stare, openly. “She is pretty! You lucky dog! Aren’t you going to introduce us?” He tried to sit up, but groaned in pain and sank back down onto the pallet.
“Lie still!” Luke shook his head in vexation, then turned to Faithe and said, in English, “My lady, I’d like you to meet my brother, Alexandre de Périgueux.” To his brother he said merely, “Lady Faithe of Hauekleah.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Sir Alex,” Faithe said in her nearly perfect convent French. Both men looked as if they’d just been smacked in the head with a war hammer. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll go out and tend to the geese.”
Rising, she turned and walked away to the delighted laughter of young Alex. As she passed beyond the front door, she glanced back and saw Luke de Périgueux with his eyes closed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
* * *
That night, Faithe awoke to the sound of distant laughter.
Arising from bed, she crossed to a window and swung open the shutters. The light of a full moon washed into her bedchamber, and a mild breeze fluttered her thin night shift. She rubbed her bare arms as she gazed out over the thatched roofs of the village, where revelers still danced around a bonfire in the middle of the green, and beyond it to the vast woodlands and rolling meadows that surrounded her manor.
Somewhere, a woman shrieked. Faithe tensed, but presently the same voice erupted in giggles, and she relaxed. A movement near the sheep fold caught her eye. Squinting, she made out a couple racing hand in hand into the woods. The woman’s white-blond hair whipped behind her like a flag. Faithe recognized her as Willa, one of her kitchen wenches. The man must be Nyle Plowman. Some of the couples who celebrated this night in the forest were longtime sweethearts, like Nyle and Willa. Some were married—usually, but not always, to each other. Others, transported by the festive atmosphere, or the ale, or the simple lure of the flesh, came together for this night only.
A splash made her turn toward the river that cut through her demesne like a horseshoe. Two faraway figures—a man and a woman, naked in the moonlight—emerged from the water and ran into the tall grass on the opposite shore. Faithe thought the woman might be Edyth, the young dairymaid. At first she took the man for Firdolf, the bondman who did odd jobs for her, but then she realized it couldn’t be him. Firdolf had been mooning after one of the twins for some time now—Leola, that was the one—to the exclusion of all other women. If he hadn’t been able to talk Leola into celebrating this night with him, Faithe doubted he would do any celebrating at all. The fellow with Edyth must be one of Firdolf’s many look-alike cousins.
The dairymaid’s companion fell upon her, and soon they were a tangle of arms and legs, writhing together in an age-old rhythm.
Faithe closed the shutter and rested her forehead against the slatted wood, but the image of the couple on the shore refused to fade. It had been so long since she’d experienced the pleasures of the flesh that she couldn’t remember clearly what it felt like to take a man inside her—to take Caedmon inside her, for her husband had been the only man she’d ever given herself to.
Faithe didn’t think what she’d felt for Caedmon could rightly be called “love.” She’d liked him well enough, though. He’d treated her with respect and been a good husband in many ways, despite his lack of interest in Hauekleah—or perhaps even because of it, for his unwillingness to involve himself in farm life had meant that Faithe could govern Hauekleah as she pleased. When she’d learned of his death, she had grieved, but her dark melancholy had quickly vanished in the light of all her duties as mistress of Hauekleah.
She and Caedmon had shared few interests, and in truth had rarely even conversed—except in bed. Sex had been the highlight of their marriage, and certainly the only pastime they had in common. For close to a year now, Faithe had lived chastely, but not by preference. Many times she had ached for a man’s touch. Since Caedmon’s death, she had oftentimes thought of marrying again—a husband of her own choice this time, a union of the heart.
The breezes carried another voice from the woods: a man calling, “Elga... Elga!” and then crying out in surprise. He must have found her—or she him. Elga Brewer and her husband were the happiest couple Faithe knew. Their mingled laughter made her smile.
A union of the heart...
Her smile faded. There would be no such union for her, it seemed. Instead, there would be Luke de Périgueux. The Black Dragon. A creature with a taste for blood.
Saxon blood. And yet...
Closing her eyes again, she recalled the mesmerizing caress of his knuckles as they’d brushed her neck, again and again, while he braided her hair. The thoughtful gesture had stunned her; it had also ignited a longing in her, a desperate ache born of long months alone in a cold bed.
She could still feel the ticklish warmth of his touch on the back of her neck.
She could also still feel the imprint of his fingers on her wrists. Opening her eyes, she held her hands up and inspected the red-hot marks that would be bruises by this time tomorrow.
Fool. Luke de Périgueux was a monster, the last man in the world she should want in her bed; yet he’d be there soon enough. Shivering, she donned a wrapper over her shift, whispering, “Please, God, let him tire of me quickly. Let him leave here, like Thorgeirr, and never return.” Grimly, she crossed herself.
Thinking to
check on Sir Alex, she quietly opened the door of her chamber, situated over the service rooms—the buttery, pantry, and dairy—at the north end of Hauekleah Hall. Looking down into the main hall, dimly lit by a single oil lamp, she saw the figure of a man wrapped in a blanket, standing with his back to her at a window—Alex. His brother, who’d been keeping watch over him, was nowhere to be seen. The servants had all either retired to their own cottages nearby, or were out celebrating tonight; only hirelings slept in the hall, usually at harvest time.
The young man turned toward her as she descended the narrow staircase; he must have had good hearing, for she was silent as the night in her bare feet. “My lady.”
“Sir Alex.”
He made a rueful face. “We’re being a bit formal for brother and sister, don’t you think?”
“Ah. Yes, I suppose so.” Soon he’d be her brother by marriage. Faithe tugged her wrapper more snugly around herself.
“Call me Alex.”
“Then you must call me Faithe.”
“I’m sorry I can’t speak to you in your own language,” he said. “I haven’t my brother’s gift with foreign tongues. I can understand English passably well, but as far as carrying on a conversation in it...”
“That’s perfectly all right.” England was now ruled by those who spoke the Frankish tongue; she’d best get used to it. “You must return to bed,” she said, noting his pale complexion and glassy eyes. “You have no business being on your feet.” That he could stand here like this, chatting casually, in his condition, was a testament both to his youthful fortitude and lack of sense.
Far-off laughter made Alex turn back to the window. “What’s going on out there?”
Faithe looked down and tightened the sash of her wrapper. “‘Tis a holiday. The people are celebrating.”
He scratched his smooth chest thoughtfully. “Those two girls who fed me supper, the twins...” His smile was so lewdly wistful that Faithe couldn’t help but chuckle. He cleared his throat, but the smile remained. “Charming girls.”
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