She puckered her lips in dismay. Had he thought of his response to her taunt of the morning? She hadn’t forgotten the sound of his hand on Hawisa’s flesh, nor the bellow of his rage. Still, this day had been profitable. Hawisa had been given the very chore she detested. She’d leaned deep into the holes and shoveled, moaning all the while. Then she’d been ordered to clean herself before reporting to the kitchens to turn the spit and scrub the pots. She was no longer required in the keep.
The garderobes smelled cleaner, the floor seemed to have scrubbed itself, the servants moved smartly to the new drill of discipline.
And William; William had responded at last to the bustle around him, to the real world outside his own head.
She had no feel for him yet, for the man who endured inside. She could not observe anyone, their mannerisms and habits, she could only listen to them and draw her conclusions from their voices and intonations. In her own home, the family and retainers she dealt with acknowledged her intelligence and perception, but William seldom spoke and so she groped when she dealt with him. To touch another being was her best insight, but because of the role laid on her, that of a middle-aged woman, she could never benefit by the perceptions open to her with grasp of hand or kiss on cheek.
“Lady Saura?”
Bartley spoke, reminding her of her duty, and she rose with a hidden tremble of her knees. “Aye, of course. Is he still hunkered by the fire?”
Bartley nodded. Maud glared at him and he realized anew that the noble Saura couldn’t see him. “Aye, m’lady. He never leaves there.”
Saura moved toward the servant, catching his shoulder and then his arm, showing him how to guide her. “Please take me to him,” she asked courteously. “And as we go tell me about yourself.”
The man started with doubtful steps across the room. “I’m just one of th’ churls here,” he volunteered, and then fell silent, unused to conversing with women, especially young, beautiful women who stood head and shoulders above him.
“Are you married?” she prodded, matching his hobbling gait with her own.
“Oh, nay, never had time for that, what wi’ chasin’ around m’lord’s estates after thieves an’ poachers an’ such.”
“You were a soldier?”
“Aye, an’ I had me own horse th’ lord let me ride—that was Lord Peter’s father, an’ then Lord Peter—till I got too crippled t’ ride in winter.” His voice sank. “Then I got too crippled t’ ride in summer, an’ I got banished.”
“Banished?” Saura encouraged him with the gaze of her violet eyes, and the elderly man forgot she was blind.
“Stuck in th’ keep like some old horse they’re too kind t’ kill.” His bitterness bled into his voice, into the agitation of his limbs. “I’m grateful. Not many lords keep their old men-at-arms in where ’tis warm when they aren’t of any use. But ’tis hell t’ be old. Don’t ever get old, ’tis just one long day after another, an’ not enough work t’ fill th’ time.”
“But, Bartley! What would I have done without you these last weeks?” Saura clasped his arm close to her side and shook it. “You’ve been such a support, helping me with the balky servants and caring for Lord William so I was free to order the cleaning.”
“And where would I be without you sitting with me in my corner and telling me stories about the battles of your youth?” The warm, golden tones of William’s voice were rich with sincerity and gratitude.
The old warrior trembled a little more, struck with the palsy of age and embarrassment. “Good master, I didn’t know ye listened.”
“It’s been the only thing that’s kept me sane.”
Bartley blushed, his papery skin darkening. “Here, m’lady. That damned dog’s on your heels again, m’lady, don’t trip on him.” He assisted Saura to a chair and stood back as the mastiff lowered itself to the floor at her feet. Stepping in front of William, Bartley said, “Been a long time since I taught ye t’ ride a horse without fallin’ off. We shared some things, m’lord, an’ since ye can’t fight anymore, an’ I can’t fight anymore….”
“Come to the fire tomorrow,” William invited, “and we’ll reminisce.”
Pleased beyond all recognizing, Bartley wandered off to boast that Lord William had spoken to him, just like the old days, and cordial as ever.
The silence between lord and lady hummed eloquent with accord.
“Very gracious,” Saura approved. “Did he really teach you to ride?”
“Everyone had a finger in that pie,” William answered, stretching out his legs to the fire. “If he wants to remember his tutelage, I’ll deny him not.”
Saura grinned, and rubbed a finger across her lips to erase it. To her mind, a grin didn’t go with the image of somber housekeeper. “You asked for me, my lord?”
“Are you laughing?”
She scrubbed a little harder at her lips. “Not laughing at you. But you made that old man so happy!”
William’s voice turned frigid. “I can make anyone happy these days, just by speaking civilly.”
The grin snapped off her face. “Then spread a little cheer, my lord.”
“Now, why is it,” he mused, “that when the servants displease you, you are distressingly polite and soft-spoken? When I displease you, you fly into a rage.”
“Because I expect better from you!”
“Why?”
“My lord,” Saura said with thin forbearance, “you are a warrior. What do you do with a soldier who loses a leg?”
“Teach him another trade.”
“And if he will not learn?”
“Let him turn to begging.”
“’Tis a hard world. What do you think of a man who has all the privileges of a loving family, a home and enough food, but must be forced to care for himself? What do you think of a man who refuses to take the burden of work from his father’s shoulders, a man who abandons his son?”
“Enough!” William’s voice started at her level and rose above her head as he stood in ready ire. “My God, who are you? Saint Genevieve who through the grace of God restored sight to her own mother? Perhaps blindness is a puny thing to you, you haven’t experienced it.”
“’Tis as big as you make it.”
“But everything I am is bound up with my sight. You said it, I was a warrior. A knight! I had to fight to protect my home, my family, my people. They’ve no use for me now!”
“Oh, don’t they?” Saura relaxed, on steady ground. “Did you arbitrate their quarrels, hand down judgment for their crimes?” William didn’t answer, and her grin blossomed again. “You have a reputation for fairness in arbitration. Did you leave the education of your son to others? He pines for you, for your support, as he grows into maturity. Your father needs a man to talk to, to ask advice of, to be with. Your tenants need guidance. They are a bunch of lost and bleating sheep without your firm hand. You’ve sown what you reaped, my lord, a demesne filled with people who worship you. But all your former good deeds will be forgotten soon if you don’t stir yourself to add to your legend.”
Listening to her warning, William wished he weren’t so scrupulous. That part of him that insisted on equity for others insisted on equity for himself. He wanted to deny the woman’s point of view, proclaim his justification for being self-centered and forlorn. Goaded beyond control, he asked, “Have you ever been in despair and in need of a human touch? And those who love you are too afraid of your disability to touch you? As if it would rub off? Haven’t you ever been alone in bed at night and felt the walls closing in, felt imprisoned by your own body?”
Saura’s throat closed with incipient tears of recognition, but he charged on. “You creak like a woman too old and dried-up inside to understand the weakness of the flesh. Never loved a man, never held a child. The way you talk, I’d think you never sinned.”
The legs of his chair thumped heavily as he flung himself into it, and Saura grappled with the surge of unexpected affinity that twisted her heart. She tried to talk, but she couldn’t: com
fort was nothing more than a whisper, fragmented in her mind and constricted in her breast.
“What are you doing? Praying for me?” William’s voice lashed at her, and then softened in a hush of thought. “Praying for me.” His fingers tapped an impatient dance on the arm of his chair. “Are you praying for me?”
She remained silent, and was rewarded with his charge.
“You’re a nun, aren’t you?”
“Oh, dear lord.”
“Of course.” He snapped his fingers. “I should have realized. It’s logical; only a nun could bring this kind of discipline to a household.”
Saura gulped and patted her flushed cheeks. “Your father….”
“Swore you to secrecy? Why, madame, are you here to teach me?”
She sighed and smiled, entertained by the evidence of his lively mind, and his faith in his own conclusions. “I’m here to teach you,” she acknowledged. “I am a teacher of the blind.”
“And you have every reason to sound so sanctimonious. You never have sinned, have you? Never held a man with love, never mothered a child.”
“And I never will.” She touched her barren womb with the intense pain of one who wants more. “An aging maiden with no hope for tomorrow.”
William bit his lip in regret. He’d wanted to bait her a little, but he never meant to probe an open wound. “The choice was not yours, to enter the nunnery?”
“If I’d had my choice, I would have my husband and my family.”
Struck by the call of a frustrated kindred spirit, he offered the best comfort he could. “I cannot help you with the husband, madame, but we are your family now.”
Touched by the graciousness of the offer, she answered, “Thank you, William.”
He grinned. “William? Will you call me by name only when you’re pleased with me?”
“My lord,” she faltered, embarrassed by her revealing slip of the tongue.
“I like it. It reminds me of my mother.”
“Your mother?” Stunned, she grappled with her dissatisfaction. She was nineteen and that poorest of creatures, an unmarried woman, but his mother?
“When I vexed her, she called me ‘my lord.’ In quite a sarcastic manner. I recognize your kinship with her.”
She coughed.
“I called you for a reason.” He ignored her emotion, recognizing the enigma of a woman’s mind. Whatever interpretation he put on her reaction, he would probably be wrong. “As you so tactlessly pointed out to me, I stink. I’ve not had a bath since last fall, and through the long process of learning to eat I’ve dropped food on my clothes and in my beard. Do you think…?”
That Woman moved with speed and confidence, he thought sourly as he poured water over his chest. A contingent of female vassals had escorted him to the solar and stripped him while the men wrestled the huge tub in front of the fire. Buckets of water had been hauled up the stairs and kettles of water hung over the fire to boil. In no time he had dipped his big toe in and then settled with a sigh. He waved everyone away with his enormous hand and let the warmth seep into his bones and move his blood. He had endured the cold for too long: the cold without, and the cold within.
Now peace reigned in the chamber, the door shut tight against drafts.
Lady Saura and her handmaid were in consultation over his clothing trunk, and the murmur of their voices washed over him.
“This feels like a fine, light wool tunic.”
“Aye, and ’tis dyed a serviceable brown with braid at the sleeves and hem.”
The other serving women worked quietly under Saura’s direction or settled with their sewing. Their hushed chatter reminded him of a spring bath four years ago, and in his mind’s eye he saw the large chamber as it looked then.
Built off the great hall, it was dominated by the polished wooden master’s bed, raised on a dais, fitted with a canopy and hung with curtains to keep out the winter winds. The clothing trunks sat against the opposite wall, close enough to the hearth to keep the contents dry but not to catch a stray spark. Blessed with more light than any other room in the castle, the solar contained clusters of stools and benches in the window seat where the women worked. Windows overlooked the fenced garden of the bailey. The iron grille protecting them cast square shadows into the room and the wooden shutters were finished with elaborate carvings.
William chuckled as he remembered how his wife had insisted on first the windows, then the carvings. His father had shouted she would beggar them with these ridiculous ideas, and Anne had shouted back, telling him to fix his own dinner and mend his own clothes and bear his own grandchildren. It had been quite a violent altercation, and in the end Lord Peter had cheerfully ordered the shutters carved and Anne had continued to bear him grandchildren.
Until she died with the last one. William had laid her to rest beside the four tiny graves of their children who had gone before.
He waited for the familiar rush of grief, but there lingered only a sweet melancholy. He missed her: her boisterous laugh, the scent of lavender on her clothes, the plump cushion of her body against his at night. But he no longer mourned her, and if this monstrous handicap had not been visited on him, he would have cast his eye around for a woman to marry and live with.
He didn’t like this process of pursuing one woman until she capitulated and then forsaking her and pursuing another. He knew men who did: Arthur, and to a lesser extent, Charles, sought the myth of the perfect woman in every bed. During the years they were fostered by his father, no serving maid beyond her first flowering lay on her pallet alone.
But that particular pattern of male behavior was foreign to him. His energies were better utilized as a warrior, his desires better cared for by a woman who loved him. He had used the serving women around the castle to sate his bodily needs, but he yearned for the one lady who would heal his soul. He sighed and dug the rag out of the bottom of the tub.
A rustle of material caught his ear, and one of the maids stepped up to test the water. William perceived the swirl of her finger by his thigh and smelled the spicy scent of carnation, and grinned. Catching her hand in his, he rubbed the soft skin beneath his thumb and rumbled, “Wench! Is my leg so interesting you yearn to touch it?”
The girl said nothing, only laughing in a startled, breathless way and tugging against his hold.
Emboldened by her laughter—she was obviously not afraid of him or his blindness—he tugged back. “Don’t go, I have more I can show you than mere leg!” With a jerk, he pulled her into the tub and onto his lap.
Water rose in a great splash and they were instantly wet from head to toe. The girl gasped and struggled in an inept, careless manner, as if she weren’t accustomed to having a man hold her. The quick skim of his hand down heŕ soaking body assured him this couldn’t be the case. Any wench blessed with generous bosoms and hips and a tiny waist had been the recipient of many an embrace.
Her amorous struggles grew wilder and less effective and a pleasured smile split his bearded lips. The tiny squeaks she let out were charming, showing spirit but not resistance. This girl knew all the tricks.
His manhood rose in immediate response to such blatant encouragement. Her hips rubbed against him as she kicked out and weakly tried to rise. Her fists pummelled his shoulders as he gathered her to him, turned her sideways and slanted her derriere across his lap. Her head fit into the crook of his elbow, her braid slid over his arm. With a laugh, he captured her flailing fist and tightened the crook of his arm beneath her neck. She was held now, stationary enough for him to find her mouth with his own.
In only a moment, he changed his opinion of her experience. Her mouth yielded, easily opening for his insistent tongue. But she didn’t know what to do with it when it surged inside. She didn’t meet his thrusts, didn’t answer his lures, but she reacted. That mouth was sweet and hungry, amazed and willing. His intentions gentled and turned to guidance.
He relaxed the grip of his arm on her head and supported her back with his huge hand. He massaged up
and down her side, petting her, mellowing her. He freed her hand and placed it against his chest, on the flushed skin above his heart. She snatched it back, but he patiently retrieved it and replaced it, still stoking the fires of her innocence with his lips. This time her hand stayed. Her fingers flexed into the curling hair blanketing his skin, trembled and flexed again.
He broke the kiss with a moan. “Sweet thing,” he whispered into her ear as he searched the rim with his tongue. A moan of her own puffed across his cheek.
His remaining hand went exploring. Cupping her breast, he circled the nipple, tight with chill and nerves. The heel of his palm kneaded the mound warmly, tenderly, thoroughly, until the woman stretched across his thighs melted into limp pliancy. Gratified with the return for his effort, William bestowed one last fond stroke and searched further. The tuck of her waist confirmed his first hasty diagnosis, and her firm belly quivered as his fingers slid across. The drenched material of her skirt bunched at her knee and his hand eagerly sought the bared skin of her calf. As his fingers made contact, his breath caught and she sighed and tossed, jerked from her lethargy. With the instincts of a magician, William captured her mouth again, delighting her with the return of his lips, and slid his hand up the long, silken pathway of her leg. The pathway to heaven.
And heaven was so close, so close.
A dose of ice cold water splashed his back and brought him crashing to earth. Two powerful hands pushed him backward and grasped the girl by her armpits. She was yanked from him and dragged out of his reach.
He rose to his feet in fury, restrained from attack only by his blindness.
His indignant roar would have frightened lesser women, but Maud was no lesser woman. “Are ye crazy, Lord William? Would ye attack a young damsel in full sight of the maidservants?”
He roared again, inarticulate with wrath, and then as his sense returned, he shouted, “Attack? Attack? All she had to say was ‘nay,’ and I would have released her. By our sweet Savior, Lady Saura, did you hurl that cold water?”
Saura, soaked and shivering by the fire, answered, “In a manner of speaking.”