“This is all very strange,” she said. “Is that Trist?”
“Aye, he is mewling so loudly it pains my ears.”
She laughed, a sweet sound that made him kiss her again. Then he sighed and pulled away from her and rolled onto his back. He brought her with him, resting her face against his shoulder. Her palm lay over his heart.
“That is pleasure, Hastings.”
He felt her lashes against his chest. He felt the warmth of her breath as she said, “It is something I could not have imagined.”
“Few can until it overtakes them. You responded well to me.”
“As you did to me, Severin.” She pictured holding him as he backed away from her. She giggled.
She felt his hand stroking down her back, stroking over her hips. She pressed herself closer against him.
“You are filled with my seed.”
There was such satisfaction in his voice that she bit him, then licked him. “Aye,” she said against his warm flesh, “and I brought you into me and held you deep and close and filled you with myself.”
He shuddered, then moaned. He said nothing more. She listened as his breathing slowed and evened into sleep.
Thank God for Dame Agnes and Alice.
Trist stretched out on Severin’s chest, his paws over Hastings’s hand.
How would one possibly have the strength to do this five times in the space of one day?
13
SOMETHING WAS LIGHTLY SCRATCHING HER STOMACH. It felt good. She sighed, stretched just a bit, then remembered the night before and opened her eyes.
She lifted the covers to see Trist curled next to her, his claws going up and down her belly. She petted him. “Where is your master?”
Trist opened his eyes, looked at her for a very long time, then stretched and slithered out from beneath the covers. He sniffed the air. Hastings sniffed the air too.
The air smelled of them. Of sex. She had smelled that before, but she hadn’t known, hadn’t really thought about it. She’d been a dunce. She’d been a blockhead.
She pushed back the covers and rose. She was sticky. His seed, she thought, as she bathed herself in the pewter basin of cool water.
Why had he left her? Why had he not awakened her so she could see to his morning meal? Perhaps this was the way men were supposed to behave after being with their wives for the night.
She saw the blue tunic she had made for him, laid out neatly on the end of the bed. There was a huge rent beneath the right arm. She remembered now that he’d ripped the tunic when he’d pulled it over his head the previous evening. She didn’t mind at all that it was ripped. She believed she could add some more material to make it large enough for him. Aye, she could do that.
She was humming when she came into the great hall a short time later. There was Severin, seated between Gwent and Beamis, the two men listening intently to what he was saying. It was still very early. She felt wonderful.
She could not believe what had happened.
At that moment, Severin looked up and saw her. His face went very still. Then, slowly, he smiled. He raised his hand and called out, “Come here, Hastings. This almond bun is difficult to eat. I wish you to feed it to me.”
She laughed and skipped toward him. She was filled with energy, filled with a lightness she hadn’t felt in a very long time. She realized suddenly that she was happy.
He pulled her down onto his lap. “Now, this fool Gwent here has been instructing me on how to eat the bun but he does not do it well. My brain is weak from all your demands last night. Feed me, Hastings.”
She pulled off part of the bun and eased it into his mouth. She was staring at his mouth as he chewed. She was staring at his throat as he swallowed.
“Now, kiss me.”
“In front of Beamis and Gwent? In front of everyone? Everyone is watching us.”
“Aye, I know it. Kiss me.”
She did, a shy kiss, her lips closed, but he didn’t care. It was a symbol, nay, more than a symbol, it was a vow, a promise, and all saw it. She was now his wife. There would be no more strife. She had bent to him. He let her feed him the rest of the bun. Then he lifted her off his lap, saying as he did so, “If you remain there, I will have to send my hand up your leg and pleasure you and that would shock our people for they believe you to be modest and bashful.” He patted her buttocks.
“Now, I understand from Gwent that Eloise has returned to Sedgewick in the company of her new guardian and Sir Robert Burnell. I trust you treated the king’s messenger properly?”
“Nay,” Hastings said. “I kicked him in the shin, wept on his shirt when he said he was taking Eloise, and fed him a potion to make him fall in love with Edgar the wolfhound.”
He laughed. Perhaps before he would not have laughed. Perhaps before he would have drawn up tight as a bow, but not now. “I am sorry if you will miss the child. What did you think of her guardian? Gwent said she was the widow of a Sir Mark Outbraith, a man to whom the king owed a favor. Her name is Lady Marjorie?”
“Aye, that’s the long and short of it. I was jealous, Severin. Eloise went to her immediately, left me as if I were naught but a slug to crawl along the ground.” Hastings sighed.
“Aye, I can see that, but you will have your own babe soon, Hastings. In nine months.”
She thought of his seed, deep within her. She turned red. He laughed. She cleared her throat and said, “That is what Sir Robert Burnell said, but I do miss her, Severin. She was still thin. Lady Marjorie acted as though I had starved her.”
He rose from the trestle table, reached down so that Trist could easily climb up his arm, then said close to her ear, “I must practice with my men now, then Gwent wants me to go over the steward’s records. That is why I left you this morning. If I had stayed, naught of anything would have been accomplished. Ah, but Hastings, after our meal, I can teach you something more about pleasure. There are many ways to reach the goal. Would you like that?”
She lowered her head. “Perhaps, but I might be too tired, Severin. Perhaps my legs are so sore that I cannot move them, perhaps—”
He touched his fingers to her mouth even as he lightly stroked his other hand down her back. “So soft,” he said, leaned down, and kissed her. “Not so very ordinary after all.” She felt his tongue slide over her bottom lip. “That feels very nice. But my tongue still wants to stay in my own mouth.”
“A shy tongue, but that will change, you will see. Be about your duties, Hastings. Think of me and what I will do to you. Ah, be quiet, Trist, else I’ll believe you some sort of magician.” The marten was mewling so loudly that even Edgar the wolfhound heard him and was walking slowly toward them.
He hugged her to him, then, whistling, he strode out of the great hall, Gwent and Beamis on either side. He looked splendid. Hastings found that she didn’t look away until he was gone from her sight.
“Well, I had believed you too stubborn, but you have proved me wrong, Hastings. I am pleased.”
Hastings turned, grinning, to say to Dame Agnes, “You are pleased? You don’t know what being pleased is.” Then she too turned away, whistling as loudly as her husband, and made her way to her herb garden.
Alice said to Dame Agnes, “If there were no pleasure possible between men and women, can you begin to imagine the strife in the world?”
“War isn’t enough for you, Alice? Men slaughtering men endlessly?”
“That is a good point. If women never received any pleasure, then they would likely slaughter the men. Soon there would be no one left except women. It would doubtless be a better life for us, but the boredom. I am just not certain.”
Dame Agnes smiled and patted Alice’s shoulder. “It is a mystery. However, for us here at Oxborough we will pray that both the lord and the lady continue to see each other through lust-filled eyes, at least until they discover that they quite like each other.”
Hastings watched as Torric slowly walked toward Severin, who sat in his high-backed chair, the chair from which h
e judged local matters, the chair from which he faced a man he knew was cheating him. Gwent stood at his side.
Severin had asked her to come to the great hall to witness what he did. She was pleased that he had asked her. She was gravely disappointed that Torric had proved to be a thief. But she had seen the entries with her own eyes. Years upon years and he hadn’t even made any attempt to hide it. The money was simply removed, no explanation, no reason given.
“Come closer, steward,” Severin called. “I want to show you proof of your thievery.”
Torric, his shoulders back, his head up, walked more quickly to Severin. “I am not a thief,” he said in a loud voice that carried to every corner of the great hall. “What I am is a fool to have remained after Lord Fawke died.”
“Well, you didn’t flee. Now, steward, you will explain these entries you made. They go back many years. I do not understand why you did not even try to hide your thievery. Is your arrogance so great? You never believed that Lord Fawke would question you as I am now?”
Torric looked at the pages of parchment that showed his neatly entered numbers. He swallowed. “I have no arrogance, my lord. Nor am I a thief. It does not look good for me, does it, my lord?”
“I would say that Gwent is itching to hang you by your skinny neck.”
Torric’s hand went to his throat.
“What did you do with all that money, Torric? Is it buried beneath Hastings’s herbal garden?”
“My lord, I swear it to you, to our God above, that I did not take any money from Lord Fawke. Oh dear, I suppose that I must speak now or suffer my own death.”
“It is your best chance to survive this, steward. Make your tale plausible and interesting.”
The steward appeared to be arguing silently with himself. Finally, he looked Severin straight in the eye and said, “Those figures are just as Lord Fawke ordered me to write in the records of Oxborough. I did nothing but what he bade me to do.”
Her father cheated himself?
“That makes no sense, Torric,” Severin said. “There is a small ransom gone from Oxborough. Because this is a wealthy holding, Oxborough has not suffered from the missing funds. But it will not continue. You steal what is mine now. Cease your lies and it will go easier for you.”
But Torric held firm. “Nay, I am not lying. I have never spoken of this before because I gave my sacred oath to Lord Fawke. I entered the figures he told me to. I did nothing more than what he bade me to do.”
Gwent, unable to keep quiet, shouted at the steward, “Stop your lying, you wretched bastard. The Devil’s teeth, I hate cheats and thieves. You will confess your crimes or I will gullet you right here, right now.”
Torric took a quick step back, only to feel the large hand of one of the men-at-arms at his back. “Please, my lord, I’m not lying. The money went south. Every three or four months, Lord Fawke and three or four men took it there. Did you not notice that all those entries appear very regularly? I do not know who lived there or lives there now. Only Lord Fawke knew. His men, if they knew, were sworn to secrecy, as was I. All had Lord Fawke’s trust. None ever betrayed him. None until me, until now.”
“But now he is dead and thus your silence matters no more,” Hastings said, stepping forward. “Why do I know nothing of this holding you speak of, Torric?”
“You knew nothing of the man your father wedded you to, Lady Hastings. Why should you know of this? I swear it to you, I am not lying. I only did what your father ordered me to do. I prayed that you wouldn’t realize that there were funds missing, Lord Severin. But I did realize that only a fool would not readily realize that something was wrong. I know you will kill me, but at least now you know the truth. All the money went to a holding in the south.”
“What is this holding called?”
“Rosehaven.”
“Who lives at this place called Rosehaven? Who would Lord Fawke send money to?”
“I do not know, I swear it.”
“Let me gullet him now, Severin. The little puking bastard will just continue to lie until I do.”
“Nay, Gwent, hold. This is proving interesting. Do we have a mystery here, I wonder? Hastings, have you ever heard the name Rosehaven?”
She shook her head. She said to Torric, “I remember that my father left every few months. He always told me he was visiting one of his holdings. Once or twice I asked to accompany him but he refused. Did he always carry the money to this Rosehaven?”
“Always. He told the men that if they failed to guard the pouch, there would be retribution. He was always gone for sixteen days, which meant he spent nine days at Rosehaven each time he journeyed there. The last time, he sent Beamis with a great deal of money because he realized that he was dying, a final payment, I suppose. I did not question him. He would have risen from his deathbed and killed me.”
Gwent turned to Severin. “That is what alerted me immediately, Severin, that huge amount that was missing recently. Do you think the little bastard is telling the truth?”
“How long have you been at Oxborough, Torric?” Severin asked, sitting forward in his great chair. Trist climbed out of Severin’s tunic and slithered down his arm to stretch out his full length. He stared at the steward, his paws stretched out to cover Severin’s fingers.
“For eleven years, my lord. I have toiled for Lord Fawke. I never cheated him. He paid me well. He trusted me. I prayed you would not discover the missing funds, but you have. Kill me, but it will not gain you any justice. Justice is down south at Rosehaven keep.”
“Where exactly?” Hastings asked.
“On the coast, near Folkstone. It is nearly four days’ hard riding from Oxborough.”
Severin was silent. He stroked Trist’s back. Finally, he said, rising, “We won’t know the truth of the matter unless we go to this Rosehaven. Hastings, you will accompany me, as will you, Gwent. We will take fifteen men. We will leave in the morning.”
“Beamis knows the truth, Severin.”
“Aye, he knows. But I like mysteries. I want to visit this Rosehaven and juggle all the pieces of this mystery until I am able, by myself, to fit them all together. Torric, you will remain here. You will continue with your duties. I will have Beamis keep an eye on you with the instruction if you attempt to flee Oxborough, he will kill you. Do you understand me?”
“Aye, my lord. I understand you perfectly.”
“Beamis has known me since I was born,” Hastings said as she walked into the bedchamber just ahead of Severin. “He has never hinted anything. Nor has my father. What is going on here, Severin?”
He stopped her, his hands light on her upper arms. He turned her slowly. “I care not at this moment if he is keeping a bastard prince prisoner at this place called Rosehaven. Kiss me, Hastings.”
She did, her mouth closed until she felt his tongue gliding along her bottom lip. She wrapped her arms around his neck, came up onto her tiptoes, and pressed herself against him. She said against his mouth, “I like that, Severin. Tell me what to do.”
“Open your mouth, just a bit. That’s it. Now, this is something men and women do. Don’t be startled.” She felt his tongue slowly slide into her mouth. She jumped and closed her mouth, holding his tongue inside.
He wanted to laugh but he couldn’t. He stroked her tongue with his until she opened her mouth to show him her approval. And her growing enthusiasm.
“This is something I had not considered,” she said, speaking, then kissing him, “something that should not be as exciting as it is—”
“Be quiet, Hastings.” He locked his hands beneath her bottom and picked her up. He didn’t stop kissing her even as he fell on top of her on the bed. Then she was laughing into his mouth. No woman had ever before laughed whilst he was kissing her. Severin drew up, balancing himself on his elbows. He stared down at her. “This is fun,” she said, and chopped her hands against his arms. He fell on top of her. Soon he was laughing with her. They kissed and laughed even as they struggled out of their clothing.
/> When they were naked, he let her come down to her knees beside him. She immediately leaned down and kissed him, licked her tongue across his lips, then straightened again. She didn’t wait this time, just clasped him between her hands, leaned down again, and took him in her mouth.
He nearly bowed off the bed. “Saint Andrew’s toes, who told you to do that?”
She didn’t release him, just said, her warm breath on him, “Dame Agnes and Alice both recommended this to me. I thought it sounded repellent, but they assured me that it was what a man wished above all things. Is that true, Severin?”
“I don’t know. I am going to die.”
When he finally had the resolve to shove her away, he prayed that she would release him. If she didn’t, it would be all over for him. She did, finally, but it was slow and excruciatingly wonderful. He was moaning, his back arching, nearly beside himself. “You’re not dead yet, Severin, but you sound very close.”
Then she laughed, kissed his belly, and went back up on her knees to look down at what she had wrought. He sucked in air. He tried to slow his breathing. He felt her hand on his thigh moving upward and managed to whisper, “Nay, Hastings. I must recover for a moment, don’t push me anymore.”
She laughed again only to suck in her breath in surprise when he flipped her onto her back and came over her. “You bring a man to the brink of madness and laugh while you watch him teeter? You laugh to see what you have done with that mouth of yours? Well, Hastings, let’s see how long your laughter lasts.”
Her laughter didn’t last five seconds. She was panting, heaving about, whimpering, her hands digging into his shoulders, when he raised his head, kissed her belly, and said, “Well? Are you teetering yet?”
She yanked his hair. He laughed and returned to her warm flesh. But he didn’t give her release for a very long time. She finally shouted, “Severin, I cannot bear this. Get it done.”
And he did. When she lay there, sucking in great breaths of air, quivering with pleasure, he was over her and coming into her.”