TheKingsViper (6 page)

Severin, it turned out, was more than pleased to swap his
fancy silk shirt for anonymous homespun. Eloise shook out the clothes offered
to her, fingering the rough linen. In this stuff they would no longer stand out
as strangers on the byways of Mendea. It was a good idea, and fair exchange.

“Go on then, lass. Get yourself cleaned up. I picked you
this.” Ruda proffered a handful of leafy greenery, but Eloise only looked at it
blankly. “It’s soapwort,” the old woman had to explain. “For that hair of yours.”

Eloise was used to fine rendered soap back at home, but she
at least knew what the herb was. She thanked Ruda.

“Get on with it then, while there’s still heat in the day.
Here’s a sheet for drying off.”

Eloise felt the warmth rise to her cheeks. She looked round
a little nervously. The yard was enclosed by its wall and private enough. It
trapped the sun’s warmth too, and stripping off would be no hardship. Except
for de Meynard’s presence. How could she undress in front of him? The very
suggestion made her squirm inside. “I’ll take a bucket into the barn…” she
muttered.

“Oh now, lass! Don’t put on airs—it’s not like it’s anything
I haven’t seen before. And your man’s no stranger to it either, is he? Get you
washed, and we’ll have a bite of supper on afterwards.”

She caught Severin’s gaze in a silent plea. She saw an
answering flash in his, of dismay and warning.

“Raise her another bucketful,” Ruda ordered him, oblivious.
“She’s got that much hair she’ll be drying it all night, and she’ll catch her
death of chill if you don’t crack on.”

There was no way of protesting, not without looking very
suspicious. They were pretending to be married, and that was that. Eloise did
not even dare exchange another look with Severin as he hauled water for her and
poured it into buckets. He tried to make himself scarce after that, but Ruda
patted the bench by the door and insisted that he sit down with her and tell
her all about where they came from. She wanted to know everything about their
families. Eloise understood that the old woman was getting a lot of pleasure
out of her guests. She liked the hawkish, scrupulously polite merchant and his
pretty new wife, and her imagination was being fired by the passion she read
into their relationship. It was a harmless thrill for the old woman—or it would
be harmless, if it were true. As it was, she was pushing them up shameful
paths. Eloise could feel her skin prickling and her heart racing.

The last sunlight of the evening lay warm over the yard as
she knelt to scrub all the salt out of her hair with the crushed soapwort. And
she was genuinely grateful for the chance to get clean, despite the chill of
the water that made her scalp tingle and her nipples jut out against her shift
in shock, despite the fact that Severin was sitting with Ruda by the back door,
his elbows on his knees, making up some fantasy about their home and family in
Boscia and trying not to look in her direction without making his discomfort
obvious. She couldn’t help her smile as she wrung out her rinsed hair.

Then very carefully, trying her best to appear casual even
though she burned with unease, Eloise turned her back and lifted her shift and
skirt to wash her bruised and dusty legs down. She could imagine his eyes upon
her and a flush of hot shame pulsed under her skin, crimsoning her cheeks. It
filled her veins and flooded her sex, and when she reached between them she
found it oozing out, slippery down the insides of her thighs. She was shocked
by how wet she was. Thrusting the cold cloth between her straddled legs, she
scrubbed at her sex and found no less shame but a sense of relief in the
pressure.

The back of the skirt preserved her modesty in that at
least, but there was no way to retain it while she changed clothes. Taking a
deep breath, she tugged open all the lacing of her shift and let it fall to her
hips, baring her breasts to the golden light. Her fingers felt stiff and clumsy
now. Her sex was tingling from its cold bath and she could feel her swollen
clit. Was he watching?

She’d woken briefly in the middle of the night, while it was
still dark, when he’d rolled over and slipped an arm about her from behind. Too
heavy with exhaustion to anticipate any danger, she hadn’t even been shocked.
She’d simply welcomed the warmth and tumbled back down into sleep again—until
he’d disturbed her at dawn by leaving and she’d seen what she should not. The
memories, kept quietly pegged away at the back of her mind all day, woke again
now, charged with a new urgency.

Was he watching?

Her skin looked the color of old cream in this light, her
nipples pink and swollen like spring buds. Was it Severin’s gaze that was
tracing that shiver up her back? She felt lightheaded now.

Ruda’s rasping giggle sounded across the yard. “She’s a rare
pretty bit, your lass, isn’t she?”

Eloise froze, but if Severin replied it was not audible.

“But she needs a bit of flesh on her bones. You should get
her plowed and planted soon, my lad. A spring baby grows best and strongest, I
always say.”

“Better to see her safe home first,” Severin answered.

It stirred Eloise from her near-trance. She washed at
herself with the wadded cloth, wiping away the sweat and salt crystals and
flecks of bark. The gelid well water woke her skin and made her nipples pucker
and harden even more; they snagged almost painfully on the new blouse she
dragged over her head. The linen clung to her damp and sensitized flesh, but it
was a relief to be able to stand in clean clothes. She loosened the ties of her
skirt and pulled her shift off beneath it, before arranging her attire so that
she was respectable once more. Wringing out the dripping ends of her hair, she
risked a glance over her shoulder toward the two gossipers. Ruda was talking
away happily, but Severin—she’d caught him mid-glance, his face set in a faint
frown, his eyes fixed on her. The moment he saw her looking he dropped his gaze
to the ground.

The thought that he might have seen something he shouldn’t
filled her core with heat. Her nipples pushed against the rough cloth, aching.
She looked away quickly, her mind churning. She wasn’t completely naive. She
recognized the pleasure at the kernel of her guilt. But it was childish, she
told herself, and vain. And very wicked.

Dropping the soapwort into a bucket, she walked slowly over
to the farmhouse. Her feet dragged on the cobbles as if she was toiling through
soft sand. What should she say, she asked herself? What would a woman say to
her husband? How could she cover for the blood burning in her cheeks?

“That’s better, isn’t it?” Ruda said, beaming.

“Oh yes. That water’s bitterly cold though,” she added.

“Good,” he growled, lurching to his feet and striding away
to the well.

Thankfully even Ruda didn’t have the brass to insist on
watching Severin getting washed—though when she took Eloise into the farmhouse
and set her to chopping vegetables, the younger woman had to stifle an
unasked-for pang of her disappointed curiosity.

“Your man Sev,” Ruda mused, stirring the pot.

Eloise braced herself. “Yes?”

“He’s a dark one, isn’t he? Inside, I mean.”

You have no idea
, she thought, but nodded shyly.

“You need to look after a man like that. He’ll haul the moon
out of the sky for you, but he’s no friend to himself. That sort turns to drink
if you hurt them.”

The thought of looking after Severin de Meynard—or indeed,
of hurting him—made her shake her head, it was so incomprehensible.

* * * * *

Mithras and all his saints
, he swore to himself. The
girl…the girl in the evening sun, washing herself by the well. He had not
needed that. He did not need the way that the inadvertent glimpses he’d caught
were painted in his memory in the bright colors of an illuminated prayer
book—her bare back, the motion of a hand, the wriggle of her hips, the water
cascading from the curls of her long hair.

It should not have happened.

He should have kept better control of himself.

Luckily the old woman had noticed nothing. Wrapped up in her
own version of events, she saw only a doting husband and a devoted wife. There
must be sap in the old stick still, he told himself, judging by the juicy
enjoyment she found in her fairy tale. After three days she let them sleep in
the farmhouse, in her daughters’ old bedchamber. That was certainly a step up
from the hay pile and the company of the cows. There was still only a single
straw pallet, though, for them to share, and he did not doubt that the old
woman lay awake every night with an eager ear cocked, hoping—in vain—to catch
the creaks and gasps of marital congress through the rubble wall.

Their sleeping arrangements were strictly chaste though.
Almost.

He found it discomforting that he woke every morning with
his arms around the King’s betrothed. It wasn’t anything he did consciously—in
fact back at Court in Kingsholme he had a distinct preference for sleeping
alone. Those women whom he took to bed were sent away before he rolled over for
sleep. And when he did forget and let them linger, he always woke on the edge
of the mattress with his back turned.

The difference was, he supposed, that back home he had
already got what he wanted from those women. That was far from the case with
Eloise. Not, he reminded himself, that there was any chance of swiving anyone
until he was back in Ystria, so he had better grin and bear the situation.

He was glad for the hard work. It helped take his mind off
his body’s demands. When Eloise’s feet were healed and they took leave of Ruda
and set off on the road, he was equally grateful for the long miles.

The traveling was not as bad as Severin had feared. The girl
didn’t complain, no matter how far they walked in a day or how little they had
to eat. She threw herself with determination into the work they did to earn
their keep at farmsteads, whether it was mucking out pigs or wringing laundry.
She was admirably stoic, he thought, surprised. He kept expecting her pride to
rankle at his command, or her courage to fail at what was demanded of her. She
was an earl’s daughter, after all, and he was only a baron. She should by
rights throw some sort of temper tantrum at some point.

But she didn’t. It wasn’t for lack of spirit; he sometimes
saw the exhaustion or frustration or fear burning in her eyes. But always she
bit down on it grimly and kept going. He rather admired that. It took courage.

She let him take the lead. When she did question him—and she
did, often—it was to understand his intentions better, with the presumption
that she had something to learn from him. She had cast herself instantly in the
role of eager pupil to his teacher, and that was something he liked too. He was
a man who throve upon responsibility. He had to laugh at himself then,
realizing that a naïve girl had instinctively managed to undermine all his
bitter defenses.

They were crossing a marshy patch in a river-valley when he
discovered just how crumbled his fortifications were. From behind a patch of
willow two swans flew low overhead, white wings beating, with a noise like the
thrumming of a windmill’s sails. Eloise turned to him then with a smile so
guileless and joyful that without thinking he responded with one of his own. He
clamped down on it in a moment, but he was too late. Through that chink in his
armor her smile flew to burst warmly in his heart.

Severin stopped in his tracks then, unable to walk for a
moment. His stomach lurched. Eloise walked on ahead, unaware of the effect
she’d had.

Oh no no no!
he told himself, horrified but utterly
in vain.
Not now, after all these years. Not now, and not
her
. Not
the King’s betrothed!

Chapter Three

Another farmstead, another night after a long day’s work.
They were bedded down in the common hall with the other servants, on straw
pallets laid behind the benches, and that night Eloise found it impossible to
sleep despite her exhaustion. Maybe it was the aching in her feet and
shoulders, or maybe the intrusive sounds of those others nearby. Someone was
snoring. One couple was taking advantage of the dark to get some swiving in—she
could hear a muted rustling, a rhythmic grunting coming from farther down the
room. It made her feel strangely restless and lonely.

She had Severin there at her back, of course. He never left
her on her own after the candles were blown out, for fear of what some bored
and horny laborer might attempt on her. He was lying silently, his back to
hers, a warm hard wall of protection. She wondered if he was still awake. His
breathing was inaudible. She wondered if he could hear those soft giggles and
gasps of desire and—if he could—what he thought of them.

Her body roiled inwardly. A familiar itch licked between her
legs. Her eyes burned in her head, but she couldn’t sleep.

She knew what she needed, of course. At home in her old room
all she would have to do was finger herself to a solitary climax and then slide
down the afterwash into sleep. But she couldn’t do that here. Severin would
notice.

Wouldn’t he?

Her hips twitched as she pressed her thighs tighter
together. A pulse ticked in her groin. This was unbearable. The last climactic
gasps of the rutting couple seemed to echo in her skull.
Blood of the Bull
,
she cursed to herself. He wouldn’t know. She could do it quietly. She didn’t
have to make any sound or thrash about or
anything
.

Very carefully she pulled her skirt up from where it was
bunched at her knees, gathering it a finger’s-length at a time. She made sure
not to make any noise. To slip her hand between her thighs she did have to
shift her position slightly, but she disguised that with a sleepy wriggle.
There—her fingers were tucked up against her pubic mound now. Delicately she
reached in to the crease tucked behind, finding the moist groove of her sex and
then her swollen clit. A shiver of grateful pleasure ran through her whole body
as she lubricated that sensitive bud of flesh, and the restless ache was
mollified at once. That was all she needed, that gently circling fingertip and
time for it to do its work. She could be quiet.