Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) (17 page)

“What did he say?” Elfrida hissed against Magnus’s shoulder as the man passed them.

“He is glad I like the gown.” Magnus would not release her but swung her right off her feet and started back.

“Do you?” Elfrida felt scalded at wanting to know—what did such trifles matter?—but she did.

“Do I like the gown and the wench in the gown? Yes.”

He said no more, and he ignored the hollers and yowls from his men and Denzil’s, carrying her steadily back to her place as if she weighed no more than a trencher. Telling herself to forget her old gown, Elfrida smoothed her new skirts down over her knees and shifted so Mark could not see down her bodice. There was a new cup before her place and a fresh trencher, loaded with steaming beef pottage. Holding back her hair, Elfrida leaned forward to smell it carefully, but there were no poisons or potions in the pottage that she could detect, and it had been ladled from a common pot.

“Here.” Magnus unclipped his spoon from his belt and handed it to her, to more yowling. He pushed his trencher close to hers. “You can feed me, too.”

At first Elfrida was about to protest, for Magnus was no infant, and beef stew was no true fare for the advent season, when the church wished men and women to purify themselves for the coming holy birth by fasting before Christmas. Then she dug in the spoon and guided it neatly to his puckered mouth, fighting down her amusement and using her experience of years of nursing sick villagers. Magnus was right. If she was to act as his mistress, then she should be as loving as a pelican to its chicks.

As for advent fasting, this clearly was no concern to the Denzils. Beyond Magnus’s broad shoulders, she caught glimpses of Gregory Denzil gorging on a small, spit-roasted chicken, and down below the salt, the men at the trestles tucked into pottage. A few aped her and jabbed the pale, silent women beside them, urging the poor souls to feed them in the same manner. Elfrida wished fleas on all the Denzil men, who made even a tavern crowd look seemly.

She scraped and spooned, and Magnus smacked his lips, seemingly with eyes and mouth only for her. She knew why he did it, of course, to prove to Denzils that she was valuable, that they must mind their manners with her.

Suddenly, Magnus thumped the table with his right arm, allowing those within the hall to stare in horrified fashion at his stump. He bawled out a series of questions that Elfrida could not follow, but which he translated himself a few moments later, when the hall was in a new buzz and flurry of excitement. “What say you to a contest, Gregory? Remember the wrestling matches we used to have, that Peter of the Mount always won? He is not here now to take the prize, so what say you?”

Gregory Denzil pointed a half-devoured chicken leg at Mark. “Him against my captain,” he said, saying it twice, once in Elfrida’s dialect. “For a forfeit of my choosing.”

“If it is in my gift, so be it,” Magnus replied, nodding to Mark as his second-in-command left the dais.

Elfrida frowned at him, but under cover of eating, he explained. “The tall, dark lass on the middle lower table was being pawed and close to weeping. A few games will give her and others like her respite for tonight, at least.”

Beside the fire, Mark had stripped to his linen braies and was flexing his arms while a taller, bigger man wandered down from the dais with almost insolent slowness.

“He will have a shock, that one,” Magnus chuckled. “Mark is as agile as an eel.” He glanced down the hall. “Were you able to talk to the blonde?”

“She did not understand me.” Elfrida offered him a morsel from her own dish, as a means of thanks. How many knights would have cared what mauling a serving maid had to endure?

“Pity,” Magnus said heavily. “I understand the speech here but cannot ask these poor lasses, especially as I am.”

Elfrida bit the inside of her lip so she would not cry at his acceptance of his brooding, disfigured looks. “The maids are already terrified,” she answered, trying to make a joke of the matter.

It was a poor jest, but he laughed and kissed her, saying swiftly against her mouth, “You screamed when you saw me first.”

“That,” Elfrida whispered back, kissing him in return, “was a war cry.”

She sensed eyes watching her instead of the coming wrestling match by the fire and twisted round to find Gregory Denzil watching, his whole face pinched in calculation. She raised her cup to him in greeting.

“Here we go.” Magnus put two fingers into his mouth and whistled hard. As a whippy-looking Mark and the tall, sandy-haired tithe barn of a man squared up to each other, the men on the lower tables began to cheer their man and lay bets.

Elfrida leaned back to escape Gregory’s probing gaze. Praying that her sister was somewhere in these woods, somewhere safe, she longed to leap from the dais and sprint about the castle in search of her. Instead she must look interested in foolish games and play the loving mistress.

And is that a hardship? No. But we are being watched. Gregory Denzil is not as simple as he seems. And where is his mysterious kinsman?

The thought was not cheering, and despite the fire, the good ale, and her own new, blue gown, she shivered.

Chapter 12

Magnus enjoyed the wrestling—Mark won his bout, as Magnus knew he would, and when it came to his turn, he flipped Gregory Denzil onto his back easily enough, both of them grinning wildly.
Such good fellowship and sport...

For sure,
Magnus thought dryly and hauled Denzil to his feet, as Peter had done so often for him in their crusading days. But Peter he trusted, and Denzil not at all.

Why was he shocked, then, that the man was a slaver? He had been mad for booty and treasure in Outremer, and these poor, pale lasses in the hall were living treasure to a brute like Gregory Denzil. There was not a redhead among them, he noted with relief, but he did not like Denzil’s interest in Elfrida.

She was applauding now, smiling at him like any love-smitten girl. And if only
that
was true!

She has kissed me
, he argued with himself. To be sure, he stalked to the dais, leaned over the table, clasped her firmly by her dainty waist, and scooped her over the salt, kissing her. Mark cheered sweatily and lustily and the rest of the hall erupted into laughter.

Elfrida was, as ever, Elfrida. She did not flinch or shriek and hang from his arms like a flag. Instead, she wound her legs about his middle and brought her hands to the sides of his head and kept him there as her mouth played with his and her tongue teased and his loins hardened in response. When he was as ardent as a youth, she nipped his ear between her teeth and breathed, “What now, my lord?”

Somehow she had kept her modesty, in spite of her thighs being locked about his middle. By rights, her skirts should be bunched around her waist, but they skimmed her ankles—a witch trick, he assumed. Much as he longed to tickle her and tear that silken sheath from her legs, he lowered her nicely to her feet.

“My Lady.” He bowed, hoping he was not blushing, certain he would punch any man who said he was.

Up on the dais, Gregory Denzil cackled and made a remark that Magnus would have died rather than translate for her. Ignoring the other coarse suggestions, he escorted her to her seat, contenting himself by remarking blandly into her ear, “We have the rest of the evening.”

“Indeed.” She always had an answer, the pert little rag.

His head ached with thinking about Elfrida and wondering if she truly liked him, if she cared. Were they to find her sister tonight by some miracle, would she say farewell and return to her woodland village without regret?

He sighed and wanted to drink himself into a piggish oblivion, like the men on the lower tables, but he did not. They were in the Denzils’ keep, and he must be wary. Besides, he disliked being drunk to excess, and he did not want Elfrida to think the less of him, especially after his blunder with her dress.

A woodland witch and I fret over her opinion of me!

He pretended to drink, of course, but spilled most of it, which was a pity, for the ale was almost as good as Elfrida’s. It was strange, he reflected, as the other women in the hall were “encouraged” to dance before the fire by means of knightly elbows and pinches, how he did not fear Elfrida. She was a witch, but he had never considered he might be bewitched by her, and he held to that belief. He remembered what the village men had told him, that she was a good and pious witch. More than that, he knew her now.

She has a warrior’s honor, my Elfrida, and a warrior’s heart.

A tumbler was practicing handstands against the solar door. Gregory Denzil was talking about a siege in Outremer, and then about a falcon he had won from an Arab. The slave women danced in a carol, slowly, as if they were wearied beyond endurance. Men were drinking again, servers ran about with fresh trenchers and spits of meat, dogs were sniffing around for scraps—the usual hurly burly of hall life.

Tonight I will bed down here but not alone
.

The time crawled when he wanted it to fly. At last the other women paired off with whoever had claimed them for the night. At last the trestles were taken down, the torches dowsed, the fire allowed to burn down. Magnus found a clear place by a wall and shepherded Elfrida to lie beside it and him.

“Beside the wall will keep you well away from the Denzils,” he murmured, his thoughts and feelings a mob within him.
I would like to ask her to lie with me. I want her so much. But will she want me in that way? What if she agrees for the sake of pity?

“That is a good thought.” Elfrida peered up at him, her face blurred in the semidarkness of the soon-to-be-slumbering hall. “Although I fear I must away to the garderobe again.”

She tried to press on his shoulder to keep him sitting down on the rushes, but he shook her off easily.

“I know where it is!” she hissed.

“Aye, and so do the men. You do not go alone.”

They edged their way round the prone bodies. Suddenly Elfrida stopped, shook her right foot, and said something very clearly. There was a cry and a wild scrabbling as a darker shadow rolled off. Magnus followed it with his peg leg, kicking out and connecting with a thick head in a very satisfying thud, but Elfrida pulled him back.

“Whichever Denzil that was, he will not snatch at me again,” she said.

“What did you say to him?”

Her eyes gleamed in the single flickering torch of the hall. “You do not need to know, my lord.”

Shaking his head, Magnus shuffled forward again. At times Elfrida could disconcert even him.

He lay in the dark, Elfrida snug and safe beside him. Was she listening to his breathing, as he did with hers? His ears straining for the slightest sound, his body braced for the smallest insult against her, he heard the rest of the hall settle, belch, and snore.

But he knew. From old campaigns, Magnus knew that he and Elfrida were being watched—listened to, for certain. Somewhere out in the dark, Gregory Denzil spied. Denzil might not see much or hear much, but the hall was not completely dark. Off in another corner he could already see flashes of white as limbs thrashed against limbs and he caught the grunting and harsh slap of flesh on flesh as one of the men took one of the slave women.

Denzil will expect me to take Elfrida tonight. To him that is what a leman is for.

He shifted off his back, turning towards Elfrida in order to dupe Gregory Denzil, to make the fellow believe he was making love to her.

If only....

When he found Elfrida already tight against him, plundering his mouth for kisses, he could hardly stifle a grunt of surprise. Her small hands seized his hand, guided his fingers to her bosom. Her unlaced, naked breasts rose under his cupped palm, their nipples proudly erect.

He almost lost control then. Knowing she was as eager as him, he ached to roll onto her, hoist up her skirts and ram into her, but the moment was too sweet, too special to be rushed. He wanted to pleasure her endlessly, and he wanted them to be close, for their lovemaking to mean something.