Candle in the Window: Castles #1 by Christina Dodd
Liberated from the restraint of silence, her voice sounded quavery, and his temper cooled proportionately. “Give the wench back and I’ll forget about it.” The group in the window seat released a collective giggle, and he sank back into the water. “Give the wench back and send these she-lackeys away.”
Wringing out her full draped sleeve in both her shaking hands, Saura swiped her hair off her forehead and refused. “I can’t do that, my lord. The girl is spoken for.”
“Spoken for! She is a serf. I am her lord.”
Saura smoothed the rough wool of her garments and cursed her own industry. Her sense of responsibility had demanded she perform the jobs Lord Peter assigned her before she availed herself of the fabric he had offered. The time had come to sew new clothes, clothes marking her as a lady and not a serving maid. “The girl’s gone.”
“Gone! No one has left this room!” His anger brought him back to his feet. “And I want her now!”
Exasperated beyond her usual self-restraint, Saura shouted back, “I’ll speak to your father! We’ll make arrangements!” With a swish of her wet skirts, she turned on Maud’s arm and went out the door held by a sewing maid who, overcome with nervous humor, bit her hand to stifle her laughter.
“Do ye want me t’ warm your bath, Lord William?” asked Linne, one of his late wife’s serving women. “I’ve got more water heated.”
“Nay,” answered William slowly. “Nay, I think my bath has been sufficiently warmed already. The cold has been vanquished.”
In a screened nook off the great hall, Lord Peter wiped his brow on his sleeve and tried to concentrate on the accounting his seneschal was explaining to him. He would rather be out in the bailey, training the young lads Kimball and Clare in swordplay; anything but this everlasting boredom. This had been William’s job, keeping track of the year’s crop yield and their tenants’ rents and whether their stewards had cheated them. He had no head for it, no matter how often or patiently the intelligent young cleric explained it.
“Due to the raids at Fairford,” Brother Cedric was saying, “the rents have been down again.” He suspended his report, his attention attracted by the commotion coming from the great hall.
Lord Peter looked up, too, interested in anything that would distract him from the agonizing tally. “It has been too long since we’ve had laughter in the castle,” he commented. “The arrival of Lady Saura has set all to rights. The servants are well behaved and cheerful, the meals are well prepared and I believe William is responding at last.”
Saura, dripping and angry, appeared in the arched door, one hand on the mastiff’s neck, one hand on Maud’s arm, and the words died on his lips.
“Lord Peter!” she demanded. “Forgive me for asking, but how long has it been since William fornicated with a woman?”
Stupefied, Lord Peter questioned, “Fornicated? With a woman?”
“His tastes definitely seem to run to female,” Saura snapped, gathering her sleeve and wringing it out.
Lord Peter stared at the drenched Madonna before him, at the puddle on the planks around her. “You’re wet,” he said. “Did you fall in a puddle?”
“Nay, I fell in a bath with your son, and a lusty fellow he is! How long has it been since he was bedded?”
A small sound escaped Brother Cedric, and Lord Peter turned to see him struggling against a chuckle and staring at Saura. The utilitarian wool cotte was drenched, the gold undergarment showed through the lacing at the sides. Her violet eyes glittered, her cheeks were flushed a pretty pink. Her lips throbbed full and red and carried the delectable swelling that was the symptom of a thorough kissing.
Maud cleared her throat and Lord Peter’s gaze flew to hers. The message that passed from her mind to his was explicit and vehement and he hastily answered, “Ah, I think ’twas before he was blinded.”
“Oh, marvelous. It has been months. Well, that must change. Bring a woman to him now. She has to have my shape,” Saura measured her waist with her hands, “and have all her teeth. He has intimate experience with my teeth. I’ll send out my clothes, she can wear them. And Lord Peter?”
“Aye?” Dazed, Lord Peter tried to put together the sequence of events leading to these extraordinary demands.
“You promised me material from France. I’ll get the sewing women started on my new wardrobe at once.” She nodded regally and took Maud’s arm. Tugging at the dog’s neck, she ordered, “To my chamber.”
Lord Peter stared after them and repeated with mild astonishment, “Damn! What did I tell you? Lady Saura is setting all to rights.”
“Shoo! Ye big dog, go on, ye don’t belong in m’lady’s chamber.”
“Let him in, Maud. He’ll just claw at the door if you don’t.”
The dog’s claws created a clipped rhythm on the wooden floor and the bedchamber door closed behind them. Maud scolded, “Every stupid dog in the world worships ye. Get over to the fire and strip out of those clothes. This chilly spring’s no time to take a bath.”
“I hadn’t planned on it!” Saura protested, hands busy with the lacing. “Oh, help, the tie is stuck.”
Maud dropped the clothes she was lifting from a trunk and hurried to attend her lady. “Aye, ’tis wet, and it would seem Lord William’s busy fingers knotted it tight. If I didn’t have reason to know better, m’lady, I’d say your performance in the bathtub smacked of an experienced woman.”
“I am an experienced woman—” Saura smiled a lopsided, charmed smile. “Now.”
“I’ve not seen such passion since the first time your mother helped your father with his bath. She was a maiden, too, but not for long.”
“I was curious.” She lifted her arms and let Maud remove her garments.
“Curiosity, is it?” Maud mused. “Nay, I’ve seen curiosity before, and that wasn’t it.”
Goaded by an interest she didn’t understand, Saura asked, “What does he look like, Maud?”
“That’s curiosity.” Stepping back, she examined her lady’s naked form. “Ah, Lady Saura, ye’re beautiful. Ye should have been wedded and bedded at thirteen, like the other women.”
“And perhaps dead in childbed at fifteen.”
“As God wills, but I long to hold your babes in my arms. ’Tis not too late, ye know. Ye’re only nineteen.”
Saura hugged the old woman. “Only nineteen? Ha! Well past the age of marriage. Don’t open my mind to hope, Maud. I can live with resignation, but if I begin to dream of a man, a man of my own….” She shivered. “I’m chilled.”
Maud brought a rough towel and rubbed Saura all over, handed it to her and ordered, “Dry your hair. He’s big.”
“Who?”
“Who!” Maud snorted.
“William? I know he’s big! His voice is way up here.” Saura leveled her hand above her head.
She plucked the veil from her hair and wrung the water from the long, single braid hanging over her shoulder. “He’s a magnificent stallion, and he’s tall and well muscled. He has a pleasant voice, very pleasant. I know all that. But what does he look like?”
Maud tossed a dry under-shift over Saura’s head and tugged it down. “His face is broad and stern, and he smiles but rarely. But when he does, m’lady! His dimples show even above that scraggly beard. He’s so blond, so light, he appears golden in his bath.” Maud checked her lady’s face.
Enraptured, Saura clung to every word with her lips slightly open and white teeth peeking out. Her hands, employed with the business of unbraiding her hair, froze in midair. Her chest rose and fell with deep inhalations, her eyes shone.
To Maud, Saura’s expression and her sudden interest revealed hope for her mistress’s future. Maud expanded her description with sly intention. “He’s the type of man women gawk at. Whoever they dress up and send in there will be more than willing, I assure ye.”
“That relieves my mind,” Saura said wryly, her fingers busy with the braid once more.
“Aye, I’m sure it does.” Maud chuckled. “This relieve
When the door of the master chamber opened and William walked out on Linne’s arm, Lord Peter had to fight back a swell of tears. His son had returned.
William’s beard was trimmed close to show the strong chin held at a determined angle. Cut into a golden fringe above his eyebrows and around his neck, his hair swung in cadence with his stride. He walked upright, his step firm and his shoulders unbending.
He was back again: William was back.
“Father!” Kimball rose from his bench at the head table and tumbled out onto the floor. “Father.” He ran to him, catching his hand.
“Aye, son?” William tilted his head down, seeming to look at the boy. “Is everyone seated at the tables? Am I late?”
“We waited for you. Lady Saura said you’d had lots of excitement and you might be taking a nap, but Grandfather said taking a bath is hard work and insisted we wait. So Lady Saura ordered a soup and we’ve been having some music. Her harp playing reminds me of the angels. But now we’re starving!”
“We mustn’t have that. Will you take me to the table?” He freed his hand from Linne’s arm, leaned down and whispered, “And make sure I don’t bang my shins?”
“Aye, sir.” Pleased to have his father back, too young to be sentimental, Kimball grinned. “I won’t let you trip. Put your hand in my elbow; you want me to sit beside you and cut your meat? The quintain only knocked me off my horse once today and it knocked Clare off four times—here’s the bench, Father, lift your leg over—but Grandfather says he’s going to be a great jouster if he keeps practicing. He’s seven and I told him I didn’t do as well at seven and he’s not as big as I was even then but Grandfather says he has a good seat. Here’s your trencher, feel it?” He took William’s hand and put it on the rough wooden plate.
“Aye, thank you, Kimball.” A smile tugged at William’s mouth. “Have you missed me?”
“Well,” the eight-year-old thought about that. “You haven’t been gone, exactly. But you didn’t like to hear me talk.”
“I know. I’m sorry, it will not happen again.” He raised his hand and searched, found the boy’s face and then his head, and smoothed the tangled hair back. “But tell me, who is Clare?”
“Why, he’s Lady Saura’s brother,” Kimball said in astonishment. “He’s sitting at the end of the head table. He usually shares my trencher.”
“Her brother?”
“Grandfather had to take him for fostering or we couldn’t have her. He’s been here all spring with Lady Saura. She’s nice. She’s been taking care of us, talking to us and kissing us good night and slopping comfrey salve on our bruises. Except she forced us to take a spring bath. Did she have the servants strip you and throw you in, too?”
A tomblike officiousness hushed the table: every ear strained to hear his answer.
“Nay, son,” William rumbled. “There are incentives for adults who agree to bathe without struggling.”
A low chuckle rippled around the trestle tables and William’s retainers and admirers nodded and murmured to one another.
He was back. Their lord was back.
“Did you enjoy your incentive?” Lord Peter asked at William’s left hand.
William smiled pleasantly. “She was a very accomplished young lass, willing and eager to accommodate her lord. She had a lovely shape and pleasant breath. She matched almost perfectly the girl I kissed in the tub.”
The page who was dishing out dropped his wooden serving spoon and he danced away from the hot soup as it splattered on the floor. The clank of the wood on the flagstones, the sound of his feet shuffling, the murmur of his apology reverberated through the great hall as the knowing heads swiveled from Saura to William and back again.
William, of course, didn’t know who else they stared at, but he knew he had everyone’s attention as he continued, “Aye, Father, I am blind. But I’m not simpleminded. The girl in the bath had an innocent fire no other woman could duplicate. Her sweet mouth branded me. I don’t know who she was, or what she was, or why I can’t have her, but my bathing companion was unforgettable. And until I can put my hands on her, I’ll not bed a substitute.”
three
“William, you have to stop kissing the maids.” Saura slapped her leather gloves against her palm.
The girl in William’s lap slid off, giggling, as he patted her bottom. “Thank you, dearling, but you’re not the one.” His voice resounded in the screened cubicle where he worked with Brother Cedric.
William’s only fault, in Saura’s mind, was his predilection for kissing the maids. The brush of a skirt against his hand brought prompt response. He grabbed and kissed indiscriminately, old and young, single and married, sweet and sour. The women giggled and grabbed back, or giggled and slipped away, but he always pronounced, “You’re not the one,” as he released them.
It warmed Saura’s heart to hear him repudiating them, as much as it burned her gut to listen to the kiss.
The cupbearer slipped past as Saura stood in the doorway, and William complained, “You need to bring in some new girls. How can I find my mystery woman if I’m kissing the same ones day after day?”
“Don’t kiss them!” she repeated in exasperation.
“But I like to.”
Saura flung her hands into the air. “You’re hopeless.”
“Just curious.”
“Dressed for an outing, Lady Saura?” With conscious design, Brother Cedric supplied the clue William desired.
“Going riding this fine afternoon?” William asked.
Instinctively straightening her new linen bliaud, she agreed. “If I can find the boys to join me. There’s trouble at the miller’s and Linne’s prepared a basket. Would you like to—”
“Aye.” William stood up. “I would.”
She laughed and blushed and stepped away. “I’d be flattered at your eagerness, my lord, but I suspect the real attraction is the horse.” She halted in her tracks. She had detected a note in her voice she had never heard before. A coy note, a shy curl of laughter: the sound of flirtatiousness.
William smacked into her back, almost knocking her down. He grabbed and caught her elbows from behind. “Saura?”
“Excuse me, my lord.” She tried to jerk away and his hands tightened briefly, then released. “I stopped in front of you, all unthinking.”
“Aye.” His voice sounded strained also, she noticed. “You’re thinner than I’d believed.”
“Did you imagine me stuffed like a palliasse?” She inched across the bare floor, uncertain of her location.
“Nay,” he answered flatly as he followed. “I imagined you…I’ve wondered.”
“’Tis natural,” she assured him, seeking the role of teacher. “The blind often wonder how the people around them look.”
“Every other face I do remember well. You are a stranger in Burke Castle. Would you let me touch your face?”
Saura drew in a shuddering sigh. She’d love to have him touch her face: and, she suspected, anywhere else he desired. But it was too soon. He’d developed into a recognizable master in the past two weeks. When he discovered the trick they had played on him, he’d be furious, and justifiably so. She cursed Lord Peter and this imaginative deception.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she told him, a kind and patronizing lilt to her voice. She hated it, but it seemed necessary to discourage his interest.
“Really?”
“The relationship we share is based on mutual respect, and curiosity on your part shouldn’t be indulged,” she babbled.
“An interesting theory.”
His voice advanced toward her and she took a sudden step back. “Lord William?”
“Hmm?”
He was smiling, she could tell, stalking her across the floor of the great hall, and serfs working by the fire chuckled with amusement. “What are you thinking of?” He lunged and she scrambled back. “I wish you wouldn’t!”
He lunged again and caught her wrist, and slo
“Still lusty as ever, eh, William?”
The stranger’s voice sounded amused and William released her in surprise. “Charles?”
“Of course.” The stranger moved into the room. “The way you chased that wench, I thought you had regained your sight.”
“I have eyes in my fingers,” he replied, wiggling them. “Raymond, is that you?” he asked when another set of footsteps advanced into the room.
“Well met, William,” Raymond said. “We hunted the day away, and rode in to sup with you. We left Arthur in the bailey with his hand up a wench’s skirt.”
“As always.” He laughed. “I bid you welcome. And where is Nicholas?”
He jumped when a quiet voice close to him said, “Here I am.”
“God’s teeth, I should have known you could still creep up on me.” He held out an arm, and Nicholas grasped it at the elbow. “Well met, Nicholas. Lady Saura?”
“At once, my lord.” She blundered away and was rescued by Maud’s hand on her arm. In silence, the older woman showed her her location. “Put up the trestle tables,” Saura ordered as she found her bearings. “Draw ale and wine and bring cheese and bread. Hurry the meal arrangements. Tell the cook to prepare cabbage soup and aforce the stew with barley. And Maud,” she lowered her voice, “escort me to a more private spot.”
The serving woman led her behind a darkened support arch. “Will these three cause us trouble, m’lady?”
“I don’t know,” Saura murmured. “Perhaps.”
Sandaled feet thumped on the floor as servants scurried to do her bidding and the three guests hauled their own benches to the newly erected tables. She heard the scraping noise as old Bartley dragged William’s chair to the center of the table and murmured, “Here ye are, m’lord.”
William carefully seated himself in the place of honor, and she tensed; a pewter pitcher clinked and liquid splashed into a goblet. The stream grew thinner as the cup filled. The sound ceased.