Wild Wind (7 page)

“So you do care what people think.”

“I would spare Nicolette her cherished reputation if I could. ‘Twill make everything simpler, in any event, if such conjecture is kept to a minimum. Legally, it makes no difference whether folks think he’s legitimate or not. Henri’s will merely stipulated that Nicolette must bear a son—it didn’t specify whose.”

“Since you’ve thought this all out so well, tell me—what will you do if she gives birth to a daughter?”

“Find some healthy newborn boy and negotiate a trade with his parents, I suppose. The baby girl and a handful of silver for their son and a promise to keep mum. Or, if Nicolette refuses to part with the girl, I’ll simply buy a boy outright and claim she had twins.”

“You’ve become quite an unprincipled wretch, you know that, Milo?”

“A man doesn’t beg to be cuckolded without coming to that realization, cousin.”

“Well, unfortunately for you, my principles are still quite intact. I won’t do it.”

“Not even for Nicolette?”

“Especially not for her.” Damn—that was careless.

In a quiet, almost sober voice, Milo asked, “What is that supposed to mean?”

A dozen different inane prevarications occurred to Alex, but he didn’t have the stomach for any of them. Finally, on a heavy sigh, he said, “You’d best ask her.”

Milo nodded slowly, then turned and lurched toward the castle. Alex took hold of him and fairly dragged him through the entrance. By the time they reached the north tower, Milo’s legs were buckling beneath him, and Alex wondered how he was going to get him upstairs to his chamber.

Hearing footsteps from behind, Alex turned and saw Gaspar coming toward them. “There you are, milord! I was beginning to worry about you. Here, Sir Alex. Let me give you a hand with him.” Squeezing three abreast in the narrow stairwell, Gaspar and Alex supported the insensible Milo between them and half-carried him up the steps. When they got to the door at the top of the tower, Alex knocked.

“Milo?” Nicki called from within.

Gaspar opened the door. “Aye, milady, but he’s...oh. Beg pardon, milady.”

Nicki was seated on the edge of the bed, drawing a big ivory comb through her hair. She stood up quickly, and Alex saw that she wore the white sleeping shift that had been laid out for her. The shimmery silk highlighted her feminine contours and left her arms and lower legs completely bare.

Alex averted his gaze, as did Gaspar—if not quite so swiftly—while Nicki grabbed a wrapper off a hook and hurriedly tied it over the shift. “Oh, Milo,” she murmured, shaking her head. “Put him here.” She folded down the bed covers.

“I’ve got ‘im.” With seemingly little effort, Gaspar lifted Milo like a baby and deposited him on the bed. “You can be on your way, Sir Alex,” he said over his shoulder as he tugged Milo’s boots off. “I’m used to this.”

Circling the bed, Nicki leaned over Milo to unbuckle his belt, her great swath of golden hair gleaming in the light from the horn lantern dangling overhead. She slid the belt beneath her husband’s inert form, tossed it aside and set about wrestling him out of his tunic.

Pausing in her task, she raised her head and met Alex’s steady gaze, her eyes enormous in the mellow lamplight. “Thank you for your help,” she said softly, “but Gaspar and I can handle the rest.”

Alex withdrew from the room and sprinted down the steps, but lingered at the bottom of the stairwell, uneasy to have left Gaspar up there with Nicki. Absurd; he was a trusted retainer. Yet something about the way he’d looked at her in her night shift had raised Alex’s hackles. Within a minute, however, he heard the big man’s heavy tread on the stairs, and feeling very much the fool, retired to his pallet in the great hall.

ALEX KNOCKED SOFTLY
on the door to the guest chamber allotted to Luke and his family. It was late—nearly matins—and he didn’t want to awaken the children.

The door squeaked on its hinges and Faithe peered out, cradling baby Edlyn in one arm and holding a candle aloft. “Alex.” She opened it all the way and stepped aside for him to enter, whispering, “What are you doing up at this time of night?”

It was obvious what she was doing up, for her voluminous night shift was untied to allow Edlyn to suckle. Setting down the candle, she draped a linen towel over her exposed breast, but in an leisurely way that implied no sense of shame. Alex liked it that she felt so at ease with him, as friends should. How very remarkable to have a woman for a friend. How fortunate for both of the brothers de Périgeaux that Luke had married Faithe of Hauekleah.

“I’m looking for something to drink,” Alex said—very softly, so as not to awaken the others. The small chamber held—just barely—a bed, a pallet, and the cradle and trunk they’d brought with them. Luke lay facedown in his drawers on one side of the bed, an arm dangling off the edge, his inky hair loose and disheveled. Robert and Hlynn shared the pallet—rather unequally, for the little girl was stretched out luxuriously, with her brother curled up on the edge. All of them were coated with a sheen of sweat; it hadn’t cooled down much after sunset.

“Can’t you sleep?” Faithe asked him.

“Nay. ‘Tis hot as blazes in that hall.” What little air crept through the arrow slits was kept steamy from the body heat of the hundred or so other men obliged to bed down there. Alex’s wool chausses itched unmercifully. Even his shirt felt oppressive, despite his having untied it halfway down his chest and rolled up the sleeves. In truth, it wasn’t just the heat keeping him awake, but this was hardly the time or place to unburden himself. “Luke has some fortified wine, doesn’t he? I tried the buttery, but it’s locked.”

“Little wonder, with all these soldiers about.” Faithe slid a finger into Edlyn’s mouth to release her hold on the breast, and adjusted her gown to cover herself. The baby yawned, little fists quivering, as milk trickled down her chin. Arranging the towel over her shoulder, Faithe burped the infant with a few efficient pats and laid her gently in the cradle. Free at last of her sweet burden, she stepped over the pallet so that she could kneel before the trunk in the corner.

“Sorry to be such a bother,” Alex said.

“You’re not a bother.” She opened the lid of the trunk, which creaked, causing Robert to awaken with a groan of protest. “I take that back.” She smiled in a resigned way as she rooted through the contents of the trunk.

“Hlynn’s taking up the whole pallet,” the boy whined.

Faithe sighed. “They’ve been at this all night.” To her son she said, “I’ll move her in a—”

“Move over, piglet!” Robert shoved his little sister aside, roughly awakening her.

“Mummy! Robby hit me.”

“Did not. I just—”

“Not again,” Luke groaned. “Quiet, both of you! Go back to sleep.”

“But, Papa.” Hlynn grabbed at her father’s dangling arm. “Robby—”

“I don’t care what he did. It’s hot. I just want you two to stop this nonsense so we can all get some...” Lifting his head, Luke blinked at his brother. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m trying to talk Faithe into running away with me.”

Luke settled back down and closed his eyes. “Take the children, too.”

Faithe retrieved a leather flask and closed the trunk. As she stepped back across the pallet, she said, “The next child who speaks tonight will eat nothing tomorrow but bread and broth. No sweetmeats of any kind. No herb cakes. No fruit tarts. No marzipan anythings, I don’t care how clever. Do you both understand me?”

They nodded dolefully, glowered at each other, and settled down facing in opposite directions.

“You can sleep in here if you’d like,” Faithe offered, prompting Alex to snort with laughter. This was no better than the great hall.

Accepting the flask of strong wine, he said, “Thanks all the same, but this castle’s an oven. I’ve got to get out of here.”

“You’re going to sleep out of doors?”

“Luke and I found an old longship this afternoon on the bank of the Robec. It has the advantage of no roof. If a cool breeze happens to pass through Rouen tonight, I’ll be ready for it.”

“Clever you,” she said, and bid him good night.

By the time Alex arrived at the boat, he was drunker than he’d been in years, having methodically drained the flask as he walked.

He should have stayed in England. England didn’t have heat like this—not often, anyway, and never in the middle of the night, for pity’s sake. More important, England did not have Nicolette.

Setting the half-empty flask with inebriated care on an oarsman’s bench, he stripped and went for a swim, grateful for the chance to cool off. Afterward he donned his loose linen drawers, but wadded up the shirt and woolen hose and shoved them in the crook where the hull met the bench, a sort of pillow.

His money pouch lay on the deck of the boat where it had fallen when he undressed. He retrieved it and, on impulse, dug around in it until he found, at the very bottom, something he’d put there nine years ago and never removed.

It was a ribbon, a slender band of white satin which had once, in another lifetime, been woven through the hair of Nicolette de St. Clair. Finding it creased and wrinkled from its long confinement beneath heavy coins, he stretched it out on the bench and flattened it with his palms. It looked to be perhaps a yard and a half in length.

Luke frequently chided Alex for his carelessness with his things, for he was forever misplacing items of importance. This ribbon and the purse that housed it were the only possessions Alex had ever taken pains not to lose.

Alex lifted the ribbon and wrapped it around his hand. It looked like a bandage in the moonlight. Bringing it to his nose, he fancied that he could detect just the faintest hint of roses.

Idiot. He uncorked the flask and quickly finished the job of emptying it. Reeling from the wine and the day’s events, he lowered his head to his makeshift pillow, pressed his ribbon-wrapped hand to his chest, and gazed into the starry heavens.

And remembered a sweet and sultry summer afternoon nine long years ago, an afternoon that bound him for all eternity to Nicolette de St. Clair.

A FEVERISH HEAT
held the world in thrall that day, spawned by a sun that burned like a torch in a cloudless Aquitaine sky. The air shimmered in waves above the sheep meadow through which Alex and Nicolette strolled on their way to the cool shadows of the woods to the south.

Alex couldn’t believe his good fortune in persuading her to take a walk with him alone. Her mother would have been outraged, but Lady Sybila had taken to her bed after the noon meal, having succumbed to the heat—and she wasn’t the only one. When Alex had arrived at his cousin’s home, adjacent to his, for his daily visit—a habit born several weeks ago, when the lady Nicolette had come to spend the summer there—he found that most of the household had chosen to sleep away the afternoon rather than put up with the scorching heat.

Happily, he’d discovered Nicolette by herself beneath an old oak, re-reading one of the books she’d brought with her. He wondered, not for the first time, how she could be content deciphering page after page of ink scratchings for hours at a time. Joining her beneath her tree, he had pleaded with her to slip away for a walk. She’d balked at the impropriety of being alone with him, finally consenting when he swore a solemn oath not to take advantage of their solitude; she knew already that he did not take oaths lightly. And she’d made him promise not to tell anyone, lest her mother find out.

She looked extraordinary that day, in a pale green tunic of the most delicate, filmy silk trimmed in heavy bands of silver braid. A demurely shapeless garment when she stood still, it drifted around her as she walked, clinging intermittently to a slender thigh...a graceful hip...a tantalizing swell of breast. It took every chivalric instinct Alex possessed to keep from staring openly.

The heat imparted a bloom of color to that extraordinary face of hers, highlighted by the unaccustomed austerity of her hair, which she’d pinned up in deference to the heat. She glowed as if from within, an ethereal creature, not of this world. Not of this region, at any rate, her particular brand of pale Norman beauty being a rarity this far south. She was an exotic creature, strange and elegant and full of mystery. From the moment she’d arrived in Périgeaux to visit her cousin Phelis, Alex had been obsessed by her. As long as he could remember, his sword had been the focal point of his life. Now his every waking thought was of Nicolette de St. Clair. He lived for those brief moments when he could exchange a few words with her—always under the watchful eye of others. But this afternoon, for the first time ever, he had her all to himself!

As they approached the edge of the meadow, they noticed something curious; actually, it was Nicolette who pointed it out. A group of sheep had abandoned their grazing and ventured into the woods, where they could just be seen, all gathered in one place. They never left the meadow.

“Come,” she said, “let’s go see what’s drawn them there.”

She reached for Alex’s hand, and his heart stopped. Looking abashed to have been so forward, she stilled just as her fingers brushed his palm, and turned quickly away. His heart hammered wildly; his palm tingled where her fingertips had grazed it. He looked after her as she strode toward the sheep, wondering how she would react if he should run after her and take her hand in his. Would she welcome the gesture, or consider it a violation of his vow to keep his distance?

“Come along,” she called over her shoulder. Realizing the moment had been lost, and rebuking himself for his childish indecision, he sprinted after her. As for what had prompted her to reach for him in the first place, it seemed to him that she was unusually relaxed this afternoon. In fact, the farther they got from Peter’s house—and her mother—the more lighthearted she seemed.

“Look at this, Alex,” she said, squeezing among the placid sheep to investigate. They were all clustered together near an outcropping of rock that rose high among the snarled foliage and ancient trees.

“Here, let me.” He muscled his way through the dusty animals. “You’ll soil that beautiful tunic.”