Raucous noises above her, the floorboards rattling the kitchen timbers. If she stayed still, she could feel the vibrations through her own feet. Bied rubbed her sleeve over her forehead and lifted the last pot from the oven. Not all needed to be cleaned because the fire burned anything off, but a few were worse than usual. What had she spilled?
‘Let me help with the cleaning,’ Tess said.
Bied jerked her head to get her hair out of her eyes. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I’m up far earlier than you,’ Tess said. ‘Most of my duties were already done.’
‘Hence when you asked to be excused because there was so much to do?’
Grinning with a wink, Tess grabbed a broom. ‘It turned out well, no one has died from your cooking.’
‘Not yet. There’s still your dessert.’ It wasn’t possible to stay annoyed at Tess, but she did lace a bit of it in her words. ‘I couldn’t believe putting me in charge was how you intended to keep me employed here.’
‘You’ve been industrious in the kitchens. How difficult could it be to do a little more?’
‘A little more! For a sennight, I’ve been sweeping floors, washing pans, and serving food. Regardless of Cook’s...situation, I’ve never fed this many.’
Cook, whose son had died a few weeks before. He was grieving and lost and hurting. Everyone tiptoed around him, including Steward.
‘What will happen with Cook? He’s never not been here at all. He at least arrives to prepare Lord Warstone’s food, talks to Steward about the menu and then leaves. I can’t keep this up if it’s only me.’
‘He’ll come...’ Tess’s face fell. ‘I don’t know.’
It helped that Lord Warstone, when in residence, wanted simple meals served to him in his private chambers. Bied hadn’t even seen him. And those few dishes Cook had continued to prepare and serve, which had left meal planning to the Steward. Feeding the rest of the household was a matter of quantity versus quality, but even that took planning on a grand scale.
She could pull meals together for a little while, but when the Steward returned with the goblets, expectations would be different. This occupation kept her far too busy to reach her sister. It wasn’t in her nature for this much delay and wondering.
‘What are we to do with the new Usher?’ Tess said. ‘He’s...’
Far too handsome? Intriguing? Everything in her said she should and shouldn’t trust him. She didn’t even know how that was possible. He was more than competent as an usher, probably knowledgeable enough to be Steward if he had the proper lineage. Yet...she didn’t know what it was, but he wasn’t what he appeared.
It wasn’t much, but why would an usher change how to present the food? Why did he ask the questions about Lord Warstone and his guards? If she had to choose between truth or falsity, she’d swear he was lying.
As for the rest, dark hair, blue eyes. Even with that odd hunch, his build was far too noticeable. Strength without bulk, though he dropped her earlier today...that just made his presence and actions more suspicious to her. ‘He’s—’
‘Cook!’ a voice boomed from the stairs.
Both of them pivoted to the mercenary on the stairs.
‘I think he means you,’ Tess whispered.
Bied brushed her hands against her gown. She didn’t know why she was called. The food wasn’t perfect. Perhaps she’d be ridiculed or punished. Perhaps she’d be told to pack her belongings and leave at first light tomorrow.
If so, she’d sort all that out later. For now, she’d soon see her sister. Her sister! Unfortunately, the guard’s thick back blocked her view when they entered the Hall. Yet, though she couldn’t see, something was different in this room. A menacing anticipation pricked at her skin.
It was similar to the warning feeling she had got when Margery raptured on about Ian of Warstone, the same feeling that made her warn her sister not to become involved no matter his wealth or charm.
But now that feeling was amplified, causing the hairs on her arms to rise. But she shoved the feeling away when the mercenary stepped to her side as they walked between two long tables and she finally saw her sister.
With Lord Warstone’s eyes on her, Bied could only give a cursory glance, but it was enough to see the dark circles under Margery’s familiar eyes, and her lips looked...swollen.
Ian, however, from his pale eyes to his effortless manners, was as Margery described. He seemed to be discussing matters with Louve, who stood on the opposite side of the table.
Louve with dark hair, but not raven black like Lord Warstone. The Hall’s lit torches revealed that there were warmer tones in it. And from this side, without Louve’s arresting gaze distracting her, the little twist he did to stretch his posture before collapsing it again took on a different light. Perhaps he adjusted it because he was forcing the poor posture. It looked wrong on him.
It wasn’t only the angle of his wide shoulders giving that impression, but the rest of his build. His height, the tapering at his waist, the strength defined in legs encased in breeches that no tunic or boots could hide.
‘Is this she?’ Ian said.
Louve peered over his shoulder, his eyes steady on hers. Not cold, or warm. Not empty. Surprised. Because she was here? Not possible; he’d known the mercenary came to fetch her.
But what? So little time together and too many facets to this man. Was he an arrogant usher or a someone else? He sometimes acted like the guards who trained for hours every day and, at other times, he’d sound more subservient than those who cleaned the garderobes.
Moreover, he kept prying and interfering which made her want to respond, to forget the servant role she played and...tie all his boots to the rafters. She needed to understand, to—no, she needed nothing from this enigmatic man. A man who appeared dark, but wasn’t when the light was shone on him. Purposefully weak, when his body was strong. Irritated there was no seasoning for the food until he laughed...that laugh! She wanted to share it with him even having no idea why he did it or why she cared.
Only her sister should matter. Margery, whose hand fluttered about her as if wanting to eat, though she didn’t, so she drank and... Was her sister swirling the ale around her mouth and grimacing before she swallowed? Her lip was swollen, and looked cut!
The bastard had harmed her. To have something to injure him with! The guard who still stood next to her had a sword—why couldn’t she?
But she couldn’t, no matter how much she longed to. Rumours of Lord Warstone, which she only truly understood right this very moment, were enough to know none of them would survive if she attacked. This man was possessed by his own demons.
There was no negotiating with him while she was empty-handed. She couldn’t attack when he was so well-guarded. If she attempted or said anything, she’d put her sister in danger. But there was one offence she could make. Because as long as Margery was alive and within reach, she’d answer any challenge. ‘I am she,’ she answered.
Ian’s brows shot up and Louve shifted to keep Bied, the guard next to her and the brute behind Ian in his sights. Here he was, a hunched waste of an usher with no sword in his hand and in a situation as fraught as when he faced adversaries on a battlefield.
It wasn’t customary for the Cook to reply directly to the lord of the manor. By doing so, she’d not only insulted Ian, but his position as well.
‘I don’t remember seeing you before,’ Ian said, easing back in his chair.
‘Is there anything of the meal that displeased my lord?’ she asked. Her eyes not on Ian, but on the mistress, who seemed to be sampling her brew as her wide eyes stayed locked on Bied’s.
Louve widened his stance, prepared to fight. Bied provided Ian with neither a direct answer nor a gaze. If he could, he’d caution Bied on her obvious disobedience. No Warstone would allow it.
‘It isn’t possible that I haven’t seen you before,’ Ian continued as if he hadn’t been slighted.
Bied slowly shifted her eyes from the mistress to Ian. ‘I help in the kitchens and am far from the private chambers, my lord. I hope my food revealed that I have some skill when it comes to your household?’
‘The food was adequate. In—’
‘The drink, perhaps,’ Bied interrupted. Louve watched her eyes go from Ian to the mistress and back. She needed to focus on the true threat, to have some sort of subservience. Quickly, and with much haste, for Ian had noticed her interruption.
‘The drink,’ Ian pronounced slowly, carefully, ‘was passable. Barely, but only because I allowed it.’
Louve waited for her to understand Ian’s warning. Instead, Bied raised a determined chin and moved so the guard next to her was in a better position to knife her in the back when Ian gave the command.
Louve ached to say something, to stop the volley of words and deeds that were causing only harm. Instead, she continued, ‘Any improvements there, my lord, for the ale, which is only passable, or suggestions from your—’
‘You’re new,’ Lord Warstone said, his words sharp. Definitive and almost ugly. He leaned forward like a hawk whose beak had made the first stab into its prey. ‘You’re new, which is something I do not, ever, tolerate. Who—’
The mistress cried out, a clatter of a knife, and all attention pivoted to her. Eyes welling with fetching tears, she sucked the finger in her mouth.
‘A cut, my dear?’ Ian asked with a disconcerting concern.
Keeping her finger in her mouth, she nodded. Louve breathed a sigh of relief that the attention on Bied had been luckily averted. Now if he could only extricate her from the Hall while Ian’s attention was solely for his mistress.
‘Here, let me help ease your mind of that.’ Ian grabbed the fallen knife, grasped the maid’s other wrist and made a shallow cut across his mistress’s palm.
She cried out. Bied hissed.
‘See, one cut is worse than the other. Isn’t that better?’ Ian crooned, while tenderly wrapping a linen around the hand he’d damaged.
In the madness, Louve had only moments and turned to Bied. ‘You’re dismissed. See that dessert is prompt.’
He must appear uninterested, heartless, as he faced Bied, whose eyes brimmed with an emotion he never expected her to feel, let alone to hide from their rapt audience: wrath.
Instead of outrage, instead of leaping across the table or any other ridiculous actions he could envision, Bied pivoted towards the kitchens.
‘Wait,’ Ian called out.
Louve hoped upon useless hope that Bied would pretend she hadn’t heard Ian. To keep walking to the kitchens and out the other door. Towards the gates, where if she was fortunate they’d open them and she could be free of all this.
But Bied turned. Her eyes flicked first to the mistress, to her hand Ian held against his chest, and then deliberately slowly to Ian’s paler ones.
Ian’s eyes weren’t like his brothers’. They weren’t brutal, like Guy’s, young like Balthus’s, nor were they searing with intelligence like Reynold’s. They did, however, hold the same mad Warstone light that was all too familiar. But this time the promised madness was actualised.
Those eyes feasted on Biedeluue while Louve stood there. He could do nothing to protect her, to warn her, nothing without jeopardising everything. Bringing down the entire Warstone family was the deed necessary to end wars. Casualties were merely part of it. Reynold’s mercenary, and his friend, Eude, had died because of this war. This brave woman, he feared, would be another.
‘I expect to be fed on the morrow,’ Ian said, cradling the bleeding palm to his jawline as if to soothe it before he set it on his mistress’s lap and stood. At his waist were keys he unhooked and tossed towards her. They fell far short of her feet. To reach them she’d have to step closer to Ian, to the guard who stood near the high table.
‘I expect the food to taste to my specifications and to be served in the way of my family. Do you understand?’
Louve didn’t breathe. Bied was trouble, wrecked by a joyous recklessness all of which he envied even as he needed to crush it. But if she displayed any of it with Ian, he would injure her.
Taking two quick steps, she snatched the keys off the floor and straightened. ‘I’ll do as my lord wishes and am deeply honoured to provide him and his men with my humble fare.’
Ian’s eyes narrowed. ‘Find that it’s not so conceitedly humble tomorrow or it won’t be to my liking.’
Two steps, that’s all Louve needed to disarm the guard who gaped at Bied’s bosom when she bent for the keys. Two steps to grasp the sword and thrust it through his stomach. To toss the smaller dagger towards the eye of the guard next to Ian. Those would be the only two manoeuvres he had before his own life, and Bied’s, would be forfeit if she challenged Ian now.
But Bied only clenched the keys, nodded once and with quick short strides was out of the Hall.
‘Usher,’ Ian said, ‘I don’t think you’re needed any more this evening. Feed my men dessert and have water and fresh linens brought to my chambers so that I might care for my love’s fresh wound.’
A game. One he could forfeit now and be no better off or continue to play. ‘As you wish, my lord.’