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He dreamt he and his brothers had found the fairy in the lake. She stood at the edge of the water, lent-lilies and snowdrops in a carpet at her feet, with the mountains all around. She wore a coarse brown dress and Nan’s face, a cloud of golden hair spilling free across her shoulders. They were waiting to see which of them she would name a king.
You must give the sword to one of us, said Rhodri, though Rhodri had never come with them to search for the fairy in real life.
But she had no sword, so she took the knife from her bodice. She held it in her outstretched hand, looking at each of them in turn. She was going to give it away to one of them, only because she had been asked. It sent a terrible dread through him. He knew it would mean disaster for her, and for him.
“No.”
It was barely more than a mumble as he jerked awake. He must have been restless in sleep, for she was already kneeling beside him. Her hand was on his shoulder, her face a little troubled as she looked down at him.
He swallowed down the dream fear and tried to speak naturally.
“Do I wake the house with my cries?” he asked.
She shook her head and lifted her eyes briefly to the window where light streamed in. After another day spent in labor to make her aunt’s home more fit, he had slept the night through to full morning. They were to leave for Lincoln today.
He could still feel the mountains of his dream around him, smell the lake, taste the beginning of danger. His own hand came up to cover hers at his shoulder, and hold it there while he willed his muscles to unclench. They stayed that way for a quiet moment, tension draining from him while she waited patiently, radiating calm as his breath steadied.
He waited for her to pull her hand away. She didn’t. His heart gave a sudden hard beat, a jolt that was not fear.
She was looking at his face. His mouth. Fixedly.
It was only a matter of turning his head to let his lips just barely touch her wrist. He waited for her to reach for a blade, but she remained still, watching him, fascinated. Her pulse sped up beneath his mouth. He did not dare even to breathe as her hand moved beneath his, turning over and moving closer. Haps it was yet another dream. It must be, the way her fingers curled against his jaw in a faint caress while he tasted the sweet skin inside her wrist.
She stared at the place where he kissed her as though entranced. Her fingers spread out against him, holding his face as his mouth opened over her pulse. He thought he might die from the pleasure of seeing her lips part, of feeling the gentle rush of air escape her when he moved his tongue over her skin.
Five years. Five years since he had tasted a woman. And never one like her.
Her eyes met his, startling blue, and still she did not pull away or reach for a blade. She wanted this. The certainty of it caused his body to throb painfully, aching for more. He thought his breath must scorch her, that he would be burned to naught but ashes on the ground from this one touch.
In the same moment he began to reach for her, her aunt’s voice called her name softly through the door. Nan jerked her hand away as though he had burned her in truth, her eyes turning to the door as she rose swiftly.
At the threshold she paused in the square of sunlight that fell into the house. She turned her head over her shoulder, in profile to him but not looking directly at him. A high color was fading from her cheeks.
“I would leave within the hour, if it please you, so we may enter Lincoln before night falls tomorrow.”
The words were courteous, impersonal, as though there had been no touch between them. She stepped outside, leaving him alone with the aching memory of it, his mouth full of her heartbeat.
To his amazement, Nan insisted on leaving the mule with her aunt. When Mary protested it as too generous, Nan only said the animal would be a hindrance to her in the journey ahead and that Mary did her a great service by keeping it. At least for a time, she said, for she was sure to come back.
“And until I do, your Edmer can go to the well and bring back more than enough for a day of cooking and washing and anything else besides,” she said. He could also do as they had done yesterday, bringing rushes to the old woman who made woven mats and rush lights that could be sold at market – as she had used to do before her husband died. With one simple gesture, Nan gave them the means to better care for themselves.
It only made them yet more humble toward Nan, who was obviously uncomfortable with this deferential manner. She had changed back to the coarse gown yesterday, and replaced the linen fillet with a simple kerchief while she pounded grain in the mortar and her dog rousted out nests of mice. Nothing she did made her aunt look at her with less admiration, as though this lovely girl in a peasant’s dress was a very great lady who condescended to serve them. And though they embraced tightly upon saying farewell, it was easy to see that there had been a disagreement between them.
“Don’t go to her, Nan,” he heard her aunt say. “She’s naught but a slut, and unworthy of you.”
Nan ignored this. She kissed her aunt on both cheeks and said, “You must send word to me if ever you need aught. So long as I live, I live in your debt. God bless you for it. God bless you.”
With that, they set off down the road toward town. Gryff searched for a way to ask about her sister, but could not find words. In truth, he knew there were no words – she would only tell him if she wanted to, as with everything. He wanted to tell her that though she was not a great lady, she was better than most he had known and deserving of her aunt’s admiration. But she would think he said it only in hopes of touching her again, so he bit his tongue.
It was market day in town, and she stopped at a stall to sell a bundle of belongings: her finer gown, the embroidered fillet, a shallow pan. Without the mule, she must reduce the baggage she carried. He would have liked to hear Nan haggle with the merchant over price, but the market at Wragby was as popular as had been promised and he found the press of people overwhelming. He felt like a falcon unhooded – too much to see, and everything that moved caught his eye and put him on guard, ready for attack.
He moved to where the crowd was thinner, and found a man who sold him a long leather strap that would allow him to carry the falcon’s cage on his back.
What he wanted was a sword. He hadn’t handled one since his days in Lancaster’s household. It would make him a target for thieves on the road, though, and he did not have enough money for a decent one in any case. Long gone were his days of chivalry. He was no one now – in the muck, as she said. Useless in every way that mattered.
“She’s a pretty one.” A man with an impressive scar down the middle of his face was standing near. “Would like to get my hands on that, I would.”
For a moment Gryff thought he meant the falcon. He glanced down at the cage he held, but then saw the man was looking at Nan. She had moved a little closer now, finished with her selling and examining the leather goods.
A part of him wanted to urge the man to try it and see what happened. But the irrational fear was creeping over him again, turning his limbs cold. The way the scarred man looked at her was too like Cuddy, the one of Baudry’s men who had to be held back from raping every woman who crossed his path.
He told himself that nothing like that would happen here, in a crowded town square. Even if it did, she could more than defend herself from this man. Just as she could defend herself from a different man who now stepped too close to her side. It was one of the merchants who leaned in to speak to her, and she leaned away.
Now the scarred man beside him was saying she was a small bit of flesh but enough for the both of them. He was expecting Gryff to join in the leering and when he did not, he could sense the shift in the other man.
It was the swift calculation of how best to take advantage of someone weaker, the look of the well-practiced villain. How easy it was to recognize, after weeks of living surrounded by such men. How it filled him with this frozen panic.
Gryff kept his eyes on Nan. Even as the man beside her pulled the kerchief from her hair and reached for her, she appeared untroubled. Somehow she evaded the outstretched arm, the groping hand. There was no knife in her hand, only one of the long nails she carried in a pouch on her belt. Likely she could kill with it as easily as with a blade, and all while Gryff stood here useless, watching.
Then he felt a tug at his hand. The scarred man was trying to pull the falcon’s cage from him. His other hand was reaching for Gryff’s wrist.
One moment Gryff was wondering why her dog had appeared at his feet barking, and the next moment he was plowing into the man’s chest, pulling the cage from his hand and throwing him to the ground.
It happened too fast to think, and then it felt too good to stop. He did not need a sword. He did not reach for any weapon. He used his fists, as he had dreamed of doing countless times, and relished the crack of bone, the feel of flesh giving way beneath the impact. It felt glorious. When the man stayed on the ground, Gryff used his feet – once, twice, and the third time it came to him that the man did not shout in protest anymore. There was only a feeble groaning.
Something – some dim memory of what his life used to be – made him stop before he beat the man senseless.
He was not a brute. He was not. He would not be.
He repeated it to himself as he caught his breath. Finally he looked up to find Nan was now standing by the falcon’s cage, calmly watching him amid a mild chaos. Gradually he became aware that bystanders were arguing amongst themselves, over whether the constable should be called. The man who had been reaching for Nan was on the ground, clutching a foot that dripped blood. More often she maims, the knight of Morency had said, a hand or a foot.
“Go on then, get ye gone from here. It’s a respectable man you’ve attacked.” A townswoman with a basket full of onions jabbed a finger at Nan, scowling. “We’ll not abide it. Be gone or you’ll see a punishment.”
Color flamed in Nan’s face, but she did not move from the spot nor take her eyes from Gryff. With a tilt of her head she indicated the man he had beaten, and looked at Gryff with brows raised as though to ask if he was finished. He nodded, and she picked up the cage, snapped her fingers at the dog, and led the way out of town.
They walked without speaking for hours. She followed a path that veered off the main road, as she had done before, and he wondered how she knew these byways. But he didn’t ask. From the moment they had walked away from the market, he had been filled with a strange elation, a kind of relief that he did not question. His bonds had been cut nearly a fortnight ago, but only now did he truly feel his freedom.
It was likely a kind of terrible sin, to find some measure of joy only because he had beaten a man – even if the man was a thief who would steal Tiffin. But he was beyond caring about sin. It was not as real as this feeling, or the truth of this new life.
“I’m down in the muck with you, Bran,” he grinned at the dog, who seemed every bit as cheerful.
Nan did not correct him to say the dog was named Fuss, which told him she was not so lighthearted. She had fixed the braces of blades to her forearms again as they left town, but he thought it was not her watchfulness that caused her mood. He too had injured a man – done more damage than she had, undoubtedly – yet only she had suffered censure for it. He remembered well how her cheeks had burned when the townswoman told her to be gone.
After many miles a soft rain began to fall, and they ducked under the canopy of trees to take cover. They found a clearing, with a broad outcropping of rock and a small pool of water fed by a stream. The leaves on the branches above were so thick that the droplets barely disturbed the pool, and Nan knelt to gather water into a leather flask. He unbuckled Tiffin’s cage from his back and sat on a convenient stump to pull out the tiny loaf of dark bread that Mary had given him this morning as he said his farewell. It’s queer how quiet she’s grown to be, she had said to him with a nod toward Nan. She were the most chattering girl.
It was hard to imagine a chattering Nan, and even harder to realize that he would part ways with her soon. Their journey would end tomorrow. He should ask her everything he wanted to know now, before it was too late. He was debating whether to ask how she had learned to speak Welsh, or where she had learned her deadly skill, when she spoke.
“Why is it always me?” She was frowning down at her reflection in the pool, but glanced up at him briefly to see his confusion at her question. “There were other girls there, young and pretty. And smiling. Some small as me, too. But it’s me he come at. They always do.”
It was an earnest question. He considered telling her that he had noticed no other fair maids at all. Few men would, with Nan there. That was no kind of answer, though. He took a bite of bread and studied her troubled face in profile. He could say it was the graceful line of her brow, or the perfect proportions of every feature in itself and all of them taken together, or how her skin seemed to glow with a delicate golden light. Or her eyes, so blue and so expressive that they would inspire every bard and troubadour who ever caught sight of her to sing of her beauty.
But in the end he swallowed and gave her the crude truth she asked for.
“Your mouth.”
She turned a puzzled look to him, and he shrugged. He kept his eyes on the bread he held and spoke casually – or as casually as he could manage, when he thought of her mouth.
“God gave you the face of an angel, that stirs a man’s breast and will cause his heart to ache with the beauty of it. But your mouth is the kind that moves a man to think of naught but hot sin. That mouth in that face...” He shrugged again and looked at her. “Is an uncommon allure.”
Her eyes fell briefly to his hand holding the bread before she turned back to the pool. A crease appeared in her brow as she considered her reflection for a long moment. She let out a faint snort, either mockery or exasperation, before dragging her hand across the surface in a quick swipe and turning away.
Her practical air returned. From her bag she pulled a square of linen and a small jar and held it out to him. At his questioning look, she pointed down at his hand, where the knuckles were scraped and swollen from fighting. He recognized the jar from the priory; it held the salve she had used on the wounded knight. When he reached to take it from her, she pulled it back suddenly and said, “Is better you wash the wounds first.”
Her voice held the slightest tremor, so unexpected and so revealing that he felt it shiver through him. He savored the sweet echo of it as he went to the water and did as she instructed.
This morning seemed a lifetime ago, but her touch had not been a dream, nor a hopeful imagining. There was a curiosity in her, a thread of desire. He had seen it. It was in her even now.
He turned back to her and walked carefully forward, ever wary. He knew he must not move too sudden, lest she feel trapped with the wall of stone at her back. Nor could he be too timid. He had spent years in being too timid, and he was free of that, too.
When he held his dripping hand out to her, she did not give him the jar as he expected, but patted the linen over his fingers to dry them. She attended his cuts as she attended to every task – brisk and sensible, efficient in her every move.
But after she finished and tied a strip of linen around his hand, she did not turn away. When he dared to brush his fingers across her cheek, she did not object. She did not move at all, except to swallow and wet her parted lips in a more provocative display than he’d seen in five long and lonely years.
It took every ounce of discipline he’d ever learned not to pull her to him and crush her against his heat. Instead he bent his neck to bring himself closer to her. He tipped her face up to look down at her mouth, the way her lashes lowered and her cheeks flushed pink, and her breath – oh God, how her breath caught, the unsteady rise and fall of her breast.
He waited an eternity, hot and hard and desperate, until she leaned forward into the slight space that separated them and brushed her lips softly across his. Then he gathered her face in his hands and kissed her, careful and coaxing, finding that thread of her desire and tugging at it, pulling her to him as her mouth opened and the sweetest sound came from her.
Silent Nan, making sounds of pleasure. Distant Nan, pressing close to him. She was the most intoxicating mixture of shy and eager, her hand pressing at the back of his neck to hold him to her, but her pliant mouth making no demands of him.
He wanted her to demand. He trailed his mouth down her throat, teeth scraping softly at her hot skin, pushing her a step backward until she leaned against the stone. Now her hand at his nape clutched harder, fingers twisting in his hair. Now her body arched gently up against his, her breath harsh at his ear. Now she demanded.
He came back to her mouth and waited there, holding himself back from the lips that were a breath away from his. His reward was her sigh, the hunger with which she kissed him, the boldness of her tongue exploring his mouth. His hands moved over her slight body beneath the coarse gown, over the braid that hung down her back. He pulled it apart, running his hands through her unbound hair at last, cool silk slipping between his fingers as she kissed him breathless.
It inflamed him, a blaze of lust that overwhelmed his senses. His knee pushed between her legs and he felt her body stiffen, her lips still. But she did not take her mouth away, so he took control of the kiss. An old lesson, easily remembered – how to seduce a willing a woman, how to coax without words. The stiffness in her eased by degrees; it was a matter of moments until she was sighing again. He set a suggestive rhythm with his mouth, with his body. The thrust of his tongue against hers beat in time with the press of his hips. She seemed to melt under his hands, his mouth, so soft and yielding that he was mad with wanting her.
He did not know when it changed, or what exactly caused it. He only felt her mouth pull away with an effort – and it was the effort that mattered to him in the moment, so he moved his mouth to her throat, down to her collarbone. Her dress was modest, no way to reach the skin beneath it except to raise her skirt. When he had brought the hem as high as her knee, it dawned on him that her hands were not on him. He forced himself to pause, still tasting her throat, still pressed hard against her as he pulled back to look at her.
She had gone utterly still, her breath coming fast in shallow little huffs. She seemed impossibly fragile, as though she had grown smaller – because she had. She shrank from him.
She looked vulnerable. So small and vulnerable, like prey flushed from its hiding place and bared to the hunter. It called up the memory of her voice saying, I was no more than a timid mouse. A mouse he wanted.
He dropped his hands from her as though burned and stepped back. She looked at him, but for once there was no clear message in her face. She trembled all over, but he thought it was not fear. No more was it lust. Then his eyes found her hand, the knife clutched in fingers that shook, the first time he had ever seen her grip unsteady.
A protest hovered on his lips, a defense against the accusation she did not make. She had wanted it. She had kissed him.
And he had taken what she gave and more, not content with only a taste freely given. Her look damned him, made him one of those men in the king’s hall who had made sport of her, who stole a touch and demanded her body, because they could.
He turned away, unable to bear the mixture of confusion and fear and courage swimming in her eyes. There was nowhere to go, but he strode away through the trees. He must go anywhere at all so that she did not look like this. Anywhere that he might forget the sight of her unsure hand trembling around her only defense.
