Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment (6 page)

He kissed her, slowly, deeply, and the throbbing in her toes swept over her body.

“You do not battle fairly,” she said, when she could catch a breath, “and neither do I.”

She wanted to caress him intimately, to join with him, but was too proud to try to persuade through any sexual wiles. “Make it a mark of nobility to the lady that she can ride fast,” she whispered.

He smiled at her and her heart felt to do a tumbler’s flip within her chest. Still she contested the point.
For the sake of the young girls, I must
.
Even if my wifely instincts prompt me to stay at the hall to please him, the witch in me says I must go with Magnus.

“Lady Astrid will not want to deny it, Magnus. Challenge her to come. If she and the less-than-holy father are involved in high malice and politics we need to keep them close and watch them carefully. You have a knack of seeing truth. So have I. How the lady reacts, what she looks at or even what she does not consider, will show us much. And it is summer, not winter.”

“Enough,” her companion grumbled. “You snared me at ‘high malice’ and converted me at ‘politics.’ The other poor lasses may be this fellow’s food, treasure, whatever, but Rowena—Rowena is different. I sense that he took her on orders but holds her when he should not.”

The tingling heat whirling in her loins had become an itch she was desperate for him to scratch, but his last words chilled her.

“You think Rowena is an heiress as well as a postulant?”

“It makes a grim sense, Elfrida. I do not feel Lady Astrid or her priest have been honest with us, do you? If Rowena is heir to rich estates and if her parents and family are dead, do you see what follows? Even if she destined for the church, if she is missing, then the church cannot control those estates.”

“Does the Lady Astrid?”

“For a time, at least, while the law decides. Especially if the lady has the ear of our king. If the church does not have the girl, they cannot have her lands, either. They would need to prove she is dead to inherit.”

Elfrida shivered. The whole “kidnapping” could even be with King Henry’s acceptance and approval, she realized, sickened at the thought. “Dead?”

“I think a marriage or betrothal is more likely. The church would protest but the deed would be done.”

“You think Lady Astrid has a marriage or betrothal in mind for Rowena?”

Magnus trailed his hand slowly down her spine and rested his palm on her bottom. “I think we speak to Tancred tomorrow and find out exactly who Rowena is, and her parents and kin.”

Elfrida swallowed. To tempt Magnus to continue his loving exploration, she skimmed her hands up his thighs. “But if the man who took Rowena was meant to hand her over and he has not, does that mean Lady Astrid wants our help after all?”

Magnus patted her rump. “I sense the lady is seeking her everywhere, by every method. We are just one of many.”

“A famous one of many,” Elfrida felt compelled to add. She wondered how she could discuss this sensibly, when what she longed to do was caress her husband, love him.

“Perhaps. I sense a hasty plan, poorly thought out and acted out at speed. I suspect Rowena’s parents and close kin died suddenly and Lady Astrid is seeking to take advantage.”

How have they died?
Elfrida sent her silent question out into the ether. She waited, but received nothing back from the spirit world.
Sometimes the spirits do not want to tell or share
. “Perhaps they sickened.”

“Does Rowena even know, poor lass?” Considering, Magnus paused in his brushing of her back and bottom. Elfrida almost protested, but forced herself to make a coherent reply.

“She may have suspected something, hence her signal to Tancred. But if Tancred knows that Rowena’s people are dead, why did he not say?”

“Because he does not trust us fully yet.”

“It seems none of them do.”

“Those are nobles for you,” Magnus agreed. “But I do not like the bad planning of this whole matter, Elfrida. Bad, hasty planning and carelessness! Look how this pair in our great bed are concerned with their comforts first, when they should be thinking of how best to recover Rowena. Speed and carelessness breed panic and mistakes, fatal ones.”

“Perhaps they cannot decide if they want her found or not. Yet, Magnus, if they did arrange for her abduction, why not use their own men? That is simpler and surer.”

“They do not trust their own men with this.” The instant Magnus spoke, Elfrida knew it was true.

“Then, for all these reasons, we must find Rowena and her captor before Lady Astrid does.” Elfrida scowled. “Now you have won,” she complained.
My witch instincts are mistaken.

“How so, elfling?” Magnus resumed his caress.

Elfrida bit hard on the inside of her lip, using pain as a focus against his tender pleasuring.
If Magnus can reason while we are embracing, so can I.
“We cannot afford for Astrid and the priest to be with you when you do trace Rowena. We need time to plan and consider how to best help her, without their knowledge.”

Magnus did not smile in his victory, which she took as a serious sign. Again his hand paused. “I am sorry, Elfrida. I like you with me, and you questing with me. I thought you had argued your way onto my horse tomorrow, but now I discover you and I have argued you off it again.”

He sounded so downcast she hugged him. “No matter. You can tell me everything tomorrow evening. You will…” She stopped herself suggesting that if any of Lady Astrid’s men rode with Magnus tomorrow, they should also be watched. If Rowena was found, such men might need to be kept apart from their lady while Rowena’s safety and best interest was determined.
Magnus knows this already. He will know what to do
.

“I shall strive to learn more from the Lady Astrid here at the house,” she finished firmly instead.

“If any can, my heart, it will be you.”

“Even so, I wish— Magnusss…” Her breath hissed out as his fingers now skimmed over her breasts. She forgot the rest of what she was saying.

He turned her to her side, rippled his fingers up her skirt and brushed her intimate curls. Desire, banked and waiting inside her, stoked into sudden, urgent longing. Clumsy in her explosive need, she tugged savagely at his braies, keen to stroke and touch him in return, to whisper love words and praise.

“What?” She was startled when he pitched her gently onto her belly, pressing her to the rushes. Checking she was ready for him, he smoothly and surely eased into her from behind in the manner of a beast, tonguing her ear and kissing her mouth.

For the second time that night, being pinned by him, being entered by him in such a loving, masterful way spurred her response. As far as she could, she rose back, rocking against him, clenching her teeth to stop from howling out her satisfaction. A blistering release burst through her, shimmering in a wave of dizzying joy. She felt him charge within her, harder and harder yet, glorious and furiously fast, plugging every inch of her as heat flung off him like lightning off a storm. In a rapturous, unending groan he gifted her with himself, with his seed, and the blissful transported peace after was as awesome as the pleasure had been.

What next? Elfrida thought, drifting into sleep.
Do I care? How very masterful Magnus is these days, as if I am no witch at all… Does that matter?
What will happen tomorrow and tomorrow night? What…?

Elfrida felt sinfully languid the following dawn, the more so when Magnus took his leave of her with a long kiss and a whispered promise. “Until tonight, wife.” He and half his men clattered openly from the manor, Tancred yawning and tousle-headed in their midst, too sleepy to complain at the lack of breakfast.

Father Jerome and three more of Lady Astrid’s party had also joined the gathering of horses, dogs and men in the yard and set out. Elfrida watched them leave. The priest’s sudden appearance had been a surprise, especially as he proved to ride as swiftly as the others. Waving them off, Elfrida peered through the standing clouds of dust and considered the day ahead.

What Father Jerome and his men do not know is that Magnus has already sent Mark and his best tracker on ahead to Warren Bruer, with half of Rowena’s shift for their hounds. They will start at the church there and look for the track of a single horse, tethered somewhere close to the church. Let them find something.

“Please, Holy Mother, let Magnus recover Rowena and the others, safe and well, untouched and untroubled. And let no malice touch his company this day.”

The stranger prays to the mother, too, and he is handsome. But my Magnus is more of a man. The Holy Mother will surely like him the better of the two.

Alarmed, Elfrida repeated her prayer seven times for luck, sent up a wish for calm, good weather and returned indoors.

Lady Astrid, on the outside bench, crossed one leg over the other and leaned back. She squinted into the new day as if the rising sun had personally offended her. “You do not have a stills room?”

“Not yet, I fear,” said Elfrida, keen to talk of the missing girls. “Tell me, my lady, does Rowena help you with your potions?”

“She had no skill in it.”

“I find such things often run in families. Is Rowena’s mother interested in cordials?”

“Rowena’s mother preferred to play with her dogs, and to ride to hounds.”

“My lord uses many kinds of dogs in his hunting and tracking, particularly the tracking. When the families of the other girls came to you for help, did they give you anything to take scent from for your dogs?”

“They did not.”

I am not sure I believe her, but she does not deny the families came to Warren Bruer. This stranger, whoever he is, knows that area.

Leaning back farther, Lady Astrid showed off the lush curves of her body. “The hunting is reasonable in this country, especially in the royal forest. You cannot ride well enough to hunt, can you? Why is that? Did you learn late?”

“I had never ridden a horse at all before last winter.”
She speaks of Rowena’s mother and Rowena herself as though both are long past, dead and buried.
“And Rowena’s father, my lady?”

“A lord and knight, like yours.”

“What is his name and title?” Nobles were usually keen to discuss genealogy.

“William the fair, of Normandy. But your potions…they are really quite good. So how do you manage?”

Sitting beside her mistress, her green-blue gown covered by an apron, Githa was picking over fresh salad leaves. She tossed Elfrida a look of pity.

“By doing my best.” Elfrida continued to stroll before the house, spinning as she walked. She could have told the lady that her whole cottage at Top Yarr was a stills room, the place where she made her more complex potions and completed her most potent magic.

The house Magnus and I need to return to soon, so I may care for the villagers there.

Once we have recovered the lost girls…

Magnus was always glad to go back with her. He would hunt and plough and fish with the menfolk, and they would joke and carouse with him. Even the women of Top Yarr no longer flinched or crossed themselves when they encountered her scarred, hulking husband. He was accepted.

He has an ease with them that I cannot have with this lady
.

About an hour had passed since Magnus had galloped away and already the day dragged. Crisp in her fresh red gown and white veil, both hurriedly snatched from her tiny chest in the solar that morning while Lady Astrid was still abed, Elfrida knew that she looked more the part of an elegant lady, but she could not feel it.

“Have you any tapestry I can sew?” Hiding a yawn behind her hand, Lady Astrid crossed her legs, one over the other, the opposing way round. “You Saxons are said to have great skill with embroidery.”

Not this Saxon
.

“No? Shall we play chess here on the bench? Githa can bring us my set.”

Chess was the new eastern game that Magnus was still teaching her. “I cannot warm to it,” Elfrida admitted candidly. “There is only one woman on the board.”

“The queen, yes. A queen with power.”

“To destroy.”

Lady Astrid narrowed her eyes. “Can you be so…innocent? To understand chess is to appreciate tactics.”

“Magnus is the warrior.”
I am the healer.

Her fingers tightened on the spindle and the thread strained as Elfrida heard her own grudging responses. The lady was clearly reluctant to speak of Rowena or of the child’s kindred, which she found strange and disturbing. Yet as a matter of simple courtesy she herself should be trying harder to discover a topic of conversation that her guest would enjoy, and giving fuller answers. “Forgive me, Lady Astrid. That was not so well put.”

“
Mon Dieu
! For sure it was not! What if this handsome manor were attacked while your warrior is gone? Have you any idea how to fight a siege? How to preserve this household for your lord?”

The lady’s earnestness transformed her from a shapely, blond beauty clothed in black and yellow into a creature of airy fire. Decisive as any queen, she flung aside her own small harp and launched herself off the bench. Sweeping into the great hall at a speed that had her be-ribboned plaits bouncing against her knees, Lady Astrid rushed back moments later in a jangle of silver bells. Today she wore no head covering and her hair was eye-achingly bright, her face a challenge.