Wings of the Storm (8 page)

The conversation from the tables below the salt was far quieter than usual. The members of the household were eating their meal with most of their attention focused on the strained movements of their betters. The tension in the air could be sliced with a dagger. Jane especially didn't like the disdainful looks the household women were aiming at Sibelle more and more openly as the evening went on.

It wouldn't hurt Stephan to say something to the kid, she fumed as he accepted another cup of wine from Bertram. Okay, she decided finally. If he wouldn't do it, she would.

She cleared her throat, opening her mouth to speak. Her mind went blank. "Uh ..." She hadn't talked to a fifteen-year-old in a long time. She had never talked to a fifteen-year-old ex-nun heiress to a barony who'd already labeled her as an enemy. She supposed they didn't really have conversational ground in common, since it wouldn't be politic to dis-cuss Stephan's acting like jerk. Still, something had to be done.

She opened her mouth and tried again. "I'll show you around Passfair tomorrow, my lady," she offered politely.

Sibelle didn't answer. Sibelle didn't look at her. Sibelle did stiffen with disapproval and lift her chins haughtily. Stephan did not rush in to fill the conversa-tional gap. Wherever had the charming boy who'd brought her home gotten to?

Jane resigned herself to silence and studied the profile Lady Sibelle turned to her. The girl would never succeed in looking down her nose, Jane decid-ed, since she hardly had one at all. It was kind of a cute little button, actually. Not like her own long beak. Sibelle's skin was really not too bad, just blotched from crying. Or maybe the pink cheeks were from a bit of windburn. There seemed to be a cleft down

there somewhere on her original chin. Weren't nuns supposed to be ascetic and sacrific-ing? Where was it Stephan said Sibelle had been? Davington Priory? Maybe she should apply there herself after the interdict was lifted. It couldn't be too hard of a life if the graduates turned out like Her Ladyship here.

Jane went back to slowly finishing her bread and broth while the dinner dragged to its conclusion. She was grateful to rise from her deep wooden chair when the last of the dishes were finally cleared away.

She wanted nothing more than to escape to her cubbyhole behind the storeroom. Only she couldn't just run up the stairs and hide. As chatelaine she had duties yet to perform.

As the servants settled down by the fire, Stephan grabbed his cloak and waded in among them, taking the choicest spot for himself, in the fresh straw laid down near the hearth. He didn't even bother with wishing his betrothed the most cursory of good-nights.

Jane decided to put his churlish behavior down to the influence of too much wine. Much to her sur-prise, Melisande and the pups stayed at her side rather than settle down with Stephan. She fervently wished him an enormous hangover and steeled her-self to deal with the girl. She turned to find the two dragons had come up from the servants' table to flank their mistress once more.

Their presence made communicating with the now crying Sibelle a bit easier. "The bower's this way," she said, and pointed the servants toward the tower stairs. The first floor of the tower held the storage room.

The second held two connected rooms: the bower, where the household women were meant to spend their days with weaving and needlework, and the castle's only bedchamber.

She led the dragons up the stairs, and they led the wailing Sibelle. It wasn't long before they reached the upper pair of rooms set aside for the lord and his lady. Since the lord was snoring peacefully on the floor downstairs, Sibelle was installed alone in the large, curtained bed. She was sitting in the center of it, snuffling disconsolately, when Jane made her hur-ried exit back down to her own quarters.

Poor kid, she thought, not for the first and proba-bly not for the last time. She tried to put the sad image of the lonely Sibelle out of her mind as she threw herself onto her own straw mattress.

Melisande and the puppies gathered around her. "Right," she said, rubbing the deerhound's ears. "Us womenfolk have to stay together, don't we?"

She fell asleep soon after winning the nightly argu-ment with the dogs over who got the most bed space.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Melisande woke her briefly with a low growl. The bed creaked as the dog got up to investigate some minor noise. She came back soon enough. Jane went immediately back to sleep.

She dreamed once again of Sir Daffyd. In her dream they lay down together in a sun-warmed field of lavender, crushing a bed of tiny purple flowers to cushion their ardent embrace.

His mouth claimed hers, making her giddy with desire. Without a word she told him he reminded her of chocolate. He asked her what chocolate was. His mouth covered hers. Does it taste like this?

She undid his sword belt and told him how no man of her own time was like him.

The thought woke her. Sitting up, she scrubbed her palms over her face. The dogs were warm lumps around her feet, the fur blanket was soft and warm, yet she was cold. Cold with dread? She shook her still somewhat sleep-fogged head. Why did she dream about the man? she wondered. She'd met him twice, but her subconscious seemed to have latched on to him as an object of desire.

All right, she conceded, he was gorgeous. Per-haps she had a weird subconscious. Or maybe it was her conscious mind that had always been weird. She'd always looked to the past, hadn't she? She'd made the past her hobby and her profession. Maybe she'd been secretly longing for a knight in shining armor. Knights didn't wear shining armor in 1209, she reminded herself, and chivalry had been invented by women while the menfolk were out pillaging and crusading. Knights wore rusting chain mail and chased down peasants who had to steal to survive.

But Daffyd wore chain mail better than anyone she'd ever seen, she told herself. He'd been worried about her safety this afternoon. That was almost chivalrous. This afternoon . . . She settled back on the bed and closed her eyes. She could see him clear-ly, gold hair flaming in the shaft of sunlight, the hard, handsome-lines of his face. She remembered the feel of his hands on her waist, of her hands on his, the softness of his hair, the scent of lavender and leather.

He was very real, she warned herself. He was not any idealized, sanitized, twenty-first-century version of a medieval man. He was himself, and being attracted to him would be very dangerous indeed. He was a landless knight, and she was masquerad-ing as a rich widow. He might be interested in a rich widow for her dowry. She didn't let herself encour-age his attention in any way. He might get ideas. She had to remember marriage was a business arrangement. It was an arrangement with only one side benefiting: the man. She was not from this time, she couldn't be an obedient chattel. She didn't dare let herself be attracted to any man from this time. A convent was safe, a marriage to a man from this time was not.

"Not that he'd necessarily be interested in mar-riage," she mumbled as she rolled over and tried to get back to sleep. "That would be even worse. Can't ruin my reputation if I want a convent to accept me.

Can't think about Daffyd ap Bleddyn anymore."

She fell asleep, and immediately back into the dream.

7

"Not Not on the floor!"

Jane cracked the squatting dog hard on the backside. "Outside!"

Melisande yelped and skittered away. She whim-pered impatiently by the alcove curtain while Jane hur-riedly finished struggling into her shift and underdress. Jane slipped her feet into shoes and fastened a veil over her uncombed brown curls.

The first light of dawn was creeping in through her narrow window, and Melisande had been trying once again to use the far corner of the storeroom. "Another morning at Passfair has begun," Jane said around a yawn.

The barest hint of dream memory teased at the back of her conscious mind, but she ignored it purposefully. She knew there was no use dwelling on erotic non-sense. She vowed not to think of the Welshman at all. Or chocolate. She had more than enough to fill her attention with a full day's worth of duties before her. She had promised Bertram she'd finally inspect the main storerooms in the deep cellar today.

Actually, Jane reflected, grabbing Melisande by the scruff of the neck, the housebreaking wasn't going too bad considering she was a grown dog. The pup-pies jumped down from the bed to follow after

them. Their training was going very well. The deerhounds really were intelligent animals. Probably because they weren't too distant relatives of their smarter wolf cousins.

"In my time," she told them, "your species has descended to little more than mindless toys."

She threw open the curtain blocking her alcove from the rest of the storeroom and pulled the dog with her through the opening, only to trip over the lump lying across the doorway. She fell flat on her face with a startled shout. She hit her nose on the hard stone this time. She came up clutching her painfully throbbing nose to find a young red-haired woman staring at her in horrified surprise.

"My lady, I'm so sorry!"

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" Jane noticed Melisande sitting calmly on her haunches, watching the two of them with a happy doggy expres-sion. "And why didn't you at least bark?" she demanded irritably of the hound. She looked at her fingers. They were sticky with blood from the tip of her nose. It felt like a pavement burn. Nothing bro-ken; just another bruise.

"I could use some aspirin," she muttered in English.

The woman had backed toward the alcove, staring at Jane in wide-eyed expectation. She was a tiny thing, with carrot-red hair and freckle-dotted milk-white skin. Very pretty, really. "My lady?" she questioned,

stepping forward eagerly when Jane spoke.

Jane climbed to her feet, glad she hadn't hit her already bruised hip when she fell. She noticed the soreness in her backside was much improved this morning. She looked down at the little woman and repeated, "Who are you?"

"Berthild," the redhead answered promptly. "Switha sent me to serve you."

Berthild? Right, she recalled. Switha's sister. The one with the soldier boyfriend. "What were you doing on my floor? You are what I fell over, aren't you?"

"I was sleeping by your door, my lady," was the swift explanation. "It is my duty."

Jane looked down at the bare wood. Duty? That sort of duty could lead to arthritis and who knew what else in the drafty air. "I see."

It seemed she now had a personal servant to be responsible for. The thought left her kind of unnerved. It was one thing to supervise the large group of people needed to keep Passfair running. It was definitely a challenge—an enjoyable challenge. But she had an uncomfortable feeling about having a peasant girl to call her own. Berthild here didn't have any rights. She was totally dependent on her mis-tress's goodwill.

Jane knew it would be pleasant to have someone to take care of all her little needs. She didn't like the responsibility that went with it.

"Owning people is icky," she mumbled behind her hand as she touched her nose again. The bleeding had stopped, at least. The entertainment over, Melisande rose and rushed out the open storeroom door with her pups. The dogs' hasty exit reminded Jane of her original purpose. She was also reminded that the key to the room was missing. If she could lock the door, she wouldn't have ended up with a sore nose to go with the black eye.

Oh, well, Berthild was there. She undoubtedly expected to be put to work. Jane smiled at her. "First you can clean up the mess in the alcove. And I need some laundry done. The yellow underdress is silk. The washing instructions for the material has got to be cold-water wa— Never mind, the river is cold. And I've been thinking maybe I could get one of the smaller tubs from the wash house moved up here so I could take a bath. Maybe you could see to that?"

Berthild gave a quick curtsy. "Yes, my lady."

"And if you must sleep by the door, tell Bertram I said you need a pallet and some blankets."

The servant's freckled face lit with delight. "Yes, my lady."

Jane hurried down to the hall, where the usual morning activity was well under way. Breakfast por-ridge was being served. Neither Sibelle nor her women were anywhere to be seen. Jane didn't know if this was good or bad. The kid probably had to be real-ly upset to miss a meal. On the other hand, missing a few meals certainly wouldn't hurt her.

She didn't see Stephan anywhere in the hall, either. She took the time to shovel in a few bites of porridge with a wooden spoon before going to look for him. She finished quickly, then rinsed her mouth with a cup of new ale. She grimaced at the raw taste, but at least it helped wash the sleep out of her mouth.

She'd wiped her teeth on a square of linen when she first woke up, but the combination of cloth and ale was no substitute for a tube of toothpaste. She sent a prayer of thanks for the dentist who'd talked her mother into having her teeth coated with sealant when she was a teenager. Whatever fate might bring to her here, at least she didn't have to worry about the mouth prob-lems that were such a plague to the natives.

She forgot about her teeth as Bertram approached her, looking as if he were ready to shoo her into the cellar. Instead, the first thing he said was, "The cook needs to speak with you about the fish pond." "Fish pond?"

"He's insisting on Lenten fare whether we have mass or no."

Jane hurried to cross herself. Sometimes she forgot she was supposed to be seeking life in a religious order. "Quite right," she approved. "What else?"

"Alfred says you promised him men to help rebuild the dovecote. Cerdic says he has too few men to help with the planting as it is, and won't send any more."

"Hmm. I thought Wat and Oswy were going to help him."

"They're working on the stable roof this morning," he explained.

She understood Alfred's impatience to get the work done. Hawks had been getting at the pigeons, and they were an important source of meat for the castle table. "I had better talk to Cerdic." Anything to stay out of the cellar a while longer. "Where's Sir Stephan?" She wanted to say a few words to her liege lord as well.