“If that were only so!” she said on a sigh.
Oh, good gods, had he spoken aloud of his randiness? But, nay, he shook his head to clear it and realized that the nun referred to his remark that she must be jesting about her father and brothers wanting her dead.
“Explain yourself, m’lady.”
“Nay. I’ve already said too much.”
“You cannot tell a man that your life is in peril and then shut your teeth.”
“I can and I will.”
He shrugged. “There are no secrets in this nunnery. Women like to blab. All I have to do is ask. Someone will tell me your story.”
She sliced him with a look that pretty much said he was as bothersome as a gnat.
Undaunted, he scowled right back at her.
“All right, I will tell you. Then leave be,” she said testily. “It is four months till my twenty-fifth birthday, at which time my mother’s dower lands at Evergreen will revert to me. My father is getting desperate.”
Toste figured the wench exaggerated her peril. Women tended to do that. “I have heard of the Lord of Blackthorne, and he is already land-wealthy.”
She made a whooshy sound of exasperation at his persistence in butting into her affairs, but nevertheless disclosed, “Yea, he is, but a father with two sons never has too much. Plus, he is a greedy man.” She put her hands on her hips and bowed her back, stretching, no doubt to remove the kinks from all the bending she’d been doing.
A part of Toste’s body stretched, too. His favorite part. “Have you no love at all for your father or brothers?” he inquired as coolly as a man with a growing arousal could inquire. He would have crossed his legs if he were not still kneeling.
“Hah! I have no use for any man, truth be told. Belch and boast, belch and boast, belch and boast, that’s all they are good for.”
Toste stifled a smile. The lady has a sense of humor. How… well, refreshing! A wicked tongue, breasts, a nice arse, and a sense of humor. The nun was looking better and better.
She was making a jest, wasn’t she? “Has your father made actual threats?”
“For a certainty, he has… both by word and deed.”
Toste peered at her a little closer… a comely woman, even with her drab garb. “What mean you?”
“I mean that he has been threatening me for years, and that lately there have been numerous near-accidents involving myself that cannot be explained.”
He frowned in disbelief. “Such as?”
“Severe stomach cramps that the healer claims to have been due to poison. A push down dark stone steps at night. A snake in my bed. Little things like that.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you asking all these questions? Even worse, why am I bothering to answer?”
“Because I am bored. Because you cannot resist my charms, despite being a nun.” Toste still could not accept a family that would do such things to a mere woman, without provocation. There were evil men in the world, though. He’d met a few. “What will you do?”
“About resisting you?”
“Nay, you saucy nun,” he said with a laugh. “About your father.”
She shrugged and pushed a strand of hair off her face with a dirty hand. Now she had a smudge of dirt on her cheekbone that made her appear ten years younger… not like the subject of some bloody intrigue. “I will survive, one way or another, as I always have. Or mayhap I will take my vows in the end. It is not such a bad life.”
“Vows? You have not yet taken vows?” Little bells went off in Toste’s head, and not the churchly kind that had been plaguing him of late. Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling! these bells said, Not a nun! Not a nun! Not a nun!
She shook her head. “I haven’t taken the final vows after ten and more years within these walls. If I do, Evergreen will go to my father. Some say I am the oldest living novice in all Britain.” Her rosebud mouth drooped dolefully as she spoke.