Hastings blinked at that, opened her mouth to stammer some sort of
profound delight, when Lady Moraine added, “Then again, Gwent, she
is very young and doubtless needs my advice more than does my son. I
saw him frowning over naught just this morning. What had she done to
} bring that frown to his beautiful face? I will find out and teach her.”
“You will have to contend with Dame Agnes and Alice, my lady,” Hastings said, and laughed. “Aye, they have endless advice, and I vow that much of it pleases me.” She laughed again.
Lady Moraine waved good-bye to Alfred, lightly kicked her heels into her palfrey’s sides, and laughed over her shoulder at Gwent, who was still looking at the damned cat, who was now waving its huge paw. The Healer stood in the open doorway, her arms crossed over her chest, just staring at them.
He shook his head. “Nothing is as it should be in this place.”
The ride back to Oxborough took only fifteen minutes. There were dark clouds lowered in the sky, the air was thick and cooling rapidly. The men didn’t want to get wet, but Hastings wasn’t uncomfortable, nor did she worry about the rain pouring down, as it would, surely, in the next few minutes. No, she was thinking of her husband, blessing again Dame Agnes and Alice, who had told her how to deal with a man.
She had dealt with him very well the previous night. He’d let her do just as she pleased, as he had promised. She had explored his hard body,
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tracing each of the scars with a light touch, then kissing each of them, spending the most time on the scar that had slashed the inside of his right thigh. That thigh was thick, covered with a light furring of black hair, and she loved to knead the muscles, to stroke him as Lady Moraine had done Alfred.
When she had loved him with her mouth, he had bowed off the bed, moaning and thrashing until she was heady with success. She did not care that she received no pleasure, for his had peaked into such intense release that she had found herself drawn into it, watching him as he shook and twisted, then freezing with the utter force of his release. And she thought, as she saw his dark eyes fix on her face with unleashed wildness, that surely he was a man to love, a man to protect, a man to trust, for all her life.
He had grabbed her waist and pulled her down close to his face. He had held her there until he could breathe and speak again.
“Think you to control me?”
“Nay, I think to enjoy your pleasure.”
“I gave you nothing, yet you smile at me and you still caress me with your hand on my shoulder. I do not understand you, Hastings.”
“Must I be as carnal as a man all the time?”
“Aye,” he said, his voice stark and deep. He pulled her onto her back and didn’t leave her until she had moaned into his mouth.
Hastings shook slightly with the power of that memory. She imagined that she would renew that powerful memory at least once a week for the rest of her life. Mayhap fewer days than an entire week. She felt a stab of sheer lust when she pictured him yet again on his back, his man’s rod in her mouth. A storm could blow in from the sea and it wouldn’t gain her attention.
She heard a laugh and turned to see Lady Moraine place her hand on Gwent’s arm as he pulled his horse closer to her palfrey. “Alfred is just a cat, Gwent, not a monster, though he does purr louder than a man snores.”
And Hastings watched Gwent and Lady Moraine, watched them ride together ahead of her and the two other men, heard them laughing, saw
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Gwent reach out quickly to grab her palfrey’s reins when the mare stumbled. She prayed with everything in her that the Healer was right, that Severin’s mother was well again, that her madness had disappeared with the Healer’s potion.