TheKingsViper (5 page)

A soft sweet thrill shivering right through Eloise’s body,
as if in sympathy. She was suddenly aware her inner thighs were slick with dew.
And as he dropped his hands and she saw his cock standing there flushed and
turgid and upright, as if waiting to impale something, the unbidden thoughts
rushed into her head—What would it be like to touch that hot hard flesh? How
would it feel? Or taste?

Confusion seized her. Her skin, so cold moments before, was
burning now. She’d not known what to expect and now she didn’t know what she
should do with this revelation. It was like a secret too big to keep. She
lowered herself, quivering, into the hay and lay there, eyes shut, pretending
to sleep as Severin gathered himself, made himself respectable and eventually
slipped quietly out, past her feet into the yard.

* * * * *

“Boscia, eh?” said Ruda, staring at them. “You’ve a long way
to walk home.”

Eloise was too busy shoveling cold pottage into her mouth
with her fingers to meet the old woman’s question. The stew was mostly pease
and barley—coarse staples of a farmer’s diet, which she’d barely tasted at home
on Venn—and burnt leftovers from the bottom of the pot at that, but she was so
hungry she didn’t care. The lack of a spoon wasn’t slowing her down much
either, nor the fact that she and Severin were seated on upturned buckets in
the yard with their bowls in their hands. She supposed that she must look a
disgusting sight by the standards of her normal life, but her empty belly
overruled her pride.

Severin nodded for both of them. “It’s certainly not what we
had planned for this journey, mother.”

Ruda jerked her chin at Eloise. “And she doesn’t look like
she’s going to be hobbling far on those feet. Not for a few days.”

Ruda’s rough-coated dog, which had chosen to lie across
Eloise’s feet, opened one eye, wondering if it was the object of their
attention.

“I will work, if you’ll feed us both while she heals.”

“Will you now? You don’t look like a stockman to me.”

“I can chop wood. Reap. Repair that barn roof for you. It’ll
be leaking come winter.”

Eloise remembered the spots of light diffusing into the byre
and ducked her head. She didn’t want to recall what that light had revealed.
Not just now; not in front of him. She’d thought, when she first came out to
join him, that he would look furtive or shamed, but he’d appeared no different
to normal. Serious and a little weary, that was all. It was hard to imagine
that she’d spied on such a secret moment, and the memory seemed unreal and
dreamlike.

“Can you build a wall? My field wall’s fallen down and the
cows are getting in to eat the vegetables.”

“I’ll give it a go.”

“What about you, lass? I could find you a pair of old shoes,
I suppose. What can you do to earn them?”

Eloise stopped chewing, and looked up. She’d never had to
work for a living. “Whatever you like,” she said, embarrassed.

“Can you shovel out that byre then?”

She arched her brows, trying not to look dismayed. The cows
made her nervous. “If you want.”

Ruda laughed, showing her broken teeth. “You’ll be at it all
week, a skinny girl like you!”

Eloise felt herself coloring. She was all too aware that
she’d had to be carried the night before. Her weakness was mortifying. Severin
must despise her, she thought. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Then I’ll look out those shoes for you, lass.”

“That’s kind of you, mother.” Eloise risked a glance at
Severin. Right now she thought there was a hint of a smile on his lips, though
whether it was mocking or approving she couldn’t tell.

“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” she muttered, casting
her gaze down.

* * * * *

Ruda set her, in the event, to climbing the olive trees in
her little grove to shake and beat out the green fruit onto blankets spread
below. Eloise had never climbed a tree before, even ones as small and gnarled
as these, and in borrowed shoes that slid around on her bandaged feet she found
it hard, precarious work. She ended up scraped and dusty and aching by the
early afternoon, and with bruises all the way up her legs.

“That’ll do,” Ruda announced as they carried the last load
into the yard. “I’ll get them sorted. You set yourself down while I find us
some food.”

Eloise found a patch of shade under the wall and sank down
to rest. Severin was nowhere in sight. If he could have seen her at work, she
thought, he would have disapproved mightily of the indignity wreaked upon the
King’s person by his betrothed’s actions. She pulled out the front of her shift
and blew down on her sweat-glazed breastbone to cool herself. Heat and
perspiration and their night in the hay had left her itching all over. She
wished for a moment she could be back in her own chamber, with her
attiring-women filling her bath for her and scenting the water with oil of
roses.

Her womenservants were dead though—drowned in the storm.
Among them Edith, who had scolded and exasperated and looked after her most of
her life. The back of Eloise’s throat began to swell.

She shook her head. There was no point in thinking about
what was lost. What good would it do? It would only make her more of a burden
to de Meynard if she were to end up weepy and upset. She tried to run her fingers
through her hair, but they caught on the rough twist of rag that she’d used to
tie it back. Despite her good intentions tears prickled in her eyes. She felt
filthy and sore and lonely. She wanted Severin to be there telling her what
they were going to do, and how it would all work out just as he planned.

Ruda lurched back out of the farmstead with that swaying
gait she had, the movements of a woman whose joints were worn down by a
lifetime of labor. She was a decent soul, Eloise thought, distracted from her
misery. They were lucky to have fallen in with her. Ruda had spent all the
morning telling the tale of her family’s woes—a husband dead years back, three
sons volunteering into the military levy, her little farm decaying around her
as her sons-in-law failed to take up the burden of the extra work. She was
barely scraping a living out of the land, and the two strangers had been a
godsend to her.

Maybe they should stay here for a few weeks, Eloise
thought—though she feared the work might cripple her. It was safe, at least.
Safer than the open road.

“Here, lass,” said Ruda, dropping a loosely wrapped bundle
into her lap. “Take it up to that husband of yours at the top of the field.”

“Thank you.” There was a whole loaf in the cloth, and a
chunk of strong cheese, and a leather flask that sloshed a little. Eloise
stood, levering herself against the wall.

“He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?” Ruda remarked. “You’re a
lucky girl.”

“Um. Yes.” She tried not to meet the old woman’s sharp gaze.

“And just as fine with his clothes off, I’ll be guessing.”

Eloise’s eyes widened. How was she supposed to answer that?
Was this what married women talked about?

“Have you fallen with child yet, lass?”

“Not yet,” she said hoarsely.

“Not from lack of trying, I’ll bet, eh? I’ve seen the way he
looks at you.”

Eloise was glad her face was flushed from exertion already.
She had no answer to that at all, twisting self-consciously. Ruda cackled with
mirth at her discomfort.

“Oh, it’s no secret! Don’t you think an old woman hasn’t
seen it all before! That’s new husbands for you, all fire and frolic. Make the
most of it, pretty lass, that’s my advice. Keep it coming as long as you can.
There’s little else in life that’ll bring as much delight.”

Frolic
was the last word Eloise would have chosen to
describe anything about Severin. She doubted he could frolic even with a skin
of brandy inside him. She was glad to make her excuses and escape, but as she
walked up toward the top of the field with the food in her hands she almost
laughed to herself. That the King’s Viper, as cold-blooded as the snake he was
named for, should be mistaken for an uxorious husband was quite a joke. Ruda
had badly misunderstood the heat she’d discerned in Severin’s expression. It
was calculation, not passion, that ruled him. Or at best, a sense of
responsibility. And yes, he was handsome in his dark, forbidding way—she’d
thought that from the moment she’d set eyes on him. By the standards of
work-worn peasants he might be an exemplar of masculine beauty. But she’d seen
King Arnauld. Now there was a man—tall and broad-shouldered and fair… Old Ruda
would probably pass out if she saw Arnauld in the flesh.

Her gaze settled on Severin at that moment, and the word
flesh
hung uncomfortably in her head. He had hung up his shirt on a branch to keep it
clean as he labored, and his chest was bare of all but his dusting of dark
hair. She’d never thought of him as a bulky man, but now there was more than
enough muscle on show. He had good strong shoulders and arms, and a torso that
narrowed from them down to the hard V of his hips. His sallow skin wasn’t
leathery enough to look like a true peasant’s though. It was hard for her to
ignore his partial nakedness, or the way the line of black hair running down
from his navel seemed to be pointing the way beneath the waist of his lower
garments. For a moment all the confusion and shock of the thing she had
witnessed that morning swept back over her, and she felt suddenly clumsy and
self-conscious.

No, she mustn’t think about that.

She saw him stoop and heft a stone from among the chaos of
fallen rocks, turning it in his hands to examine every angle. Of course, she
told herself. Even with a task as physical as building a wall, de Meynard would
approach it thoughtfully. No one could ever accuse him of not analyzing a
situation.

Having familiarized himself with the stone’s shape, he
slotted it into place on the topmost course of the wall and tested to see if
rocked. A small stone slipped in as a prop seemed to satisfy him and he stepped
away, eyeing up the next space.

Eloise picked her way through the fallen rocks. “Ruda sends
food.”

Severin turned and looked at her. He didn’t smile in
greeting, but his gaze seemed to strike through her and she was suddenly
conscious that his eyes weren’t really black, not out here in daylight. They
were darkest brown—like the timbers of the great jetty of Venn harbor, savaged
by salt and tide and storm, but enduring still.

I’ve seen the way he looks at you.

She felt a shiver slide up between her shoulders. She felt
like one of his stones, to be examined and assessed and finally slotted into
the place where he wanted her. She was horribly conscious of how filthy she was
and how useless, of how much she depended on him to save her from their plight.
Of the burden of the responsibility that lay on his shoulders.

“Has she been working you?” he asked, looking at her
hands—the scuffed knuckles of her right hand, which she’d bashed against a
branch, the swollen fingers.

“She’s had me harvesting the olives. I’m not used to it, that’s
all.” Eloise passed the bundle to him. He nodded and went over to sit upon the
largest of the fallen stones.

“Have you eaten yet?”

“I’ll have what you leave.”

He began to break the bread up with his dusty hands. Eloise
turned away, uncomfortable to be seen just watching him, and looked at the
sagging drystone wall. It stood at the top of a steep bank. It looked like the
soil beneath had given way at some point, she thought, and about six feet of
the wall had simply collapsed. All the stones, irregular in shape, lay strewn
down the slope.

“Is it difficult to build?”

“It makes sense once you know what you’re looking at,” he
answered, round a mouthful of cheese. “The outer faces of the wall slope in
toward the top to give it stability, and there’s a core of small rubble. You
just build it up row by row.”

Eloise rubbed her hands on her skirt. He was right. There
was more structure to the wall than there appeared at first glance. The topmost
intact course was of narrow plates of rock set vertically instead of
horizontally—she guessed that that was to deter animals from climbing on top.
The rubble was all jumbled together, of course, rocks of every size and shape
strewn pell-mell. It must, she thought, make it even more difficult to find
just the right rock for the next slot, if you had to look through the whole lot
every time.

One of the narrow stones lay by her feet. She stooped and
tested its weight in her hands, feeling the pull of her shoulders.

Without saying anything, she set to sorting the stones where
they lay in the grass, separating out the narrow top plates and laying them out
in a row, a little way away from the rest. Severin made neither protest nor
comment. The sound of the crickets in the long grass was hypnotic.

She worked with him for the rest of the day. He built the
wall; she sorted the stone into piles of similar sizes and shapes.

By the time they came down the hill back to the farm, Eloise
was weak-legged with tiredness, but satisfied in a way she’d never been. They’d
repaired nearly the whole fallen stretch, and when she turned to look back,
even from the farm building, the length they’d rebuilt was clearly visible.
She’d never done anything like this in her life. She didn’t mind so much now
how grubby she looked. She had helped Severin, and they had made something
lasting together.

Back at the farmyard the dog greeted them noisily, already
treating them as friends. Eloise sat down on the curb of the well and rested
her feet while Severin wound the windlass to raise the leathern bucket.

Old Ruda bustled out of the house, a heap of clothes in her
arms. “Here you are. I found some of my husband’s old clothes for you, laddie.
And you, lass—a decent blouse, in exchange for that flimsy thing you’ve got on.
It’ll make a fine pillowcase for my old head.”