Fathers and Sons by Le Veque Kathryn

Author:Le Veque, Kathryn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Medieval, Romance
Publisher: Dragonblade Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2019-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOUR

The Wix

The Next Day

His head was killing him.

That wasn’t unusual, for he liked his wine and often drank himself into a stupor. But last evening at the grand party given by Prince John in honor of his wife’s birthday, there had been several different kinds of liquor and he’d delighted in trying all of them. Wine from Spain, Italy, and even Constantinople had different flavors and textures, and he’d drank so much that he didn’t remember much of the previous evening. He remembered arriving at Westminster, and speaking with some of the prince’s men, and finally the prince himself, but after that… nothing.

Jago de Nantes, Duke of Colchester, had awoken in his bed this morning with a splitting headache. His wife wasn’t in bed next to him but a serving wench was, the pale and skinny girl that helped out in the kitchens. She was a mute and she had a tight little body, something he found immensely pleasing. She was a woman he took to his bed more often than his wife because she had no interest in the amount of sex he wanted. She really had no interest in sex, period, and she truthfully didn’t care if her husband took a servant to his bed. As long as she didn’t have to perform her wifely duties, she would leave her husband to his servant wenches and not raise a fuss. Her mother had done the same thing, so it was the silent suffering of her female line to endure the appetites of their husbands.

The daughter of Odo FitzHerbert, descendant of Eudo FitzHerbert, the first Lord High Steward of Colchester Castle, Grace FitzHerbert de Nantes had been part of an arranged marriage as befitting the cousin of the king. But the woman was frigid, and ugly, and hated the fact that she’d been forced to marry at all. Therefore, Jago wasn’t surprised when he woke up to the mute serving wench curled up next to him. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d awoken to Grace in his bed.

In spite of his aching head, he thought he might have his way with the serving wench again, in fact, but his brain was pounding so terribly that he kicked her out of bed and demanded she bring him cold compresses. That had been an hour ago and only now was he starting to feel marginally better.

But his head still felt like it was about to explode.

High in his bower on the top floor of The Wix, a four-storied behemoth of a townhome that had been given to him by his cousin, King Richard, he could hear the sounds from the bailey below but also the sounds of the city from beyond the walls of the complex. The townhome sat next to the river, so the humidity was sticky and everything felt moist and clammy, and a major avenue ran out front, the road that led from Westminster into London. There always seemed to be a dull rumble of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.