Fire and Steel by Anita Mills

Author:Anita Mills [Mills, Anita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626810440
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-05-23T16:00:00+00:00

20

Brian FitzHenry felt the toe of Aislinn’s slipper when she kicked him awake. Rolling over in his pallet, he blinked against the morning light and shielded his eyes with his hand. His head ached as though it had been split with a battleax and his mouth was sour with the taste of last night’s wine.

“Get up and send your whore away,” she ordered him coldly.

“Wha . . . ?” He shook his head as though to clear it and winced from the pain. “Oh . . . ’tis you,” he mumbled, drawing his blanket to cover his head. But even as he turned away, her foot hit him again in the small of his back. “Jesu! Why are—?” He didn’t get a chance to finish his question before she poured the pail of drinking water over his head. Beside him, Tyra came awake with a shriek of outrage.

“Whore,” Aislinn repeated contemptuously. “You ought to be tending to your babes rather than getting more of them, Tyra.”

The serving woman clutched Brian’s blanket to her bare chest and stared insolently at the younger girl. Brian, sensing even through the cobwebs of his mind that Linn was angry, slapped Tyra hard on her thigh and pushed her off his pallet. “Nay—go on.” Sitting up, he wiped his face with the corner of the blanket and looked up balefully at the girl who stood over him with her hands on her hips.

“Get up—else I’ll douse you again.”

“God’s beard, but you are cross,” he complained as he struggled to sit and the blanket fell away, exposing his nakedness all the way to his lap. “ ’Tis no place for you, Linn.”

“Nay, it is not, but I would speak with you about Cat, Brian. Get up and get dressed and come down to the field—I will meet you where the quintains are set.”

“Jesu, but you cannot just wake a man and—”

“The sun is already high and everyone has eaten but you. Maman already meets with the butler and the chamberlain to speak of the guests, Papa has gone hawking with Geoffrey, as you may remember if you were not too drunk to note it, and Cat practices with Pippa and Bella, showing them how they are to comport themselves at my wedding. Now, do you get up or do I have to go to Papa with the tale?”

“What tale?” he asked warily. “God’s beard! Make sense, will you?”

“Are you getting out of that pallet or not?”

“Aye, but—”

“Then I will see you at the quintains—and do not stop to eat on your way.”

The skirt of her embroidered overgown brushed against him as she twitched it behind her and marched from the room. With a sigh that pained his aching head, he groped for his clothes, wondering how it could be thought that she was the sweet-tempered one. He stood naked to relieve himself in the chamber pot and then hastily pulled on his chausses. If Linn meant to carry some tale to Roger, he must have done something ill, but his memory failed him.

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