Chapter 13
As Gellir carefully set Merraid’s words to the page, he couldn’t help but feel unworthy of her talents. Her gift was astonishing. Never had he heard words of such honor and eloquence. To think they had come from a maidservant…
“Can you read that back to me?” she asked as she ran a fingertip along the curved edge of the grinding wheel.
He nodded. “Dear heart, I fear mere words cannot express The measure of the love I would confess. Each passing hour, deprived of your sweet smile I languish here in woebegone exile.”
“Is that all right?”
Gellir grunted. He wasn’t sure he was languishing. But he supposed it couldn’t hurt to make his bride think so.
“My soul despairs,” she said, giving the wheel a spin and watching it whirl, “to know ye suffer so.”
His quill hesitated over the parchment. Despairs? That seemed even stronger than languishing. He raised dubious brows. But in the end, he faithfully reproduced her verse. He only hoped the gushing missive wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.
“Next?” he asked.
The wheel slowed to a halt. “I curse the devil’s deed that laid ye low.”
He wrote, then paused, debating whether to capitalize “devil.” In the end, he decided it was probably a devil, not the Devil. “Laid…you…low.”
“And pray ye take my strength to help ye heal…”
He nodded in approval. Strength was good. Much better than despair. Or languishing. “Help…you…heal.”
She leaned back against the grinding wheel, closing her eyes and hugging herself. “That I may soon my own true love reveal.”
For a moment, he couldn’t tear his gaze away. Merraid looked so beautiful. So vulnerable. So damned desirable. His loins stirred, threatening to reveal his own true love all too boldly.
He dipped the quill, almost knocking over the vial of ink. “Shite.”
Her eyes opened. He righted the vial. But now he’d completely forgotten her words.
“Sorry,” he said. “Again?”
“That I may soon…my own true love…reveal.”
“Right.”
He managed to finish the line while she sauntered toward the door, stopping here and there to straighten a targe on the wall.
“More?”
“They say that absence makes the heart grow fond,” she continued. “That trust and patience form the strongest bond.”
“Wait. Slower, I pray you,” he pleaded. His hand was beginning to cramp. “They say that absence… makes the heart…grow fond…”
“That trust and patience…” she repeated.
He copied down the words. “Form the tightest bond?”
“Strongest bond.”
“Strongest…bond.”
He looked up. Merraid stood in profile against the flickering flame of the wall sconce. Golden light haloed her bright hair as tendrils escaped her shortened braid, making her look like an angel of fire. He wondered if the same unsteady blaze burned inside her body.
“But I grow restless in our time apart,” she said.
Scraping the quill across the parchment, he asked himself if he’d grow restless when he was no longer able to match wits with the maidservant each day.
“Our…time…apart,” he echoed.
“Bereft o’ hope to ease my achin’ heart.”
The more she recited, the more the emotions resonated in him. But it wasn’t the way he felt about Lady Carenza. After all, he’d met the woman only briefly. He hardly knew her.
Nay, the sweet smile, the restlessness, the aching heart described how he felt about Merraid, knowing he was leaving her behind.
She continued. “A glance, a word, a smile would ease my pain.”
He formed the letters on the missive meant for Carenza. But it was Merraid’s face he imagined. Her grin of mischief. Her arched brow. Her gentle smile. Her twinkle-eyed laughter.
“Aye?” he croaked, dipping the quill.
“But since the Fates command us to abstain…”
The Fates. He cursed the Fates that steered him away from Merraid. That forced him to wed a lass repulsed by him.
“To…abstain…” he repeated.
He looked up. Merraid tapped at her lower lip. She gazed sightlessly at the flagstone floor, deep in thought.
Finally she murmured, “I’m forced to…woo? Court?” Her brow creased. “Court,” she decided. Then she intoned, “Alas! I’m forced to court with awkward prose…”
“Awkward prose?” he protested. “Your prose is anything but awkward.”
She gave him an indulgent smile. “’Tis kind o’ ye to say so.”
“’Tisn’t kindness.”
“Humility is best, I think,” she explained. “No one likes a braggart.”
That was true enough. He copied down the line. “Awkward,” he read back, shaking his head, “prose.”
She turned away from him then, facing the wall. She mumbled something he didn’t catch.
“What’s that?” he asked.
She turned her head slightly over her shoulder and murmured again. Her voice was too soft to discern her words.
“I didn’t catch that. Could you speak a bit—”
“The one I long to hold in passion’s throes,” she blurted out. Then, aghast at her own daring, she whipped her head back toward the wall.
Startled, he dropped the quill. It made a blotch on the parchment. He gasped, picking it up before it could do too much damage.
Did he hear a second gasp in the darkness? Or was it just the echo of his own?
He wasn’t sure. He was still reeling from the image her words had conjured. Holding her in passion’s throes.
Merraid misunderstood his gasp for disapproval.
She bristled. “’Twas the only thing I could think of,” she hissed in her defense. “’Tisn’t easy, writin’ verse. What would ye have me say? ‘That I should like to grab and tweak her nose’?”
For an instant, he was stunned silent.
Then a bark of laughter erupted out of him. “Tweak her nose?” God’s bones. What had made her think of that?
The picture of him tweaking Carenza’s nose made more laughter rumble deep in his chest. The kind of laughter that bubbled up inside him only on rare occasions.
Like when Hew splayed himself in the mud at the feet of a lass he was trying to impress.
Or when Adam did a brilliant impression of Father James, reading scripture after polishing off a jack of ale.
He wondered how Lady Carenza would respond if he grabbed her by the nose. The idea made him laugh even harder.
He was unused to laughter. There was a reason he was called Grim Gellir. When a man was known as the greatest swordsman in Scotland, there was little time for levity.
But on occasion, when something struck him by surprise, chuckles rippled and burst forth like ale kept too long in the barrel. And this was such an occasion.
The sound made Merraid swing about. She wrongly assumed he was laughing at her. Flushing with humiliation, she planted her hands on her hips. Her brows slammed together in anger.
“ Tweak her nose’?” he repeated, tossing his head back and laughing in earnest. “Och, lass, that’s priceless!”
She saw now he wasn’t mocking her. Disarmed, she lowered her hands from her hips. Her brow smoothed, and her lips began to twitch. She couldn’t stay angry with him.
“Well,” she said, “’twas that or…’pinch her toes’.”
He roared, which made her giggle. Soon they were laughing together.
“What about ‘tie her hose’?” he suggested.
She gave him a chiding shove, which set off a new round of snickers.
“Or ‘wash her clothes’?” she offered.
He tried to stifle a laugh with the back of his hand and failed.
“Well, shite!” she spat.
“What?”
“Now I’ve forgotten the line.”
He managed to get his laughing under control. “I remember it.”
He did remember it. Because the words were sensual. And intimate. And shocking. The kind of words exchanged only between lovers.
The one I long to hold in passion’s throes.
He remembered. Because he felt that kind of longing.
But it wasn’t for his bride.
It was for the woman who made him laugh.
It was late when Merraid left the armory.
But she was too rattled to do more than toss and turn on her pallet.
She feigned sleep when young Swannoc and Ede, finished with their chores, climbed into the straw pallet next to her.
And it was a long while before she could calm the lusty beating of her heart.
When she finally drifted off, her dreams were spiced with desire. Images of Gellir at his bath. Whispered words of seduction. Memories of his sweet and tender kiss.
The next morn she woke late. Too late to perform the ritual of her taijiquan. It was Swannoc and Ede who jabbed her awake, telling her Lady Feiyan had a task for them in the garden.
Merraid quickly dressed and braided her hair.
After the disturbing night she’d had, she was glad to be assigned work away from the keep.
The second missive would be delivered to Gellir’s bride-to-be this morn.
And Merraid wasn’t sure she was up to hearing the lady recite the erotic words she’d written.
An hour later, on her hands and knees in the dirt, Merraid forgot all about Lady Carenza and Sir Gellir.
The sun felt pleasantly warm on her back.
The soil was pleasantly cool under her fingers.
There was a certain satisfaction in planting last year’s dried peas in the earth, knowing the spring rain would make them sprout and grow into new vines to feed the clan all summer long.
She used a stick to poke holes in the dirt, keeping the rows straight and the spacing even. Meanwhile, birds twittered from the forest, and Swannoc and Ede kept up a soft patter of conversation.
“I think she hates him,” Ede said, dropping a pea into the hole Merraid had made.
Swannoc covered it with soil. “What makes ye say that?”
“Davy took her another missive,” Ede told her, “and he said she burst into tears when she read it.”
Merraid frowned. “What are ye talkin’ about?”
“Lady Carenza,” Ede said, wrinkling her nose. “I don’t think she likes Sir Gellir. Not at all.”
“She should tell him,” Swannoc decided, “before ’tis too late.”
“What?” Merraid said, sitting back on her heels. “’Tis nonsense. O’ course she likes him.”
“Then why was she cryin’?” Ede asked.
“Maybe he told her he doesn’t love her,” Swannoc suggested.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Merraid scolded. “O’ course he loves her. Cryin’? They were likely tears o’ joy.”