Page 5

Five

The Wolf

If she didn’t fuck again, Adelais was going to tear this entire valley down with her bare hands. After a few hours’ restless sleep, she gave up trying, rolled her blanket between her legs, and ground against it until she came, hoping that would take the edge off until she could have the abbess again.

Adelais couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so obsessed with a person, when all her thoughts had bent toward a single someone like smoke following the wind. Certainly not her husband. Handsome and charming though he was, Gérald had never piqued Adelais’s curiosity. She’d had a full sense of him from the moment they met at their betrothal negotiations, and never in the four years of their marriage did he reveal anything more than what she saw that first afternoon: a swaggering libertine who was better with his cock than with a sword, who fought like a rag doll and skirted responsibility like a teenage boy.

No. Not her husband. Not even Maud, the companion who shared her bed for a few years after Gérald’s death in battle. Maud, too, had been a fine lover, energetic and flexible, and intelligent enough not to be tiresome, but she was like every other person Adelais had met in her life. Tame, predictable. A leaf fluttering when the wind blew, with all their variegations and veins visible for anyone who had eyes to see.

But Tate…

Tate was no leaf, no easily deciphered puzzle or transparent piece of glass. Her cleverness in sneaking into the camp, her pluck in daring to ask for Adelais, was nothing Adelais would have expected from the small, reserved woman once she’d met her. In fact, nothing that Tate had done at any point last night was something Adelais could have predicted, could have extrapolated from whom the nun seemed to be.

For the first time in her life, Adelais couldn’t read someone, couldn’t predict their words and actions. For the first time, someone was a challenge.

Or something better—a secret.

Adelais rolled onto her back and replayed the memories in her mind. Tate’s hair in Adelais’s hand; Tate’s hot mouth, slick and clever. That delicious little confession as she lay panting on the carpet.

Forced, maybe?

Yes. Yes.

As much as Adelais loved secrets, she often found her interest vanishing the moment she overturned whatever stone was hiding the truth. Once she’d answered the question, there was no game left to play, no more light filling up her mind, and so she moved on to the next thing.

But that hadn’t happened with Tate last night. Adelais had managed to rip the abbess’s control into a pile of shreds and see the little Venus trembling underneath, full of carnal torment. She’d lifted Tate’s mask, and then she’d been equally fascinated with what she found underneath. And now she had even more questions, was itching to know more and to have more; she wanted the little nun in front of her so she could quiz her on where she’d learned to be brave, where she’d learned to fuck, if anyone else knew what she’d confessed to Adelais last night with her own hand still pressed between her legs.

Forced, maybe?

Yes. Yes.

Agitated with want—with every hour between now and dusk seeming to Adelais a vast, horrible epoch—she finally readied herself and strode out of the tent to check on her men. They were mostly good soldiers, handpicked from Gérald’s lands in Normandy and hardened by battles both in France and England, although there were a few newer men with whom she wasn’t impressed, like the guards who were caught unawares by a nun last night. A nun .

Even though she planned on excoriating them for it later, it did make her smile now to think of. Tate slipped into their camp like a ghost, sly-footed and quiet like a holy little assassin. Sisters in Normandy were wellborn women who spent their days with needlework and prayer; perhaps they were a different breed here in England. Another thing she wanted to ask Tate.

No, not ask. She wanted more than an answer—she wanted to know . Intimately. She wanted to feel the girl’s history as if it were her own, to be able to say with confidence what every hour of Tate’s day looked like, where her favorite spot in the abbey was, where she roamed in the hills when she was free and what thoughts she thought when she stared at the sun sliding down the cloud-streaked sky. Adelais wanted to find every chemise, habit, and veil Tate had ever worn and touch them to her own skin to see how they felt, whether they were rough or soft, itchy or cool. Whether they still smelled like Tate—like wet stone and incense.

Adelais reached the edge of camp and found Ernouf, her second-in-command, staring at the road leading the opposite direction of the abbey. It was the road they’d taken to come here, a narrow lane that wound alongside an equally narrow river.

“Has the duke sent any summons?” Adelais asked. She was given rein to come out this far, since it served William’s purposes to have her terrorizing the countryside, but if he needed her at Exeter, she would be obliged to come.

“He’s the king now,” Ernouf reminded her, but he didn’t take his eyes off the road. No, not off the road —off the standing stone that kept watch over this end of the valley. The company had passed by it on their way in last night, and many of the men had crossed themselves as they rode under its moon-cast shadow, as if terrified some pagan priest was going to pop out from behind it and curse them all to burn in a wicker giant.

“He’s still the duke where we’re from,” Adelais said, “and more importantly, he’s not here to hear what we call him.”

Ernouf sighed but answered her first question. “No, he hasn’t sent for us. But the men are wondering how long we’ll stay. The valley makes them uneasy.”

“Because it’s difficult to defend?” Adelais shook her head. “I do not think we’ll have any trouble from the locals. Anyone who can fight is in Exeter now, waiting for Harold’s sons to conjure an army.”

“They’re not afraid of a fight, Adelais,” he replied, “but of this place. It’s an unholy place, they are sure of it.”

Adelais laughed. “Because of a single standing stone? Have they not been to Brittany? You can’t walk for tripping over a cairn or a stone table there. They’re no more haunted than the aqueducts and theaters the Romans left behind.”

“It’s the dead and past in Brittany,” Ernouf said slowly. “But it’s not the past here, and it’s certainly not dead. Can’t you feel it? There’s something different about this valley.”

“There’s nothing but an abbey down there,” Adelais said, amused that solid, serious Ernouf believed in superstitious nonsense. “Founded by Alfred of Wessex himself. I can’t imagine a coven of Druids taking shelter nearby, waiting for unsuspecting foreigners to wander in so they can burn us alive while they chant at the moon. And in any event, we’ll only be here two more nights before we either raid or leave. Tell the men to hang on to their balls until then.”

“Do these two nights have anything to do with the abbess who visited your tent?”

Adelais grinned. “A general never tells her secrets.”

“Hardly a secret when the whole camp can hear.”

“Ernouf, is that judgment in your voice? From you, a man with a lover in London, two in Rouen, and a wife back home?”

Ernouf gave her a look. “None of them are nuns or monks or priests, Adelais.”

“It was an offer she made,” Adelais said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m sure God won’t mind so much, if it was to keep her abbey safe.”

“Will it?” he asked. “Keep her abbey safe?”

“I thought this was an unholy place, abbey included. You care about its safety now?” she asked, lifting a brow.

“I never said the abbey was unholy,” responded Ernouf. “But perhaps if the abbess came willingly to your bed, then…”

Adelais’s smile grew larger. “Then what? Then it must be a pagan abbey? This may be a strange place, but it’s not that strange. And I hardly think their saintly King Edward would have made so many pilgrimages if this were secretly a shrine to Diana or Bacchus.”

Ernouf shook his head. “You may be right about that, but there’s still something uncanny here. The men feel it. I think you’d feel it, too, if you let yourself.”

Adelais clapped his shoulder and turned back to the camp to check on the other men. Ernouf could keep his superstitions. The only thing she felt was a gnawing need to have her little abbess naked again.