Alan already faced the others. “Come on then, my friends. Who’s first? And which one of you bastards knifed our little lad, then? A child who did no harm to you nor no one else, but ended up dead for the pleasure of seeing one of your ugly faces.”
“I also recognise two of you,” David said, standing wide legged and ready beside Alan. “And you’ll recognise me from the same place, for I know exactly who your master is, and what you’ve been up to. So which of you was so brave to slaughter an innocent child?”
The horses were now stamping and fretful, kicking hard, nostrils flared. Not only those six newly arrived, but those already settled into the hostelry stables now panicked. The earl’s horse, a huge destrier of uneven temper, had been standing placid, asleep, his head bowed. He woke with a grumble and a hiss, memories of battle training remembered as he heard men shouting. The beast reared with two thundering front hooves crashing against the side of his stall.
Adrian’s four remaining henchmen rushed Alan and David, but Harry was back and in seconds had another man down with a hard boot point to his knees and another to his groin. David, his knife now pressed to his adversary’s throat, called to the destrier. “Calm yourself, Pallis. You know me. There’s no trouble. Go back to sleep.”
Above the stalls the hay loft was stocked with bales, sacks of oats and turnips, and the pallets of the hostelry’s grooms. None now slept, but all covered their heads and kept flat down in the straw. The floor was half planked, then open to the stalls below. Rob jumped from above directly onto two of the newcomers. One hit his head on a rolling bucket, and, eyes glazed, slumped. The other fought back. Rob fisted him straight to the nose, his other fist to the eye. “Pit yerselves agin a backstreet fighter from London, would you?” Rob chuckled. “There’s no Nottingham bumpkin will get his knee to my cods.” The second man staggered and fell, eyes shut, mouth gaping, and was quiet.
Within a few moments of energetic concentration, there were five heavyset men lying prone on the ground, straw in their ears, horse dung in their hair, arms and legs thick roped and quite unable to rise. One was unconscious, another bleeding from a broken nose, but the horses gradually quietened, returning to an amiable supper.
David, Alan, Harry and Rob looked cheerfully down at their handiwork. David smiled slightly. “Though I seem to remember,” he said softly, “his lordship saying something about subtle questioning.”
“Oh well,” Rob scratched his head. “No harm done. Least – maybe some harm to that bugger with the broken nose. But serves him right. The bastard tried to knife me. None too subtle, p’raps. But effective.”
“His lordship won’t mind,” grinned Alan. “He’ll just be sorry he weren’t here to lend a hand.”
His lordship was kissing his wife. The window shutters, raised and solid, kept the chamber enclosed in blackness and a whisper of warmth. But the bedcovers were thrown back and Emeline lay naked in the darkness, her arms wrapped tight around her husband’s waist. As he entered her hard, her hands clasped lower. Nicholas chuckled softly, tickling her ear. “You’ve an arse as soft and round as rolled velvet,” he told her. “I doubt mine gives the same satisfaction.”
He was nuzzling the side of her face, the short evening pickles across his jaw scraping against her chin. She whispered, “I love your body, Nicholas. Long and lean and hard in some places and silky soft in others.”
Wedging himself up a moment, he gazed down at her. “You surprise me, my love. I thought you still too timid to notice me one way or the other. Nor admit it if you did.”
“I didn’t. But now I do.” The snuggled dark made the room feel smaller, more intimate, hiding the blushes and the shyness. “When you’re dressed all grand, I’m proud to walk beside you. When you’re undressed, it’s an even greater pride I feel.”
He grinned. “So? Better dressed? Or undressed?”
“I see other women looking at you, admiring, but that’s just when you’re dressed of course.” She felt her toes curl, and smiled at herself, daring to say what she had long thought. “And I like thinking I’m the only one who sees you undressed,” she whispered. “I am, aren’t I, my love? And when you make love to me, your eyes glitter. I love looking at you.”
“Only looking?”
“And touching.” Her fingers, tentative but explorative, traced over his buttocks and down to the back of his thighs. “So much muscle,” she murmured. “So much strength. I can feel the force and power of you, even here, where your skin is smooth. Rolled velvet wouldn’t look right on you at all.” She giggled, half smothered. “There’s the long slight swell, dipping in at the sides,” and her fingertips slid down across his back. “I like it because the muscles aren’t all knotty. Some men look as though their muscles are stuck on afterwards and don’t really belong to them. Yours are all lean under the skin. Almost glossy. You feel – polished.”
He laughed, but it was husky as if his breath caught in his throat. “You have muscles I love too, little one, here, inside, where you close around me.” He rocked gently against her, easing himself deeper within. “You squeeze, and those muscles take me straight to paradise.”
She was losing her own breath. “That’s just flattery. You exaggerate.”
“No. Paradise indeed. Probably the only way I’ll ever get there.”
“You take me places too – places I never imagined. And I like feeling all that strength, when you’re so gentle with me.”
“If you only knew, my love, how tempted I am not to be gentle. Not gentle at all.” His own fingers edged between their swear damp bodies, pushing down to his own place of entry, teasing and probing. One fingertip pushed inside, forcing deeper, and she gulped. “Too much?” He smiled, removing his hand, caressing between her legs, up and behind to her own buttocks and the dividing crease. “But I promise to go on being gentle, little one. At least until we know each other a good deal better.”
“And you like me touching you – here?”
“Clasp my arse as tight as you like my sweetest and that pulls me tighter inside you,” he whispered, his voice now softer, sultry as he pressed both from behind and in front. “But talking of arses, it’s certainly yours I prefer. Round, pliable and dimpled. Now,” and he pushed once more and climaxed at once, sinking down against her with a groan. She sighed, arms tight around his back, squeezing once more as she felt him grow and pulse within her, and surrendered to her own mounting delight.
After slow moments of gradually reclaiming breath, he rolled over, keeping her pressed against him, releasing her only from his weight as they then lay side by side. Then finally, slowly, he eased himself out from her and leaned over, resting her head against his shoulder as he kissed the top of her head. “Sleepy?”
“Umm.”
His fingers smoothed down from her neck to her breasts, across and around, embracing her in warmth. “Not cold, little one?”
She paused, then whispered back, “I’m not cold. You feel like a furnace. I could forge horseshoes.” Another pause, then, “I couldn’t be – feverish, could I, Nicholas?”
He said, “No more than I am, my love.” Then paused, before speaking slow and soft. “There’s many thing bring pain in this sweet fresh world of ours. There’s a thousand diseases, and a thousand tortures from the bitter punishments of the law to the pangs of childbirth. But I’d choose all of them sooner than face the pestilence. That pustulating growth of bleeding agony that eats the body whole, and leaves only a breathing hell in an empty rotting carcass. After four days of that, death is the reward, not the punishment.” He turned to look down at her, although in the darkness he could see only the faint sheen of her eyes. Then he bent, pulling up the blankets which he wrapped around them both, tucking her in, swaddling her nakedness. “This sickness is not a thing you can mistake, little one, or be unsure. You have no contagion, no pestilence, no disease.” He kissed her cheek, and then, lightly, her mouth. “Now my sweet and healthy beloved, sleep with me and we’ll wake in ruddy welcome health tomorrow morning, ready to return downstairs together, and face my wretched cousin, my equally wretched father, my uncle, your mother, both sisters, and all the new day’s adventure, whatever that may be.” He chuckled softly. “And that may seem a pestilence of another kind.”