Redeeming The Rogue Knight. Elisabeth Hobbes

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СКАЧАТЬ brushed her hands down her dress, which was creased and felt grimy from being slept in. She only had two and the other was lighter cloth better suited for warmer days. It would have to do as she could not bear to remain in this one any longer. She pulled the dress from the chest at the end of the bed and quickly changed with her back to Sir Roger in case he should awake and catch her in her linen shift.

      Her eye fell on the small glass vial that he had drunk from the night before and she held it to the light. A few drops remained. She inspected the ropes on Sir Roger’s wrists. He would be going nowhere when he awoke, but just to be certain...

      She narrowed her eyes and looked down at Sir Roger.

      ‘You’d rather sleep and be free of pain, wouldn’t you,’ she said. ‘We don’t want you waking before I’m ready to deal with you.’

      She knelt by the bed and held the rim to Sir Roger’s lips, parting them with her fingers to allow the liquid to slip into his mouth. His throat moved as he swallowed and his tongue darted out to lap up the droplets that remained on his lips, reminding Lucy of Robbie suckling in the night when asleep and unaware of what he was doing. Her breasts gave a sudden throb and she wrapped her arms tightly around her chest. Robbie had only recently given up nursing and she put her body’s reaction down to the memory of that. It was most definitely not because of the idea of Sir Roger’s lips on her breasts.

      The thought of Robbie raised another issue that she had not previously considered. If Sir Roger was sleeping and drinking like a babe, there would be other needs that would arise. If it came to it, she would deal with those in the same manner she dealt with Robbie, but as she picked up her son and left the room she fervently hoped Thomas would return long before she had to assist with anything that involved more of Sir Roger’s body than she had already encountered.

      Lucy went about her daily tasks. She fed the pig and the chickens and put Robbie out to play in the yard behind the house, a long rope around his waist so he did not stray to the stream. Once or twice someone passed by heading to or from Mattonfield. She greeted them with a wave, calling brightly that there would be new ale within the week. Noon passed and still Thomas did not return, but neither was there a sound from the bedroom. Robbie began to wail and she spooned boiled apple into his mouth, sitting him on her lap.

      ‘Mama will crush the malt next,’ she told him with a smile, ‘and you can go see if Gyb has caught anything.’

      He burbled excitedly, pleased to be given permission to torment the burly orange tomcat that sometimes graced them with his presence. That would keep him busy while Lucy ran upstairs to check Sir Roger had not lapsed into a fever. His wound would need bathing and she should try him on some of her father’s draught. Perhaps he, too, would take some of the mashed apples that her son was busily smearing in his hair.

      She frowned. Where was Thomas? She had hoped him to be back by now so she could be rid of her burden as soon as possible.

      She went to the shed and began crushing the malt and tipping it into the bowl to soak. When she heard a familiar whistling coming down the road she forced herself to finish the task, covering the vat with a damp cloth before wiping her hands down her apron and emerging.

      The visitor was Widow Barton, an old friend of Lucy’s father. She leaned on the stout stick she used for walking and tugged her cap into place, tucking wiry grey strands beneath it.

      ‘Good day, Lucy.’

      She was one of the few inhabitants of the nearby town who had remained on good terms with Lucy after she returned home with a swelling belly and no husband to save her honour—and the only one who knew the identity of the man who had caused her shame. The old woman took the leftover ale mash to feed her pigs, in return for an occasional flitch of bacon, without which Lucy’s diet would have been scant indeed.

      ‘Did you hear about the commotion in Mattonfield last night?’

      Lucy shook her head truthfully. The news had not reached her, but her nerves jangled as she imagined who might have been the cause.

      ‘Two men searching for two more. They tried to raise the hue and cry, but Lord de Legh refused as they would not account for why they were searching. He told them if they could not name the crime he would have no part in it.’

      ‘Did they catch the man?’ Lucy asked.

      Mary gave her an odd look.

      ‘The men,’ Lucy amended. She averted her gaze, annoyed at her slip.

      ‘No one was found,’ Mary answered after a pause. ‘They must have come past your way before they arrived in town.’

      ‘I suppose they might,’ Lucy agreed, ‘though there are many ways to travel.’ More on her guard now, she stopped herself from finishing the sentence ‘...from Lord Harpur’s estates.’

      Mary gave her a shrewd look. ‘You’ll meet a bad end living out here alone. Your father should have sold up when he knew his time was at hand.’

      ‘Should he have left my brother nothing to inherit when he returns?’ Lucy asked.

      It was remarkably easy to speak of Thomas as if he was still in France. For years she had believed he would never come home and that most likely he was dead somewhere across the water. A guilty thought crossed Lucy’s mind that if Thomas did not return to claim his friend, he would not claim the inn, either.

      Mary glanced towards the inn, which was showing more signs of disrepair as each month passed. ‘There’s not much to inherit,’ she said kindly.

      Lucy’s lips twitched. ‘I keep it going as best I can.’

      ‘I don’t blame you. Your father should have found you a husband to help run it.’

      ‘He tried. I refused,’ Lucy reminded her. ‘Besides, no man of any regard wants a wife with a bastard brat hanging off her.’

      Any husband, whether of good standing or not, would have been suitable in her father’s eyes to rid him of the shame of an unwed daughter with a child. Mary knew this already. Lucy suspected the widow even approved. She had five grown children and no husband for the past decade.

      Mary sniffed, her beak of a nose flaring.

      ‘Are you brewing again?’

      Lucy held an arm out, glad of an excuse to draw the older woman away from the house and off the subject of husbands.

      ‘Come see.’

      She led Mary into the shed, talking all the while of the new mix of yarrow and elderflower she was planning to use as gruit to flavour the brew, of Robbie’s final emerging tooth—the goodwife had helped birth the boy and still took a keen interest—and of the fair to be held in Mattonfield at the end of the month.

      Anything to keep the old woman from suspecting that upstairs she had a drugged nobleman tied to her bed who would very soon require her attendance.

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