Hellion Read online

  Isabelle sniffed. “It’s sweet to the nose,” she said.

  “But bitter to the tongue,” her mother replied.

  “What is this?” Isabelle fingered some purplish, red-ridged stems. The plant had an aromatic fragrance.

  “Mugwort. We flavor the beer and wine with it.”

  “What else is here?” Belle queried her parent.

  “Tansy, mostly for cooking, but also useful for getting rid of wind. Mary’s gold, an antidote for pestilence and stings, but also good for flavoring stews and pottage; for rubbing into cheese to preserve its color; and when sugared, it makes a delicious conserve. Liverwort, which when made into a warm drink eases liver troubles; milfoil to stop bleeding; and foxglove, used externally for scrofula. Pasque flowers yield green dye, and asphodels a yellow dye. The roots of the iris give the scribes their ink. Dried, we call the roots by another name, orris, and it makes a fine deodorant and room freshener. Lavender will give sleep to the sleepless, and horehound stops coughs. Borage, as well as thyme, will give courage. Balm is a memory enhancer, and sage, if eaten in the month of May, will give long life,” Alette concluded. “There is a great deal more, of course, but I think if you have absorbed anything I said, Isabelle, then you have made a good start.” She began to dig vigorously, aerating her plant roots. “Go on now,” she told Belle.

  “But I want to help you, madame,” Isabelle replied.

  “You have already done more than enough,” Alette answered sarcastically. “I need no more of your help, my daughter.”

  “I am sorry!” Isabelle burst out. “I thought you wanton. I did not know you loved him. I would not harm you, Mother.”

  “Love him? Why on earth would you say a thing like that?” Alette demanded angrily. “What makes you think I love him? Do you believe because a woman lies with a man that she must come to love him? Do you love your husband, Isabelle? Do you even know what love is? Rolf de Briard showed me that passion need not be bestial and cruel. He proved to me that a man can be tender with a woman. He is everything that your father was not!”

  “And you love him!” Isabelle concluded triumphantly.

  Alette’s face was thoughtful a long moment, and then she said, “Perhaps I do, Isabelle, but you will say nothing of it to him.” She pulled herself to her feet and brushed the loose dirt from her gown. “Nothing.”

  “Why not, madame? He loves you and would make you his wife.” Belle drew herself up to face her mother, shaking her skirts out.

  “I will be no man’s chattel ever again,” Alette responded with her familiar litany. “A wife can be abused, but a man never abuses his mistress lest he lose her. I, however, am neither a wife nor a leman, for my virtuous daughter would not have it so within her house,” Alette finished bitterly.

  “Hugh is lord here,” Isabelle heard herself saying, “and if he orders you to marry Rolf de Briard, Mother, then you must!”

  “I would throw myself from the walls of this keep, or drown myself in the river first,” Alette answered her daughter grimly. “Think not to force me to the altar, Isabelle, lest my death be on your conscience.” She turned and walked away.

  As Isabelle and her husband lay abed that night, she asked him, “Why is my mother so stubborn in this matter?”

  “Because your father mistreated her,” he explained patiently again, stroking her soft white breasts with his long fingers. “If it is God’s will that Rolf win her over, then he will.”

  “And if he does not?” Isabelle demanded.

  “Then they will both be very unhappy, I suspect,” Hugh replied. Bending his head, he kissed her mouth in a leisurely fashion, smiling at the sound of her breath, which drew itself in sharply. “I have heard it said that you gained your temperament from your father, ma Belle, but I think there is much of your mother in you, too. She is a very stubborn, a most determined woman.” He drew his wife into the circle of his arm, his other hand caressing her, slipping down the curve of her hip to fondle her bottom. “It has been some weeks since I have had to spank this sweet flesh,” he murmured. “You have been a very good little wife of late, ma Belle.” He kissed her hard, forcing her lips apart, plunging his tongue into her mouth to fence with her tongue.

  Isabelle’s head spun slightly. While she was getting used to his passion, she suspected she had not yet tasted it to the fullest. He had never before done what he was now doing, but she liked it. With a sigh she shifted her body so that she might wrap her arms about him, drawing him against her aching breasts. “Mmmmmmmm,” she purred, her sharp little nails raking him ever so lightly.

  He shivered as he felt a tingle of pleasure race down his spine. “Hellion,” he said softly, taking his mouth from hers, “you are still too innocent to know your own powers, and for that I thank God.”

  Belle responded to this by nipping at his earlobe. Then her little tongue pushed into his ear, wiggling about the whorl suggestively. She blew softly into the spiral. Her hand reached down to fondle him and she whispered boldly to him, “Your rod is already as hard as iron, my lord. Your eagerness to fuck me is apparent, Hugh of Langston. Come, and put yourself inside me, husband.” She kissed his ear warmly.

  “You are shameless,” he teased her, his fingers exploring her nether regions, finding her more than ready to receive him.

  “Aye,” she admitted blandly. “I am totally shameless when it comes to your passion. Hurry! I want to feel you hot and throbbing within my secret chamber, my lord husband. I cannot do without you!”

  “Tell me that you want to be fucked,” he taunted her.

  “I want to be fucked!” she quickly responded. “Ohh, Hugh, yes, please! Now! I want to be fucked!”

  It almost killed him, but he slowly, slowly pushed himself into her eager sheath, when actually he wanted to use her roughly. He could not, he was finding out to his dismay, get enough of his young wife. Sometimes he thought that if he could, he would spend every day and every night in their bed with her. A day had not gone by since their marriage, except for the few days of her flow each month, that he had not used her several times daily. And she was as eager for him as well. Ahhh, God! She was eager!

  “I shall have to put you in a chastity belt,” he growled at her, “when I go to give my service to the king this summer.” His buttocks contracted and expanded as he rode her heaving body. “Your passion is far too hot, ma Belle.” He pushed her legs up so he might plunge deeper into her, for he could not, it seemed, go far enough today.

  “I will always be hot for you, my lord,” Belle told him, wrapping her legs about his waist. Ahh, God! He was wonderful, and she was dying of the sweetness between them. “There is no man who could possibly please me as you do!” Then Belle felt herself soaring into infinity, and her cries mingled with his as they found their pleasure.

  Afterward, as they lay sated in each other’s arms, Hugh said, “I must leave you in a few days’ time to go to my grandfather’s house near Worcester. Langston is a fine place to raise my birds, and I have promised you a merlin, ma Belle. I want a young bird, that I may train it myself.”

  “Can I not go with you?” she asked him. “I have never been anywhere in my whole life but here. I think I should like to travel.”

  “Not this time, my love,” Hugh answered. “It is not a good time to visit, for there is a great deal to be done here. Even though Rolf will remain to oversee his duties, I do not want your mother taking charge of the household again. Langston is yours now. It is too soon for you to go away. It would only confuse the servants and diminish your authority. That authority must be strong, for certainly this summer sometime I shall be called upon, and Rolf, too, to serve the king against his brother, who will try to take England. Whether the battle be joined here or in Normandy, Rolf and I must go. You, ma Belle, will be left with the entire responsibility of Langston. Though you have stewarded the estate in your father’s absence, your mother was always considered Langston’s chatelaine. That is no longer the case. In the absence of its lord, Langston belongs to
its lady entirely. Everyone will depend upon you.”

  “Will you ever take me to meet your family?” she asked. Though disappointed, Isabelle understood fully what her husband was saying to her. She did have responsibilities, and if they did not seem so heavy a burden when he was with her, she knew their weight well, having borne them in the past.

  “If this war is not an arduous one, we shall go in the autumn after the harvest is in,” he promised her with a kiss.

  Hugh departed several days later, traveling in company with his squire, Fulk, and six men-at-arms, young Langston men, wide-eyed at this chance to see more of the world. Isabelle waved her husband off, disappointed, but with a smiling face. He would be gone a full month, and she was already aching with loneliness. How had Hugh managed to creep into her affections so easily? Then she laughed at herself for being a little fool. Hugh Fauconier was strong and kind. He knew how to laugh, and would not allow anyone, his wife included, to take serious advantage of him. She respected him, and perhaps she even harbored a small tender of fondness for him as well.

  Hugh had been gone several weeks, and it was almost May when one day the watch on the tower called out a warning. On the other side of the river, opposite the ferry crossing, a small armed party of men had appeared. Isabelle stood atop the walls of Langston and counted.

  “Ten, no more,” she said. Then she turned and asked her mother, “Where is Rolf de Briard?”

  “He rode out this morning to the far village,” Alette answered. “Does not the leader of that troupe look familiar, Isabelle?”

  “We had best send a rider for Rolf,” Belle said, paying little heed to her mother’s words. “We should be safe unless they attempt to swim the river. I do not think they will, for any fool can see it is a tidal river and the currents are strong.”

  “It is Richard,” Alette said suddenly. “It is your brother, Richard de Manneville. Look closely, Isabelle. Is it not Richard?”

  Giving instructions that the steward be sent for, Belle turned her gaze back across the river, straining her eyes. “It might be Richard,” she said. “I cannot really tell from this distance. Besides, he was not full-grown the last time I saw him.”

  “What can he want?” Alette wondered nervously. “Why has he returned to England? He should be in Normandy.”

  “You are frightened,” Isabelle said, surprised. “Why are you frightened, madame? The de Mannevilles cannot harm you.”

  “Richard should not be here,” Alette said. “He has no reason to come to Langston. That he has is bad luck.”

  “He is in for several surprises,” Isabelle said. “No one sent word to him of my marriage, did they?”

  Alette shook her head. “No,” she said. “I felt there was no need for courtesy, as he had not the decency to send to us that your father had died and that he himself had married. We do not even know who his wife is, or if there is a child.”

  “I no longer care,” Isabelle replied. “When Richard stormed back to Manneville simply because Father had made Langston my dower, I realized that it was not us, but Langston he loved.”

  “Yet you never said anything,” Alette cried. “You defended him at every turn! How could you?”

  “He is my half brother, madame,” Belle answered simply.

  “Halloo, the keep.” The cry came across the river clearly.

  “Impatient as ever,” Belle noted, and then she called back, “Identify yourself, my lord.”

  “I am Richard de Manneville, lord of Langston,” was the reply.

  Isabelle burst out laughing, the mocking sound carrying in the still air. “You are not lord of Langston, Richard, and well you know it! I will send the ferry across for you, and two of your men, when our steward returns to the keep this afternoon. Until then you must bide your time, brother.”

  “Belle? Is that you? God’s blood, wench, you are taller than ever. Let me cross now. We have not eaten since early morning.”

  “That is your misfortune, Richard,” she answered him. “When the steward returns, and not a moment before. Of course you could try to swim your horses across, but the tide is soon to turn. You might drown, and be less trouble to me then. Come ahead if you wish.”

  Now it was Richard de Manneville’s turn to laugh. “Belle from Hell, you have not changed, I can see. We’ll wait, petite soeur.”

  Isabelle and her mother descended the walls and returned to the hall. Alette was fretting again.

  “How dare he call himself lord of Langston! He knows better.”

  “He may call himself whatever he wishes, madame, it changes nothing. Langston was my dower. The king had me wed to Hugh Fauconier, and now he is lord of Langston. What can Richard possibly do in the face of that?” Isabelle demanded.

  “He is like his father,” Alette said grimly. “He does nothing without purpose.” She took a cup of wine from the servant at her elbow and drank nervously. “What can he want?”

  “Obviously he has some scheme in mind to relieve me of Langston,” Isabelle responded. “He has secured Manneville, and married. I will wager he already has an heir, else he would not leave his wife. Now he thinks to take my portion.” She laughed. “What a surprise my dear greedy brother is in for when he learns that Langston is no longer undefended, or his sister defenseless.”

  Rolf de Briard returned from the far village, brought by the servant who was sent for him. “I’ve already seen,” he said as he came into the hall. He bowed to Isabelle, but his eyes were on Alette.

  “It is my half brother, Richard de Manneville, calling himself lord of Langston,” Isabelle said, and explained the rest. “We have enough men to defend the keep against such a small party, do we not?”

  “We have enough men-at-arms now to secure Langston against a far larger troupe, lady,” Rolf replied.

  “I believe a strong show of force is in order, Rolf. I do not want my brother to believe for one moment that there is any chance of his taking Langston from us. Richard is charming, but he is ruthless.”

  Rolf de Briard nodded. “Give me an hour, lady, and then I will send the ferry for him and all of his men. It is better we not leave the others to wander about the countryside. There might be others planning to join them who are not yet here. If we contain your brother and his companions within the keep, there will be little danger from the outside then. Hugh should be back within a few days.”

  “I will leave our defense in your capable hands, Rolf,” Isabelle told him, and then she smiled, to his surprise.

  A trifle nonplussed, he bowed again, and left the two women.

  “Shall we see to our toilette, madame, so we may greet our guests with honor?” Isabelle suggested to her mother.

  When Richard de Manneville entered the hall at Langston over an hour later, he was astounded by the sister who greeted him. Isabelle was indeed tall for a woman. Her carriage was quite imperious. She wore a light wool tunic, pale yellow in color, over a long, full skirt of green linen that fell in trailing folds. The neckline was embroidered in indigo blue and gold threads, and matched the identical embroidery on the wrists of her sleeves. A girdle of green silk cord belted the garment. Her red-gold hair was neatly contained in a gold net Crispine. This was certainly not the child he had left behind when he returned to Normandy.

  “Isabelle, ma petite soeur,” he greeted her, enfolding her in an embrace. Jesu! The wench had fine full breasts. He pressed her a trifle too tightly against his chest, holding her a bit longer than he should.

  Isabelle shook herself free. “Welcome to Langston, brother,” she addressed him in English, and then more bluntly, “What brings you to England? Does not Manneville need your attentions?”

  “Father is dead, and William, too,” he announced dramatically.

  “Did you think we would not know that?” Isabelle demanded, an edge to her voice. “And you have married, we are told.”

  “I did not think that word would have reached such an isolated place as Langston,” he said, a bit surprised.

  “K
ing Henry was concerned that in the absence of our menfolk, Mother and I would be left unprotected.” She turned and motioned the steward. “This is Sir Rolf de Briard, our steward. Sir Rolf, my brother Richard, Sieur de Manneville.”

  The two men nodded warily to each other.

  Richard de Manneville then acknowledged his stepmother with a bow. “Madame, it is good to see you again.” He had forgotten how young she was. And how beautiful. She wore her favorite blue, and her face was serene as he had never seen it.

  “You look well, Richard,” Alette replied coolly.

  Langston’s well-trained servants were already offering refreshments to the Sieur de Manneville and his nine companions.

  “The meal will be served shortly,” Isabelle said, “but first, tell me why you have come to Langston, Richard.”

  “Duke Robert has returned Langston to me,” Richard began.

  “I beg your pardon, brother?” Belle’s tone was icy. “Langston is not Duke Robert’s to dispose of, for it was an outright gift to Father and his descendants from King William. Father settled Langston upon me, not you, Richard. How dare you attempt to use your sex to usurp my lands!”

  “Isabelle, you do not understand, being just a young girl, but there is to be a war soon. Langston must be secured for Duke Robert when he regains his father’s inheritance from Henry Beauclerc,” Richard explained. “A woman cannot hold lands. It is unnatural. Father should have never given you Langston, but Duke Robert has corrected the situation.”

  “Langston is my dower, Richard,” Isabelle said.

  “Do you think I should leave my sweet little sister homeless and without a husband, Belle?” Richard chuckled benignly. “Not at all. I have brought you a husband, chérie. We have both sworn our allegiance to Duke Robert, and Luc de Sai has sworn his fealty to me. In return he will have you to wife, Isabelle, and hold Langston for us. And you, my lady Alette, will remain in your home under our protection as well. I have seen to it all,” he finished, pleased. Then he called, “Luc de Sai, to me!”