Thierry waved to signal he heard.
“I do not want to keep you from your duties,” she said, preparing to go inside.
He stopped her with one hand on her sleeve. “Will you save a place for me by your side at supper again, my lady? I enjoy your company very much.”
“Certainly, sir,” she replied demurely.
His smile stretched wide, charming, not a solitary gleam of menace in sight. That brute. Guy Devaux could take lessons from his friend, she thought acidly. “I shall look forward to it, my lady.”
A second cross shout from his petulant lord and master finally reminded him of his duty and then he trotted off.
Chapter Seven
When she entered his bedchamber, looking for Sybilia, she found the woman in a state of consternation. “What did you do to him last night?” were the first words out of her mouth. No “Good morning.” No “Thank you for suffering in my place.”
“I did nothing,” she replied. “He did it to me.” If she told herself that enough times she needn’t feel so bad about bedding with a dastardly Norman.
“Well, he won’t do it to me.” Sybilia was almost in tears.
“What do you mean?” She tried not to sound too glad.
The other woman glowered at her. “He woke today with a huge, stiff….you know.”
Deorwynn was astonished to hear it. He was still raring to go after a night of fucking such as they’d shared? She knew she certainly could not have accommodated him this morning.
“But he turned away and got out of bed. He…he didn’t want me.” Sybilia’s pride was wounded it seemed.
“Perhaps he simply had other matters to tend, or he thought that I—you—would not be able to take him again this morning. After last night and all the…times that…” she trailed off, the other woman’s angry scowl scorching her face.
Sybilia walked around the bed, straightening the coverlet of thick fur, brushing stray goose feathers to the floor and plumping pillows, feigning an industrious care for the tidiness of his chamber. “All he said to me before he left the bed was that I should not forget the entertainment I agreed to arrange for him. What did he mean by that?”
“Naught. I know not. Who can say how his mind works? Not I. For pity’s sake. And glad I am not to know. To be sure.” She stopped, aware that she was chattering too much again.
“You had better not flirt and encourage him,” Sybilia exclaimed. “I see how his eyes wander already.”
“Of course not. Why would I…?”
“Because if you do, I won’t ask him to intercede on your brother’s behalf.”
She swiftly decided to say nothing about her confrontation with the Norman by the battlements. “You have not mentioned my brother to him yet?” she asked quietly.
“There has been no opportunity.”
“Will you ask him today then?”
“We’ll see.”
She should never have trusted this woman. Now she had no choice but to wait and hope Sybilia discovered a conscience. Her side of the deal was done; she had nothing left to barter. And after the encounter on the battlements she couldn’t beg Devaux for his help. If only she hadn’t lost her temper, she might have used his interest to win a favor; instead she’d made him angry.
“In the meantime, if you encourage his attentions, Deorwynn, I’ll tell him you’re a Saxon spy who came to gather information for the rebels. You know what he does to his enemies.”
Obviously Sybilia was not in love with her mystery fellow any longer. Not now she was married to Guy Devaux. Her affections were shockingly fickle, but then, of course, she had Norman blood. They were all like that.
“He must lay with me. He must,” she hissed. “And soon. It cannot be delayed.”
“Of course he will…”
“You don’t understand. I am with child. If he does not have me soon, he will know the babe is not his.”
Thus the truth emerged. Apparently Sybilia had only wanted her fooled long enough to use her as the virgin proxy; now the deed was done, she could reveal her true reason for this subterfuge.
“But you saw your lover last year when you went to visit your sick mother. That was surely nine months ago at least.”
Sybilia gave a curt laugh. “There was no Saxon lover, you fool. It was Brother Simeon.”
Brother Simeon was a new young resident of the monastery that neighbored the convent. He was handsome and rather easily distracted from his prayers. All the girls had teased him, but Sybilia now confessed that her flirtation went further.
“I met him several times at night. There was a niche in the orchard wall and two people could hide there in the vines quite easily.”