The Falconer's Daughter - Liz Lyles Page 0,48

she would read a book four or five times until he would finally get another.

The last several nights she had been reading about men and women and it made her think of the Duke Fernando. She wondered if she would really be betrothed to him. Philip said so little about it lately that she thought perhaps the talks had ended. Maybe the Earl was considering a proposal from someone else.

It didn’t frighten her anymore…the talk of marriage. She didn’t have much choice anyway. Of course she would have to marry. It was her duty. Her responsibility. She smiled as she turned a page in her book, glancing briefly in Elisabeth’s direction. Elisabeth was sleeping; her face was buried in the pillow. The glow of the fire lit the creamy pages of Cordaella’s novel and even though it was late, easily an hour past midnight, she couldn’t put the book down. Philip had loaned her his copy of Boccaccio’s The Decameron, a novel written in Italian that took considerable effort to read. Italian was enough like Latin that she could make guesses at unfamiliar words, but that wasn’t the reason she was so fascinated by the book.

At least some of the tales in the The Decameron were about men and women and things they did to each other for pleasure. Cordaella turned a page, her gaze racing down the paragraph. She squirmed at the depiction of nuns and holy men, young girls and eager men. There was something dark about the writings, something sordid, but the very same sordidness made her mouth dry and her belly tighten. Is this what men and ladies did, this groping beneath robes, this riding?

She read slowly now, beginning a new tale, “Second Day, Seventh Story.” Her Italian was terrible but she was still able to understand the direction the story was taking, particularly the paragraph about robust Pericone stripping off his clothes and getting into bed with beautiful Alatiel, the daughter of the sultan of Babylon. She reread the description of how with Alatiel he gave her “the horn men use to butt”, and how Alatiel repented, rejecting Pericone’s earlier advances because she found she liked his presence in bed very much.

“Cordy,” Elisabeth said, turning her head towards the fire, her dark blonde hair matted and her cheeks flushed from sleep, “when are you going to sleep?”

“Soon,” Cordaella promised.

“But you’ve been reading for hours. And the fire is too bright for me to sleep well. Can you not wait to read until the morning?”

Cordaella closed the book and scrambled to her feet, her hair loose down her back, the long black tresses inky in the firelight. She gathered her blanket and pillow and hurried to bed, the wood floor cold beneath her bare feet. Slipping between the covers, she pulled out the stones that the housemaid had placed earlier between the sheets. The stones had lost their heat and the sheets were stiff. Cordaella lay in bed with her eyes closed. She wasn’t in the slightest bit sleepy. All she could think of was the novel and the stories of men and women pleasuring each other. She had never thought of it that way, never considered that bodies could be anything but ugly and meant for covering. Timidly she reached under the bodice of her chemise and touched her breast, her fingers tracing the shape of her nipple. The nipple hardened beneath her fingertips, the center of the aureole contracting as if cold. Nervous, she pulled her hand away and yanked the covers flat over her chest. Would the Duke Fernando someday touch her that way? Would he like to feel her skin?

Cordaella turned on her side, drawing her legs up into a circle. The novel had made her think of new things, and was it a sin, these thoughts? Was it wrong to be curious about the secrets between men and women?

She didn’t want to think of the Castilian, not of him or the marriage bed. Instead, closing her eyes, she pictured the Irish knight, Bran O’Brien. She could see his red hair, the color like copper in the sun. She remembered how tall he was, his shoulders large and wide beneath the black jupon and silver chest plate. He was old but not ancient. He was strong but not fat. She liked his blue eyes and his accent, the way his voice sounded like night.

What would it feel like if he stripped her, lay in bed with her? Cordaella pressed her face into