as a swaddling board. “There are no bells to toll Vespers; thus I have been praying quite fervently on my own for some time now.”
“Praying? For what?” Servanne yawned.
“For salvation,” Biddy declared. “For redemption in the eyes of God and man—assuming it is not too late to plead for forgiveness before either!”
“Oh Biddy—” Servanne frowned and stretched cozily within the warm cocoon of furs. “What are you talking about? What has happened now that requires forgiveness?”
“What has happened?” she demanded shrilly. “You can lie there and ask me what has happened? Better it is I who should be asking you—as if mine own eyes have not already given me the answers. Sweet Mary Mother in Heaven, I should have known it would come to this. I should have known it was his intent from the outset. And you! I blame only myself for what has become of you. Too innocent, you were. Too much talk, too great the temptation. Oh yes, I could see the temptation; who could not? Who could not?”
The older woman blew her nose savagely into a sodden scrap of linen and cursed as she was forced to wipe her fingers on the hem of her tunic. In the next wailing breath, she resumed her self-condemnation before an utterly confused and bewildered Servanne de Briscourt.
“In all of my eighteen years as your nurse and companion, I never dreamed I would bear witness to such wanton behaviour. From other women—plain women, common women, trulls and whores, oh yes, I should have expected it and known how to deal with their urges. For women such as those, taking a lusty man to their beds is as commonplace as lifting a leg to piss.”
“Biddy!” Servanne gasped, jolted wide awake.
“But you! I thank the Lord your sweet, saintly mother did not live to see such a thing. And with such a one as him! Sweet Jesu, had I but suspected such a need in you, I would rather have seen you serviced by one of the guardsmen along the way—”
“Biddy!”
“—than by that great, lustful brute! At least it could have been arranged with some discretion! Not like this! Not … not brazenly walking through the hall, with him naked as a bull and you”—Biddy waved a hand in unfathomable distress—“you hanging off his neck, looking as if you could scarce wait to have a bed beneath you!”
Servanne made a strangled sound in her throat and sat bolt upright. “Biddy! What are you saying? What are you accusing me of doing?”
“Do you deny you were hanging off his neck when he carried you in here?” Biddy demanded with narrowed eyes.
“I was not hanging off his neck!. I was in a faint!”
“So would any normal woman be to see the size of him,” came the scandalized retort. “Curse me if I did not think he had grown a third arm to support you!”
Servanne flushed. “Biddy! He was naked because he was bathing in the pond. I fainted because I was … I was exhausted—you, of all people should know why! And he must have carried me back here because I could not walk the distance on my own.”
Biddy stopped fussing with the bit of linen long enough to arch a brow sardonically. “And I suppose he helped you out of your clothing because he was concerned they might choke you in your sleep? I suppose he remained with you in here for nigh unto an hour because he was worried you might not be able to fall asleep on your own?”
Servanne clutched the layer of furs to her naked breasts. “He … unclothed me?”
“He did indeed. And he enjoyed the view for considerably longer than it should have taken to fold the garments and lay them neatly aside—had he troubled himself to do so, that is.”
Servanne followed an accusing finger and felt her mouth go dry at the sight of her gown and under-garments strewn across the earthen floor. She swallowed hard and pressed a trembling hand to her temple.
“I do not remember,” she whispered. “I do not remember anything after I fainted.”
Yet that was not exactly the truth either and she did not have to hear Biddy’s snort of disdain to feel the heat creeping upward in her cheeks. She did remember something—a feeling, or a sensation of intense warmth and pleasure. But … it was not possible for him to have lain with her and not left something of his presence behind.
Servanne flung the pelts aside and examined herself critically, searching