Wild Wind Read Free Page B

eat?”
    “Patience,” Nicolette murmured as the banquet master summoned the pantler, who unwrapped a saffron-hued loaf from its portpayne of fringed cloth, sliced its upper crust, and presented it to the king. Next came the laverers, who made the rounds from table to table with their basins of herb-scented water, embroidered towels looped over their arms.
    Hlynn, clearly struggling to keep her eyes open, swayed slightly on her bench. She tried to lean on her mother, but the nursing baby was in the way. “Wait until Edlyn’s gotten all the milk she wants,” Faithe instructed the sleepy child, “and then you may put your head in my lap.”
    “She’s overdue for her nap,” Luke explained to the company at large.
    “I’ve got a perfectly good lap that’s going to waste,” Nicolette told Hlynn, adding, to Faithe, “If your mama doesn’t mind.”
    Faithe hesitated fractionally, then smiled. “Not at all. Hlynn, would you like to...”
    But Hlynn was already curling up contentedly on her new friend’s lap, thumb firmly in place. Robert, meanwhile, rested his weight on Nicolette as he nibbled his trencher into nothingness.
    “Do children always take to you so readily?” Faithe asked her.
    “I like them. I think they sense that.” Nicolette’s smile struck Alex as sad.
    “A pity you never had any children of your own,” Berte said.
    The smile vanished. “Aye, well...we were not so blessed.”
    “Not yet,” Berte said. “But you’re not too old to quit trying—not quite. How old are you—thirty? A bit older, perhaps?”
    Nicolette met the older woman’s gaze impassively. “Eight-and-twenty, my lady. And yourself?”
    Reddening slightly, Berte ignored both the question and Alex’s little huff of spontaneous laughter. Nicolette was never easily cowed, a trait he couldn’t help but grudgingly admire. “Well, then.” Berte nodded resolutely. “There’s plenty of time. You haven’t given up hope, I trust.”
    Alex and Luke exchanged a look. Their sister could be monstrously bothersome with all her probing and prying.
    Nicolette merely lowered her gaze to the sleeping child in her lap, threading her fingers through the little girl’s sweat-dampened black hair. Alex speculated on her thoughts: after nine barren years of marriage, a child now would be nothing short of miraculous.
    “Perhaps,” Berte counseled, in a unctuously maternal tones, “if you spent less time at that writing desk of yours, and concentrated on more feminine pursuits—needlework, say—’twould realign your womanly aspects, and facilitate the planting of a babe.”
    With an incredulous little cock of her head, Nicolette said, “Are you suggesting that I’m childless because I compose verses?”
    Berte smiled indulgently. “‘Tis a man’s avocation, is it not, my dear? I’m sure they’re much cleverer at it than a mere woman could hope to be, even one with such a...plethora of education as yourself. And for a woman to engage in men’s work causes an imbalance in the vital fluids that regulate” —she glanced awkwardly at the men and lowered her voice— “generative matters.”
    Nicolette’s mouth twitched, just slightly. “What a remarkable theory. I shall take it under advisement.”
    Berte nodded with self-satisfaction. “Do. No doubt my cousin, your lord husband, will be most grateful to see you set aside your parchment and quill.”
    Alex wondered if there might not be some truth in that, recalling his own uneasiness with Nicolette’s learning, the product of a rigorous convent education. Granted, like most young knights, he’d been relatively unschooled, incapable of reading or writing anything but his own name. Although Nicolette’s intellect—and her facility with verse—had impressed him immeasurably, his admiration had been tainted with a vague sense of inadequacy. Milo, on the other hand, was a man of letters, having been brought up at the Abbey at Aurillac. He’d always seemed to enjoy