69. Sighs

As the days grew cooler in the evenings, everyone around me in the keep was happy in either love or lust, everyone but me.

I prayed continuously, pondering my own unrequited wishes.

I tried not to be jealous and I nearly succeeded.

What I did not succeed in was avoiding my husband, who had now decided conversation with me was all he wanted.

He would retire earlier to the rooms now, pouring himself a whiskey and leaning against our fireplace, asking me how my day went, giving me short answers when I asked in return.

I would be forced to sit in the desk chair, sipping at water and lightleaf oil, speaking of farming taxes and property disputes.

I found myself sitting with a candle in Gareth Pope’s bath more than once, reading the man’s journal to avoid going back to the room to endure a full hour of that penetrating hazel gaze.

Apparently, he had missed me while I had been with the orchardists.

But Gareth Pope only added to my surroundings of romance.

I was nearing the end of the journal and he was now in the throes of a forever love with then Prince Hinnom.

Hinnom was obsessed with not only Gareth’s body but his magic.

It seemed to be the only thing Gareth recorded was how proud his lover was of his blessings from the goddess.

In present day, Mischa and Perch seemed to try to spend most nights seeing if they could be louder than the previous night.

Helena may have been more ladylike, but she too was in the clutches of her own affair.

I walked across the landing to the dormitory one night and found Thatcher cradling her face and begging her to come share his bed.

I hid in the stairwell to avoid her seeing me see her put up little protest.

Catrin reported daily that Peregrine visited his mother.

I suspected he had not been so dutiful of a son before our friend became his mother’s lady.

River had convinced Quinn to hold her hand in front of others and Quinn even allowed her to kiss her on the cheek one evening.

This last pairing was hard for which to hold jealousy.

Seeing Quinn at peace melted my heart.

Only my darling Maureen seemed immune to lovesickness or sex.

But, halfway through that fall, proof of my husband’s bodily desire for me was handed to me in the form of my shameless eavesdropping.

One morning, before the sun had fully made itself known, I woke.

Thinking Alric had to already be gone, I rolled towards the center of the bed to splay my limbs out.

My husband was not only still in bed, he was in the middle.

My rolling into his frame woke him and he put his hands out defensively as I tried to pull away.

His right hand fell on my breast which was nearly out of my nightgown.

Against my hip, I felt his hardness.

For a beat, we both froze and together, we pulled away from the other.

“I am sorry,”

he said, his voice full of formality.

“Well, that was bound to happen,”

I said, shocked at the lightness in my tone.

He repeated that he was sorry, got out of bed, pulled on his clothes and left.

I stood up from the covers and went to the desk, pulling out the drawer for the skeleton key.

I pulled my teal dress over my nightgown, gathering up a shift and stays and moved to open to the door, seeking the peace of Gareth’s bath, when it swung inward, almost hitting me.

Alric stood in the doorframe looking at me.

“You forget to knock more and more,” I teased.

His voice came out strangled.

“I came for the skeleton key.”

“Oh,”

I said, holding it up.

“I did not feel like conversation with other women this morning.

But you take it.”

I held it out to him.

“No need,”

he said gruffly, spinning and taking the stairs downward with speed.

I made my way down to our private bath and wondered if his morning’s hardness was simply male or meant for me.

I chided myself for this.

I had to put it out of my mind.

And then as I began to lather up the soap, through the wall that bordered the men’s baths, I heard my husband say, “for gods’ sake, I just want to be alone in here.”

“He’s jerking off,”

said Perch’s voice.

Thatcher laughed.

The splash of bodies moving through water echoed through to me.

“He doesn’t like to jerk off in the privy.

He thinks it’s too dirty,”

Thatcher said.

Perch made a hmm noise and then said, "He’s precise about everything else, so why wouldn’t he be precise about where he gets hard?”

Thatcher replied, “I think if he were being especially precise as to the whereabouts of his prick, he would like to be hard inside his wi—”

“Can you please not subject me to your animalism?”

said Alric.

There was the sounds of them washing, the swish of the water on stone and flesh.

“I think, brother,”

said Thatcher, “you got used to your lady wife being gone and being all alone and being able to jerk off to her in your bed, with her scent all over your sheets—”

“Gods, Thatcher,”

said my husband, his exasperation seeping through.

“That’s why he is in here so early,”

said Perch.

“To jerk off before everyone else wakes.

Clever, actually.”

“Are those two words the only ones you know?”

Laughing, Thatcher said, “He gets condescending when he’s not had a good jerk.”

“Why are the two of you here so early?”

my husband asked.

“I like to leave my bride alone in my room,”

said Thatcher.

“Soon she will see it as her own.”

“Mischa kicked me out of bed,”

said Perch.

“I don’t know what I did to upset her.”

I snickered to myself.

“You do seem to piss her off more often than not,”

said Thatcher.

Perch said, “We’re not like you and your woman.

It’s just a business of the flesh.

She doesn’t want me like that.

She still wants her man back in Eccleston, but he’s probably dead.”

“Remember you have to marry her in a few moons,”

Alric added.

There was a pause and then Perch said, “It be no love pairing, but I do not mind having only her for the rest of my days.

This is how I think you see your lady wife.”

Alric grumbled something, but I could not make out the words.

“You should have seen his reaction to her in her summer dress,”

chimed in Thatcher.

“Unbelievable cock up.

Behaved like a complete arsehole.

Started yelling at her for buying too many flowers.”

“I did not yell at my wife,”

said my husband.

Thatcher kept talking over the sound of Perch’s laughter.

“And the lady was having none of it.

Poor woman, trying to cool off in the summer heat.

Minding her own business.

He probably ruined her whole day.

He’s lucky she agreed to sit with him and his family that night.”

“Oh that was The Rush of Flowers,”

said Perch.

“Then we found you outside on your knees.

Begging her for her forgiveness.”

“I was not on my knees.”

“I think he would like to be on his knees,”

said Thatcher, “if his head was between—”

Alric raised his voice over Thatcher, but remained without emotion, “I will give you each a week of my pay to let me be.

I beg you.”

“Done,”

said Perch and there was a surge of water that sounded like he stood up.

“Oh, brother, no need for coin,”

Thatcher sang.

“I know you are in hell.”

Alric replied but I could not make it out.

I had risen out of the bath, carefully so as not to make any noise in the water and wrapped myself in linens, sitting up against the wall that separated this bath from the men’s.

My ear was pressed to the stone, eager to hear their conversation.

Now there was no sound.

I went to stand when I heard a sigh from above my head.

I garnered he was standing out of the water.

Then I heard a second sigh, this one deeper.

The third sigh told me he pleasured himself.

I imagined him standing against the stone wall, his left hand pushing against it for purchase while he pumped himself with his right.

The image was exquisite in my mind, all that bone and sinew, always so contained now loosened by lust.

I leaned my head against the wall.

Did he think of me? I had certainly thought of him in here.

I pulled down the linen around me down, exposing my breasts.

He had accidentally cupped the left and my left hand mimicked where his right hand had been.

“Edith,”

came his voice in a whisper I could barely hear.

He thought of me.

He was thinking of me.

He wanted me.

I was drunk on this revelation, dizzy with this awareness.

I reached my right hand down to my right breast and gave an unbridled moan when both my thumbs grazed both my nipples.

There was a splash and then there was a rush of air from the other side of the wall, like he was trying to catch his breath.

“Edith?”

he panted.

“Is that you?”

My hands left my breasts and covered my mouth.

Gods, I had been too loud.

“Edith? Are you there?”

His words were low and horrified.

I was stunted in my arousal and mortified.

I tried to recount if, in the two instances of his being down here, we had heard men’s voices from their baths, if he knew the exact location of this chamber.

There had been plenty of Procurer contenders bathing that first time, but he had been in such a state of exhaustion I did not remember him commenting on it.

Perhaps he did not know it was possible for me to be on the other side of the men’s wall.

But then I remembered that he had used this bath during my week at the orchardists’ and had most likely heard voices through the wall.