Nine
THE WOLF
ADELAIS HAD BEEN TOOnoble last night on the road, and she knew it for sure the moment she sat on Tate’s pretty face.The abbess didn’t protest as Adelais started riding her mouth, and her slender hands stayed open and slack in their bonds above her head, as if she wanted to make it eminently clear to Adelais that she wasn’t going to snap her fingers and call a stop to this.
Adelais was glad, because even though she would stop the moment the abbess asked, fucking her mouth feltso good.Adelais couldn’t regret how overwhelmingly stirring it had been to fuck Tate, to work that knife hilt inside that soft, wet place until Tate came, but she did almost regret how riled up she was because she couldn’t last.Only a few moments working her sex against Tate’s mouth, and she peaked, culminating with a grunt and then making Tate lick every last wave of pleasure from Adelais’s sex until she was satisfied.
She moved off the well-used nun and cut her bonds, and then sat on the edge of the cot to catch her breath, feeling like she’d just fought off twenty men.
The abbess sat up behind her, preternaturally quiet.She would have made an excellent thief—or killer.
Adelais supposed when it came down to it, Tatehadmade an excellent killer.Adelais only wished it wouldn’t haunt her so.The thought of Tate miserable, guilty, sad—it tormented Adelais almost as much as the idea of Tate being in actual danger.Looking over at the abbess’s bare feet next to hers—small, delicate, fastidiously clean—Adelais abruptly knew she would do anything to make sure Tate never felt like that again.
What that meant, she didn’t know yet.And what that meant for the second reason she’d come to Far Hope…she also didn’t know.
“You found a way into the abbey,” Tate said.Her voice was quiet.Adelais knew from her earlier scouting of the dormitory that there were only two other nuns here, and that one of them was currently with the sick visitors.The other was at the far end of the structure and had been snoring loudly enough to wake all the sheep in Devonshire when Adelais found her.
“Last night, I followed you,” responded Adelais.“I didn’t like the idea of you walking alone after the game we played.”
Tate’s mouth moved, and Adelais couldn’t tell if she was holding back a smile or a frown.“I am glad you came into my room tonight,” the abbess said.“It would be a gift from God if I could spend every night in bed with you.But you shouldn’t be here, Adelais.The whole point of our arrangement was for you to stay on the other side of the wall.”
Adelais reached for her hose and started drawing them on.“About our arrangement,” she said, not knowing how to feel.The only thing in her life she wanted more than knowing the secret of Far Hope was this nun in front of her, and she had the uneasy feeling that one would come at the price of the other.But she could not be other than what she was.She was Adelais of the Maine, and she was at Far Hope at last.“I have something to show you.You should get dressed.”
Twenty minutes later, they were padding silently through the abbey’s grounds, past a stone church with stained glass windows—a rarity and a luxury this far into the wilderness—and past the abbey’s stables and storehouse and kitchens.All the way to the very end of the valley, where a low stone wall and something like a lichgate guarded access to the abbey’s sacred spring, which was also the source of the Hope River.
But Adelais didn’t take Tate through the gate to the spring.Instead, she led Tate to the sheer face of the hill beyond.A curtain of rock and moss and stubborn gorse, and, like a curtain, it had drapes and bends and folds.And in one of those corrugations was an opening.
Tate stopped as they approached, which did not surprise Adelais.In the dark, with her homespun habit and white wimple and veil, she seemed bled entirely of color, much like this lonely landscape under the cold light of the moon.
“How did you know this was here?”asked Tate.That mask of cool composure was back, as impenetrable as the rock walls around them, and Adelais hated it as much as she respected it.Tate was protecting herself and her home, and that composure was her defense, her bulwark, and her fortress walls.
Alas, walls had never stopped Adelais.
“When I followed you last night, I stopped at the top there,” Adelais said, indicating the place where the path spilled over the lip of the hills and down into the valley.It was a good path, cleverly hidden, because if she had not seen someone else take it, she would have guessed these hills to be impassable.“But tonight, when I crept down, I saw a glimmer of light coming from a cleft in the rock.I followed it here.”
Tate’s breathing was so even, so controlled that Adelais knew she must be deeply afraid.“Did you go inside?”
There was no point in lying.“Yes.And I want to go inside again, with you.”Because what Adelais had found seemed to have very little to do with heavy psalters and dry, old prayers.
Tate closed her eyes.There was the faintest twitch around her mouth; Adelais realized she was praying.That shamed her a little.
“Yes,” Tate said finally, opening her eyes.Her voice was full of resignation, which also shamed Adelais and then irritated her.She was not accustomed to shame, and she didn’t like the way it felt.“Yes, I will go inside with you.”
The cleft in the rock was illuminated again tonight, but very faintly.But as they stepped through the cleft and down the man-made stone steps into the earth, it gradually grew brighter and brighter until they were in a chamber lit by three braziers.
“It is your job to keep these lit?”asked Adelais, knowing that it could not be an easy job.
Tate stopped beside Adelais.In the red-yellow glow, she was a luminous thing.What would this elfin creature have become had she not been haunted by her sins?Because beauty was commonplace, everywhere; Adelais had known this since she was a child and was fawned over for her loveliness.People had talked as if she’d end up marrying a count or a duke with looks like hers, but in the end, her oft-praised beauty had only been worth a castellan.There were too many other lovely girls, and with more land and larger dowries.And fewer murderous instincts.
But whatever Tate had, it was past what beauty was, what it could do.It consumed Adelais’s thoughts; it made her think stupid, foolish things.It would have captivated princes, kings.And here Tate was, the keeper of an odd little abbey in the middle of nowhere.
“Yes, although I don’t know how much longer,” answered Tate.“It was expensive and time-consuming enough before the invasion.But now it is nearly impossible to get the wood from farther down the valley.There’s been too much sickness, too much war.So many of the people we relied on are dead.I think in the next month, I will have to decide to keep the fires lit only during Michaelmas.”
“That seems…specific.”
Adelais knew Tate well enough by now to catch the faintest hint of a smile.“Our abbey is dedicated to St.Michael.”
“Interesting.”Adelais looked around the stone chamber again.It was as large as a church, and with the three braziers burning at different points in the space, it didn’t feel dark.In fact, the entire quartz-studded ceiling glittered like a sea of stars, bright and twinkling.There were piles of blankets and furs, cruets of oil, low platforms heaped high with cushions.There was a stool in the corner, as if for a harpist; there were drums, lamps, gleaming goblets stacked neatly and draped with linen.It could have been a scene from King David’s court after he got his army of wives and concubines.“You know,” Adelais said, the heretical thought too fascinating to let slide by, “most holy places named after St.Michael used to be sites of heathen worship.Pagan places.”
