Lara dipped her head.“As I told you,m’lord.”
He furrowed his brows at the title hehated, which was why she used it.“I tell you what, Lara the piebaker.I’ll pay you a copper for a pie all my own.”
“How many pies can you eatin a day?”Lara quickly calculated how many coppers equaled a goldsolidus.
He laughed, low, deep, and morepleasing to her ear than she cared to admit.“One at a time willsuffice.My favorite is berry, any kind.”
“Mine is peach.”Phillipejangled his purse.
“And mine is plum,” Treeadded.
Before she finished clearing thetable, she had orders for five pies from five soldiers, making fivecoppers toward her wergeld, which she pocketed before heading up tothe captain’s chamber that she still shared each night.Shuttingthe door behind her, she glanced around.One of her new duties wasto keep the captain’s chamber orderly, but there was nothing forher to tidy up.The captain was as neat and careful of hisbelongings as he was of his person, bathing each afternoon beforesupper in the tub in the antechamber.
“You’re welcome to bathebefore I do,” he’d offered the first night she’d returned to thekeep as lidi.“Or after.No sense in wasting a tub of hotwater.”
She’d thanked him and told him shebathed at her house, and then he’d ordered three bars of sandalwoodsoap and one of rose from her, grinning sheepishly as he’d askedfor the bar of rose soap.
“A gift for a woman?”she’d asked, pocketing his coin.
He’d shrugged for an answer, and theimage of Ravenna, who’d sent a servant to buy a vial of love potionfrom Sophie that afternoon, had come to Lara unbidden.She’dimagined him grinning at Ravenna the way he sometimes grinned ather, slow and sure and teasing, and she’d almost told him she wasout of the rose soap and would have if not for the coin.
He still came up to the chamber late,spending the evenings in the common hall with his men, and now thathe wasn't guarding the door against Lara, he slept in the big,four-poster bed while she slept in the cot, Wolf on his peltsbeside her.They were seven nights into this new dance when thedoor to their chamber pushed open shortly after Lara had retired,and the captain walked in carrying the strawberry pie he’d boughtfrom her that afternoon.Phillipe followed him in, carrying apitcher of wine and three cups.Lara was sitting on her cot,counting her growing hoard of coin, a copper between her fingers asthe captain set the pie on the table and Phillipe set the pitcherand cups down alongside it.
“How much?”The captainnodded at the ornately carved wooden box that Lara kept her coinin.It was the first time he’d asked about her earnings.
She dropped the copper into the boxand shut the lid.“Fifteen coppers, three silver pieces, and onegold solidus.”
“How much of it is fromSophie’s love potions?”He elbowed Phillipe in the gut.“Amelia,the steward Braun’s daughter, gave Phillipe a sweet libation thisvery noon.”
Phillipe made a show of feeling hishead, his chest, his gut.“Is there anything in particular I shouldbe noticing?”he asked Lara, his blue eyes laughing.
“Aye,” she told him.“Abrunette named Amelia.”
“She is rather pleasant ina rather bland fashion.”He winked.
“She pays with good coin,”Lara told him.“As have half the women in this valley.”Phillipegrinned, and the captain snorted.“Be careful who you take a sweetdrink from, Captain,” she warned him.“Half of those women intendtheir potion for you.”
“It will do them no good,”Phillipe said, shaking his blond curls.
Lara gave the captain a sly smile.“Over two score of marriages in the province have been initiatedwith a vial of Sophie’s love potion.”
“If it’s marriage theyseek, they’re poisoning the wrong men,” the captain vowed with asavage certainty that gave Lara pause.
“But if it’s a night ofpleasure only.”Phillipe wagged his blond brows.“Then I’m theirman.”
Lara laughed, the captain scowled, andPhillipe poured the wine into the three cups as the captain set upthe figurines on the game board, all black on one side, all whiteon the other.He motioned for Lara to sit at the table withthem.
“The game is called Shah,or King,” the captain told her as Phillipe moved one of the domedwhite pieces a square forward.“It was a gift from the Emperor ofByzantium, who taught me how to play my second time there ascourier to Charles.”
“How many times have youbeen to Byzantium?”Lara asked, impressed.A courier was someoneeducated, someone the king trusted with secretive information, butthen the captain did read, write, and speak Latin, and was liegeddirectly to Charles.
The captain moved a black pieceforward.“Three.I traveled my second with Phillipe as my guard,which was how we met.”
“Ten years ago this pastspring.”Phillipe moved another white piece.
Lara took a sip of her wine.“How longhave you been soldiers?”
“Eight years,” Phillipesaid as the captain studied the board.“When Charles realized whata strategist Talon was, not to mention good on a horse and handywith a sword, he talked him into becoming captain of a company ofhorsemen, a special troop that could ride hard and fast whenneeded.Then they talked me into joining, promising me travel andadventure, women and glory.”
