Chateau of Desire (Chateau of Love Book 1) Read online

  He shook his head again. Tried to focus on a Spanish girl in some city like Madrid. He couldn’t picture her. Phoebe popped into his mind instead.

  Nope. Not working. The British had rallied and driven them off anyway. They had had to ride their horses right back down the slopes, slipping in the rainy mud everywhere.

  How about that? The cold rain that had set in afterward? Maybe he should think about that. It was awful. Everybody got soaked through. No fire could be hazarded. Not even a woman to warm him during the night.

  Life as a condottiere, an adventurer, sure didn’t add up to its reputation. The money was scant, the food awful, the booty few and far between. The happiest in du Guesclin’s band had a genuine hatred for the British. They were filled with stories of the humiliating defeat at Crecy ten years ago. They hated Edward, the Black Prince of Wales. Tristen quietly admired the prince, named for his shield with its white feathers on a black field, its motto of “I serve.” He kept his comments to himself, though, whenever others of the band started in on the prince’s black armor, black heart, black cock, black whatever.

  In any case, it wasn’t a good idea to admire someone he might find himself facing over drawn swords someday.

  Instead, Phoebe floated back in front of his eyes. Back at Chateau Brionde, working in the kitchen as a scamp with bony knees sticking through the burlap sack she wore that pretended to be a gown. He was older. He had looked out for her after she had arrived, just like him. Begging at the back door for a crust of bread. He had kept Adalene from kicking her out. Had taught Phoebe how to sweep out the fireplace without setting the broom on fire. Had showed her tasks that she could do, all the ones that Adalene hated, like peeling potatoes and carrots, or washing kale, lettuce and leeks in a bucket so Adalene wouldn’t chirp about wasted water. Eventually, even Adalene had had to admit there was some use to be found in the new Twig, as she called her.

  Tristen had even held her all those early nights when she cried about her mother who had died in some attack by the British. How her mother had died, she wouldn’t say. But Tristen had taught the scamp to pray to her so that, some months later, Phoebe had finally stopped crying and seemed to find a sense of peace.

  Which was good, because it was about that time that Adalene had started complaining that Tristen was eating the kitchen out of its stores, stores meant for m’Lord and m’Lady, the castle gentry, the servants and the Guard. He didn’t understand it. He was just suddenly so hungry all the time. One evening, he had even taken a loaf of bread so that he could munch on it slowly through the night. Then, he took another. And another.

  Once he had almost gotten caught when Adalene was called without warning to warm some mead for m’Lord late one night. Because he and the scamp slept next to the fireplace, he knew he would have been caught for sure if Phoebe hadn’t laid on top of it to save him. She may not have said much, but Phoebe was smart all right. He was sure of that.

  Eventually, however, he did get caught. And Adalene sucked the Master’s cock in payment to beat Tristen. And beat him the Master did. Thoroughly. So thoroughly he peed himself and shat himself. When it was finally over, when Tristen thought that he was going to die that way, thankfully, the Master threw him out the back of the castle instead. He could barely move the next morning when Phoebe came to him with some bread and potatoes hidden in her smock.

  They knew that he had to leave, but she begged him not to, anyway. She cried bitterly. Big, glopping tears that popped out of her soft green eyes and rolled down her dirty cheeks. She held onto his knees, shrieking at the end, begging him not to go. It was the hardest thing he had ever had to do. But he knew it to be best. He could barely fight for his own survival. There was no way he could ever take care of her, too.

  So he had.

  He turned his back on Chateau Brionde with its dolphin in a yellow field flying on its flag above the Keep. He taught himself to hate everyone in the castle. Everyone except Phoebe.

  He learned how to be hard. He learned how to steal without getting caught. He learned how to fight with his fists and elbows, even his shoulders and knees, to protect the food and clothes that he stole. He learned how to hike many miles in a day. How to sleep in the woods. How to keep his hair smooth, and his face and hands clean so that people in a passing village wouldn’t set the dogs on him.

  He learned that there was a whole world outside Brionde. He traveled north to Normandy. He hiked east to Anjou. Seeing how knights were treated in the wider world, at an inn one night, he stole an old, rusty sword and, only in the woods, he practiced with it for hours. Eventually his shoulders and biceps got stronger and the heavy blade became little more than Phoebe in his arms no matter how long he worked with it.

  One day, he killed a knight. It wasn’t a fair fight. He didn’t even start it. The knight was soused, stinking of mead. He was slapping a woman around and, thinking of the scamp, Tristen told him to stop. Without a word, the knight drew his sword to run it right through him. Except he tripped on his own drunken feet. Before he knew what he was doing, Tristen grabbed the sword up and stabbed the knight in the back of the neck, holding it down all through the ugly, bloody spasms that followed. The woman grabbed his hand and pulled him through the village to her house. Where she cleaned him, and then showed him how to fuck her. It was wild.

  Early the next morning, he snuck out of her hut, and returned to the knight, finding the body cold and stiff. He dragged the body into the tavern’s stable and stripped it of its armor, careful to keep the knight’s money pouch with its jingling coins quiet. Matching the crest on the scabbard, he found the knight’s horse by the shield mounted on its flank and, after packing the armor, stole the lot, barely hanging on to the horse as it galloped out of the stable and out into the dawn.

  The least expected thing of all was how difficult it turned out to be to manage that damn horse! Killing the knight was easy, he found, compared to preventing that horse from killing him. He did, though. At last. He called it Destrey because he had once heard that the name meant fate. It was a tall, strong war charger. A deep dark brown with a blaze of white on its forehead. After he had finally learned to ride Destrey and had learned how crazy the horse was for oats and clover, they had learned to get along quite well together. He learned how to pay attention when Destrey was getting tired after a long day’s climb up a hill or how chilled Destrey could grow during a cold rain. Sometimes he even found himself wondering whether Destrey was growing fond of him. It was a nice thought. He didn’t trust the thought very much though and would typically try to think of something else.

  He gave himself the name Sir Tristen, from the old stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. He told everyone he was a Breton by birth, born not too far from Chateau Brionde. Some might have heard of it, but few knew it.

  Most important of all, as the years passed, he stayed the hell away from there.

  The whole transformation turned out to be far easier than he expected. No sane person ever attacked a knight, unless it was another knight. And they were all off fighting the British or fighting for the British. His small bag of coins went far, he found, because he was very careful with it.

  He even gave up stealing. He didn’t have to anymore. Most villages and towns usually had some service only a knight could perform, something in the nature of keeping the King’s Peace. He had a really difficult time not laughing the first time they had him beat a thief senseless, then paid him with plenty of mead, a large meat pie, a comfortable room, and stabling for Destrey. He also learned that if he stayed too long, however, questions would begin about his past.

  So he kept roving.

  The years passed.

  Eventually he ran into the Commander, who offered solid coin for his hit and run campaigns against the British and their forts in France. He took a shine to Tristen, for he was from Brittany, as well. Moreover, he was a Breton who liked to fight but didn’t like to talk about his past. They got along quite well together. And the Commander’s
band grew to accept Sir Tristen despite his youth. His skill grew as his reputation for fierceness grew as the number of deaths attributed to him in battle grew.

  Their roaming took them through the heart of the country, all through the Loire Valley. Tristen lost track of all the castles and forts they attacked and the towns and villages they sacked. Cities were richer, true. They were also far riskier for being the much better defended. There came a day, however, when there was nothing left to plunder. So, the Commander took them south, into English King Edward III’s fertile lands of Aquitaine. They had been there for a year or two when, one day, the Commander announced that they were moving back north. Why, Tristen never got the real story. Gaspard whispered that Paris had sent a message. The British were pulling back for lack of funds and refocusing their efforts on Brittany because it was closer to England.

  The attack last night would prove to be their last here.

  The Crown had called du Guesclin and his band of condottiere back home.

  * 2 *

  Phoebe heard a Guardsman’s moans and peeked through the hole in the meat smoker’s wall. Sure enough, there was Nicole, the slut, working on his cock. Phoebe tucked her hair in around her ears nervously, then did a quick check around her, particularly for Adalene. The coast was clear. She peeked back through. She had to stifle a laugh because the Guardsman was struggling to get a ham hanging from the roof to stop bouncing in his face as he kept thrusting into her mouth. His cock was brown with a reddish blue head to it, she thought. It was hard to tell with the dim lighting in the shed. She also was surprised at how small it was. She had seen larger. Part of it was that the hair around his cock was so bushy that it hid a lot of his manhood. She could see that Nicole was getting a bit irritated with the hairs shoving up her nose whenever he went for a deeper thrust.

  That he was enjoying it, though, was obvious. So, she settled down and focused on what Nicole was doing. After a moment or two, Phoebe saw that the girl was following a simple pattern. Nicole let him thrust into her mouth a few times, then she backed off, taking his cock in her hand and began working the shaft with her tongue back and forth, side to side, back and forth, side to side. Then, when he began to get a little antsy, looking down at her and pleading for more, she swallowed just the head to his loud moan of delight. She worked the head in her lips and from the puckering of her cheeks, Phoebe guessed that Nicole was working it with her tongue, too. Then, after a moment or two of that, the slut took him all the way in. At which point he began thrusting in and out of her mouth again.

  It didn’t seem so difficult Phoebe thought, moving one knee off a sharp stone digging into it. She wanted to see the cum. She had only seen one once before. After hearing so much about it, she was honestly a bit disappointed at how little came out. Particularly given how much noise the man was making at the time. It was Jurgen, delivering the wood, and Adalene didn’t have the coin, so she made one of the maidservants suck his cock. That had been a bit of a downer, too, because the poor maid kept having to shove his big belly out of the way. Phoebe had to bite her lip to keep from shouting out with laughter at how ridiculous it all looked. No, a common tradesman didn’t have much cum in him, that was clear. Now a Guardsman, she thought...

  And she saw stars. Her nose was screaming in pain. She couldn’t figure out what had happened until she heard Adalene’s own screams in her ears.

  “Get up you lazy lout of a girl! Get up and get back to work!”

  She stumbled to her feet and ran for it. Just turning the corner, she glanced back and saw that Adalene was peeking through the hole now herself. Of course.

  Still, she didn’t want another beating, so she got the broom, dipped it into the water pail next to the fireplace and began sweeping out the last of the morning’s ashes to be put on the garden vegetables. Then, she loaded the fireplace with fresh wood in time for the evening’s fire. m’Lord was having some important guests, she had heard, so only fresh wood would do for the pig that would be roasting all afternoon long. The pig itself lay on the large cutting block that took up most of the center of the kitchen floor. It was still waiting to be butchered, and she wasn’t looking forward to scooping out the entrails.

  “Hey, Twig!”

  She gasped. Her hand immediately went to her nose as she turned to look at him.

  Louis was standing there in the doorway, one hand on the frame, looking so incredibly gorgeous she wanted to smother him in kisses.

  “What’s wrong?” His golden brown eyes were narrowing in concern. He took a step toward her, his hand reaching out.

  She stepped back and ran into the cutting block, then turned and tried to get away. “It’s fine!” she cried. “It’s nothing.”

  “Looks like something to me. Let’s see it,” he replied and stepped over to her.

  She looked down, swearing inside that she should have checked their mirror to see how badly her nose looked. It was tiny, they were so expensive, but would have done the job. They usually only used it to do a last check of their smocks before entering the Hall with a platter during a meal.

  He was gently pulling aside her hand. “Come on, let’s see it.”

  She anxiously looked into his eyes to see what he saw.

  He was tsking. “What did you do? Get into a brawl over at the tavern?”

  “No!” she moaned. “I...fell.”

  “Into what?” he asked. “Adalene’s fist?”

  She paused for a long moment, searching his eyes. Then she nodded.

  “Well,” he said, “I’m not going to ask what you did to earn that.”

  Thinking of Adalene bending over her fat belly to peek through the same eye hole, she grunted in disgust.

  “At any rate,” he smiled, “I’m here. Put me to work, though I only have a few minutes before practice.”

  She smiled, brightening up. So he had remembered. After a few days of nothing, she had decided that he had forgotten. This morning, she had had to positively fight herself not to bring him a biscuit anyway.

  Still... She decided on saucy. That seemed to work with him.

  “Guess you were missing those biscuits.”

  “Maybe,” he beamed back at her. “Or maybe I was just missing your smile.”

  She had to stifle a “Louis!” and look away.

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and waited. She kept her eyes down, watching the scuffed toe of one of his boots start to turn inward. The moment seemed to stretch on forever.

  “Tell you what,” he finally spoke. “Choose something that will get you out of hock with Adalene. I’ve seen how brawny those arms of hers are. I bet she packs a good wallop.”

  She nodded and looked around the kitchen wondering what to suggest. She wanted to say something smart, but only felt more tongue-tied with each passing moment. Of course, Adalene would probably show up soon anyway and ruin everything. God, she felt so stupid!

  He nodded toward the pig. “How about that? Got a knife and a bucket?” And before she knew what was happening, he was stripping off his blouse.

  And then they did it. Their first task done together. Years later, she would savor the memory as if it were made of the finest mint and cocoa treat melting slowly on her tongue. That they were actually slaughtering a pig...well...

  In any case, at the time as she struggled to untie the knots in her tongue, he neatly pulled a knife from the side of the cutting block, and twirled it between his fingers a few times as he looked over the pig.

  “Right up the middle?” he asked. “It’s already drained, right?” He fingered the cut in the pig’s neck where the jugular had been sliced open.

  She nodded, a quick jerk, then felt stupid all over again.

  “Grab the legs,” he said.

  And she did the best she could. The pig, more of a huge hog really, was just that. Tremendous in size and weight. She put all the strength she could into holding it in one place and felt so puny while doing so. She also felt an incredible amount of heat building up in her l
oins, just below her belly as she watched the muscles ripple across his back while he plunged the knife into the belly and began working it up to the chest.

  What an amazing chest he had himself, she thought, watching his shoulders and biceps flex, the abs taut with tension as he began breaking each of the ribs for easier cleaning and, later, stuffing the pig. She wondered how she could prolong this moment without looking too obvious. Spill something? No, she’d look like a doofus, and she had done enough of that already.

  She saw his hair start to drift into his eyes and longed with a soft sigh to brush it out of the way as she watched him flick it with a jerk of his head. Her own eyes began drifting to his hands, so strong, and she wondered what it would be like to be held by them. Once she saw a Guardsman take Nicole from behind in the meat smoker, his thick hands grasping her heavy thighs as he plunged in and out of her, again and again.

  She swallowed a moan. And tried not to act like an idiot. Finally, if she wasn’t going to let her inner whirligig make her dizzy enough to puke, she had to simply look away.

  A few sharp pops later, and he was washing the fat off his hands while she began scooping out the liver and stomach. He even wedged a block of wood to hold the ribs open for her to make it easier to slice out the lungs and begin washing out the inside.

  Before she knew it, however, he was donning his blouse.

  “I better get to the yard,” he said.

  She nodded again, her tongue lost somewhere again. She began looking at the slops bucket on the floor and noticed how quickly it filled up when the animal was so large. She kept noticing that. It drew her attention like a moth to a flame and would not let her go.

  “So...” he cleared his throat.

  The kitchen got very quiet all over again.

  “A biscuit tomorrow, then?”

  “Sure!” she managed to squeak out – she actually squeaked – and turned about fifty shades of red.

  “Good,” he chirped. “See you then.”