At Her Service (Swords of Passion) by Cerise Deland Read Free Book Online Page B

quickly.
    The snow of this storm was not yet deep, but it laid a slick layer on the ice that caused Elise to slip and almost fall more than once. The wind cut through her cloak, and she tried to brace against it to no avail. She stopped, one arm out to steady herself and pant against a tree.
    Something crackled in the forest. A tree limb falling under the weight of ice? She jerked her head around and surveyed the terrain but saw nothing. She shivered in fear. A family of wild boars had moved into these woods last autumn and attacked anything that moved. Before Christmastide, the male had chased Ulred and cornered her, slicing one of her ankles with his long sharp tusks. But Elise saw nothing that resembled the huge, hairy beasts. Still, a flapping of wings made her jump, and she looked up at a fat crow, high above her in a tall pine.
    “Best you stay there in this storm,” she murmured to him. Clutching her hood deeply about her face, she bent to the wind once more and headed for the thatched home of Atherton’s only outcast.
    Elise scurried towards the woman’s hut near the creek where Ulred had lived since she’d been fourteen and Alphonse had banished her for predicting his second wife’s death. No one in the castle’s walls wanted Ulred’s eyes upon them, claiming Ulred alone had put evil spells on all Atherton’s countesses. But Elise felt no harm from the woman who, if she had a more pleasant demeanour and regular meals, might even have been lovely. Elise had often consulted her in the past twelve years, asking for potions to help make her fertile or aids to make her desire her husband. While none of those had ever worked, Elise knew Ulred had other medicinals that had cured coughs and headaches and other maladies of her, her husband and their serfs.
    “Why won’t your herbs help me bear a child, Ulred?” Elise had asked often, but Ulred had given her a weary look and dismissed her with some babble. “I cannot make a child blossom where no seed lives. The same I cannot grant your wish that your husband were a lustier man.”
    Thus, Elise learned and accepted that there were limits to everything, even Ulred’s fame and talents. Still, I come today, hoping for more.
    Scurrying to Ulred’s door, Elise called through the hanging of animal skins sewn together by Ulred’s artful fingers. “Ulred, ‘tis Lady Dumond! Are you there?”
    “Aye, where else would I be in this storm?” she called to Elise as she flung the heavy blanket hide aside and grinned at her with yellow teeth. “I expected you, I have. Get in here.”
    Elise ducked to let herself inside the place where Ulred had lined the walls with more hides from the wild beasts of the woods. The room was surprisingly warm as she went towards Ulred’s fire in the centre of the earth-packed floor. There, the woman had hung a pot, boiling with a stew. “What do you cook, Ulred? It smells wonderful.”
    “My dinner and your potion.”
    Elise attempted to demur, one hand up. “Mine? Nay. I have no idea what you brew there, woman.”
    Ulred approached and leaned close, her breath sweet with mint despite all her dark teeth. She inhaled Elise’s essence and closed her eyes. “You’ve been mating.”
    Elise’s eyes flew wide. She had bathed, washing her nether lips until she had pleasured herself with the rub of the cloth against her still swollen and tender cunny. “How can you tell?” If Ulred could, might not others? Men. Cleve. Her servants.
    “I can smell it on your breath. Your flux was more than a fortnight ago, and your skin breathes with a fecund musk. Your eyes glow with it. Your man has appeared at last, has he not?”
    There was no reason to deny it. ‘Your man’ had long been Ulred’s term for a tall, dark warrior whom she had predicted more than five years ago would be Elise’s saviour—and her tormentor.
    Elise inhaled. “Aye. May I sit?”
    Ulred squeezed her dark eyes in glee and clapped her hands. “I knew he was about. I