Read Online Godiva by Nicole Galland - Free Book Online Page B

face. “You are testing me,” he replied.
    â€œI can arrange an assignation,” she repeated slowly.
    He took in a slow, pained breath and let it out with a slow, pained sigh. “What a little tormentor you are!”
    â€œWill you meet with her alone?”
    â€œI . . . of course not!” he said. “By Olaf’s bones, that would be disastrous. I can hardly speak in her presence.”
    â€œYou would not need to speak,” Godiva said.
    â€œNow I know you’re testing me, and this is nonsense,” he said. “Edgiva would not do that, even if she wished to, so you are offering me something I’d have to take by force, and I would not do that to a woman I find so excellent in all regards. This is an unfortunate flaring of desire that has no future and I must simply ride it out—”
    â€œSo to speak.”
    â€œThe abbess does not deserve to be spoken of in such a manner,” Sweyn said, very cross.
    That convinced her. She stood on tiptoe, kissed his cheek, and then gave it a mothering pat. He was worthy of Edey.
    â€œAnd there she is, at it again, ” said Edward’s tenor nasality from behind her. “Mind your wench, Mercia. If you so readily cede that which the Holy Church has given you, you should not be surprised if other possessions slip out of your grasp as well.”
    She turned quickly to see her husband, illuminated by a torch at the doorjamb, standing in the door, wearing only his shirt with his mantle wrapped around him, looking something between amused and embarrassed; the king, in bed-robes, was disappearing back into the darkened hall.
    Godiva immediately knelt, grabbed her mantle, and with the awkwardness of chilled limbs, began to wrap it around herself. Sweyn took one very large step sideways.
    â€œBy Odin’s wounds, your wife’s intentions toward me were entirely decorous,” Sweyn said. Godiva had never seen him nearly so demure. “She was only testing my devotion to another.”
    â€œI know what she was doing,” Leofric said drily. “The problem, wife, is that you do not know what you have done.”

CHAPTER 7
    Hereford
    S weyn had planned to hunt with the king the next morning, as many of the earls were doing—Great Councils always met near the best hunting grounds. But upon hearing the abbess required an escort, he gave regrets to the king and his huntsman and ordered his housecarls to prepare for departure at dawn, when the stone cathedral’s bells tolled Prime. So Edgiva rode pillion behind a lay brother, in a convoy with Sweyn and his housecarls, as far as Hereford.
    It was a rough day’s ride, over hilly terrain, in raw weather, with no spring flowers worth the notice to liven the road. Truly, Edgiva was glad of the hard pace they kept because it would make casual conversation impossible. She spent the morning with gloved hands clenching the grips, head bowed, praying to St. Pelagia for protection from sexual defilement. Sweyn gave her no reason for it; it was her own heart’s pounding that alarmed her.
    She had assumed—as Godiva teased her often—that she had been born without the urge to mate, or even to crave that manner of attention. It was such joy and yet such agony to spot him out of the corner of her eye as they rode. He looked so maddeningly handsome in his fawn-colored leather gear and cloak, on his mare—even that he rode a mare, she could hear Godiva japing filthily and gleefully about this, and her cheeks reddened and she had to consciously control her breathing.
    He made it worse—although he did not mean to—when after the brief break for a midday meal near a flowering pussy willow, as they were walking the horses for a stretch, he reined his mount up alongside the one she rode on and struck up a conversation with her. He was so obviously eager to entertain her; she became embarrassed for him, that everyone in the riding party could surely read