Read Online Ill Met by Moonlight by Sarah A. Hoyt - Free Book Online Page A

itself with the depth and breadth of his mouth, her searching, hungry lips seemed to wish to suck his very soul away.
    Will’s heart throbbed, in joyful, painful dance. A din of unholy music filled his head, reverberated from the walls of his cranium, set his bones afire. Convulsively, he embraced the lady, feeling her body taut against his, her body perfect and pliant in his arms, her breasts soft and warm against his chest.
    As suddenly as it had begun, the kiss ended. The lady he’d held in his arms vanished.
    Alone, on a patch of moonlight outside dark Hewlands Farm, Will wiped his mouth which, inexplicably, tasted sweet and spicy like the best wine.
    Heat coursed through Will’s veins and made him want to sing and dance for joy. He forgot he was tired and hungry. He felt as he had on wakening when he’d been quite small and the whole day stretched in front of him full of unending possibilities.
    He sauntered down the path to the farm. He must have dreamed while he walked, and whatever restless sleep his brain had snatched while his body strode through the forest path had left him wonderfully renewed. Sleepwalking, he must have been, and no wonder, as hard as he’d been working.
    Now, he would knock on the door and they would admit him to the chamber where Nan bid the night, and the fantastic nightmare would be over.
    His blood surged in him and protested the idea of the dark lady’s being gone forever, but he shook his head at it. A dream. Or if not a dream, a succubus that tormented sleeping men in their loneliness.
    He remembered Nan in silk and pearls dancing with the royalty. That’s what came from listening to his mother’s nonsense. Now, he’d dream of it, and his mother’s fantasies would pursue him until he knew not truth from folly.
    He walked across the still-warm threshing yard and to the house proper, and knocked at the door.
    It took a while to rouse anyone. As it would be if there had been a birth in the house. Everyone would be asleep and exhausted, of course.
    But when Bartholomew opened the door, Will saw Bartholomew’s wife right behind him, standing and swollen as big with child as ever.
    Bartholomew, a tall, fair man with eyes so pale they always reminded Will of much-boiled blackberries, frowned down at Will, his bristly eyebrows meeting in disapproval above his eyes. “Hello there, Brother Will,” he said, with forced heartiness. The long white shirt he wore looked creased and grey smeared. “How come you disturb our peace in the night? Is Nan well?”
    Nan. Bartholomew asked if she was well. Wasn’t she here ?
    “Nan? Have you not. . . ? Is Nan not here?” Will looked from Bartholomew to the other members of his household, arrayed behind him: young men and women, and small children. “Nan wasn’t home. House dark. I thought . . . Gentlemen in velvet, my mother said. But I thought perforce Nan would be here. Is she not?”
    “Wine,” one of Nan’s other brothers said, from behind Bartholomew. “I much fear you’ve been drinking, Brother Will.”
    The Hathaways were good religious people and disapproved of alcohol, except for the smallest of small ale.
    Will shook his head. “No.” He tried to discipline his tongue to a coherent telling of his woes. Of a sudden, all the tiredness of the day returned, its weight falling on his shoulders like an accustomed cloak. “No. When I returned home from work, Nan was gone and I couldn’t find her.” He told the whole tale, even mentioning the block of wood in the cradle, but leaving his visions and dreams out of it.
    The women of the house exchanged glances at his words, but didn’t raise their voices.
    It wasn’t until Will, buoyed by a mug of weak ale and a hunk of mutton, was ready to walk home again, that Margaret, Nan’s sister, spoke to him.
    At the door, away from the family’s men, she leaned toward Will and whispered, in a breath reeking of old mutton grease, “It is the good people who leave a stock in the bed of