My Lady Midnight. Laurie Grant
gray kirtle. Glancing across the bailey again, Claire saw that the groom had regained control of the war-horse, and the smith had resumed his attempts to shoe the restive stallion. She resumed her exploration.
She finished investigating the inner ward first, with its outbuildings built into the inner curtain wall. Crossing the bailey from the brewmistress’s outbuilding, she had come to the kitchen, greeting Marie, the cook who had given her and the children bread yesterday, and had met Tansy and Flora, the pair of kitchen maids, and Peter the quistron, the boy who turned the spit.
At a right angle to the kitchen lay a large rectangular outbuilding easily identifiable as the stable by its odors of manure, livestock and hay. From within Claire heard a horse neigh, and then saw Lord Alain’s stallion prick up his ears, toss his head and give an answering whinny.
“Good morrow, sweeting, and welcome!” called a voice above her. She looked up to see a flaxen-headed man waving from a window in the upper floor of the stable. “Hugh la Jaune-Tête is my name! We’re both named Hugh, but if ye fancy a man who can woo ye better than Le Gros, why not come upstairs to the barracks and visit with me now? There’s naught here but me at present…It’s but a short climb up the ladder in the stable, sweetheart!”
Saints, did every soul in Hawkswell Castle know that Le Gros had tried and failed with her last evening? And as Haesel, she could not respond with the shocked outrage that she could have if a man-at-arms had taken such verbal liberties with Lady Claire de Coverly. Why, he could have been whipped for less at Coverly!
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