"Sure," Sally slurred, and then whispered loudly, "Just don't tell my husband about Bill. He's the jealous type."
"I won't," Jayr promised as she handed her off to the trainer. To him, she said, "Have Eric follow you in Sally's car. Thank you, Bill." She turned to inspect the other women who had not yet left, and made her choices. "Sara, Candace, Ellie, may I speak with you for a moment?"
The women followed her into the connecting meeting room. All three had worked as hostesses at the Realm for many years. Over time, like many of the other females on the staff, they had also become trusted friends and allies who occasionally performed other services for the Kyn.
The women enjoyed their employment, not only for the generous pay and decent working conditions, but because after the Realm closed for the night, they had their pick of the unattached Kyn males. Jayr made it clear to the women who chose to provide pleasure for the men of the Realm that they had the option to refuse anyone they wished at any time. She also did not allow any female on staff to stay more than one or two nights each month. The men of the garrison, who would otherwise have had to go out and hunt for human blood and pleasure, handled the staff females with great care and respect.
"Lord Byrne is restless tonight," she told the women. "Would you be willing to entertain him?"
Candace exchanged a glance with Ellie. "All three of us again?"
Jayr shrugged. "He is quite restless."
Sara, a dark-skinned islander with a beautiful accent, flashed a devilish smile. "Sounds like we'll be putting in some overtime, girls."
Jayr escorted the women back up to Byrne's chamber, and pretended not to hear them as they chatted on how they could best entertain her master. This part of her duties was as necessary as tending to Byrne's weapons or keeping his chamber in order, but she despised it. Had she been a normal woman, she could have seen to all his needs.
Had you been a normal woman, her conscience chided, he never would have made you his seneschal.
Jayr let the women into the chamber but remained outside. She had to finalize some travel arrangements for the last of the tourneyers, perform an inspection of the armory, and sort through the ever-present pile of paperwork in the management office. She had not yet found the time to go and see to straightening Rainer's arm. The seigneur would be attending; she would have to call his seneschal, Navarre, and learn what arrangements would best please Cyprien and his sygkenis.
Instead, Jayr stood and waited outside while the women entertained her master. It wasn't that she didn't have faith in the women—the three had spent many nights with Byrne—but that she didn't trust his mood.
Or her own. How could she have been so blunt with him?
Jayr knew she had said too much. The ease between them relied on the formality of the traditional relationship between lord and seneschal. She also took great pains to keep him from seeing her as a mere female. Now that Byrne knew she did not take lovers, would he pity her? Did he even suspect how much she wished she could be the one in his bed?
If he knew how often she had imagined it, he would send her away. Or laugh.
Because she was alone and had nothing to do but listen for any indication of Byrne's displeasure, Jayr's imagination began to torture her. Images formed in her mind, tableaus to accompany the faint, soft sounds and voices that were coming through the door.
A big, virile man like Byrne could easily pleasure three human females at the same time. He would strip them bare first and have them pile around him on the bed. He would take the time to arouse them, using not only his scent but his hands and mouth. They would be panting and gasping, drenched in the scent of heather, before he rolled Ellie onto her back and plowed into her. As he impaled her, he would put his mouth to Sara and use his fingers on Candace. Once he had brought them to their pleasure, he might play more with them, having two use their mouths on him while one straddled his face and—
No. Jayr's thoughts became a spear-tipped portcullis and slammed down on the image. I will not see that.
She wished she could blame her indecent thoughts solely on her imagination, but she knew exactly how well her master could pleasure a woman.
Jayr had firsthand experience.
It should never have happened. Not there, not with a battle raging only a field away. Not to a girl who had spent most of her life shut away in a convent. Not to the warrior who lay dying in her arms.
Jayr had arrived in the village of Bannockburn in late June, only a day before the army of King Edward II came marching up the old Roman road to mass at the village ford. In the hills a rebel force of Scots only half the size of the English army had already entrenched themselves to the north of the gorge, where the narrow flatlands between the marshes and the hills gave them the advantage. She had tried to walk out, but the Scots had blocked all paths through the forests with barricades of branches and trees as well as cleverly disguised pit traps. An old man in the village told her that neither she nor the English would outflank Robert the Brus.
Even now it seemed impossible that so many men had died in the space of two days. Jayr recalled the long hours she had spent hiding in the root cellar of the inn, listening to the thunderous advance of the English cavalry and the barbaric shouts of the Scots pikemen in their schiltroms, impaling all who came near them on their wall of fifteen-foot spears.
The innkeeper came and went with news from the battlefield. Against an army twice their number, the Scots were holding the line. The English archers had crossed the gorge and fired their arrows too early; they slaughtered hundreds of their own cavalrymen retreating from the advancing Scots infantry. When the Scots wavered under the rain of arrows, Keith the Marischal had charged out of his hiding place in the woods, leading five hundred mounted warriors into the field to scatter the bowmen.
Confusion among the English ranks, it was later said, took the day as much as the Scots did.
Now no longer afraid the English would swarm over the village, the innkeeper and his wife had throw Jayr out, bolting the door against her. She went from door to door, but her English accent failed to gain her new sanctuary. As the Scots advanced in the distance, driving their enemies back toward the gorge, she walked out into the marsh and crossed it, heading for the densest part of the forest. There she would have to find a place to hide until the battle was done.
She had to cross one last pasture to reach the trees, and in the center of it she came upon the edge of the pit trap.
Unlike those scattered through the woods, this pit was smaller and deeper, and had been freshly dug. She began to walk around it when she heard a man groan.
"Dinnae leave me alone here, lass."
With hair the color of blood and a face covered with strange blue tattoos, the Scot had looked like a demon leering up from the abyss. But the strange twilight fire in his eyes was fading, and the brutal, torn hand he held up to her shook with pain and exhaustion.
Jayr was not a fool. She could not jump into a pit trap for a dying man three times her size who had just spent two days killing her countrymen.
So, of course, she did.
The door swung away from her back, almost causing Jayr to fall. Heather-scented air poured out of the chamber, and she pivoted to see Sara's dreamy face as she emerged from the chamber.
"Hey, girl." The brunette yawned as she drifted past. "We're done for the night."
"You've finished?" Jayr thought Byrne had settled on the other two—perhaps he was a little tired—but Candace and Ellie followed Sara, and the door closed.
Jayr checked their wrists, but saw punctures only on Ellie and Candace. Sara seemed to be wholly untouched. Evidently none of them had removed their garments; there hadn't been enough time even for that.
"Was my lord displeased with you?" Jayr asked, worried now that Byrne had grown tired of the trio.
"No." Candace, her face still flushed with pleasure, smiled. "He did me without even touching me."
"We're to go home now," Ellie said, her voice taking on the faint burr of Byrne's accent, indicating that she had been told to do so while bespelled. "G' night, Jayr."
The three glided off, still suffused in the pleasures bestowed by her master and l'attrait.
He had not taken them. He had pleasured them and then sent them away.
Unreasonable satisfaction scorched through Jayr. Byrne had not surrendered to lust or the means to rid himself of it. Maybe now he meant to do without it, as she did.
Or maybe he had simply tired of the women and wanted new ones.
Feeling elated and wretched all at once, Jayr stared at the door, wondering if she dared go inside and inquire. She knew her master's needs better than anyone. Byrne had never sought to live in celibacy, yet he had not taken a human woman for weeks. By all accounts he should have used the three for the remainder of the night. It made no sense that he would take only a little blood and send them away.
What was wrong with him?
That day on the battlefield came back to her in a rush, his voice from the pit surrounding her, squeezing her from all sides, holding her helpless, suspending time between the past and the present until all that remained were his words, the words that she had imprinted on her mind, on her heart, on her soul.
Dinnae leave me alone here, lass.
Dinnae leave me alone here.
Dinnae leave me alone.
Dinnae leave me.
Dinnae leave.
Dinnae.
And then his hands, and his mouth…
Jayr slammed her fist into the wall hard enough to split the skin. She wouldn't go inside or humiliate herself again. She knew her place. She was Aedan mac Byrne's servant and bodyguard, the eyes at his back, his third blade.
Seneschal. And that was all she would ever be.
Jayr knew she would find no rest away from him this night. She turned and pressed her shoulders to the door, sliding down until she sat, her arms resting on her knees. She let her head fall back and gave herself up to the anguish so eager to torment her.
The scent of tansy drew Byrne to the door of his chamber. He pressed a hand against the polished wood, sliding his palm down as he knelt to see a shadow partially blocking the light that filtered through the crack at the bottom. Jayr, sitting on the other side. All that separated him from his seneschal—from her—was three inches of seasoned oak.