Free Alinor by Roberta Gellis

and could continue to complain and appeal and hold up Peter's pence. Winchester hinted to me that the subordinate bishops implied they would make no protest over the Pope's decision to exclude them from the election if Stephen Langton were preferred."
    "Who?"
    "Stephen Langton, an Englishman. He is now cardinal priest of Saint Chrysogonus in Rome. You do not know him, but my lands are in the north and I met him twice, oh, many years ago when he was a prebendary in York. It was just after I came out of Wales. I was, perhaps, eighteen or nineteen years old. I have never forgotten him. No one who has ever met him has ever forgotten him. He will serve our purpose if any man alive can. He is the stuff of which martyrs are made."
    Alinor fastened the bandage and reached out absently to hand Ian his shirt. He smiled as he began to struggle into it. She was looking at him with a frown on her brow but obviously not seeing him at all. Her thoughts were all for the political matter under discussion. Again Ian was aware of pleasure oddly mixed with pain. Obviously, he was no longer an honored guest, one who must be waited upon hand and foot. Husbands might do for themselves when wives were otherwise occupied. The abandonment of formal courtesy was reassuring, but Ian was not a husband of long standing. He was a young lover. He wanted his lady's eyes to dwell upon him with desire.
    The shirt was Ian's own and thus too tight over the bulky bandage. Simon's chausses had fitted well because both men were long of leg and narrow of hip, but Simon had been bulkier of shoulder and chest than Ian. In a moment Alinor's attention was recalled by his contortions. She "tchk'd" with irritation, snatched the shirt off over his head again, and went to fetch another.
    "I can see that it will help to fix John's attention on a contest with the church, although that is a chancy thing and may bring grief in its train; but it is not enough," Alinor said as she maneuvered the larger shirt over Ian's body.
    Now started, she continued to dress him with automatic efficiency, dropping to her knees to pull the chausses over his feet and up over his legs. Ian's hand twitched toward her glossy hair, as black as his own, but thick and straight as a horse's tail, so long that it swept the floor around her as she knelt. He had only seen her hair twice before in his life. Once, when he had first known her and she still wore the old-style headdress of a veil under a chaplet, he had seen her hair under the veil in braids. Once, when she had miscarried of a child, Simon had brought Ian to their bedchamber to talk to Alinor and lighten her heart. Then her hair had been loose as now. Ian drew his hand away.
    "Not enough," he agreed. The effort he made was successful. His voice was steady. "What more must be done remains to be seen." He paused for a moment and then went on somewhat hesitantly, "Weddings are a good reason for men to meet without seeming to have any suspicious purpose."
    "Excellently thought upon," Alinor agreed heartily.
    There was no quiver of disappointment in her voice. She knew this marriage was an arrangement of political and personal convenience for Ian. It was quite reasonable that he should think of the wedding in terms of its political usefulness. In fact, she could not understand why she felt differently. There was no change in her love for Simon. Nonetheless, when she thought of being married to Ian, her breath came a little shorter and warmth suffused her. It would be necessary to be very careful to hide such things from him. It would be unfair to display an interest and eagerness he was unable to match.
    "Stand up." Alinor tied the chausses, dropped to her knees again, and tapped his right foot. He lifted it enough for her to slip the cross garter under. "Tighten that leg."
    Ian seized the cloth at his thigh and drew it upward while Alinor expertly twisted the cross garter round his leg and tied it under the knee. The left leg was similarly treated.