Free The Outlaws of Ennor: (Knights Templar 16) by Michael Jecks Page B

fellow, once he stopped strutting about. Most of the time he walked around like a constipated duck. She’d told him that, and he had looked hurt, but then he had to laugh with her.
    It had been a long, wonderful summer’s day, only a matter of two weeks ago. Isok and the men were out in the boats, and Robert had come past. Tedia was thirsty after a backbreaking morning digging in her field, and Robert had been carrying a wine-skin.
    ‘That looks good enough to kill for!’ she had said, half-jokingly, almost before she realised what she was saying. This man was the gather-reeve for the Lord of the Manor, Ranulph Blancminster, after all! If Robert were to denounce her for her lack of respect, she could have been taken and whipped. She’d put nothing past Blancminster.
    The latter instilled fear in all the peasants. Ruthless and indifferent, he ruled the islands under his authority like a monarch. There was no one on Ennor to restrain him, and although Tedia lived on StNicholas, and was serf to the Prior, owned by the Manor and ultimately answerable to the Abbot of Tavistock, the Lord of Ennor would be a very bad enemy for a mere peasant.
    ‘You think I’d be worth killing just for a mouthful of wine?’ Robert had asked, with mock offence. ‘Perhaps I am too violent to give up my wine without a fight.’
    ‘You’d wrestle with a poor woman like me, sir?’ she’d responded, and then flushed to the roots of her hair.
    Tedia knew that it wasn’t so often that a woman would flirt so suggestively with any man – especially the gather-reeve. She hadn’t meant to – but when he grinned at her he was quite handsome, and she felt a familiar stirring at the sight. It reignited memories which she had tried so hard to suppress. Memories of rolling naked with a boy in fields of flowers while the sun warmed their backs; memories of swimming naked with boys; memories of golden afternoons with nothing to do but lie in the grass and listen to the waves while a boy’s hands investigated her body with a cautious, delicious reverence.
    ‘I think there should always be wine for a lady,’ he had said, and within the hour, they were sitting side by side on the beach at the westernmost porth of the island, beyond the line of hills that hid them from the view of the vill and the monks of St Nicholas. Here they spoke for hours, until the sun was moving too far from its zenith. As it began to sink westward, they had stopped speaking, and merely watched. The wine was all gone, and Tedia felt a warmth flowing through her body from the unaccustomed drink. She wanted to stay there for ever. If she had died then, she would have died happy.
    Her happiness almost turned to ecstasy when she touched him and felt him shake. And then she kissed him, softly, sweetly, and with real affection. An affection which grew to desire when she saw how his body had responded. She stared at him for what felt like an age.
    It was curious. No, it was more than that: it was wonderful, exciting,
thrilling
! For the last few years she had felt like an old woman: undesired and unlovable. No matter what Isok said to her,she always believed that it was her fault. It was her sin, perhaps, in loving too many boys when she was a girl before she married; or maybe it was something Isok had done. She had no idea. All she knew was, that suddenly she had here, within reach, proof that she was not undesirable, that she could still make a man’s heart run with liquid fire. She could make his manhood rise as firmly and proudly as a mare could her stallion or a bitch her dog. She was still a woman.
    That discovery was wonderful. It was as though her life had suddenly begun again. The desperation and despair of the last years were wiped out as though by magic, and in their place was a new confidence. This was the proof: the problem was not hers, it was her man who was at fault. And yet she could do nothing about it. She was tied to him with indissoluble chains, witnessed by