Free Dark Maiden by Lindsay Townsend Page A

from him as he interrupted. “Night terrors! No, madam, those would be a blessing compared to what my girls and the other maids here presently endure. Filthy dreams of carnal couplings and handsome demons fondling them!”
    “Alms,” called a new voice, issuing like the voice of God himself from the churchyard. “Alms for a poor, misjudged soul who never did any harm…”
    What has he done now? Yolande quickened her pace and vaulted over the low stone wall bordering the churchyard, leaving the reeve to go the long way ’round by way of the church gate.
    “In thought or deed,” the voice went on.
    Behind her, Michael Steward finished his complaint with, “And my youngest daughter is but twelve years old.”
    “They are dreams and dreams can be fought,” Yolande countered with firm reassurance, striding across the grass. Halme’s priest was still absent but a handsome, tanned fellow sat in the churchyard stocks, batting away pebbles and rotten fruit as if he made great sport with the crowd. Geraint loved working an audience.
    “Gentle lady,” he addressed her, sweeping his tasseled cap off his riot of black curls. “Pity, I pray you, and tell these good folk I am no thief.”
    “You know this man?” Michael Steward forgot the plight of his three daughters in his doughty disapproval of her companion, who grinned and clapped his bare feet together like a pair of hands.
    “Geraint Welshman is my servant.”
    That was the lie she and Geraint had decided upon so she could spend last night at the reeve’s house and Geraint could spend it watching the graveyard and church for any sign of revenants.
    So what is he doing in the stocks? Look at him, winking at me and juggling pebbles for the crowd. He may be a strolling player but does he have to turn every occasion into a show? He can be out of those stocks in a moment. Why isn’t he?
    A buxom matron pushed to the front of the tightly knit group. “He stole a loaf of my bread and put his hand up my dress.”
    Geraint answered roundly, “I paid for the bread, goodwife, with my tumbling and kept my hands to myself.” Iron bit into his next words. “This I swear, especially the last.”
    “You call me a liar to my face?”
    “I say you are mistaken. No more, no less.”
    Yolande knew he was aggrieved. Geraint might filch a king’s deer or a lord’s trout but he did not thieve from the people and he never made free with his fingers. Glancing at the blush on the older woman’s neck, she understood the desire—did she not feel it herself, every day? But even so, matters had gone far enough.
    “I have two good silver pennies here to see my servant set free before his feet rot off,” she intervened, hoping she sounded tart and disinterested.
    Sprawling in the stocks as if on the most comfortable of thrones, Geraint rolled her another bow. “Lady, you are all grace but I wish to prove my innocence.”
    Stubborn man. “I thought you were keeping guard over this place,” Yolande said in Welsh, a language he had patiently taught her these last six months.
    Six months traveling together, close enough to touch, to lie side by side each night and yet never to join… Why have I heard no reply to my message yet? For how long must we wait?
    “I was, until ‘Goodwife Bosom’ took a fancy to me.”
    Yolande translated Geraint’s answer in her head and fought to pay closer attention. “You have been in the stocks all night?” she demanded in English.
    “That I have, and with no sign of any fresh snow, ghosts, revenants or succubi,” he replied in the same tongue before switching seamlessly back to Welsh. “Although you are tempting enough for any man.”
    Glad the bronze of her skin hid her blush, Yolande turned to the reeve. “Can he be freed quickly? I have work here and I need his help.”
    This was not strictly true but she would be glad of his company.
    “No matter, cariad . I have done it myself.”
    There had been no creak or turn of the heavy timbers of