Page 49 of Laird of Steel
“Och!” Feiyan cried. “Leave off your fighting then. We’ve got guests arriving after dinner. Merraid has chores to do.”
“As you wish,” he told her. Then he glanced up at Merraid. “Well, you’ve won. I’m at your command. What’s your bidding?”
The way he was looking at her—his eyes misty and mysterious, his lips curved in a smile that was half irritation and half amusement—a dozen wicked thoughts coursed through her brain. Thoughts she dared not voice. Instead she lowered her gaze.
“What would your biddin’ be if ye’d won?”
“My bidding?”
He reached up toward her. She took his hand to help him up. When he didn’t immediately release her, she felt a blush warm her cheeks.
There was an awkward moment as their eyes met. Surely the smoldering she saw in his piercing gaze was only a reflection of her own desire. But for an instant, she feared he might blurt out something deliciously improper. Like “a kiss.” Or “a caress.” Or “a tryst in the woods.”
Then the smoke dissipated from his eyes, and he arched his brow. “I would bid you stop spying on me for a day.”
She frowned. Disappointment effectively quashed her lust. “Spyin’ on ye? I haven’t been spyin’ on ye.”
She very muchhadbeen spying on him. But it wasn’t because she was meddlesome, as he imagined. It was because she cared. She was trying to safeguard him.
He was a blind fool if he couldn’t see that.
Damn his ungrateful hide. She’d exchanged serving duties with a kitchen lad just so she could watch over Gellir last night at supper. Manipulated her way into the garden the other day to keep an eye on him. Taken time out of her busy schedule to interrogate other servants, researching each prospective bride.
He had no idea what effort it took, what pains she’d gone to, looking after his welfare without neglecting her household duties.
Then inspiration hit her. She would show him how difficult it was.
“Ye’ll do my biddin’?” she asked.
He placed a hand across his heart. “So I have vowed.”
“Then ye can do my chores today.”
Gellir had never been one to complain about hard labor. He was not as high-and-mighty as Merraid seemed to believe. He was always willing to help a crofter push his cart out of a rut. Chase after a lady’s runaway palfrey. Help deliver a litter of pups. On the tournament circuit, he polished his own armor and cared for his own horse.
But he quickly learned Merraid’s long list of tasks rivaled those of a king’s squire.
It didn’t help that the other servants snickered behind their hands at his clumsy efforts. Smoothing linens over trestle tables. Emptying a dozen chamberpots. Polishing wooden furnishings with beeswax. Carrying a basket of live eels to the kitchen.
With all Merraid’s responsibilities, it was a wonder she found spare hours to perfect her fighting skills. How she carved out time to spy on him, he didn’t know.
The Darragh warriors, apparently unable to stand the sight of their appointed hero subjected to such indignity, largely avoided crossing his path.
But Merraid stayed close to him all day. She seemed intent on lapping up every gloating drop of his humiliation.
“Ye missed a spot,” she complained with an impish sparkle in her eye as he ran a waxy rag over the lid of Feiyan’s oak chest.
He glared at her and swabbed across the wood…again.
“Don’t break the eggs,” she warned as he carefully counted out a dozen from the day’s collection.
“I won’t,” he said, smugly tossing one in the air.
She caught it midflight, scowling as she handed it back to him.
When he entered the kitchen lads’ quarters to empty chamberpots, she stopped him with a warning. “For this chamber, ’tis best to tie a scarf o’er your face.”
“I need no—” His words cut off abruptly as the stench of waste hit him full in the face. He wrinkled his nose in disgust.
